<p>The North will rise again.</p>
<p>If Democrats win control of the House of Representatives in November, that inversion of an old slogan is likely to be a central factor in their victory.</p>
<p>Although no one anticipates a Democratic sweep in November on the order of the Republicans' 1994 triumph, the forces that were at work 12 years ago are in play this year -- but in reverse.</p>
<p>One key to the Republican takeover of the House under Newt Gingrich was the completion of a long-term realignment to the GOP in the South. White Southerners started supporting Republican presidential candidates in large numbers as long ago as 1952, but many of them did not bring their congressional voting habits in line with their presidential votes until 1992 and, with a vengeance, 1994.</p>
<p>But a quiet counter-realignment has been under way in the Northeast and Midwest. Post political writer Dan Balz was one of the first to notice after Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection that longtime Republican suburban bastions in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, New York and New Jersey were moving the Democrats' way.</p>
<p>If Democrats take the House this fall, it will be the culmination of this trend. To put it in historical terms, if Democrats have suffered in the states of the Old Confederacy, many of their best opportunities in November are in states carried by the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, in the 1860 election.</p>
<p>These include four and possibly five seats in Pennsylvania, four in Ohio, three in Connecticut, two to five seats in New York, three in Indiana, one or two in New Hampshire, and one each in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.</p>
<p>That totals as many as 26 seats and rises to 27 counting a competitive race in New Jersey (a state that divided its 1860 electoral votes between Lincoln and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas). Democrats need 15 seats to take the House.</p>
<p>That number is at the outside range of Democratic hopes, and Republicans have a few opportunities of their own for Northern pickups. But winning the bulk of these Lincoln-state seats would be the linchpin of any Democratic victory.</p>
<p>In the Senate, where Democrats need a net gain of six seats to win a majority, the most vulnerable Republicans include Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum and Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee (who faces a tough primary later this month).</p>
<p>The changing regional contours of American politics have been visible in the Southernization of the GOP leadership -- from President Bush of Texas and Gingrich of Georgia to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and, earlier, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, both Texans. The rise of the Dixiepublicans and their brand of conservatism has pushed moderates in the North in the Democrats' direction.</p>
<p>But Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat who is seeking a second term this fall, said in an interview here that Republicans are suffering from factors very specific to this political year, including President Bush's unpopularity in this part of the country.</p>
<p>Rendell argues that in the older industrial states, Republicans are being hurt by the trade issue, and he criticizes the Bush administration for filing many fewer unfair-trade complaints against foreign competitors than did the Clinton administration.</p>
<p>Job losses have made voters especially sensitive to the erosion of America's competitive position in the global economy. Rendell says flatly: "In 10 years, we could wind up being a second-rate economic power if we don't improve our competitiveness."</p>
<p>Rendell -- who is well ahead of Republican Lynn Swann in the polls -- offers remedies that include national health insurance in order to remove the burden of health costs from American businesses. He says his party should also push for education reform and major investments in alternative energy. These suggestions have the potential of being both business-friendly and congenial to liberal Democrats.</p>
<p>And then, Rendell said, there is the strong opposition to the Iraq war in his region, which could complicate the Bush administration's new political offensive targeting Democratic critics of its policies.</p>
<p>By pushing the war to the forefront, the president might well increase turnout among core Republican voters, but at the cost of hurting individual Republican candidates in districts where opposition to the war is particularly strong.</p>
<p>The realignment of the South has been more important than any other factor in the rise of the Republican Party to majority status in Congress. It would be one of history's ironies if that majority were imperiled by the reassertion of the Lincoln states.</p>

<p>In an attempt to strike a pre-election Republican compromise on immigration, two conservative lawmakers will unveil a plan today that would allow most of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States a chance to work here legally, but only after the government certifies that U.S. borders have been sufficiently secured, two congressional aides said.</p>
<p>The proposal -- sponsored by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (Tex.) and Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.) -- would pressure illegal immigrants to "self-deport" to their home countries within two years of the law's enactment and apply for a new kind of visa that would allow them to return to the United States quickly and work legally if a job awaits them. They would have to work here for 17 years, however, to be eligible for U.S. citizenship.</p>
<p>The plan, which has received mixed reviews from those briefed on it, is aimed at unifying Republicans on an issue that has bitterly divided them for months and threatens to damage the party in future elections.</p>
<p>The stringent rules for illegal immigrants are certain to draw bipartisan opposition from those who favor a quicker and easier path to citizenship. Additionally, conservatives who favor legislation to secure the border this year and delay action on guest workers and the citizenship question are also expected to oppose it.</p>
<p>The Washington Post was provided an advance copy of the proposal.</p>
