History
> 2005 > USA >
Politics > Senate
The U.S. Capitol Building is seen in this
2004 file photo.
The Senate approved a $60 billion tax cut bill on Friday
that would impose a $5 billion tax on big oil companies
and provide new tax breaks to help rebuild hurricane devastated regions.
REUTERS/Larry Downing
Senate approves $60 billion tax cut bill
R 18.11.2005
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=
2005-11-18T101828Z_01_RID821299_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-TAXES.xml
Officials Want to Expand
Review of Domestic
Spying
December 25, 2005
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Dec. 24 - Congressional officials
said Saturday that they wanted to investigate the disclosure that the National
Security Agency had gained access to some of the country's main telephone
arteries to glean data on possible terrorists.
"As far as Congressional investigations are concerned," said Senator Patrick J.
Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, "these new
revelations can only multiply and intensify the growing list of questions and
concerns about the warrantless surveillance of Americans."
Members of the Judiciary Committee have already indicated that they intend to
conduct oversight hearings into the president's legal authority to order
domestic eavesdropping on terrorist suspects without a warrant.
But Congressional officials said Saturday that they would probably seek to
expand the review to include the disclosure that the security agency, using its
access to giant phone "switches," had also traced and analyzed phone and
Internet traffic in much larger volumes than what the Bush administration had
acknowledged.
"We want to look at the entire program, an in-depth review, and this new
data-mining issue is certainly a part of the whole picture," said a Republican
Congressional aide, who asked not to be identified because no decisions had been
made on how hearings might be structured.
Current and former government officials say that the security agency, as part of
its domestic surveillance program, has gained the cooperation of some of the
country's biggest telecommunications companies to obtain access to large volumes
of international phone and Internet traffic flowing in and out of the United
States.
The agency has traced and analyzed the traffic flow - looking at who is calling
whom, where calls originate and end, and other patterns - to gather clues on
possible terrorist activities. In cases where security agency supervisors
believe they can show a link to Al Qaeda, President Bush has authorized
eavesdropping on calls without a warrant within the United States, so long as
one end of the phone or e-mail conversation takes place outside the country.
The White House declined to comment Saturday on the security agency program or
the use of data-mining, saying it would not discuss intelligence operations.
"The administration will aggressively fight the war on terror in an effort to
protect the American people while at the same time upholding the civil liberties
of the American people," said Allen Abney, a White House spokesman. "The
president is doing both of these things and will continue to do both of these
things."
Defenders of the program within the federal government say that the security
agency's broad analytical searches and data-mining, combined with actual
eavesdropping, are an essential part of detecting and preventing terror attacks.
And they say the president is well within his legal authority to order such
programs, because of his inherent constitutional power and because of
Congressional authorization in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that
permitted him to use "all necessary and appropriate force" to fight terrorism.
But civil rights and privacy advocates voiced concerns Saturday about the
expanded role of the security agency, which historically has focused almost
exclusively on foreign powers in mining for data on American phone lines.
"To the extent that the N.S.A. is collecting information on people who are
suspected of no wrongdoing whatsoever, it presents some very critical privacy
concerns," said Marcia Hofmann, who leads the government oversight section at
the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a group that lobbies for greater
privacy rights. "And it shows the need for Congress to put in place real
safeguards to prevent the government from abusing this information."
Lisa Graves, senior counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, said,
"There's no data-mining loophole in the Fourth Amendment." Ms. Graves added,
"We're seeing an administration that's engaging in a lot of legal hair-splitting
to justify behavior that's not authorized by the law."
Officials Want to Expand Review of Domestic Spying, NYT, 25.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/politics/25wiretap.html
A Lone G.O.P. Senator, Unknown,
Holds Up an
Intelligence Bill
December 24, 2005
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - An unidentified
Republican senator has blocked the authorization bill that sets guidance for all
intelligence spending, and the measure must now wait for Congress to return next
month from recess, Congressional officials said Friday.
The bill, setting broad policies on intelligence matters, is one of the last
items of significant business that was left hanging as lawmakers went home for
the holiday recess.
The parliamentary "hold" was put on the intelligence authorization bill under
Senate rules that allow a single senator acting anonymously to delay action on
legislation. It appeared to be intended to block amendments dealing with the
detention and treatment of captured terror suspects and with intelligence on
Iraq.
The amendments were offered by the two Democratic senators from Massachusetts,
Edward M. Kennedy and John Kerry. The amendments include a requirement for the
director of national intelligence to provide regular detailed updates about
secret detention sites maintained by the United States overseas, and to account
for the treatment and condition of each prisoner.
While the Central Intelligence Agency has provided limited briefings to members
of Congress about the detention sites, the information has generally been shared
with only a handful of Congressional leaders, who are prohibited from discussing
the information with their colleagues.
Another amendment, also introduced by Mr. Kennedy, would require the White House
to provide classified intelligence documents on Iraq that have been withheld
from Congress.
"Senate Republicans are blocking adoption of the Intelligence Authorization
Act," Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democrat leader, said. "As a result, we
are now at risk of not passing this important piece of national security
legislation for the first time in 27 years."
Mr. Reid added, "At a time of war when everyone agrees good intelligence is
essential for our troops and our security, it is deeply disturbing that
Republicans are holding this important piece of national security legislation
hostage."
The authorization bill sets the policy and states guidance for intelligence
spending. The delay in approving it does not cut off financing, which is
allocated in a separate appropriations bill. The Senate still has time to seek a
compromise and approve the authorization bill when it returns next month.
The hold on the intelligence authorization bill was first reported in The
Washington Post on Friday. The hold scuttled a compromise negotiated with
Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence
Committee, who agreed to include the amendments in a measure that was to be
presented to the Senate for unanimous consent.
A
Lone G.O.P. Senator, Unknown, Holds Up an Intelligence Bill,
NYT, 24.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24intel.html
Reporter's Notebook
Issues and Egos
Contend in Congress's
Rush
to Leave
December 24, 2005
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The end of a
Congressional year is never a pretty thing. But as the Senate Democratic leader,
Harry Reid of Nevada, said after the Senate spent hour after hour in a mostly
fruitless weekend session, "This is about as un-pretty as I've seen it."
The days were long, the tempers short, the egos huge.
Nobody beat anybody over the head with a cane (that actually happened once, in
1856, when a House member burst into the Senate chamber and beat a Massachusetts
Republican into unconsciousness). But there were fights, and plenty of them,
because where would Republicans and Democrats be without fights?
Congress is a lot like college, and so it was this week. The members left their
tough assignments, like cutting $40 billion from the federal budget and figuring
out whether to open an Arctic wildlife refuge to oil drilling, until the last
minute, then stayed up all night to finish before rushing home for holiday
vacation.
There were late-night pizza parties, like the one for Senate Democrats in which
bleary-eyed senators wandered in and out of Mr. Reid's Capitol suite, shuttling
between their pepperoni pies and the empty Senate chamber, officially in a
"quorum call" - Congressional lingo for a holding pattern. The world's greatest
deliberative body had been reduced to a fraternity party.
