Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat, contended that Republicans were unfairly and unwisely placing the burden of spending cuts on domestic programs.

"I'm willing to see more deficit reduction, but not out of domestic discretionary spending," Durbin said.

In response to a House-passed bill that would cut $61 billion from the federal budget, Senate Democrats put forward a measure that would trim just $6.5 billion from domestic agencies, as President Barack Obama proposed.

That would erase billions in cuts for education, housing and other programs sought by Republicans, but leave a massive gap between the two sides. Nonetheless, Obama's chief of staff, William Daley, said the White House and Republicans were not as far apart as the numbers would suggest.

"However you slice it, there is a challenge to our government," Daley said. The House and the Senate must agree on a budget, he added, "or this government doesn't fund itself and we look ridiculous."

Continue Reading...

Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin tells CNN's "State of the Union" that "toxic rhetoric" can lead unstable individuals to believe violence is an acceptable response

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., is warning against blaming political groups for the attack.

Continue Reading...

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.

Continue Reading...

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.

Continue Reading...

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.

Continue Reading...

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.

Continue Reading...

Apparently, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the Democratic whip whose comments Thursday about rallying lawmakers to vote against a public option, had had a change of heart. Aides told the progressives -- and reporters -- that Durbin would whip lawmakers for the public option, but only if the House included one in a reconciliation measure. The up-and-down path the public option has been on since last summer was heading up once more. The Huffington Post splashed Durbin's comments on its homepage; things were looking good.

Continue Reading...

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said Friday that he will vote with his fellow Democrats Saturday night on a cloture motion that will allow the Senate to begin debating the legislation.

"Throughout my Senate career I have consistently rejected efforts to obstruct," Nelson said in a statement. "That's what the vote on the motion to proceed is all about. It is not for or against the new Senate health care bill released Wednesday .... If you don't like a bill why block your own opportunity to amend it?"

Continue Reading...

But what if that legal opinion isn't worth the paper it's written on? That's what two Senate Democrats want to know.

The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel is, effectively, the executive branch's lawyer. When White House officials want an official legal opinion, they call up OLC. If you were in the market for a favorable "reinterpretation" of the law, you might look for some pliant political appointees at OLC; hence, the Bush administration's so-called torture memos.

On Aug. 1, 2002, OLC issued the torture memos after input from Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, who were at the time, respectively, White House counsel and counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney. The memos defined torture away, calling it treatment "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

Continue Reading...

So what will the Senate leadership do now that a court has said their rationale isn't on solid legal ground? Well, so far there's no word from Majority Leader Harry Reid. But his deputy, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., says they're standing fast. He indicated that the impasse might go on until Gov. Rod Blagojevich is removed from office or resigns and his successor makes a new appointment. That, however, would appear to go against the wishes of President-elect Barack Obama, whose team reportedly asked Senate Dems to move the process along and seat Burris.

Update: Reid spokesman Jim Manley sends out a statement: "The Senate Parliamentarian, the Secretary of the Senate and Senate Legal Counsel are advising Senate Leadership as we consider a way forward."

Continue Reading...

This fight started over a legalistic argument Cheney's office made to avoid oversight, under an executive order, of how it stores classified documents. In claiming an exemption, according to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the vice president's office claimed that it was not "an entity within the executive branch."

That prompted Democrats in both houses to move to cut off some of the money for the office.

Continue Reading...

No one knows, but Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., think it's time to find out. Two weeks ago, the bipartisan duo introduced a bill that would require federal intelligence agencies to collaborate on a National Intelligence Estimate to evaluate the security challenges presented by climate change.

Continue Reading...

Reid acknowledged that a number of different opposition proposals are circulating through the Democratic caucus. He described Ted Kennedy's proposal -- legislation that would prevent Bush from spending any money to send more troops to Iraq without further congressional approval -- as "an idea" that would get "careful" consideration. He said that Sens. Joe Biden, Carl Levin and Jack Reed are working on another proposal, and Dick Durbin said a few minutes later that he's working on another, which he would describe only as being "broader" than what Kennedy has proposed.

Reid insisted that the bipartisan statement -- he didn't say what form it would take -- would "do more than anything else" to change the direction of the war in Iraq.

