From the misguided vote to end debate on the Patriot Act Dec. 16, to a long, voteless weekend, to allowing the issue of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to be included in a Defense appropriations bill, Senate leadership failed badly and repeatedly this month.

Cloture on the Patriot Act wasn’t even close to possible after the news of warrantless eavesdropping by the government, yet the majority leadership let the bill out of conference anyway. Then, when enough Republicans sided with Democrats against the bill, leadership unveiled a lame strategy of threatening to have the act die in an attempt to embarrass the opposition. Democrats proposed the obvious alternative – a temporary extension of the current act.

After nearly a week of imperious speeches about the safety of the nation and assurance from the White House that a temporary extension was unacceptable, the Senate approved a six-month extension, which the House later shortened to five weeks.

That vote followed a 51-50 vote on a spending reconciliation bill that cut programs for students, the elderly and the poor by $40 billion over five years. The leadership called this deficit reduction while it prepared the second half of reconciliation: a tax-cut bill that would remove $60 billion from revenues over that time plus another $30 billion in tax cuts outside reconciliation. That’s not deficit reduction. That’s a sham.

Even worse was the Defense appropriations bill itself. Drilling in ANWR was added during the House-Senate conference bill, in violation of a Senate rule. Leadership allowed this to occur, but then found it couldn’t shut off debate. That led to the better part of a day last Wednesday wasted by a directionless Senate, followed by the loss of $2 billion in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and money for Gulf Coast reconstruction.

Republicans take most of the heat for these failures because they are in the majority, but the constant feuding, the bitter atmosphere and the difficulty of moving legislation is a bipartisan affair. Democrats know they benefit as the public opinion of Congress falls.

Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, as Republican moderates, have been forced into one tough vote after another. They have been strongly against drilling in ANWR yet the bill to which it was attached had both important Defense spending for Maine and the LIHEAP money. Both senators took the risk of getting whacked by environmentalists’ negative ads and stood up for Maine’s jobs and Maine’s poor. It was the right choice, but they never should have been forced to make it.

Additional LIHEAP funding remains highly uncertain – Sens. Snowe, Collins and Norm Coleman of Minnesota may have an oral agreement with leadership to bring the issue back for debate. Whether it will actually take place, pass, remain through a House-Senate conference, pass in the House with the White House distributing the money may not be known by LIHEAP recipients until the weather starts to warm. Maine is due to run out of LIHEAP funding by mid-January.

Northern state senators are working hard to avoid a freeze-out on LIHEAP and they may be successful. But like so much in the Senate this month, the issue should have been resolved already, rather than require extraordinary efforts to provide a basic service.