Democrats complained bitterly that Republicans were passing special-interest
giveaways in the dead of night. By 6 a.m. Monday, as the House took up a $40
billion budget-cutting measure, Representative Jim Nussle, Republican of Iowa
and chairman of the Budget Committee, sought to correct the record.
"It is now the break of dawn," Mr. Nussle announced. "It is no longer the dead
of night."
Much of the fighting had to do with the rules, and with Democratic assertions
that Republicans were violating them. The Senate, in particular, operates on
rules so arcane that aides make entire careers of studying them. Perhaps the
most arcane of all is the "Byrd rule," named for the senior senator from West
Virginia, Robert C. Byrd.
The Byrd rule - which has given rise to an adjective, "Byrdable," heard nowhere
but the Capitol - allows senators to object to provisions in the budget bill if
they can prove that those provisions do not affect the budget. It had a starring
role this week when Senate Democrats declared that three budget provisions were
Byrdable, and used the rule to strike them from the budget. Republicans were
exasperated.
"There are so many rules in this institution that go to minutiae," lamented
Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire and chairman of the Budget
Committee.
But Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, had a different take on the
rules in defending a Republican plan to tack the Arctic drilling provision onto
a military spending bill.
"When I got to the Senate," Mr. Thune said, "I was told that the only rule is:
There are no rules."
The drilling provision was so contentious that at one point late Sunday, Mr.
Reid could be seen on the Senate floor jabbing his finger at his Republican
counterpart, Senator Bill Frist, in an angry off-the-microphones exchange over
the plan. Stunned reporters, looking down on the Senate chamber from the press
gallery one floor up, craned their necks to hear.
They need not have. Before long, the irate leaders stormed upstairs to discuss
their grievances. Pens scribbled and tape rolled as the insults flew. Mr. Reid
is a former boxer, but Mr. Frist got in the sharpest jab.
"He is frustrated by being in the minority," Mr. Frist said, "and having less
than 50 votes."
Not everyone, though, was in a fighting mood. Representative Joe L. Barton,
Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce,
showed up to vote for the Arctic drilling plan at 4 a.m. Monday, just hours
after being released from the hospital for treatment of a heart attack.
"I'm not going to embarrass anybody on this floor," Mr. Barton told his
colleagues, "but some of the meanest, toughest reputations on both sides of the
aisle have called me and shown themselves to be some of the biggest softies I've
ever known.
"So I just want to say from the very, very bottom of my very, very sore heart,
God bless this institution."
Republicans lost the drilling fight, and no one suffered more than Senator Ted
Stevens, Republican of Alaska, who had championed drilling for 25 years. In a
lengthy Senate speech, he promised revenge, reminding colleagues, like Senator
Maria Cantwell, the Washington Democrat who led the opposition to drilling, that
by stripping the drilling language from the military bill, they were also taking
money for hurricane relief and home heating oil assistance for the poor.
"I am going to go to every one of your states, and I am going to tell them what
you have done," Mr. Stevens said. "And I am sure the senator from Washington
will enjoy my visits to Washington, because I am going to visit there often."
Some say politics is about compromise, but often it is about saving face.
Mr. Frist, for instance, insisted that he would oppose a "a short-term
extension" of the USA Patriot Act, the broad antiterrorism bill whose major
provisions were set to expire Dec. 31. When Democrats pushed for a three-month
extension, Mr. Frist and President Bush held fast to their demands that the
provisions be made permanent.
When Democrats blocked the permanent renewal by filibuster, Mr. Frist and the
White House accepted an extension after all - not for three months but for six,
provoking considerable debate about the meaning of "short-term."
That lasted a day, until the next face, that of Representative F. James
Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the Judiciary
Committee, demanded saving.
Mr. Sensenbrenner, also a proponent of permanent renewal, had said he would
accept no extension less than four years. With three months and six months off
the table, and four years out of the question, he cut a deal with the White
House for five weeks. Senator Trent Lott, the Republican of Mississippi who
preceded Mr. Frist as leader, summed it all up this way:
"You always say what you're not going to do - until you lose. And then you do
it."
Issues and Egos Contend in Congress's Rush to Leave, NYT, 24.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24memo.html
Daschle Says Congress
Did Not Approve
Spying Authority
December 23, 2005
Filed at 9:35 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The use of warrantless
wiretaps on American citizens was never discussed when Congress authorized the
White House to use force against al-Qaida after the Sept. 11 attacks, says
former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.
In an article printed Friday on the op-ed page of The Washington Post, Daschle
also wrote that Congress explicitly denied a White House request for war-making
authority in the United States.
''This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to
exercise expansive powers not just overseas ... but right here in the United
States, potentially against American citizens,'' Daschle wrote.
''The Bush administration now argues those powers were inherently contained in
the resolution adopted by Congress -- but at the time, the administration
clearly felt they weren't or it wouldn't have tried to insert the additional
language,'' the South Dakota Democrat wrote.
Daschle was Senate Democratic leader at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington. He is now a fellow at the
Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank.
The administration formally defended its domestic spying program in a letter to
Congress late Thursday, saying the nation's security outweighs privacy concerns
of individuals who are monitored.
In a letter to the chairs of the House and Senate intelligence committees, the
Justice Department said President Bush authorized electronic surveillance
without first obtaining a warrant in an effort to thwart terrorist acts against
the United States.
''There is undeniably an important and legitimate privacy interest at stake with
respect to the activities described by the president,'' wrote Assistant Attorney
General William E. Moschella. ''That must be balanced, however, against the
government's compelling interest in the security of the nation.''
Bush has acknowledged he authorized such surveillance and repeatedly has
defended it in recent days.
But Moschella's letter was the administration's first public notice to Congress
about the program in which electronic surveillance was conducted without the
approval of a secret court created to examine requests for wiretaps and searches
in the most sensitive terrorism and espionage cases.
Moschella maintained that Bush acted legally when he authorized the National
Security Agency to go around the court to conduct electronic surveillance of
international communications into and out of the United States by suspects tied
to al-Qaida or its affiliates.
Former CIA Director Jim Woolsey said Friday the decision to undertake the
monitoring is a ''very tough and a very close call,'' but he comes out on the
president's side.
''This is one where I think if anyone says it's a crystal-clear issue one way or
another, that is the only position I regard as wrong,'' Woolsey said. ''There
are real values on both sides -- privacy vs. security.''
Yet Woolsey said the White House's argument that it was authorized to do this
under Congress' joint resolution days after 9/11 is weak, and the president has
to rely on his inherent power under Article II of the Constitution.
Because of threats from group's like al-Qaida and Hezbollah, he said, ''we are
going to have to take some steps in the war on terror that we did not have to
take in the Cold War.''
In his letter, Moschella relied on the Sept. 18, 2001, congressional resolution,
known as the Authorization to Use Military Force, as primary legal justification
for Bush's creation of a domestic spying program. The resolution ''clearly
contemplates action within the United States,'' Moschella wrote, and
acknowledges Bush's power to prevent terrorism against the United States.
