GOP again says Daschle holding up Bush agenda

By Dana Bash
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Republicans Wednesday launched their third attack this week against new Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, for holding up the White House legislative agenda.

The latest attack accused Democrats of stalling President Bush's education initiative.

In tandem press releases Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, and the Republican National Committee slammed Daschle for not taking the steps to meld education bills passed by the House and Senate into a final version that can be sent to the president.

"By failing to act on President Bush's bipartisan education initiative, the Senate Democrat majority is holding up the most sweeping reform to our nation's educational system in decades," said Lott.

This follows a Monday press conference in which Lott told reporters Daschle was threatening the military because the Senate had not yet voted on Bush's request for $6.5 billion in extra spending, including $5.5 billion for defense items.

Lott also accused Daschle of ignoring the nation's energy needs by not putting long-term energy reform, another top Bush agenda item, on the legislative calendar.

A Daschle spokeswoman said the Republicans' strategy was clearly to blame the majority leader for anything they can think of in an attempt to weaken him.

"In another day or so there will be a story where Daschle gets blamed for thunderstorms in Kansas," said Anita Dunn, Daschle's spokeswoman.

The Republicans are settling into their minority status in the Senate after losing the right to determine the legislative schedule three weeks ago when Sen. Jim Jeffords left the party and became an independent.

"We want to keep the Democrats on defense, and if we can do that, great. We need to show that Sen. Daschle has a learning curve as the Democratic majority leader," said a senior GOP leadership aide.

Although the aide claimed the Republicans are not trying to attack Daschle personally, "we want to make sure that we're pointing out the weakness in Senator Daschle's leadership style," he said.

On the education package, Dunn said Daschle would appoint senators to a House-Senate conference committee for compromise legislation as soon as a long-delayed resolution to organize the Senate and set up committees is resolved.

Daschle has been negotiating with five Republicans appointed by Lott over the resolution, which has been held up over disputes on how to handle Bush's judicial nominees.

"Their failure to let us organize the Senate has meant that the full education committee has not been able to pick conferees," said Dunn, "maybe he [Lott] should be complaining to his group of negotiators."

Daschle told reporters he reiterated to Bush in a Wednesday morning phone call his promise to bring the defense appropriations bill up before the Senate adjourns for the July Fourth recess.

He has previously said energy reform is "near the top, if not at the top" of things he wants to take up this year."

When Republicans held the majority, they had planned to pass the president's energy reform package by the Independence Day recess.