<p>Hutchison and Pence consider it the foundation for a possible compromise between the Senate, which voted for a plan that would provide a new path to citizenship, and the House, which has demanded that Congress focus only on securing borders for now. Former House majority leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.), a critic of the Senate bill, said the new proposal could be "a bridge between the two bodies."</p>
<p>Armey, former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie were briefed on the plan in hopes that they would help build pressure on skeptical lawmakers, the aides said. White House officials, including presidential adviser Karl Rove, have been told of the framework but not the details. A Republican close to the White House said President Bush "won't be crazy about it, but I think he would sign it."</p>
<p>The impasse will not be easy to break. The push for a pre-election compromise has lost its sense of urgency, as both sides privately calculate that no deal might be the best politics and produce the best policy.</p>
<p>Hutchison and Pence think they can bridge the divide. They will emphasize that immigration laws will not be changed until the president certifies that the borders are secure, the congressional aides said. The plan includes the most popular security measures that have passed the House and Senate, including new border fences, additional enforcement personnel and bigger detention facilities.</p>
<p>The government would spend about two years instituting the security changes. U.S. companies would open Ellis Island-type centers in many countries to process applications for a new kind of work visa, known as the Good Neighbor SAFE (Secure Authorized Foreign Employee) visa. The government would create tamper-proof identification cards that contain personal information and biometric technology designed to minimize fraud. Illegal immigrants would be required to return to their home countries and apply for the SAFE visa. They would undergo criminal background checks and health screenings and would need to prove that a U.S. job awaits them.</p>
<p>The new visa would be offered only to immigrants from countries that are part of trade pacts covering Canada, Mexico and most of Central America. The SAFE visas would be good for two years and could be renewed five times, for a total stay of 12 years. At any point, the holders could return to their home countries and apply for U.S. citizenship without paying a fine or back taxes. But they would have to wait in line.</p>
<p>Illegal immigrants could extend their stay beyond 12 years by applying for a five-year X-Change visa, which requires a job and a clean record. After 17 years in the system, X-Change visa-holders could go through the citizenship process without leaving the United States.</p>

<p>In 2001, Jennifer B. Chace heard an insurance broker's pitch for a new insurance company marketing tax-free medical savings accounts. She jumped at the offer, but first, the broker told her, she would have to sign an application -- already filled out -- that would entitle her to a low group rate.</p>
<p>With that signature, Chace, a Florida dentist in the market for health insurance, unwittingly joined one of Washington's most prominent conservative organizations, Citizens for a Sound Economy, she would later testify.</p>
<p>"Before I showed you this form today, did you even realize that you signed a form that was an application for membership in Citizens for a Sound Economy?" her lawyer would ask during a 2004 deposition.</p>
<p>"I don't know what Citizens for a Sound Economy is," she replied.</p>
<p>Chace's experience has brought to light an obscure arrangement between a prominent Republican businessman, J. Patrick Rooney, and a free-market interest group that has netted the grass-roots organization hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of new members. Citizens for a Sound Economy -- now called FreedomWorks and headed by former House majority leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) -- has netted more than $638,000 and about 16,000 members through the sale of insurance policies.</p>
<p>Officials from FreedomWorks say the insurance sales are just another way for grass-roots groups to garner members and are no different from the activities of such giants as AARP, the senior citizens lobby.</p>
<p>"This is one of several avenues through which nonprofits do their job," said Kent Lassman, vice president for strategy at FreedomWorks.</p>
<p>Critics see the effort as a way for political groups to inflate their membership rosters -- and their bottom lines -- by taking dues from people with no interest in the groups' politics.</p>
<p>"We have clearly concluded these folks had no idea what Citizens for a Sound Economy was," said Louis M. Silber, a lawyer involved in a Florida class-action suit against Rooney's firm. "They had no idea where their money was going."</p>
<p>Officials from Rooney's Medical Savings Insurance Co. did not respond to numerous telephone calls and e-mails.</p>
<p>Documents produced through the suit against Rooney's company show how FreedomWorks, a political group that made its name fighting for a flat income tax and questioning global warming, has joined the insurance business. Under the deal, proposed by Rooney in 2000, brokers for Medical Savings Insurance Co. sell high-deductible insurance policies and tax-free savings plans at a group discount to buyers who join the conservative political organization.</p>
<p>"We are pleased with your offer to benefit CSE and we are ready to go forward subject to alterations of the contract," Ann House Quinn, then vice president for development of Citizens for a Sound Economy, wrote to Rooney on Sept. 13, 2000.</p>
<p>That was the first of a series of letters that revealed that insurance policy holders' names would be rented out as CSE members, that the group's bylaws would be changed to accommodate Rooney and that CSE would control dues rates.</p>
<p>Lassman said emphatically that no one has been signed up for the organization unwittingly and no one who joined through an insurance policy has quit upon learning of the group's political activities. An "MSA [Medical Savings Accounts] Association" membership form that CSE produced in 2000 to accompany application forms is emblazoned with the phrases "Flat Tax," "Across-the-Board Tax Cuts," "Limited Government" and "School Choice" among other political slogans.</p>
<p>"I have every confidence that new members to FreedomWorks know what we're about and what that relationship means to them," Lassman said. "There is no confusion about their relationship to us."</p>