Congress adopted the resolution in the chaotic days after the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks, authorizing the president to wage war against al-Qaida and
other terrorist groups that pose a threat to the United States.
Moschella said the president's constitutional authority also includes power to
order warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance inside the United States. He
said that power has been affirmed by federal courts, including the secret
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. The FISA court was created in 1978
after public outcry over government spying on anti-war and civil rights
protesters.
The administration deliberately bypassed the FISA court, which requires the
government to provide evidence that a terrorism or espionage suspect is ''an
agent of a foreign power.''
Moschella said Bush's action was legal because the foreign intelligence law
provides a ''broad'' exception if the spying is authorized by another statute.
In this case, he said, Congress' authorization provided such authority.
He also maintained the NSA program is ''consistent'' with the Fourth Amendment
-- which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures -- and civil liberties.
For searches to be reasonable under law, a warrant is needed, Moschella said.
But, outside criminal investigations, he said, the Supreme Court has created
exceptions where warrants are not needed.
Associated Press reporter Katherine Shrader contributed to this story.
Daschle Says Congress Did Not Approve Spying Authority, NYT, 23.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Domestic-Spying.html
The Year's Results
What Congress Did and Did Not Do
December 23, 2005
The New York Times
Passed
HURRICANE TAX RELIEF The $8 billion tax plan to spur redevelopment of the Gulf
Coast creates an "opportunity zone" and grants tax incentives to those who
rebuild housing and businesses.
ENERGY The first comprehensive energy bill in years sets rules to increase the
reliability of electrical supplies, encourage construction of nuclear power
plants and finance research into alternative energy sources.
CENTRAL AMERICA FREE TRADE Most trade barriers between the United States and six
small Central American countries are removed.
HIGHWAY SAFETY More stringent safety measures are instituted, including the
first performance standards intended to reduce rollovers. States can now receive
additional federal money if they enact laws allowing the police to pull over
drivers for not wearing a seat belt.
BANKRUPTCY OVERHAUL The first major overhaul of bankruptcy laws in 27 years
disqualifies many families from erasing their debts and getting a "fresh start."
Significant new costs are imposed on those seeking bankruptcy protection, and
lenders and businesses get new legal tools for recovering debts.
CLASS ACTION LAWSUITS The ability of people to file class-action lawsuits
against companies is sharply limited, and many such cases will now be
transferred to federal courts from state ones.
TORTURE Cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners in American custody
is banned in a bill sponsored by Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and
a former prisoner of war, that was originally opposed by the White House.
USA PATRIOT ACT The antiterrorism bill passed in the wake of the Sept. 11
attacks is extended five weeks. Sixteen major provisions in the act had been set
to expire on Dec. 31, and lawmakers now have until Feb. 3 to agree on
reauthorizing them.
HURRICANE AID $29 billion in new federal aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina is
authorized.
AVIAN FLU $3.8 billion is set aside to prepare for a possible outbreak of avian
flu.
Pending
TAX CUTS AND THE ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX
CHANGES IN IMMIGRATION
SOCIAL SECURITY OVERHAUL
STEM CELL RESEARCH
ASBESTOS COMPENSATION
What
Congress Did and Did Not Do, NYT, 23.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/23/national/23cbox.html
Senate approves deficit cuts
Posted 12/21/2005 9:12 AM
Updated 12/21/2005
10:44 AM
USA Today
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican-controlled
Senate passed legislation to cut federal deficits by $39.7 billion on Wednesday
by the narrowest of margins, 51-50, with Vice President Dick Cheney casting the
deciding vote.
The measure, the product of a year's labors by
the White House and the GOP in Congress, imposes the first restraints in nearly
a decade in federal benefit programs such as Medicaid, Medicare and student
loans.
"This is the one vote you'll have this year to reduce the rate of growth of the
federal government," said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., chairman of the Senate Budget
Committee, in a final plea for passage.
But Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada countered that the GOP was
advancing "an ideologically driven, extreme, radical budget. It caters to
lobbyists and an elite group of ultraconservative ideologues here in Washington,
all at the expense of middle class Americans," he said.
The roll call delivered less than the final victory Republicans had hoped for.
In maneuvering in advance of the final vote, Democrats succeeded in forcing
minor changes.
That requires the House to vote on the bill before it can be sent to President
Bush for his signature. Passage is all but certain, but the timing remains in
question, since most House members have returned home for the holidays.
The vote came on the first of two major measures facing tests in the Senate
during the day.
On the second, Republicans maneuvered to open the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge to oil drilling. Democrats opposed that measure with a filibuster, and
Republicans scrambled for the 60 votes needed to prevail.
Republicans signaled earlier in the week they would need the vice president to
be present for the final vote on deficit cuts, and he flew back early from an
overseas diplomatic mission.
"The vice president votes in the affirmative," he said, speaking only a few
words as dictated by Senate custom.
He wasn't the only one who made an unexpected trip back to Washington. Sen.
Chris Dodd, D-Conn., flew back on Tuesday night. He has been recuperating at
home from knee replacement surgery, and he made his way into the Senate with the
aid of a walker.
Senate approves deficit cuts, UT, 21.12.2005,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-12-21-congress_x.htm
Senate passes spending cuts
after Cheney
breaks tie
Wed Dec 21, 2005
10:39 AM ET
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on
Wednesday narrowly passed a bill to trim nearly $40 billion from federal
spending over five years, including cuts to social welfare programs such as
health care for the elderly and poor.
Vice President Dick Cheney, in his role as president of the Senate, broke a
50-50 tie when he voted in favor of the spending cuts.
The House of Representatives approved the measure on Monday. But during debate
in the Senate, Democrats forced a minor change to the bill, requiring the House
to act again, probably on Thursday.
Senate passes spending cuts after Cheney breaks tie, R, 21.12.2005,
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=fundLaunches&storyID
=2005-12-21T153911Z_01_SPI156234_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-BUDGET-PASSAGE.xml
In Still-Busy Senate,
Showdown Is Today
December 21, 2005
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - Some are calling it
Fristmastime on Capitol Hill.
Five days before the holiday, the Senate remains at work, poised for decisive
votes Wednesday on major legislation. The results will determine whether the
Congressional session ends on a triumphal note for Republicans, or whether
Democrats will celebrate blocking Republican priorities like Arctic oil drilling
and spending cuts.
"It is make it or break it," Senator Mel Martinez of Florida said Tuesday as he
left a closed lunch where Republicans, led by the majority leader, Senator Bill
Frist of Tennessee, had laid out strategy for the next 24 hours.
The last few days at the Capitol have been chaotic, with an exhausting all-night
session in the House that ended just before sunrise Monday and then, after
adjournment there, two days of bitterness in the Senate over process as well as
policy.
The two parties have done battle over the fate of the USA Patriot Act, the broad
antiterrorism law. Charges and countercharges are flying over the Bush
administration's secret domestic surveillance program. Democrats continue
attacking the Republicans for making what the minority deems draconian cuts in
social programs.
