But at the same time, Sen. Chuck Schumer says the tea party will be to blame if negotiations fail and a government shutdown happens.

Schumer tells network interviewers he believes Republicans, driven by tea party supporters, are being unreasonable in the particular areas of federal spending that they want to cut. The New York senator tells NBC's "Today" show Wednesday that tea party-backed GOP lawmakers have demanded the cuts "be in a very small portion of the budget," such as student aid, scientific research and public broadcasting. But he also says "some progress was made" in talks on Capitol Hill late Tuesday night between House Republicans and Senate Democrats.

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After thanking his colleagues — Barbara Boxer of California, Ben Cardin of Maryland, Tom Carper of Delaware and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut — for doing the budget bidding for the Senate Democrats, who are facing off against the House Republicans over how spending for the rest of the fiscal year, Mr. Schumer told them to portray John Boehner of Ohio, the Speaker of the House, as painted into a box by the Tea Party, and to decry the spending cuts that he wants as extreme. “I always use the word extreme,” Mr. Schumer said, “That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.”

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It is actually amazing how quickly this collapsed. One month ago every single Senate Democrat signed a letter in support of reforms of the cloture rule. Tom Udall's proposal would not have even killed the filibuster; it would've just forced 40 members to stay on the floor to sustain it, instead of one guy declaring filibuster and everyone pacing for 30 hours.

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Heroes

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Rangel's birthday party is always a well-attended party, but most years the longtime congressman is not facing multiple ethics charges. Rangel's campaign sent out a memo claiming that Senator Chuck Schumer and would-be Governor Andrew Cuomo will both be speaking at the gala at the Plaza Hotel. But neither Cuomo nor Schumer have confirmed their attendence.

It actually sounds like a pretty kick-ass party:

Rep. Joe Crowley is to introduce the “master of ceremonies” Gov. David Paterson, who briefly wavered about sticking to his agreement to participate, but apparently is back on board. Other speakers include: Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Mayor Bloomberg, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

Paterson is, according to this memo, to acknowledge the presence of former NYC Mayor David Dinkins and his father, ex-state Secretary of State Basil Paterson. And then Rangel speaks. Dionne Warwick will take the stage after the congressman, and then do a “Happy Birthday” duet with Chuck Jackson.

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Their names weren't on a single ballot, but their desire to lead the Senate's Democrats next year is tied to Harry Reid's November fate. If he loses his reelection campaign in Nevada, then his leadership post will open up. But if Reid somehow hangs on, then the race -- presumably -- will be off.

For months, it was assumed that Reid would go down to defeat. He's had close calls in Nevada before, but never has the climate been as poisonous for him as it is now. When he fell behind his prospective Republican opponents by sizable margins earlier this year, his fate seemed sealed. Through all of this, of course, Schumer and Durbin professed utter and absolute confidence in Reid's reelection prospects -- even as they privately took steps to shore up their support within the Democratic ranks.

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As Gabriel Winant pointed out this morning, the GOP is doing everything it can to ruin what should be a very good year for them. In New York, they're challenging a barely-known, unelected senator who was appointed by an unpopular, unelected governor. Even New York Democrats are not thrilled with her. The potential GOP candidates are a former Bear Stearns chief economist, the father of "American Idol's" least popular judge, and a complete unknown from the Board of Commissioners of the Port Authority.

In the governor's race, they're facing the massively popular Andrew Cuomo, but a credible challenger could probably damage the prickly attorney general.

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It's notoriously difficult to predict the outcome of congressional elections, which are draped in mystery, with members intensely skittish about discussing internal matters in public. Personal relationships -- friendships and grudges -- that are invisible to or misunderstood by the public also loom large.

Still, it's not impossible to handicap the Schumer-Durbin race. There are four major factors that should be crucial in determining the winner:

Freshmen allegiances. Chuck Schumer’s best asset may be his personal connection to the 17 members elected in the last two 2008 and 2006 election cycles, when he was running the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. After this year's elections, these freshmen should make up nearly one-third of the Democratic caucus.

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Initially, Schumer had indicated that he supports Joe Lieberman's plan (soon to be introduced as legislation) to strip accused terrorists of their American citizenship. But as word of his position spread, Schumer's spokesman told Sargent this afternoon that his boss hadn't really known much about Lieberman's idea when he'd commented.

"Having learned about the proposal," the spokesman said, "he believes it would be found unconstitutional in this context and would also be ineffective."

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Democrat Chuck Schumer and heroically whiny Republican moderate Lindsey Graham recently spent weeks hammering out vague areas of agreement on the immigration thing so that Republicans could announce that they made a good-faith effort at bipartisanship -- even though it was basically predetermined that Lindsey would get upset over some bullshit thing or another and back out. (They ended up with an Op-Ed and Lindsey immediately threw a tantrum when he learned that Reid might want to do immigration before climate change.)

