EMAIL DETAILS

*Biden steps into Rahm's shoes*
By: Carol E. Lee and John Bresnahan
December 9, 2010 04:34 AM EST

With Capitol Hill increasingly hostile territory for President Barack
Obama<http://topics.politico.com/index.cfm/topic/BarackObama>,
Vice President Joe
Biden<http://topics.politico.com/index.cfm/topic/JoeBiden> seems
ready to take the place of the departed Rahm
Emanuel<http://topics.politico.com/index.cfm/topic/RahmEmanuel> as
the one senior administration official who can deliver the White House’s
position — good news or bad — to members and senators of both parties.

White House officials say it’s the same role the vice president, who served
nearly four decades in the Senate, has played since the start of the
administration. But in the absence of
Emanuel<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42803.html>,
who formerly served as Obama’s chief of staff and as a House member, no one
in the West Wing matches Biden when it comes to his ties on the Hill, depth
of knowledge on how Congress works and having the members’ trust on both
sides of the aisle.

Obama gave Biden a pivotal role in the tax-cut talks on the Hill, making him
the lead negotiator with Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell<http://topics.politico.com/index.cfm/topic/MitchMcConnell>
(R-Ky.).
Biden is also the point person on the White House’s efforts to win enough
Senate votes for a new START treaty during the lame-duck session. And he met
last week at the White House with Rep. Darrell
Issa<http://topics.politico.com/index.cfm/topic/DarrellIssa>
(R-Calif.),
who is preparing to take over as chairman of the Oversight and Government
Reform Committee and who is expected to dig into the administration’s
spending of economic stimulus money.

But his most public assignment of late has been as the White House’s
emissary to Democrats, tasked with trying to tamp down their anger over a
tax-cut deal hammered out largely between the White House and GOP leaders.

The vice president had a blunt message for House Democrats on Wednesday
during a closed-door session, according to members who attended. “It’s as
good as it gets,” Biden told them, taking a hard line that did not go well
with everyone.

“The vice president said, ‘This is the deal, take it or leave it,’” said
Rep. Henry Waxman <http://topics.politico.com/index.cfm/topic/HenryWaxman>
(D-Calif.).

But at least one member felt Biden’s attentiveness was a salve for Democrats
wounded by the product and the process that cut them out. “He made it
easier,” said one attendee. “The vice president was pitch-perfect in tone.
He was respectful. He really talked to the members in a way that they knew
he was listening.”

Asked whether he had picked up any support as he left the meeting, Biden
responded: “Oh yeah, we got a couple of ’em.”

During his appearance before the Senate Democratic Caucus on Tuesday, Biden
began by lecturing some of the more liberal of his former colleagues over
the political need for the deal — only to be cut off by Sen. Patrick Leahy
(D-Vt.), who told him “to relax.”

“It got a little contentious,” said a Senate Democrat who attended the
meeting. “He started off by saying, ‘You liberals may [oppose] this, but
we’ve got to do it. Then [Leahy] told him to relax; it’s not doing you or us
any good.”

Biden made a point to remind many of those in the room that he had
campaigned for them this year.

McConnell said the White House has stepped up its contact with him and other
Republicans since the GOP’s decisive electoral victory on Nov.
2<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44561.html>.
And with the power of congressional Democrats diminished, the vice
president’s portfolio has been expanded to include more direct talks with
McConnell and other GOP leaders.

“He’s been heavily involved up here in talking to a variety of different
people,” said McConnell, who added that Biden “played a very important and
constructive role” in the negotiations over the tax-cut package.

“Those talks made this whole deal possible, the two of them negotiating and
transacting,” said a senior Senate GOP aide of the Biden-McConnell
discussions.

In addition to the tax-cut talks, Biden and McConnell had a one-on-one
meeting recently on moving forward on the new START treaty, a major priority
for the White House, according to Senate aides. Debate over that nuclear
arms accord with Russia is expected to begin after the Senate completes work
on the tax package.

“I think the main point I would make is that there’s been a lot more
conversations, not just with me but with Republicans in general over the
last couple weeks. More than over the last couple years,” McConnell said in
describing White House outreach to GOP congressional leaders since the
Democrats’ Election Day debacle. “I say that as a compliment. I think the
voters clearly sent a message that they wanted us to do things together, and
I think the early indications are that that may be possible.”

For the first two years of the administration, Emanuel was a regular on the
Hill for big legislative fights, conducting personal negotiations over the
economic stimulus package and health care law, among other issues, and
calming Democratic nerves on key pieces of Obama’s agenda.

Emanuel’s skills as a partisan broker fit well in a Democratic-controlled
Congress, where he could try to pick off a Republican senator here and there
but ultimately could go it alone. In contrast, Biden has long, sometimes
close relationships with Republicans, which will be crucial in the coming
months.

For instance, Biden and Indiana Sen. Richard
Lugar<http://topics.politico.com/index.cfm/topic/RichardLugar>,
top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, worked together
extensively on legislation over the years on such topics as climate change,
foreign aid, violence against women and U.S.-Pakistan relations.

Biden, who clashed repeatedly with Minority Leader John
Boehner<http://topics.politico.com/index.cfm/topic/johnboehner> of
Ohio, the speaker-designate, over the past two years, has also been trying
to soften his image with House Republicans. After meeting with Issa, the two
men issued a joint press release, saying they had “identified some areas of
agreement, including the need to enforce full compliance with reporting by
recipients of recovery act funds and to have follow-up conversations about
other areas where they can work together.”

Issa also noted that he knew Biden “before he was vice president, and we
should’ve been working together” previous to this meeting.

Biden and Issa’s aides plan to meet again before the end of the year to
follow up on what their bosses started, according to one GOP insider.

With many Democrats furious over the tax-cuts deal — both on the merits and
for what they see as a White House runaround of the bipartisan group of
members and administration officials tapped to negotiate a compromise — the
White House has been trying to downplay Biden’s role in the tax-cuts deal,
even rejecting the notion that he was doing the negotiating.

The vice president’s “role at the outset of this was not as a negotiator,”
said White House senior adviser David Axelrod. “His role was as someone who
had relationships across the aisle in the Senate as a result of 36 years in
the United States Senate. And in his soundings, he got a sense of what was
possible and what was not possible. And he became more actively involved at
the end in negotiations as things accelerated because of that
relationship.”

“One of the great values he has here is his knowledge of the Senate: the
personalities there, years of relationships,” Axelrod added. “And we’d be
crazy not to take advantage of that.”

A senior administration official described Biden’s discussions with
McConnell as “sidebar conversations that were very much a part of the main
negotiations” but disputed the idea that Biden is filling Emanuel’s former
role.

“It’s a continuation of a role that ebbs and flows,” the official said.

*Carrie Budoff Brown and Jonathan Allen contributed to this report.*
<http://www.irides.com/>

© 2010 Capitol News Company, LLC
--
Eric D. Schwerin
Rosemont Seneca Partners
(202) 333-1880
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.co