In House, new Republican majority plans to act fast to undo Obama's agenda

     Next on the agenda: congressional investigations of the Obama administration. Act fast guys and decisively: this is total political war. TAKE NO PRISONERS!!!!-----lee

By Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 5, 2011; 12:43 AM 

     Almost as soon as they take control of the House at noon Wednesday, Republicans will embark on a 20-day plan aimed at undoing major aspects of President Obama's agenda as they seek to take advantage of the weeks before the Senate's return and the president's State of the Union address.

     The first move will come Friday, when the House begins the process of repealing the new health-care law. House leaders will then quickly begin to identify tens of billions of dollars in proposed spending cuts and to ease regulations that businesses find burdensome.

     Much of what Republicans do will be symbolic, given that Democrats still control the Senate and the White House. But the quick action will allow Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), the incoming speaker, and House Republicans to follow through on campaign pledges and to try to establish their party as a bulwark against what they see as an out-of-control government.
     Recognizing the limits of their power, Republican leaders said they will follow their initial aggressive stance with efforts to force Obama into what they consider principled compromises. Those would most likely come with attempts to cut federal spending and spur job growth, two agenda items that both parties have set as priorities.
     "This is a two-way street going on here, and results are going to be judged through the prism of whether jobs are created and whether spending is cut and the deficit is brought back under control," Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the incoming House majority leader, told reporters Tuesday. "And it is as much the responsibility of this administration as well as the Senate to join with us in echoing what we heard in the last couple months."
     While the Democratic majority in the Senate was diminished in November, the party still holds a 53-to-47-seat edge, giving Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) the votes he'll need to block Republican legislation coming from the House.

More bipartisanship?

     But the upper chamber's new margin could force the two sides into more-bipartisan talks than the narrow negotiations held in 2009 and 2010. Then, Democrats needed to win over just a couple of Republicans to overcome filibusters, but now Democrats need at least seven Republicans - and the GOP needs at least 13 Democrats - to maneuver.
     "Any solution now is going to have to have at least 10 to 20 senators from the other side," said Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), the No. 3 Republican leader.
     That will probably make Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) a critical player in the coming months, since he could either engineer bipartisan agreements or be a deal-breaker.
     Senate Republicans are looking ahead to a pair of opportunities in the next several weeks in which McConnell could re-create his role in negotiating the broad bipartisan deal last month to extend the Bush-era tax cuts. Party leaders said they hope to use the March 4 expiration of the temporary measure that funds the government, as well as the need to lift the federal debt ceiling above $14 trillion, to extract concessions from Obama.

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