The crucial votes now at hand deal not only with Arctic oil drilling and budget
cuts but also with wartime military spending, Pentagon policy, and education and
health care appropriations. Both parties have been marshaling their forces,
making certain all senators will be on hand Wednesday. Democrats checked Tuesday
on the status of Senators Jon Corzine, who is busy preparing to take office as
governor of New Jersey, and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, who is
recovering from knee surgery. Vice President Dick Cheney cut short a trip to
South Asia and the Middle East so that he would be present if his vote was
needed to break any ties.
Veteran legislators say that preholiday theater is not unusual and that
Congressional leaders often use the calendar to try to enact measures that would
never pass otherwise.
"I have been here 27 years, including, I think, two of those years on Christmas
Eve," said Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia. "I actually observed
fisticuffs between two of the most respected Republican senators ever to serve
in this body on Christmas Eve."
As for Mr. Frist, he said he had no problem with working this close to the
holiday.
"I used to be a surgeon," he said. "People got sick all the time on the 20th,
the 21st."
But Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, declaring that the budget-cutting
bill would damage programs for the poor, complained: "This is some Christmas
present. We should go home for Christmas and not pass the legislation."
Republicans said that though Mr. Cheney's vote might be necessary, they were
confident they could win final approval of that bill, which would save $39.7
billion over five years. They were less certain about the outcome of what could
become a complex procedural challenge to their decision to include in a $453.3
billion Pentagon spending bill the provision for oil drilling in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge. Democrats and environmentalists said they were gaining
ground in their efforts to block the provision, either by having it ruled out of
order or through a filibuster against the bill.
One piece of legislation for which no votes are yet scheduled is the USA Patriot
Act. Sixteen provisions of the law are set to expire at the end of the year, and
an effort to extend them was blocked by a filibuster last week. Senate leaders
traded accusations Tuesday over who would be held responsible if the provisions
lapsed.
"The Patriot Act expires on Dec. 31, but the terrorist threat does not," Mr.
Frist told reporters, echoing President Bush. "Those on the Senate floor who are
filibustering the Patriot Act are killing the Patriot Act."
Democrats, who were joined by four Republicans in blocking the measure, say it
is the majority that is at fault, for refusing to agree to a temporary extension
while disputes over civil liberties safeguards are worked out.
Republicans acknowledged that the final days of the session had been messy, but
said that if the votes on the remaining legislation came out in their favor,
they would be able to claim success for the party agenda.
Republican leaders also say they might have been able to finish earlier had they
not lost considerable time in September dealing with Hurricane Katrina and its
aftermath. But the approach of a holiday break is often an occasion for
legislative action, as the time pressure builds and lawmakers relent on some
fights.
Richard A. Baker, the Senate historian, recalled that in 1982, exasperated
senators of both parties joined just two days before Christmas to shut off a
filibuster by a handful of conservatives against an increase in the federal
gasoline tax.
After the lopsided vote, Senator George J. Mitchell, Democrat of Maine, recalled
for his colleagues Cromwell's exhortation to Parliament in 1653: "You have sat
too long here for any good you have been doing; in the name of God, go."
In
Still-Busy Senate, Showdown Is Today, NYT, 21.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/21/politics/21cong.html
Antiterrorism law may expire;
Congress
debates
Tue Dec 20, 2005
7:48 PM ET
Reuters
By Thomas Ferraro
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Republican
leaders on Tuesday appeared ready to let key provisions of a U.S. antiterrorism
law expire and blamed Democrats who have blocked a renewal in a bid for more
civil-liberties safeguards.
If these provisions of the USA Patriot Act expire on December 31, as scheduled,
the Republican-led Senate could take another crack at renewing them as soon as
Congress begins a new year in January, aides said.
Democrats, who are using a procedural maneuver known as a filibuster to block
renewal, have proposed a three-month extension to provide time to resolve
differences. But the White House and Republican congressional leaders have
rejected such a move.
"Those on the Senate floor who are filibustering the Patriot Act are killing the
Patriot Act," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican.
The act is a centerpiece of U.S. President George W. Bush's war on terrorism.
Debate over renewing the provisions has escalated with revelations last week
that Bush authorized spying without warrants on Americans suspected of having
ties to terrorists.
Provisions up for renewal include ones involving wiretaps, access to business
records and information-sharing by law enforcement and intelligence authorities.
The House of Representatives last week voted to renew the provisions, but that
bill has been blocked in the Republican-led Senate.
Republican leaders have turned down a temporary extension, saying the proposed
renewal would make improvements in civil liberties. Critics say the improvements
are insufficient.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said, "The president says
he wants to fight the terrorists, but his political stunt with the Patriot Act
suggests he's more interested in scoring political points."
"Extend it, don't end it," said Reid. He said a majority of the Senate would
back a temporary extension if Republican leaders allowed a vote on it.
Republicans aides noted that a majority of the Senate backs final congressional
approval of the House-approved renewal.
A bid to end the procedural roadblock and move to passage of the measure fell
eight votes short of the needed 60 in the 100-member Senate last week, with a
few Republicans joining most Democrats in opposing it.
Frist said, "I've made it very clear where I stand. I'm opposed to opposed to
(temporary) extensions."
"Why leadership on the other side would celebrate killing the Patriot Act, I
don't understand it," Frist said.
Antiterrorism law may expire; Congress debates, R, 20.12.2005,
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=
2005-12-21T004818Z_01_KRA102363_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-PATRIOT.xml
Lawmakers Prepare for Showdown
Over Arctic
Oil Drilling Provision
December 20, 2005
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE
and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - With tensions rising in
the Capitol, Senate Democrats threatened on Monday to derail a $453 billion
military spending bill over an Arctic oil drilling dispute, just hours after the
House approved the measure in an all-night session that also included passage of
a $40 billion budget-cutting bill.
Anticipating a Democratic-led effort against the military bill, Senator Bill
Frist, the majority leader, took procedural steps on Monday to cut off debate on
the measure, setting the stage for a decisive vote Wednesday on the legislation.
Frustrated Democrats predicted they could round up the votes to stall the
Pentagon measure even if it put them in the awkward position of blocking money
for American military operations. They called on Republicans to drop the
language allowing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
"I don't have any hesitation to be part of a filibuster," said Senator Joseph I.
Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, who is a military hawk and a longtime foe of
the Arctic drilling plan. "This is a tough fight," he added. "But it is a fight
worth waging."
The standoff over oil drilling came as Congress tried to wrap up its business
for the year, but significant issues were far from settled. In addition to the
Pentagon bill snarled in the oil fight, Senate Democrats and Republicans
remained at loggerheads over the USA Patriot Act, the broad antiterror law
containing major provisions that were set to expire Dec. 31 without Senate
action. The Senate has yet to vote on a $142.5 billion measure paying for
health, education and employment programs. And Democrats are threatening to
stall a series of nominations that Senate Republicans had hoped to see approved
before the end of the year.
While the Senate began debating the budget-cutting plan Monday, both parties
were also focusing on the procedural end-game.