<p>He did not deny that the $638,040 that has flowed to the group over 5 1/2 years in monthly checks for "association fees" collected by Medical Savings Insurance Co. is a boost. But, he said, it is a small one for a group with a $7 million budget. A database search of the group's 800,000 members indicated roughly 2 percent -- or about 16,000 -- joined by signing up for insurance, he said.</p>
<p>"If people want an account like this and are not aware of FreedomWorks, and they come to us this way, that's great," said FreedomWorks spokesman Adam Brandon.</p>
<p>But Jeffrey M. Liggio, a lead lawyer in the lawsuit, pointed to the insurance policies themselves, which never mention FreedomWorks or Citizens for a Sound Economy and label the group policyholder simply by a number: 1214.</p>
<p>"The certificates of insurance issued to class members, despite the clear language contained therein, did not disclose the identity of the Group Policyholder of the group policy, despite the fact that each putative insured must 'join' and pay money to such group as a condition of obtaining the insurance," the suit's motion for class certification states. The motion was granted in December.</p>
<p>Larry Butcher, a plaintiff in the case, said in a deposition that he signed on to a policy simply because his insurance broker son thought it was a good deal.</p>
<p>FreedomWorks and its predecessor, CSE, were careful about the deal's financial aspects. In a Sept. 13, 2000, letter, CSE's Quinn said documents should overtly refer to dues, suggesting they be set at $12 a year, to be raised at CSE's discretion upon notifying Medical Savings Insurance Co. She also noted: "I would assume that these people will become CSE members for all purposes and therefore will go on the CSE mailing list. Since the CSE mailing list is rented, as a matter of course, those names would be rented as CSE members . . . without specific identification as MSIC insureds."</p>
<p>A Sept. 20, 2000, correspondence from Medical Savings President Randal E. Suttles to Rooney said the deal could not go through because the CSE charter states "the corporation shall not have members" and therefore does not comply with the law governing group insurance.</p>
<p>Fifteen days later, Quinn told Suttles the group had solved the problem, amending its charter to allow for voting members.</p>
<p>The money that Medical Savings collected on behalf of CSE and FreedomWorks trickled in at first, canceled checks show. The first, in December 2000, was for $28. In April 2001, it was $738. But according to financial documents, the program gathered steam quickly. By March 19, 2003, the monthly "association fees" totaled $10,060. By 2004, they were topping $15,000, peaking that August at $15,309. They have since ebbed, to $10,687 last month.</p>
<p>Last month, Lassman said, about four times as many FreedomWorks members dropped out of the organization as joined by purchasing a policy.</p>
<p>But the total raised so far, $638,040, is not insignificant, Lassman said.</p>
<p>"In the nonprofit world, every dollar is precious," he said, "but to put it in context, hundreds of thousands of dollars over five years does not strike me as out of the realm of normal."</p>

<p>In 2001, Jennifer B. Chace heard an insurance broker's pitch for a new insurance company marketing tax-free medical savings accounts. She jumped at the offer, but first, the broker told her, she would have to sign an application -- already filled out -- that would entitle her to a low group rate.</p>
<p>With that signature, Chace, a Florida dentist, unwittingly joined one of Washington's most prominent conservative organizations, Citizens for a Sound Economy, she would later testify.</p>
<p>"Before I showed you this form today, did you even realize that you signed a form that was an application for membership in Citizens for a Sound Economy?" her lawyer would ask during a 2004 deposition.</p>
<p>"I don't know what Citizens for a Sound Economy is," she replied.</p>
<p>Chace's experience has brought to light an arrangement between a prominent Republican businessman, J. Patrick Rooney, and a free-market interest group that has brought the grass-roots organization hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of new members.<br />
Citizens for a Sound Economy -- now called FreedomWorks and headed by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas -- has netted more than $638,000 and about 16,000 members through insurance sales.</p>
<p>Officials from FreedomWorks say the insurance sales are just another way for grass-roots groups to garner members and are no different from the activities of such giants as AARP.<br />
"This is one of several avenues through which nonprofits do their job," said Kent Lassman, vice president for strategy at FreedomWorks.</p>
<p>Critics see the effort as a way for political groups to inflate their membership rosters and their bottom lines.</p>
<p>Policyholders "had no idea where their money was going," said Louis M. Silber, a lawyer involved in a Florida class-action suit against Rooney's firm.<br />
Officials from Rooney's Medical Savings Insurance Co. did not respond to numerous telephone calls and e-mails.<br />
Documents produced through the suit against Rooney's company show how FreedomWorks, which made its name fighting for a flat income tax and questioning global warming, has joined the insurance business.</p>
<p>Under the deal, proposed by Rooney in 2000, brokers for Medical Savings Insurance Co. sell high-deductible policies and tax-free savings plans at a group discount to buyers who join the conservative organization.</p>
<p>"We are pleased with your offer to benefit CSE and we are ready to go forward subject to alterations of the contract," Ann House Quinn, then vice president for development of Citizens for a Sound Economy, wrote to Rooney on Sept. 13, 2000.</p>
<p>That was the first of a series of letters that revealed that insurance policyholders' names would be rented out as CSE members, that the group's bylaws would be changed to accommodate Rooney and that CSE would control dues rates.</p>
<p>Lassman said no one has been signed up for the organization unwittingly, and no one who joined through an insurance policy has quit upon learning of the group's political activities.</p>
<p>Jeffrey M. Liggio, a lead lawyer in the lawsuit, noted the insurance policies never mention FreedomWorks or Citizens for a Sound Economy and label the group policyholder simply by a number: 1214.
