GOP rejects Democratic offer on reorganizing Senate

Daschle opposes any change that would allow the Senate to vote on nominees rejected by committee

By CNN Congressional Correspondent Jonathan Karl

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Republicans have rejected a Democratic proposal for reorganizing the Senate, setting the stage for a partisan showdown when the Democrats take control of the chamber next week.

At issue are the composition and leadership of 20 committees that do most of the Senate's business.

The 41-word draft resolution written by Democrats said simply, "The majority party of the Senate shall have a one-seat majority on every committee of the Senate," and the members of those committees will be appointed by Democratic leader Tom Daschle and Republican leader Trent Lott. Republicans rejected it Thursday.

Currently all committees are evenly divided between the two parties because the Senate is evenly split.

Before agreeing to a one-seat Democratic majority on Senate committees, Republicans want assurances that the full Senate will be allowed to vote on presidential nominations even if Democratic-controlled committees vote against those nominations, a senior GOP leadership source said.

"We don't want to be in a situation where important nominations are bottled up in committee," said the source.

Traditionally, nominations are not voted on by the full Senate until they have passed at the committee level. Daschle, who is to become majority leader, opposes any change that would allow a vote on nominees rejected by committee.

"I'm not sure I've ever heard of anything quite like that before," Daschle told CNN. "We're going to use the nominating process that the Senate has used for decades, if not generations -- just go through the hearing process and make our decisions without making any early commitments about what we are going to do one way or the other."

Republicans also want assurances that a one-seat Democratic majority on committees would be achieved by adding a Democrat, not by removing a Republican. Democrats argue that some committees already are too large to add more members.

"The Democrats need 60 votes to get this resolution passed, so they are going to need to negotiate with us," said the GOP source. If Democrats don't have 60 votes for their resolution, Republicans can kill it with a filibuster.

It is in the Democrats' interest to get a new organization resolution passed quickly. Although Democrats will take over as committee chairmen, until such a resolution is passed, the committees' membership will revert back to the last Congress: Since Republicans were in the majority then, all the committees would have more Republican members than Democrats.