WASHINGTON - Congress returns for its midsummer session Monday with a Senate supermajority not super enough for President Barack Obama's top priorities to pass without Republican support.
The seating of Minnesota Sen. Al Franken will give Democrats the filibuster-proof 60-40 majority in the Senate, but only on paper. Absences by two ailing senators mean the party can count only 58 votes, and then only if Majority Leader Harry Reid can herd two independents and the independent streaks of 55 others behind Obama's biggest initiatives: expanded health care coverage and cleaner but more expensive energy.
Republicans are well aware that the closer the Democrats get to 60, the more leverage GOP senators have as Congress struggles with those problems that have eluded solutions for decades.
"With their supermajority, the era of excuses and finger-pointing is now over," said GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who heads the National Senatorial Republican Committee.
It's a fragile supermajority because Sens. Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts are ill and have not voted in weeks. It's unclear when or whether they might return to the Capitol.
Ill senators have voted by gurney and wheelchair in the past. But Democrats and Republicans said they don't foresee any votes in the coming week that would be close enough to warrant a trip to the Senate by either Byrd or Kennedy.
Byrd, 91, returned home this past week from a six-week hospital stay after a series of infections. Kennedy, 77, is battling brain cancer.
It's also a truism that it's often easier to get 80 votes and more than it is to get 60. Overwhelming support for legislation can become a persuasive force of its own. But if there's a chance of stopping or slowing a bill, other considerations factor in to a senator's calculus — typically regional matters, ideology and plain self-interest as much as party loyalty.