Tipping Point in the Senate.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth

Even before Senator James Jeffords of Vermont left the Republican Party and tipped control of the Senate to the Democrats, he was a favorite among environmentalists. In March, he led a coalition of Senate and House members that opposed the Bush Administration's plan to deal with temporary energy shortages by relaxing pollution controls on power plants. Instead of weakening air-quality regulation, Jeffords's bill would require new cuts in carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and mercury levels. His defection breathes new life into hopes the environment, energy, and other public policy areas can be saved from the Bush agenda that has been steamrolling its way through Congress. By putting the Democrats in power, Jeffords tossed the whole system into disarray.

But if the political dynamic in Congress changes, it won't be because of any strenuous opposition the Democrats have offered up till now. Witness the tax cut package that sailed through Congress with bipartisan support. Jeffords's defection didn't do anything to prevent the permanent damage done by siphoning off the surplus in a giveaway to the rich. (He opposed the initial Bush tax plan, on the same grounds he opposed the Reagan tax cuts that generated record deficits and deprived the government of funds to enact any meaningful domestic policy in the 1980s. But Jeffords threw his support behind the minimally less destructive compromise plan.)

Still, on a host of other issues, the changing of the guard in the Senate gives Democrats a big opportunity. The question is, what will they do with it?

It's telling that moderate Senators like Jeffords, and his colleagues Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Lincoln Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, are favorites of environmental lobbyists on Capitol Hill. "Chafee is the only one who says there's not an energy crisis," says Scott Stoermer of the League of Conservation Voters. Stoermer also praises Collins for standing up to Dick Cheney in a meeting on Capitol Hill, pointing out that Exxon, which made $5 billion in profits last year, could surely do more to control runaway gas prices.

In contrast, Stoermer is exasperated by the Democrats' tepid reaction to the Bush energy plan, in spite of the photo-op at an Exxon station on Capitol Hill where Democratic leaders denounced Bush. "You mean the press conference where Daschle drove up in his S.U.V.?" Stoermer snorts. It's true. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle drove the seven blocks...