The House approved the measure shortly after 5 a.m. Monday by a vote of 308 to
106 after the drilling provision was added Sunday afternoon at the insistence of
its longtime champion, Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska. Mr. Stevens,
82, has fought to open the refuge to oil exploration since the 1950's, when he
was a lawyer in the Interior Department under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He
sees the military spending measure as his best shot.
The bill also contains a $29 billion hurricane recovery package and $3.8 billion
to prepare for a potential avian flu pandemic. It also institutes a 1 percent
across-the-board cut on the current federal budget, reducing spending by about
$8.5 billion. Veterans programs were exempted.
Upset with the oil drilling initiative and other add-ons, Democrats accused Mr.
Stevens of twisting Senate rules to hijack the military bill to advance an
unrelated pet cause, a charge he angrily denied in a lengthy speech on the
Senate floor Monday.
"We've done it because of the sincere belief that production of oil domestically
has a great deal to do with our national security," he said. "Our national
defense cannot operate without the basic potential for our own production of
oil."
The fight over Arctic drilling had earlier threatened to kill the budget bill
until Congressional Republican leaders agreed to take out the language and tack
it onto the Pentagon measure. That move cleared the way for the House to
narrowly approve the budget cuts, by a vote of 212 to 206, just after 6 a.m.
Monday. Nine Republicans joined 196 Democrats and one independent in opposing
the bill backed solely by Republicans.
The final five-year savings in the measure, achieved through a combination of
revenue increases and spending reductions, were put at $39.7 billion, about $10
billion less than House conservatives had sought. An initial budget agreement
announced Sunday afternoon had put the total at nearly $42 billion, but
last-minute concessions made to secure votes lowered the final total.
As bleary-eyed lawmakers streamed out of the Capitol just before the sun rose
Monday, Republican leaders hailed the budget vote as a victory that demonstrated
they could rein in federal spending.
"This budget is the product of months of hard work, and on balance, I believe it
is a positive first step in restoring fiscal responsibility on behalf of all
Americans, from students and families to workers and retirees," said
Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio and chairman of the Education
and Workforce Committee.
But Democrats and outside advocacy groups said the combination of the
across-the-board cut, the future spending reductions required in the budget
plan, and the cuts pending in the health and education bill would severely
squeeze health and social programs for children, the elderly and the poor and
would touch nearly every federal program.
While a plan to reduce spending on food stamps was blocked, the budget bill does
reduce federal spending on child support enforcement. Senator Edward M. Kennedy
of Massachusetts, senior Democrat on the health and education panel, said it
also took $12.7 billion from student loans.
"Republicans are good at the rhetoric and making it look like they want to help
our neediest citizens," Mr. Kennedy said. "But when it comes to putting their
money where their mouth is, they fall short, very short, and it's our nation's
poor that have to pay."
In another predawn vote, the House approved and sent to the Senate a broad
military policy measure that, like the military spending bill, includes a
provision by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, that would ban cruel,
inhumane and degrading treatment of military prisoners in American custody,
establishing the Army Field Manual as the uniform standard for the interrogation
of prisoners.
White House opposition to the McCain language had held up the military policy
bill for weeks, but last week, President Bush reversed course and accepted the
provision.
The bill also includes a provision sponsored by Senators Lindsey Graham,
Republican of South Carolina, and Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, that
restricts the rights of detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Mr. Graham has said
the measure's intention is to make it possible to use information obtained by
interrogation techniques that he describes as coercive but not abusive when
military panels evaluate whether the detainees are being rightfully held as
"enemy combatants."
On the antiterror law, both sides appeared dug in. Senator Arlen Specter,
Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he had
talked to his Democratic counterpart, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, over
the weekend to try to reach a compromise. But by Monday, with House members
having left the capital, Mr. Specter said he saw little chance for a resolution.
The Pentagon, along with health and education programs covered under the second
pending spending measure, are operating under a stop-gap bill that will expire
Dec. 31. Should efforts to enact the two bills collapse, lawmakers would have to
approve another temporary bill or money for those agencies would run out at the
end of the year.
Lawmakers Prepare for Showdown Over Arctic Oil Drilling Provision, NYT,
20.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/national/20cong.html
Senate takes up Alaska drilling
Mon Dec 19, 2005 10:43 AM ET
Reuters
By Richard Cowan and Tom Doggett
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hours after the U.S.
House of Representatives agreed to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to
oil drilling, the Senate was set to begin debating on Monday whether the issue
belonged in a must-pass spending bill for the Defense Department.
Senate Democrats and moderate Republicans have long opposed giving oil companies
access to the refuge, an area the size of South Carolina that sprawls along
Alaska's northern coast. ANWR is home to a variety of wildlife such as migratory
birds, caribou and polar bears.
Before dawn on Monday, the House approved drilling when it voted 308-106 in
favor of a defense spending bill that contained the ANWR drilling language.
Giving oil companies access to the refuge's estimated 10 billion barrels of
crude oil is a key part of the Bush administration's national energy plan to
increase U.S. petroleum supplies and cut America's oil imports.
Rep. Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, noted that majorities in the House and
Senate have voted in favor of ANWR drilling only to be "frustrated" by Democrats
who used procedural tactics to block Senate passage.
The initiative could be debated by the Senate as early as Monday, where it will
face stiff opposition from some Democrats and possibly some moderate
Republicans.
"The defense bill should be about delivering equipment and support to our
troops. Instead, it is being used to deliver a multibillion bonanza to oil
companies," said Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the senior Democrat on the House
Appropriations Committee.
Sen. Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, said including ANWR in funding for the
Pentagon violated Senate rules that say a spending bill can include only germane
items.
"These tactics reflect poorly on this body and this leadership," Feingold said.
"Funding for our brave men and women in uniform should not be jeopardized by
opening ANWR to drilling."
The administration believes ANWR could eventually pump 1 million barrels a day.
However, drilling opponents say raising vehicle fuel standards for new cars,
minivans and sport utility vehicles could save the same amount of oil.
About 1.5 million acres of the refuge's coastal plain would be opened to
drilling under the current congressional plan.
Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska pushed to get the drilling plan included
in the annual defense budget because it was the only major bill moving through
the Congress that ANWR could hitch a ride on.
"Oil is related to national security. This is an amendment to pursue domestic
production of oil," Stevens said. "The largest consumer of oil in the United
States is the Department of Defense."
His state would get half the estimated $10 billion in bids that energy companies
would pay for the right to drill in ANWR if oil prices were around $50 a barrel,
according to government estimates. The federal government would receive the
other half.
The Defense Department spending bill includes about $453.3 billion in funding
for U.S. military troops in Iraq and around the world, pay increases for
soldiers, and weapons building.
Democrats planned to challenge the inclusion of the ANWR language to the bill,
saying it was added by negotiators and did not appear in the original versions
of the House and Senate defense spending bills.
If Congress opened ANWR to drilling, the refuge's oil would not flow into market
for 10 years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Once the refuge reached peak production in 2025, its oil would shave about 2
percentage points off the share oil imports would have in meeting domestic
demand, the EIA said. That would moderate U.S. oil imports to a forecast 58
percent of total demand in 2025, equal to current import levels.