</p>

<p>Proponents of the Cape Wind project on Nantucket Sound say wind farms like it will help wean the country from dependence on foreign oil. Opponents suggest it will harm the area's environment, scenic views and economy. And both sides insist wealthy interests are doing their best to manipulate the decision-making process by hiring high-priced lobbyists and cutting backroom deals on Capitol Hill.</p>
<p>The fight over Cape Wind -- a 130-turbine wind farm that would span 24 square miles of federal waters off the Massachusetts coast -- highlights how development of alternative energy remains a complex and often contentious business.</p>
<p>After years of failed plans and minimal growth, the nation's installed wind capacity grew 35 percent last year. On Thursday, Texas officials approved the nation's largest offshore wind farm -- which when built will be able to power 125,000 homes. One wind farm is operating in West Virginia, with more applications pending in that state as well as in Maryland and Virginia. But small communities in Vermont, Massachusetts and elsewhere have fought stubbornly to block wind farms, and some operators are struggling with a shortage of turbines and the challenge of transmitting wind-generated electricity to more populated areas.</p>
<p>"The wind industry is not in a mature phase in the U.S., but it has a good future," said Michael Liebreich, who heads London-based New Energy Finance, which analyzes clean energy projects.</p>
<p>"It's part of the answer" to the energy crisis, he added, but "we're not going to get rid of oil and coal and nuclear power in the next 20 years."</p>
<p>For the moment, projects such as Cape Wind often still face formidable obstacles. Last month, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) inserted language into a Coast Guard reauthorization bill to allow Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) to kill the project, a move Stevens and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) defended on the floor Tuesday.</p>
<p>The maneuver has put the bill in limbo: New Mexico Sens. Pete V. Domenici (R) and Jeff Bingaman (D), who sit atop the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said they will filibuster the bill unless Stevens's language comes out. "It's not normal for Congress to be trying to legislate a particular energy project around the country," Bingaman said in an interview.</p>
<p>Kennedy, whose family's famed compound in Hyannis Port looks out on Nantucket Sound, has led the fight against Cape Wind. He said he opposes the venture on policy rather than personal grounds.</p>
<p>"That is a giveaway of public land that belongs to the country," he said in an interview, noting there was no competitive bidding on the wind farm and the developer would reap tens of millions in federally funded tax credits for renewable energy. "Those credits are coming from working families."</p>
<p>Kennedy and groups such as the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, which is financed in part by major GOP donor and Cape Cod landowner Bill Koch, assert that the venture will damage a delicate marine sanctuary and the area's value as a tourist attraction. The development will rival the size of Manhattan, boasting turbines with blades stretching as high as 426 feet mounted on piles driven into the ocean bottom 80 feet below.</p>
<p>"There are serious environmental, safety and economic implications for the people of Massachusetts, and the developer is trying to keep them out of sight," Kennedy said, adding that he is not opposed to the project because he owns land there. "If this was about self-interest, I'd have a different voting pattern than I've had for 43 years in the U.S. Senate."</p>
<p>Massachusetts residents, along with their congressional delegation, appear divided.</p>
<p>A Statehouse News Service poll of 400 residents this week found that 71 percent of respondents approved of the project and 17 percent opposed it, but 66 percent of Nantucket residents voted against it in a nonbinding referendum last month.</p>
<p>Government officials overseeing the project seem split, as well. The Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department criticized aspects of Cape Wind as part of a broader environmental assessment by the Army Corps of Engineers. Interior wrote in February 2005 that it "may represent substantial and unacceptable adverse impacts to the aquatic resources of national importance."</p>
<p>But the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board issued developer Jim Gordon a permit last year, concluding there was a need for new sources of electricity in the state and there could be "significant and lasting air quality benefits resulting from the wind farm's displacement of other, primarily fossil-fueled, generators. . . . Overall, the Siting Board concludes that the air quality benefits of the wind farm are significant, and important for Massachusetts and New England."</p>
<p>Chris Miller, a senior energy campaigner for the advocacy group Greenpeace, said the only marine activities that might be jeopardized are destructive trawling on the ocean's floor.</p>
<p>"What we believe is this is absolutely the right project in the right place at the right time," Miller said, adding that migratory birds are also not in danger. "House cats in Hyannis kill more birds than this wind farm ever will."</p>
<p>Elsewhere, some communities have embraced wind power. Jerry Patterson, commissioner of the Texas General Land Office, said he and other state officials cannot understand why politicians would block wind farms. Texas is expected to outpace California in wind power capacity by the end of this year, according to the American Wind Energy Association, and has pledged by law to triple its installed wind capacity by 2015.</p>
<p>"We go, 'Huh?' " Patterson said. "We are accepting, and we are encouraging and we don't mind looking at wind platforms when we've been looking at oil platforms for a long time."</p>
<p>Patterson announced Thursday his office will grant Superior Renewable Energy LLC the rights to 39,900 submerged acres in the Gulf of Mexico, just off Padre Island, to build a 500-megawatt wind farm -- bigger than Cape Wind.</p>
<p>Former House majority leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.), who is advising Cape Wind investors from his base at the law firm Piper Rudnick, said politicians will soon have to abandon the "not in my back yard" attitude in light of the country's growing energy needs.</p>
<p>"Eventually the NIMBYists are going to feel enough pressure from others in their communities and start being a little less aggressive," Armey said. "It's a perfect clash between the special interests and the public interest."</p>
