Obstructionists

As you can see here, Democrats in the Senate this year proposed hundreds of amendments to legislation, and only 18 of them were agreed to. With a Republican majority in the chamber this is to be expected. But the Senate is supposed to be the great chamber of consensus, free from the rank partisanship of the House. And on bill after bill, amendment after amendment, the GOP struck down one vote after another. Bob Geiger describes some of those votes, and you begin to see a picture of that "Democratic agenda" which the Right believes is nonexistent. Turns out it's almost all about protecting Americans, especially working families:

Two attempts by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) to raise the federal minimum wage, S. amdt. 44 and S. amdt. 2063, went down by votes of 49-46 and 51-47, respectively, with only a couple of Republicans crossing the aisle on behalf of working Americans. John Kerry (D-MA) and Jack Reed (D-RI) tried three times to getting funding for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and failed on all of those attempts...

Bigger, Republican-sponsored bills – one, an anti-Bankruptcy gift to the financial industry and another measure that almost entirely neutered any possibility of lawsuits against the firearms industry – passed despite many attempts by Democrats to make them less harmful to the American people.

The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, which took effect in October, makes it almost impossible for Americans to file for bankruptcy any longer, no matter how dire the circumstances that drove them to that end. The best Senate Democrats could do was propose amendments to the bill, in an attempt to water down how many middle-class and low-income people it could hurt. Also sponsored by Kennedy, S. amdt. 28 would have exempted debtors whose financial problems were caused by serious medical problems from any means testing in filing for bankruptcy. The measure couldn't make it past Bill Frist and was voted down.

S. amdt. 32, by Jon Corzine (D-NJ), sought to preserve existing bankruptcy protections for Americans in economic distress if they acted as caregivers to ill or disabled family members. Dick Durbin (D-IL) sponsored two bankruptcy-bill amendments, S. amdt. 49 and S. amdt. 110. One would have protected employees and retirees from losing their life savings in corporate bankruptcies, while the other attempted to exempt debtors below the nation's median income from filing restrictions.

All were defeated on primarily party-line votes – almost all Democrats voting for and almost all Republicans against.

Charles Schumer (D-NY) had two amendment defeated (S. amdt. 1189 and S. amdt. 1190) that would have provided $70 million to identify and track hazardous materials shipments and provide new security programs for inspection of air cargo containers -- both were defeated by the GOP leadership.

Here's the thing: Republicans have an agenda. It involves paying off big business at the cost of the American worker. Democrats have an agenda. It involves helping the vast majority of Americans reach their potential and set their goals. If you remove all the spin and obfuscation, that's what you've got. Republicans were able to hold off almost all of these Democratic attempts to further their agenda in 2005. After the 2006 elections, the path may not be so clear, as long as Democrats explain to everybody what their votes mean and why people should support them.