One thing Reid and Schumer agreed on was the necessity of a new national biometric Social Security card for every American worker, because national ID cards hit the sweet spot where Democratic government overreach and Republican police state affection overlap.

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That's the stuff of palace intrigue in the Senate these days. Why? Because both Durbin and Schumer, the second- and third-ranking Democrats there, seem to want to take over Reid's job if he loses in November. Which means just about anything -- including attempts to help Reid keep the gig -- is starting to be viewed by the media as an undercover maneuver designed to position his would-be successors for a leadership race-in-waiting.

To an extent, that makes some sense. Both Schumer and Durbin clearly appear to be making preparations in case Reid does lose and a contest does develop. The last close Democratic leadership battle, after all, came down to one vote, between Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and former Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota; Reid managed to head off a run by Dodd after Daschle lost in 2004, in part by lining up support early and announcing it just hours after Daschle conceded his Senate race (which, at the time, wasn't the most popular move among Daschle staffers). Smart politicians plan ahead so they can seize opportunities as they come up.

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That's the situation Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin could find themselves in this year. Both men may want to take over as Senate majority leader if Harry Reid loses his reelection campaign in November. And both men, when they're not in their respective home states (Illinois for Durbin, New York for Schumer) live together in a Capitol Hill house owned by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., along with Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass. Which means an already delicate situation could wind up being truly weird.

Neither Durbin nor Schumer wants to seem like he's after Reid's job, or to discuss the prospect of seeking it. "They're still friends, and they will be when Harry Reid is reelected, too," Durbin's spokesman, Joe Shoemaker, told me Thursday -- just after saying he was about to hang the phone up, once I started asking questions about a leadership race. At least he answered it; Schumer aides, for their part, didn't even return phone calls.

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The announcement Sunday comes despite the fact that some of those same airlines are expected to report first-quarter losses next week amid significantly higher fuel prices and the beating they took from the heavy February snowstorms. Add-on fees for things like checked bags, pillows and food are a key revenue stream for them.

For 26 large U.S. airlines, so-called ancillary fee revenue accounted for 6.9 percent of their total operating revenue in the third quarter of 2009, up from 4.1 percent a year earlier, the most recently available government data shows.

But major carriers risk alienating customers if they follow Spirit Airlines' lead and impose a fee on carryon bags. The small Florida airline in August will begin charging customers up to $45 to place a bag in an overhead bin.

Other fees haven't stopped people from flying, but many of those fees can be avoided. It would be hard for many travelers to avoid a carryon bag fee.

"We believe it is something that's important to our customers and they value, and we will continue making that available to them at no charge," American Airlines spokesman Roger Frizzell said.

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Schumer's support matters because of his stature within the caucus; he's a member of the leadership, and his fellow senators respect his political acumen, so some may be swayed by his apparent belief that this is a winning issue. More, it's a sign of what may be ahead; Reid isn't expected to win reelection this year, and if he does lose, Schumer's a likely candidate to replace him. He's been staking out a position on the public option generally that could give him a boost in that race, and this decision only adds to that -- as a side effect, it's a bit of a headache for Reid, too.

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Then the feminist guilt started to set in. Even the National Republican Senatorial Committee had come out of the woodwork to demand that Gillibrand and women's rights organizations stand up "for women in the workplace" and admonish Schumer. Was I being a hypocrite? Would I have had the same apathetic response to a Republican bad mouthing a flight attendant with a sexist slur? Had I been so completely sucked into the feminist appropriation of the word that I'd completely forgotten why the word needed to be reclaimed in the first place?

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Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Tom Carper, D-Del., have come up with a proposal that would establish the national government-run insurance option that progressives want, with one caveat. Under the plan they've been discussing, individual states could vote to opt out of the public option. (Ironically, conservatives in various states have been discussing measures that would opt them out, but that was a negative reaction to the idea of a public option, not a way of achieving compromise.)

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Still, Schumer seemed to acknowledge that the GOP has made some headway painting themselves as old-school fiscal conservatives by picking away at provisions in the stimulus package for preventing sexually transmitted diseases and non-smoking programs. But he dismissed any concerns over the strategy, saying, “People don’t care about these little items. I think the Republicans are looking for an excuse not to vote for the bill.”

Also at the press conference was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who said he hoped to hold a vote on the stimulus package Thursday, and told reporters that Senate Democrats are prepared to pass the legislation with or without significant Republican support. The GOP, he insisted, “can not hold the president of the United States hostage.”

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