<p>In fact, both sides have spent money on special-interest lobbyists to press their case.</p>
<p>The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound and Koch's Oxbow Corp. have spent at least $1.02 million in lobbying fees on the issue since 2003, according to federal election records, while Cape Wind has spent at least $325,000 on lobbying since 2002.</p>
<p>And while critics complain the venture has enjoyed fast-track treatment under the new energy bill because the developers did not have to engage in a competitive bidding process, Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers said the project has been scrutinized by 17 agencies since 2001.</p>
<p>"I would like to see what the slow track looks like," Rodgers said.</p>
<p>Not far from Nantucket Sound, however, there is a ghostly reminder of what happens when wind projects fail.</p>
<p>In the 1970s, a few men got together on Cuttyhunk Island, seven miles off the coast, and built a small windmill in the hopes of generating electricity. The project never really got going, and its remains rusted in the wind for years afterward.</p>
<p>But Ernie Corrigan, a spokesman for the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, said the renewable energy industry can survive without windmills on Cape Cod. "They act as if this is somehow going to halt the entire alternative energy movement in the United States," Corrigan said. "That movement is going on, with or without Cape Wind."</p>

<p>They're off : The Virginia Gold Cup steeplechase is often upstaged by drinking and networking, but this weekend's races had an extra sideshow: New Jerseyites Katie O'Malley , 39, and Angus McCulloch , 42, exchanged vows between the third and fourth races in a tent sponsored by conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks. Second marriage for both. "I kind of like the chaos around us," said O'Malley, a fundraiser for a nonprofit.
</p>

<p>Democratic leaders, increasingly confident they will seize control of the House in November, are laying plans for a legislative blitz during their first week in power that would raise the minimum wage, roll back parts of the Republican prescription drug law, implement homeland security measures and reinstate lapsed budget deficit controls.</p>
<p>House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said in an interview last week that a Democratic House would launch a series of investigations of the Bush administration, beginning with the White House's first-term energy task force and probably including the use of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Pelosi denied Republican allegations that a Democratic House would move quickly to impeach President Bush. But, she said of the planned investigations, "You never know where it leads to."</p>
<p>In recent days, Democratic confidence has been buoyed by a series of polls indicating that not only is Bush growing increasingly unpopular, so are Republicans in Congress. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Friday found that 33 percent of the public approves of Bush's job performance, the lowest rating of his presidency. And only 25 percent approves of the job Congress is doing, a figure comparable to congressional approval ratings before the 1994 elections that swept Republicans to power.</p>
<p>The AP-Ipsos poll found that 51 percent of Americans say they want Democrats rather than Republicans to control Congress. Only 34 percent favor Republican control.</p>
<p>"We have to be ready to win," Pelosi said, "and we have to tell [voters] what we will do when we win."</p>
<p>Republicans say Democratic leaders run the risk of looking overconfident -- if not foolish -- in predicting they will win the 15 net seats necessary to take the House.</p>
<p>"If they fall short [of control], she's going to be severely damaged," Carl Forti, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said of Pelosi.</p>
<p>But Democratic planning parallels similar efforts 12 years ago, when GOP leaders were plotting a return to control after 42 years. By May 1994, Republicans had the outlines of a legislative agenda that would become their "Contract With America," said Richard K. Armey, who was the chairman of the House Republican Conference at that time.</p>
<p>Republicans then needed to pick up 40 seats, something most analysts considered virtually impossible six months before the election.</p>
<p>Democrats need to pick up 15, a task that many analysts still believe is a long shot. Democratic leaders do not.</p>
<p>"We are more and more confident that we are going to have the responsibility of leading the House, so we have to prepare," said House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (Md.).</p>
<p>Despite waves of redistricting that have solidified the positions of incumbents from both parties, Pelosi said 50 Republican seats are in play, while fewer than 10 Democratic seats face strong challenges. That figure of GOP seats is disputed by independent analysts, but even the most cautious estimates put more than 15 Republican seats in jeopardy.</p>
<p>Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report, said his most expansive estimate classifies 52 seats as "unsafe," 40 of them Republican, 12 of them Democratic. But, he said, only a tidal wave would dislodge the incumbent party from many of those seats, and more realistically, 30 Republican seats and five Democratic districts are vulnerable.</p>
<p>To seize control in 1994, Armey said, Republicans needed three key ingredients: scandal, which was provided by House members' abuse of the House bank and postal system; a policy fiasco, provided by the Clinton administration's failed national health-care plan; and a coherent plan of action, which came with the "Contract With America."</p>
<p>This year, the House is engulfed in bribery and influence-peddling scandals that have forced the resignation of former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), sent former representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.) to jail, and yielded guilty pleas from two former DeLay aides and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.</p>
<p>But those scandals are also linked to a Democrat, Rep. William J. Jefferson (La.), leading some Republicans to conclude they have been inoculated.</p>
<p>The war in Iraq has provided a policy debacle at least on par with the health-care issue, Armey said. But Democrats cannot offer policy alternatives because, he said, Americans remain leery of their prescriptions for an activist government and higher taxes.</p>