Senate takes up Alaska drilling, R, 19.12.2005,
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=
2005-12-19T154338Z_01_FLE937851_RTRUKOC_0_US-ENERGY-CONGRESS.xml
Congressional Leaders Agree
to $42 Billion
in Budget Cuts
December 19, 2005
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - Meeting in a marathon
weekend session, Congressional leaders reached agreement Sunday on a nearly $42
billion budget-cutting plan that Republicans hoped to force through before
adjourning, along with a military spending measure that would open the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
Congressional negotiators also put the finishing touches on a $29 billion
hurricane recovery package for the Gulf Coast and a $3.8 billion proposal to
prepare for a potential flu pandemic and added them to the Pentagon spending
bill.
House Republicans dropped their effort to add campaign finance changes to a
second military policy measure, clearing the way for passage of that bill, which
establishes new rules for the treatment of terror detainees and provides the
armed forces with a pay raise and new health benefits.
The agreement between the House and Senate on the $41.6 billion, five-year
combination of spending cuts and revenue increases put Republicans on the brink
of a significant political victory after struggling for months to reach a deal
sought by conservatives as a way to demonstrate a new willingness to control
federal spending.
"This bill is a good first step towards addressing the long-term spending
challenges in the federal budget," Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said. "I am proud
that House Republicans have put in the long hours and hard work necessary to
make this happen."
Negotiators softened the impact of some provisions that had drawn objections
from Republican moderates, including cuts in food stamps. But the plan reduces
spending on Medicare by $8 billion and Medicaid by nearly $5 billion, and wrings
savings out of several other programs like agriculture and student loans.
Democrats said the cuts were unfair and meant little for the deficit because
Republicans were trying to advance next year nearly $100 billion in tax cuts
that would more than erase any savings. "This entire exercise imposes sacrifice
from Americans least able to afford it in an attempt to camouflage far larger
Republican tax breaks for the wealthy," said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of
Iowa.
The budget agreement came only after the proposal to allow drilling in the
Arctic was stripped from the measure and added to the military bill. But passage
of the budget cuts in the House, which planned to meet into the early morning
hours, was not assured because some Republicans who had balked at the Arctic
drilling plan were threatening to oppose the budget legislation to protest the
decision to incorporate drilling into the must-pass military bill.
That move also infuriated Democrats and other drilling opponents, raising the
prospect that the military spending bill would face a filibuster and other
obstacles in the Senate. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader,
accused Republicans on Sunday of ignoring Senate rules to enhance the chances
for approval of the drilling initiative that was a long-standing goal of Senator
Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska.
"This is a dark day in the history of the American constitutional form of
government," said Mr. Reid, who threatened to slow the Senate over the next few
days and block any votes on nominations as Republicans try to wrap up the
session before Christmas.
Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, disputed the notion that Republicans
were subverting the rules, though he said a specific provision in the military
bill would declare that any new precedent created by including the drilling plan
would not alter the rules for future legislation. He said it was acceptable to
include the drilling in a Pentagon measure because the Senate had endorsed the
oil exploration in earlier votes as a way to increase domestic oil production.
The senior lawmakers putting together the military spending bill agreed Sunday
to add the drilling plan at the insistence of Mr. Stevens, who has been
relentless in his effort to enact the plan this year. In trying to round up
votes, Mr. Stevens added language that would direct billions of dollars from the
sale of drilling rights to Gulf Coast recovery. Separately, $10 billion from the
sale of rights to analog broadcast spectrum freed up by a switch to digital
would be parceled out for hurricane relief, domestic security, home heating aid
and other areas.
One of the last items added to the military spending bill was a provision sought
by Mr. Frist that would shield drug makers from lawsuits related to vaccines
that protect against biological agents or viruses like the one that causes the
avian flu. The language would allow lawsuits against vaccine makers only if they
engaged in "willful misconduct." The government would pay medical expenses and
benefits to those injured or killed by vaccines.
Mr. Frist contends that the provision is necessary to encourage drug companies
to make vaccines. But it is likely to draw criticism, with some arguing that it
would be a windfall for those companies.
The second Pentagon policy measure for military pay raises and new health
benefits had been stalled by a fight over the effort by House Republicans to use
it to enact new campaign spending restrictions that Democrats believed would
hurt their fund-raising efforts more than those of Republicans.
But Republican authors of the measure in both chambers encouraged the House
leadership to relent in its push for the campaign finance changes to allow the
otherwise popular bill to be approved. Like the military spending bill, it
incorporates the newly negotiated agreement on banning torture of terror
detainees and lays out the legal rights of those held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
It would have been the first time in 40 years that a Pentagon policy measure had
not been approved, and Democrats assailed Republicans for threatening to hold it
up.
Despite the bickering on Capitol Hill, some legislation was moving through. On
Saturday, the House sent President Bush a measure promoting the creation of
banks to store umbilical cord blood, which yields stem cells that are useful in
treating blood and bone marrow disorders.
Congress also approved legislation extending terrorism risk insurance and gave
final approval to a measure providing new money for programs to curb violence
against women. Lawmakers also approved a Justice Department measure that would
require an annual report from the attorney general on the legal status of all
people detained on suspicion of terrorism.
A huge spending measure for health, labor and education programs had yet to
clear the Senate. It and the military spending bill were the final annual
appropriations measures awaiting passage, and the federal programs they cover
were running under a newly passed stopgap bill that would expire Dec. 31.
Republicans said the overtime wind-up was extraordinary, but they attributed the
crunch to the extra work that had been forced upon Congress by the hurricanes
that hit the Gulf Coast at the end of the summer.
"It all went out the window when you get hit by a Category 5, another Category 5
and another Category 4," said Representative Adam H. Putnam, Republican of
Florida. "Unusual factors have impacted this unusual year."
Congressional Leaders Agree to $42 Billion in Budget Cuts, NYT, 19.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/politics/19cong.html
In Congress, a Lobbyist's Legal Troubles
Turn His Generosity Into a Burden
NYT 19.12.2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/politics/19lobby.html
In Congress,
a Lobbyist's Legal Troubles
Turn His Generosity Into a Burden
December 19, 2005
The New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - The announcement by two
senators last week that they would return $217,000 in contributions linked to
the indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff has produced calls for other members of
Congress, Republicans and Democrats, to follow suit or risk being tainted by the
money in next year's elections.
Mr. Abramoff, a major Republican Party fund-raiser who is the focus of a federal
corruption investigation in Washington involving gifts to lawmakers, was long
among the most generous lobbyists in the capital in directing political
contributions to lawmakers who could help his clients.
The money, most of it from Mr. Abramoff's Indian tribe clients and their
lucrative casino operations, was eagerly accepted by members of Congress until
this year.
But no more. Political strategists working for likely challengers in several
2006 Congressional races have said they intend to publicize the donations,
arguing for the ouster of incumbents tied to Mr. Abramoff and his clients.
