THE KEYSTONE CONGRESS

"HARRY Reid, the Senate's majority leader and resident Uriah Heep, affected 'umble and syrupy sadness about the Senate's inability to pass the immigration bill that he pulled from the floor last Thursday evening for a transparently meretricious reason.

Saying the Senate's time was too precious to expend on limited debate on Republican amendments to the bill, Reid vowed: "Everyone that's been home, there are two issues that are foremost in their minds: No. 1 is the Iraq War and No. 2 are gas prices. We're going to deal with that as soon as we finish with this immigration legislation."

So the Senate took Friday off, wasted Monday in the predictable futility of failing to pass a nonbinding nullity (a resolution expressing constitutionally irrelevant lack of confidence in the attorney general), then debated lowering gasoline prices - or cooling the planet; or something - by spending taxpayers' money to raise food prices. It took up legislation to quintuple the mandated use of mostly corn-based ethanol, which already has increased Americans' food bills $14 billion in the last 12 months. For such silliness, Reid scuttled the bipartisan attempt to improve the eminently improvable immigration status quo.

Granted, Reid is just one reason for the immigration legislation's parlous condition. Another reason is that lessons from 14 years ago have been forgotten.

In his new biography of Hillary Clinton, "A Woman in Charge," Carl Bernstein recalls April 23-25, 1993 - the 94th, 95th and 96th days of the Clinton administration, when the president and Mrs. Clinton attended a retreat with Senate Democrats.

It was already clear that the Clintons were not going to fulfill their promise to present "comprehensive" health-care legislation within their first 100 days. Bernstein reports that two of the most respected and, for Mrs. Clinton's purposes, most important senators, Pat Moynihan and Bill Bradley (both were on the Finance Committee, which would handle her legislation), were appalled by her highhandedness.

Bradley asked her if the tardiness in delivering her bill would complicate passage by making the bill competitive with other legislative goals, and he suggested that some substantive changes in her proposal might be necessary. Bernstein writes: "No, Hillary responded icily, there would be no changes because, delay or not, the White House would 'demonize' members of Congress and the medical establishment who would use the interim to alter the administration's plan or otherwise stand in its way."

Bradley and Moynihan heard this, Bernstein says, "with disgust and distrust." Her plan never even came to a vote in a Congress controlled by her party."

And stop already with the unintended consequences schmear concerning the ethanol boondoggle that has seen food prices soar throughout the Americas. Gas in Iowa is now at least as expensive as gas in states NOT diluting fossil fuel with corn squeezin's, so the con has worked and worked quite well. Ethanol is into the pipeline bigtime and isn't leaving anytime soon. While mexicans go hungry because all of THEIR cornstuffs are being shipped north and pronto.

It is all about the money. Always has, always will be. Let a liberal Congress take over and the bunko artists rush to Washington with one wacky plan or another and the cash begins to flow. And of course Bill and Pat were appalled by Hillary's highhandedness. She was co-President and they were only Senators.