<p>To counter that perception, House Democrats have formulated a plan of action for their first week in control. Their leaders said a Democratic House would quickly vote to raise the minimum wage for the first time since 1997. It would roll back a provision in the Republicans' Medicare prescription drug benefit that prohibits the Department of Health and Human Services from negotiating prices for drugs offered under the program.</p>
<p>It would vote to fully implement the recommendations of the bipartisan panel convened to shore up homeland security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Democratic leaders said.</p>
<p>And it would reinstate lapsed rules that say any tax cuts or spending increases have to be offset by spending cuts or tax increases to prevent the federal deficit from growing.</p>
<p>Armey dismissed the substance of the Democratic proposals as demagoguery but said that the politics "really, frankly, are not too bad."</p>
<p>Pelosi also vowed "to use the power to investigate" the administration on multiple fronts, starting with the task force convened in secret by Vice President Cheney to devise the administration's energy policy. The administration has successfully fought lawsuits since 2001 that sought to reveal the names of energy company executives tapped to advise the task force.</p>
<p>"Certainly the conduct of the war" in Iraq would be the subject of hearings, if not a full-fledged House investigation, Pelosi said. Another subject for investigation could be the use of intelligence on Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction to make the case for the 2003 invasion.</p>
<p>Hoyer added that he would like to see investigations into the extent of domestic wiretapping by the National Security Agency, and the billions of dollars wasted by contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Campaign chiefs for Republican Senate and House candidates have already begun using the threat of such investigations to raise money and rile core Republican voters. A recent mailing by Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.), chairwoman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, warned that Democrats "will call for endless congressional investigations and possibly call for the impeachment of President Bush!"</p>

<p>The Tom DeLay era is ending much as it began. An entrenched majority, battered by ethical scandals involving its top leaders, is running what many see as a politically polarized and profligate House of Representatives.</p>
<p>What is most remarkable, according to more than a dozen GOP lawmakers and aides, is that it took a little more than a decade for DeLay and House Republicans to succumb to many practices they railed against in the 1990s. From stifling congressional dissent to the raw use of power, they say, Republicans have become like the Democratic barons they ousted in 1994.</p>
<p>Former House majority leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) said that former majority leader DeLay (R-Tex.) was largely to blame for leading Republicans away from their core values. "DeLay, as much as anybody, was responsible for putting the party on the wrong track," Armey said last week. "He always wanted his place in the sun."</p>
<p>Yet many others said the problem was much bigger -- and more complicated -- than the excesses of DeLay. They said it was a general sense of hubris and self-preservation that prompted GOP leaders to gradually abandon the tenets of the 1994 revolution: smaller government, accountability, and a new and cleaner way of doing business in Washington.</p>
<p>"It is a little like a reformed alcoholic taking little drinks -- pretty soon, you have a real problem on your hands," said John S. Czwartacki, who served as a key communications strategist for House Republicans in the 1990s. Czwartacki was talking about the Republicans' embrace of big government spending in particular, but others said the idea applies to the undoing of the entire revolution.</p>
<p>DeLay's career tracks the rise and fall of the Republican Revolution. He was a little-known conservative backbencher in the early 1990s agitating for change. And he was part of a broader movement led by then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who sought to take down not only the Democratic Party but also the more moderate and compromise-minded leadership led by Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.).</p>
<p>The parallels between the Democrats that DeLay and Gingrich abhorred 12 years ago and the Republicans of today are striking. In 1994, Democrats who had been the majority for more than four decades were heavily favored to remain so. But the public was discontent with their performance. Polls then showed that about one in three Americans approved of the Democratic-controlled Congress; polls today show that about one in three respondents approve of the Republican-control Congress.</p>
<p>Democrats were increasingly perceived by the public as corrupt and unethical. Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) had become the first man in that office to resign because of ethics charges, while then-Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Calif.), who pioneered many of the money-for-access techniques DeLay would later adopt, had stepped aside after his financial dealings came under scrutiny. Then the House Bank scandal erupted, and reports that members had routinely kited checks served as a symbol of Democratic abuse.</p>
<p>DeLay, Gingrich and other conservatives mounted a national campaign based on a promise to end corruption and enact a new "Contract With America," which promised institutional restructuring, tax cuts and a reduction in government red tape.</p>
<p>After the Republicans toppled the Democrats that fall by picking up 52 seats in the House, they promised big changes -- and often delivered. With Gingrich as speaker, Armey as majority leader and DeLay as whip, the Republicans instituted a series of reforms aimed at curbing some of the Democrats' worst excesses. They applied federal workplace laws to Congress, so lawmakers had to comply with the same rules as other federal employers, and eliminated proxy voting so members had to actually show up and vote when committees were in session.</p>
<p>GOP leaders abolished bastions of patronage, such as the House mailroom, and eliminated perks including daily ice delivery to House offices. These changes, along with decisions to eliminate 621 committee staff jobs, saved taxpayers $50 million in 1995, according to the House Oversight Committee. The Republicans cut taxes, eliminated many regulatory restrictions on business and took aim -- unsuccessfully -- at eliminating the Departments of Education and Commerce.</p>