In announcing last week that they would return money from Mr. Abramoff's clients
and his lobbying partners, Senators Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, and
Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, made clear that they were trying to
distance themselves from accusations that they had done favors for Mr. Abramoff
in exchange for the donations.
Mr. Burns, who is facing a difficult re-election fight next year in part because
of news coverage back home about his links to Mr. Abramoff, called for other
lawmakers to return donations from the lobbyist, who is also under indictment in
Florida on unrelated fraud charges. "This is an important step that all public
officials should take in order to renew the faith" of voters, he said.
Senator Dorgan, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee,
said he was returning $67,000.
"I think a lot of voters are beginning to recognize the name Jack Abramoff,"
said Harry Mitchell, chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party. Mr. Mitchell said
in an interview that the disclosures had given the party a clear opportunity to
unseat at least one of the state's Republican House members, Representative J.
D. Hayworth of Scottsdale.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a research group in Washington
that monitors the influence of money in politics, Mr. Hayworth was the largest
single Congressional recipient of donations from Mr. Abramoff and his family,
his associates, his Indian tribe clients and a gambling cruise ship line that he
owned, with more than $101,000 going to Mr. Hayworth and his political action
committee since 1999. Mr. Hayworth was also a frequent guest in sports skyboxes
controlled by Mr. Abramoff and his clients, and at Signatures, a Washington
restaurant owned by the lobbyist.
Mr. Mitchell said Mr. Hayworth needed to return donations linked to Mr. Abramoff
if he wanted to prove that he was not involved in "all the corruption that's
been going on in Washington." In the meantime, Mr. Mitchell said, the party was
looking for a strong candidate to challenge Mr. Hayworth in a race that, he
said, would now focus in large part on the incumbent's ties to Mr. Abramoff.
Mr. Hayworth's chief of staff, Joe Eule, said in a statement that he did not
take Mr. Mitchell's threats seriously and that the congressman had no intention
of returning the money.
He said that Mr. Hayworth, co-chairman of the House Native American Caucus, "has
been a hero to tribes nationwide" and that it was not surprising that "tribes,
including a few formerly affiliated with Mr. Abramoff, have been generous in
supporting Mr. Hayworth's political efforts."
The research by the Center for Responsive Politics shows that of the top 25
Congressional recipients of political money linked to Mr. Abramoff, 19 are
Republicans and 6 are Democrats. The second largest recipient was listed as
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, with $69,000 in donations.
The Democrats include, tied at No. 16, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, his party's
Senate leader, who received a total of $30,500. Asked if Mr. Reid was
considering whether to return the money, his office said in a statement that he
was "reviewing the circumstances of the donations."
The top Democrat on the list, who at No. 8 took in $42,500, is Representative
Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island, who sits on the House Appropriations
Committee, which determines how the federal budget is divided. Sean Richardson,
a spokesman for the lawmaker, said that Mr. Kennedy was a founder of the Native
American Caucus, that he had a "direct personal relationship with tribes" and
that "none of it has anything to do with Jack Abramoff."
Only days before Mr. Burns announced last week that he would return $150,000 in
contributions linked to Mr. Abramoff and his partners, his office had insisted
that the donations were proper and had already been spent. "There's nothing to
return," his spokesman, James Pendleton, said at the time.
The Center for Responsive Politics, which did not include donations from Mr.
Abramoff's lobbying partners in its calculations, found that since 1999 Mr.
Burns received $49,590 from Mr. Abramoff's Indian tribe clients.
Mr. Burns is widely seen as one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents in
next year's Senate elections; a recent poll by Montana State University showed
him with an approval rating of less than 50 percent. News reports in Montana
have documented how he took a series of actions favorable to Mr. Abramoff's
clients around the time he received large campaign contributions linked to the
lobbyist.
Insisting that his actions were never tied to donations, Mr. Burns wrote to
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales last month, asking that his ties to Mr.
Abramoff be reviewed quickly by the Justice Department so he could be cleared of
wrongdoing before next year's election.
"I welcome your thorough and expeditious review of this matter so that it may be
disposed of officially once and for all and these outrageous and wrongful
allegations may be put to rest before we get into the 2006 re-election cycle,"
Mr. Burns wrote.
In
Congress, a Lobbyist's Legal Troubles Turn His Generosity Into a Burden,
NYT,
19.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/politics/19lobby.html
Lawmakers Back
Use of Evidence Coerced From
Detainees
December 17, 2005
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT
and TIM GOLDEN
WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - House and Senate
negotiators agreed Friday to a measure that would enable the government to keep
prisoners at Guantánamo Bay indefinitely on the basis of evidence obtained by
coercive interrogations.
The provision, which has been a subject of extensive bargaining with the Bush
administration, could allow evidence that would not be permitted in civilian
courts to be admissable in deciding whether to hold detainees at the American
military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In recent days, the Congressional
negotiators quietly eliminated an explicit ban on the use of such material in an
earlier version of the legislation.
The measure is contained in the same military policy bill that includes Senator
John McCain's provision to ban the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of
detainees in American custody worldwide. Mr. Bush reluctantly embraced Mr.
McCain's ban on Thursday. The full House is expected to approve the compromise
bill soon, with the Senate to follow in the next few days, Congressional
officials said.
The juxtaposition of the seemingly contradictory measures immediately led
lawyers for Guantánamo prisoners to assert that Congressional Republicans were
helping to preserve the utility of coercive interrogations that senior White
House officials have argued are vital to the fight against war against terror.
While the measure would allow the Guantánamo prisoners to challenge in federal
court their status as enemy combatants and to appeal automatically any
convictions and sentences handed down by military tribunals in excess of 10
years, it would still prevent the detainees from asking civilian courts to
intervene with the administration over harsh treatment or prison conditions.
Thomas B. Wilner, a lawyer who represents a group of Kuwaiti detainees at
Guantánamo Bay, said in an interview that the new language would render the
McCain restrictions unenforceable at the Cuban prison. "If McCain is one small
step forward, enactment of this language would be two giant steps backwards,"
Mr. Wilner said.
Two of the main Senate sponsors of the measure, Lindsey Graham, Republican of
South Carolina, and Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, defended the changes made
to the language that the Senate passed last month, 84 to 14.
Mr. Graham acknowledged the measure's intention to make it possible to use
information obtained by coercive interrogation techniques in military panels
that evaluate whether detainees at Guantánamo are being rightfully held as
"enemy combatants." He argued that the techniques were not abusive.
He also said that under his measure, the panels would weigh the value of the
intelligence gained from an interrogation against a judgment on whether the
statement was coerced. He said in a telephone interview with reporters that the
amendment would promote "a balanced approach." A similar rule now applies in the
military commissions that have been established to prosecute terror suspects at
Guantánamo.
Human rights advocates criticized Mr. Levin, the chief Senate Democratic
negotiator, for agreeing to restrict further the legal rights of Guantánamo
detainees. Mr. Levin suggested that he had settled for the less damaging of two
bad outcomes, saying he had deflected more onerous provisions that House
Republicans wanted, including a demand that interrogators who abused prisoners
be granted immunity from prosecution. Mr. Levin added in a telephone interview,
"I don't think courts will allow coerced evidence in any proceeding."
