Dawn of the donkey

Politics | Democrats take over Congress with a broad-yet modest-agenda | Mark Bergin

The Democrats have plans—politically minded plans a dozen powerless years in the making. They want a higher minimum wage, lower interest rates on college loans, and federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. They want to tighten controls on lobbyists, negotiate for cheaper prescription drugs, and enact all of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations.

But what the newly anointed majority party wants most is its man—or woman—in the White House. Until then, the Democrats' domestic agenda may accomplish little more than helping President George W. Bush locate his missing veto pen. In a guest column for The Wall Street Journal Jan. 3, the day before the 110th Congress opened, the president wrote, "If the Congress chooses to pass bills that are simply political statements, they will have chosen stalemate."