Initially, Representative Michael E. Capuano, one of Ms. Coakley's three rivals for the seat, said her statement showed she lacked the "realism" necessary to shepherd bills through Congress.
That bodes well for their efforts to shepherd the bill through the Senate as a whole.
A cabinet minister's job is simply to shepherd a bill from his bureaucrats through parliament.
It took twelve years for Moss to accrue the political standing to shepherd the bill to passage.
Gerald Dial, the Republican Senate whip, helped shepherd the bill through Alabama's legislature; now he says he would support repealing it.All of that is old news.
House leaders said they expected the House to vote on Wednesday to set up a special committee to shepherd the bill through the process.
But in a sign of the difficulties facing Mr. McCain and Mr. Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, as they try to shepherd their bill to passage, others were not so sanguine.
Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois, said Tuesday that he planned to shepherd a bill granting the panel a 60-day extension for its final report.
Senator Bob Menendez, the powerful chairman of the foreign relations committee who helped shepherd the bill through the upper chamber, said the combined congressional votes were "critical for President Putin to hear".
Suspicion fell on Mr. Hunter, but as the day wore on Mr. Skelton said that in a reversal, the erstwhile opponent of an extension was in fact helping shepherd the bill through the House.
But even as the details were being hammered out Sunday evening, questions remained: can Democrats tap into the vein of populist anger over the excesses of Wall Street and shepherd the bill through, 18 months after the near-collapse of the banking system almost wrecked the economy?