Continue Reading...

"With a unifying leader like Barack Obama in the White House, I know that we can overcome the deep divisions that cause such unnecessary friction to arise between red and blue, both in Washington and in our nation as a whole," Durbin writes. "That is why I hope you will join me in urging Barack to run for president."

Continue Reading...

According to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times, the Democrat from Illinois thinks a filibuster is more likely than he did just a few days ago. "A week ago, I would have told you it's not likely to happen," Durbin said Thursday. "As of yesterday, I just can't rule it out. I was surprised by the intensity of feeling of some of my colleagues."

Durbin, who has announced that he'll vote against Alito, said he still doesn't know whether opponents of the nomination have the votes to pull off a filibuster. "It's a matter of counting," he said. "We have 45 Democrats, counting [independent] Jim Jeffords, on our side. We could sustain a filibuster if 41 senators ... are willing to stand and fight. We're asking senators where they stand. When it reaches a critical moment when five senators have said they oppose a filibuster, it's off the table, it's not going to happen. But if it doesn't reach that moment, then we'll sit down and have that conversation."

Continue Reading...

In February 2004, the Senate voted to have the Intelligence Committee investigate the intelligence that led to war. The investigation was to happen in two parts: The first, focused on intelligence gathering, was completed before the 2004 presidential election. The second, focused on the administration's use of intelligence, was to take place after the election was over. But when George W. Bush won re-election in November -- the "accountability moment," he called it -- Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts put the brakes on Phase II of the investigation, and no report has been issued.

Continue Reading...

Maybe the moment came for you when five Republican justices on the U.S. Supreme Court handed a presidential election to one of their own. Maybe it came when the president took America to war based on pretenses that turned out to be false. Maybe it came when you saw those photographs from Abu Ghraib, or when you learned that the man who helped orchestrate America's torture policies would become its attorney general. Maybe all of those things built up in your mind until your idea of America started to seem a long way off from the reality around you.

Maybe that hasn't happened to you yet. And maybe it will when you read about the plight of two young men from China who have spent the last three years locked up inside the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay.

Continue Reading...

Republicans have been demanding a lot of apologies from Democrats recently. On "Meet the Press" on July 17, Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman said Democrats should apologize to Karl Rove for their "smear campaign" against him. Republicans also pushed Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., to recant his ill-considered comparison of Guantánamo jailers to Nazis. And the GOP demanded that Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean repent of his virulent attacks on Republicans. But it is the Republican president who has the most to apologize for.

Not that the Democrats don't have anything to apologize for. I started my career in Washington working for Ronald Reagan and would happily do the same again. But for reasons that I offered in a column in Salon last fall (which subsequently was featured in a "Doonesbury" cartoon), the current president is no conservative, at least as that philosophy has traditionally been understood. His grievous failures dramatically overshadow those of his political adversaries.

Continue Reading...

So Karl, put that together with the reports about the administration's lack of planning for what used to be called "post-war" Iraq and its failure to provide adequate armor for the soldiers serving there, and then please tell us again how the true "motive" of "liberals" like Dick Durbin is to endanger the lives of U.S. troops.

Oh, and Karl? While you're thinking about that, ponder this: As John Aravosis at AMERICAblog notes today, a new poll out this week identifies the man more Americans hold responsible for starting the war in Iraq. It's somebody you know pretty well, and his name isn't Saddam Hussein.

Continue Reading...

In a speech in Manhattan last night, Rove slandered Democrats for their response to 9/11. "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war," Rove said. "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."

It's an old argument, one that Dick Cheney used often against John Kerry last year. It's also false. When al-Qaida attacked the United States in 2001, the country united behind George W. Bush -- conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats -- and supported an attack on the country, Afghanistan, that had provided al-Qaida with its base of operations. Did a few far-left liberals oppose that operation? Sure. But to say that "liberals" as a group wanted to "prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers" is about as accurate as saying that all U.S. soldiers treat detainees like Nazis would have. Dick Dubin didn't say the latter, but he apologized anyway. Karl Rove did say the former, and we're betting he won't.

Continue Reading...