New Senate math challenges Obama’s agenda

WASHINGTON — From health care to job creation and from bank reform to climate change, President Barack Obama’s agenda is facing a new and serious challenge after the upset victory by Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special senatorial election on Tuesday.

Brown’s stunning win in the race to fill the late Edward M. Kennedy’s seat robs the Democratic party of its 60-seat supermajority in the Senate, the number needed to end filibusters, just as congressional Democrats are putting the finishing touches on the White House-backed health care reform bill. Democrats are scrambling to get the bill through Congress and will be forced to use alternative means to pass it.

Brown’s five-point victory coincided with the
one-year anniversary of Obama’s swearing-in as the 44th U.S. president,
and about a week ahead of Obama’s first State of the Union address.
Obama will use the address, scheduled for Jan. 27, to lay out his agenda, including job creation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., vowed Wednesday morning to press ahead with a host of issues.

“In the coming year, we will ensure all Americans
can access affordable health care, deny insurance companies the ability
to deny health care to the sick, and slash our deficit in the process,”
Reid said on the Senate floor.

“We will continue to create new jobs, including good-paying clean-energy jobs that can never be outsourced,” Reid added.

But Republicans seized on the new balance of power in the Senate,
saying it could spell defeat for the health care overhaul. Brown’s win
means that the Republicans will be able to stall any Democratic
legislation in the Senate. The GOP has heavily criticized proposed Democratic legislation on climate change and the White House’s stimulus package, aimed at creating and saving jobs.

“We ought to stop,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky
said Wednesday morning, about the health care bill. Asked if he thought
the Democrats’ health care bill was dead, McConnell replied, “I sure
hope so.”

Obama’s party enjoyed a de facto supermajority in the Senate until Brown’s election Tuesday, with 58 Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats.

House Democrats could now simply accept the Senate’s version of the health care bill, a measure that passed Dec. 24 but which some in the House are already backing away from.

“I don’t think I can vote for the Senate bill, and I don’t think there are the votes in the House for the Senate bill,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner, a liberal New York Democrat, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Democrats could also try to pass the health care
bill through a special legislative process known as reconciliation that
prohibits filibusters and requires only a simple majority in the Senate.

But the battle over health care has hurt Obama and the Democrats, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News
poll demonstrates. For the first time, a majority of voters disapproved
of the job Obama is doing on health care. Moreover, the poll found that
voters are now evenly split over which party they hope will run Congress after the mid-term elections in November.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday morning, Brown said
he was looking forward to being seated as soon as possible. He said he
planned to go to Washington on Thursday and meet with the Massachusetts congressional delegation.

Brown also said he could offer Reid “guidance” on
how to re-do the proposed health care overhaul and kept up his
criticism of the Democrats’ plan, which he called “one size fits all.”

“It doesn’t work,” Brown said.

Meanwhile, Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., a member of the Senate Banking Committee,
said he did not believe Brown’s victory would have as much an impact on
bank regulatory reform under consideration by senators than it will
have on health care reform. But Johanns argued that the mood of the
country is different since Brown won the Massachusetts Senate race.

“I think the whole mood is different,” Johanns said.
“The country is obviously very dissatisfied with the direction of this
administration. They’re saying, ‘It was too much, it was too
aggressive, too radical.’ If Massachusetts is saying that, that’s a
pretty strong signal.”

—

(c) 2010, MarketWatch.com Inc.

Visit MarketWatch on the Web at http://www.marketwatch.com

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.