<p>But as the Republicans became more entrenched and accustomed to their position of power, leaders shifted their emphasis from reforming government to consolidating their power and self-preservation. "I do think for both parties -- and it has happened for Republicans now -- there is a risk of majority fatigue where you run out of new ideas," said Ari Fleischer, who worked in Congress in the 1990s before becoming White House spokesman. "The other risk is people's zest for reform yields to their desire to maintain power."</p>
<p>Gingrich said the party became too preoccupied with creating and maintaining safe GOP districts as part of an effort to cement a lasting majority. Gingrich, who originally championed the idea, said he now thinks the tactic has had the effect of undermining democracy and distancing House members from their roots.</p>
<p>Democrats "get to rip off the public in the states where they control and protect their incumbents, and we get to rip off the public in the states we control and protect our incumbents, so the public gets ripped off in both circumstances," Gingrich said. "In the long run, there's a downward spiral of isolation."</p>
<p>During their decades in the minority, Republicans lambasted Democrats for excluding them from decision-making in drafting major legislation and denying them the opportunity to amend bills on the floor using arcane House rules.</p>
<p>After having vowed to eliminate the "closed rules" Democrats used to quash GOP ideas, Republicans used the same tactics to stifle debate. During the past Congress -- the 108th -- only 22 percent of legislation was considered with an open rule allowing the minority to offer amendments from the floor, compared with 30 percent under the Democrats' 103rd Congress. When Democrats offered 29 amendments to a medical malpractice bill last Congress, GOP leaders blocked all of them from coming to a vote.</p>
<p>"Here we are fighting for democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we have more and more closed rules here," Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.) said. "We don't want democracy to flourish on the floor of the House of Representatives."</p>
<p>DeLay and others also grew increasingly focused on campaign fundraising, especially how much others were raising for the party and fellow members. They abolished the seniority system that controlled chairmanships and committee assignments, and replaced it with ideological and financial litmus tests. Those who raised the most money for the party often had the best chance of snaring a top committee assignment.</p>
<p>DeLay "had a tremendous influence making [money] a consideration, and once you have adopted those criteria, other members take note and say 'Gosh, I better do whatever it takes to get the nod for the job,' " Michel said.</p>
<p>The Republicans built a powerful legislative machine that rarely faltered. House Republicans were highly effective at passing legislation, especially tax cuts and measures benefiting businesses. The GOP leaders rarely lost floor votes, and since President Bush took office in 2001, they have shaped and pushed the Republican agenda. But along the way, the core conservative principle of shrinking the size of government was jettisoned, according to some Republican members. During the past six years alone, government spending has increased by more than 25 percent under their watch.</p>
<p>Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.) said the party has compromised away its commitment to smaller government. "The moderates went along with us on policy as long as we gave them more money at the end of the year," Souder said. "We got addicted to spending." Souder, who first won office in 1994, said that it is no longer clear what the party stands for.</p>
<p>"This is a campaign where we're each fighting on our own, hoping we can survive with a bare majority," Souder said. "Even if we had a unified vision, I don't know exactly what our vision would be."</p>
<p>Of all of the examples of backsliding, it is the ethical ones that Republicans fear could hurt them most in the fall election. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.) recently resigned after pleading guilty to taking bribes. Last week, DeLay announced he will resign from Congress this spring, just as the investigation of his former top aides in money-for-favors scandals is heating up. Many members said they expect at least one more GOP member to be indicted this year. A new AP poll shows 60 percent of Republicans now disapprove of the Republican Congress.</p>
<p>"If it's about your power, you lose," Armey said, quoting one of his own favorite axioms. "If it's about you, you lose."</p>

<p>A key member of Congress proposed yesterday to use the District as a laboratory to experiment with a controversial approach to federal tax policy.</p>
<p>Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the District, held a hearing to talk about implementing a flat tax on city residents, which would be voluntary. D.C. residents could opt to remain under the current federal tax system.</p>
<p>A flat tax would impose a uniform federal tax rate on income and eliminate many current exemptions. Proponents say it generates economic growth and is a valuable way to reform a tax system that invites special-interest lobbying. Opponents say it benefits wealthy investors.</p>
<p>Brownback did not ask local officials to testify yesterday; he said he planned to hold another hearing. The witnesses included former House majority leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) and analysts from the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation.</p>
<p>At his weekly news conference, Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) said of the idea, "I'm open to it."</p>
<p>Although she did not attend the hearing, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said she opposes such a proposal and questioned whether it would hold up to constitutional muster because the District would be taxed differently from the rest of the country.</p>
<p>Yet in a discussion with reporters, Brownback mentioned that Norton supported a version of the flat tax about a decade ago.</p>
<p>Norton called her proposal a progressive flat tax. "That was at a time when residents were pouring out of the District at lethal levels," she said.</p>
<p>Shadow senator Paul Strauss (D), who sat in the audience, said, "They think of us as a state when it comes to federal liabilities."</p>
<p>"When it comes to federal rights," he added, "they think of us as a laboratory rat."</p>

<p>As Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) moves to unite his fractious House Republicans, the newly elected House majority leader has another issue to finesse: his own views on some key issues, which have clashed with the stance of much of the Republican Party.</p>
