We Need Some Accomplishments.

People in the blogosphere have called this a hit piece, but there's some substantive truth to it, and you can't just reference polls showing that nobody likes George Bush in order to rebut it. The fact is that the Democrats did run on a specific agenda that has vastly broad public support. And half of that agenda has been passed by both houses of Congress, and has been waiting for a conference report for several weeks. I'm getting a little antsy:

The "Six for '06" policy agenda on which Democrats campaigned last year was supposed to consist of low-hanging fruit, plucked and put in the basket to allow Congress to move on to tougher targets. House Democrats took just 10 days to pass a minimum-wage increase, a bill to implement most of the homeland security recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, a measure allowing federal funding for stem cell research, another to cut student-loan rates, a bill allowing the federal government to negotiate drug prices under Medicare, and a rollback of tax breaks for oil and gas companies to finance alternative-energy research [...]

The minimum-wage bill got stalled in a fight with the Senate over tax breaks to go along with the wage increase. In frustration, Democratic leaders inserted a minimum-wage agreement into a bill to fund the Iraq war, only to see it vetoed.

Similar homeland security bills were passed by the House and the Senate, only to languish as attention shifted to the Iraq debate. Last week, family members of those killed on Sept. 11, 2001, gathered in Washington to demand action.

"We've waited five and a half years since 9/11," said Carie Lemack, whose mother died aboard one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. "We waited three years since the 9/11 commission. We can't wait anymore."

House and Senate staff members have begun meeting, with the goal of reporting out a final bill by Memorial Day, but they concede that the deadline is likely to slip, in part because members of the homeland security committees of both chambers, the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the two intelligence committees all want their say. The irony, Lemack said, is that such cumbersomeness is precisely why the Sept. 11 commission recommended the creation of powerful umbrella security committees with such broad jurisdiction that other panels could not muscle their way in. That was one recommendation Congress largely disregarded.

The Medicare drug-negotiations bill died in the Senate, after Republicans refused to let it come up for debate. House Democrats are threatening to attach the bill to must-pass government funding bills.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, has proposed his own student-loan legislation, but it is to be part of a huge higher-education bill that may not reach the committee until June.

The House's relatively simple energy bill faces a similar fate. The Senate has in mind a much larger bill that would ease bringing alternative fuels to market, regulate oil and gas futures trading, raise vehicle and appliance efficiency standards, and reform federal royalty payments to finance new energy technologies.

I think a lot of people have assumed that those House bills were passed into law already, so I'm skeptical of the conclusion that Democrats are paying the price for this... yet. And a lot of this can be attributed to the fact that legislation moves much more slowly in the Senate, where you have to have 60 votes to get anything passed, and that's just a fact of life. But the tax breaks on the minimum wage bill have been reconciled. The 9-11 Commission recommendations bill has been passed. And so has a stem cell bill which Bush has vowed to veto (but we're very close to an override there). There needs to be some political capital spent on getting these bills to the President's desk. I know Democrats can be an unruly lot and everyone wants their say. But Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have garnered tremendous party unity this session, and some of that must be expended to shepherd these bills through. You can add the hate crimes legislation that passed the House to that as well.

Here's the alibi part of the story:

Democratic leaders remain hopeful that a burst of activity will put the doubts about them to rest. They have promised to pass a war funding bill and a minimum-wage increase that Bush can sign, to complete a budget blueprint and to finish the homeland security bill by Memorial Day. The House wants to pass defense and intelligence bills, its own lobbying measure and the first gun-control legislation since 1994, which would tighten the national instant-check system for gun purchases. The Senate hopes to complete a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws.

That's a tall order. I hope they're up to it.