<p>From illegal immigration to sanctions on China to an overhaul of the pension system, Boehner, as chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, took ardently pro-business positions that were contrary to those of many in his party. Religious conservatives -- examining his voting record -- see him as a policymaker driven by small-government economic concerns, not theirs.</p>
<p>In the coming months, Boehner must decide whether to stick to his well-established beliefs and try to bend his party's stance or give in to the majority of the majority party.</p>
<p>"Everybody has to give up something for the good of the order, and the higher you go up, from rank and file to committee chairman to leadership, the more you give up," said Richard K. Armey, a retired Republican House majority leader from Texas.</p>
<p>In an interview, Boehner vowed to lead by consensus.</p>
<p>"This is going to take people a while to realize, but I'm a big believer in allowing all members of the team to participate," he said.</p>
<p>But he also stood by his positions, especially on a tough illegal immigration bill that passed in December with overwhelming Republican support over Boehner's opposition. One provision in the bill would mandate that every business verify the legality of every employee through the federal terrorism watch list and a database of Social Security numbers. For the bill's authors, the measure is central to choking off illegal immigrants' employment opportunities. To business groups and Boehner, it is unworkable.</p>
<p>"It is a huge unfunded mandate on employers," Boehner said.</p>
<p>He has made his opposition to bills larded with home-district projects proof of his readiness to change the way the Republican Party operates, while acknowledging that a silent majority of the party has no desire to end such "earmarks."</p>
<p>In a tough election year when some conservatives believe the GOP could lose control of Congress, division at the top could be trouble. "If the emphasis is on the split within the Republican caucus on a whole raft of issues, then he will be helping to bring about defeat," Paul Weyrich, a veteran conservative activist, said of Boehner.</p>
<p>To be sure, Boehner has sided with his fellow Republicans on the bulk of his votes, but he has shown an independent streak on some issues central to his party's agenda.</p>
<p>"He is a libertarian, much more so than anybody we've ever had in the leadership," said Weyrich, who favors government activism in some instances, especially on social issues.</p>
<p>Boehner was one of only 17 Republicans who voted against the border security bill. He passed a business-friendly overhaul of the private pension system late last year that included a Boehner-written measure that would allow major investment companies to provide investment advice to employees of companies whose retirement plans offer the advisers' investment products. That provision -- and much of the broader House bill -- is ardently opposed by a key Republican, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (Iowa).</p>
<p>Boehner was one of only eight Republicans who opposed a major transportation and public works law passed in July and one of only 13 who opposed a major waterway development bill the same month. Both bills were stuffed with home-state projects.</p>
<p>Also in July, Boehner joined a minority of Republicans who unsuccessfully tried to scuttle legislation that would mandate sanctions for individuals, firms or countries selling arms to China.</p>
<p>In 2002, Boehner voted against a bill that would have permitted churches to engage in political campaigns without jeopardizing their tax exemptions. In that case, 46 Republicans joined most Democrats to kill the bill over heavy lobbying by the religious right.</p>
<p>Some of those votes won him few friends last month in the race for majority leader. Boehner said his position on immigration cost him "a lot of votes," although he still scored an upset over acting majority leader Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). His opposition to the religious activism bill contributed to an undercurrent of hostility from the religious right, which backed Blunt.</p>
<p>Some Republicans see Boehner as more attuned to the interests of big business than to the views of the voters. "In the past, he was just one more congressman. Now he's in a position to set the agenda," said Michael A. Fox, a Republican commissioner in Butler County, Ohio, Boehner's home district. "My suspicion is that the chamber of commerce, the homebuilders and the national business groups' position will get far more attention than the average voter's."</p>
<p>A clash on some of the policies appears inevitable. Congressional Republicans see an immigration bill as one of the few pieces of legislation they must pass before the November midterm elections. The conflicting House and Senate pension measures must also be resolved this year. And disputes over U.S. policy toward China -- always roiling under the surface of GOP politics -- can emerge unexpectedly. Just last week, a bipartisan group of senators and House members proposed to reinstate an annual vote on China's trade status.</p>
<p>"There's a difference when you become a leader of a party from when you were representing a particular interest or constituency," said Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), a foe of China. "I'm confident that he will choose" to change his views.</p>
<p>The immigration bill poses the clearest problem. The firebrands pushing the measure are not likely to accept Boehner's arguments, even if he is now the majority leader. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) challenged Boehner to "come and see what we see, and hopefully he will have a better understanding."</p>
<p>On the pension bill, Grassley believes Boehner's investment advice provision, pushed hard by the securities industry, would create inherent conflicts of interest, despite the safeguards that Boehner wrote in.</p>
<p>Armey said Boehner will have to temper his views to reflect the conference's. He cited his own votes for President Bush's No Child Left Behind education law and the authorization to go to war in Iraq as positions he never would have taken if he was not majority leader.</p>
<p>But Armey said Boehner will be in position to bend the conference toward his positions.</p>
<p>Had Boehner been majority leader in December, he probably could have blocked the employee database provision in the immigration bill, Armey said, and he still may succeed. As for the pension measure, Boehner squaring off with the Senate Finance Committee chairman as the Education Committee chairman is a far cry from facing Grassley as majority leader, Armey said.</p>
<p>"Boehner, as education and labor [chairman], would have lost," Armey said. "Boehner as majority leader will likely win."</p>