The Bush administration has repeatedly considered - and rejected - explicitly
prohibiting the use of evidence obtained by torture in the military commissions.
Most recently, the issue was a major part of a lengthy internal debate over new
rules for the tribunals that were promulgated on Aug. 31 in response to
longstanding criticism in the United States and overseas that the tribunals are
unfair.
Several officials familiar with the internal discussions said State Department
officials and some senior Defense Department aides had strongly advocated an
explicit ban on the use of evidence obtained by torture in a series of
interagency discussions that began last December.
At one point in that process, the Pentagon official in charge of the tribunals,
Maj. Gen. John D. Altenburg Jr., who is now retired, proposed barring any
"confession or admission that was procured from the accused by torture,"
according to parts of a draft document read to a reporter. The rule defined
torture as any act "specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental
pain and suffering."
The ban was also championed by the counselor of the State Department, Philip D.
Zelikow, two officials said. The deputy defense secretary, Gordon R. England,
also supported the ban in meetings on the revised commission rules, as did some
senior military officers, said a spokesman for Mr. England, Capt. Kevin Wensing.
But such a prohibition was opposed by other officials involved in the debate,
including David S. Addington, who was then Vice President Dick Cheney's counsel
and is now his chief of staff. A spokesman for the vice president said Mr.
Addington would have no comment on his reported role in the policy debates.
Since the drafting of the presidential order that established the commissions on
Nov. 13, 2001, White House officials have sought to give the commissions wide
latitude to consider evidence that would be inadmissible in civilian courts.
Mr. Addington, who was a primary architect of the presidential order, argued in
the debates earlier this year that by explicitly prohibiting evidence obtained
by torture, the administration would raise an unnecessary red flag. suggesting
at least implicitly that prisoners in American custody were, in fact, being
tortured, officials said.
Justice Department officials involved in the debates contended that such a
prohibition was not necessary because the matter was already covered by the
Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or
Punishment, a treaty adopted by the United Nations more than two decades ago and
ratified by the United States in 1994.
Lawmakers Back Use of Evidence Coerced From Detainees,
NYT, 17.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/17/politics/17detain.html
Senators Thwart Bush Bid
to Renew Law on
Terrorism
December 17, 2005
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
and ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - The Senate on Friday
blocked reauthorization of the broad antiterrorism bill known as the USA Patriot
Act, pushing Congress into a game of brinksmanship with President Bush, who has
said the nation will be left vulnerable to attack if the measure is not quickly
renewed.
With many Democrats and some Republicans saying the bill does not go far enough
in protecting civil liberties, the Republican leadership fell short of the 60
votes required to break a filibuster. Now the future of the law, which greatly
expanded the government's surveillance and investigative powers in the wake of
the Sept. 11 attacks, is in doubt.
The debate, a passionate fight about the balance between national security and
personal privacy, became a touchstone for repercussions after the disclosure on
Thursday night that Mr. Bush had secretly authorized the National Security
Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search
for terrorist activity.
On Friday afternoon, after the report in The New York Times and the fallout it
engendered, Vice President Dick Cheney made a hurried trip to the Capitol to
defend the domestic spying program against charges that it might be illegal,
while Mr. Bush said he "would do everything in my power to protect the country,
within the law," from another terrorist attack.
Disclosure of the eavesdropping prompted immediate calls from some lawmakers for
an end to the program and for Congressional and possible criminal investigations
into its operations. One senator, Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said
the new information had prompted him to support the filibuster against extending
the antiterrorism law.
"I went to bed undecided," Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor, "but today's
revelation that the government has listened in on thousands of phone
conversations is shocking and has greatly influenced my vote."
Opponents of the extension say they are concerned that the law would allow the
government too much latitude in obtaining personal information, like library and
medical records and business transactions, and in conducting secret searches.
The vote, 52 to 47, with four Republicans joining all but two Democrats to back
the filibuster, capped a particularly trying week for Mr. Bush. He has been
buffeted by criticism, including from within his own party, over his policies on
terrorism, the war in Iraq and the detention and treatment of military
prisoners.
On Wednesday, Senate Democrats and Republicans agreed on a measure to require
the director of national intelligence to provide regular, detailed updates about
secret detention sites maintained by the United States overseas. On Thursday,
after weeks of resisting Senator John McCain's effort to pass a measure banning
cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners in American custody, Mr.
Bush reversed course and embraced the plan.
The proposed renewal of the antiterrorism law had already been teetering under
the weight of increased concerns about civil liberties.
Sixteen major provisions are set to expire at the end of December, and Congress
hopes to adjourn in a few days. The bill's opponents had pushed for a
three-month extension of the law to allow for more negotiations, but the White
House and Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, rebuffed their
request.
"The terrorists want to attack America again and kill the innocent and inflict
even greater damage than they did on Sept. 11 - and the Congress has a
responsibility not to take away this vital tool that law enforcement and
intelligence officials have used to protect the American people," Mr. Bush said
in a statement after the vote against ending debate. "The senators who are
filibustering the Patriot Act must stop their delaying tactics so that we are
not without this critical law for even a single moment."
Some Republicans as well as Democrats voiced concern about the disclosure that
Mr. Bush had authorized the eavesdropping, without warrants, on the
international phone calls and e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
people within the United States, despite longstanding legal and policy
restrictions on such domestic wiretaps.
A government official said Mr. Bush took a hands-on role in the oversight of the
program, reviewing it every 45 to 60 days and renewing the original executive
order more than three dozen times. The official said that close oversight
reflected a determination by the White House to monitor the program closely.
Officials spoke about the program on condition of anonymity because it was
classified.
A series of legal opinions within the Bush administration have supported the
president's authority to conduct such warrantless searches, citing the authority
that Congress gave him after the Sept. 11 attacks to deter Al Qaeda, officials
involved in the operation said. But concerns about the program's use and the
complexities of the legal rationale behind it prompted the administration to
suspend it for a time in 2004 and impose new restrictions to better safeguard
against abuse of civil liberties, the officials said.
Officials who were briefed on Mr. Cheney's closed-door meetings with House and
Senate leaders on Friday declined to discuss them in detail because they took
place in a classified setting. But they said Mr. Cheney, whose office helped
lead the creation of the eavesdropping program, offered a vigorous defense of
its legality and usefulness.
The lawmakers Mr. Cheney met with, Democrats and Republicans, had been briefed
on the program previously, and the vice president focused less on explaining the
program than on discussing the impact of the disclosure, one official said.
Mr. Bush was asked about the program on the PBS program "The NewsHour with Jim
Lehrer," but he would not confirm its existence.
"We do not discuss ongoing intelligence operations to protect the country," he
said. "And the reason why is that there's an enemy that lurks, that would like
to know exactly what we're trying to do to stop them."
But Mr. Bush added: "I will make this point. That whatever I do to protect the
American people, and I have an obligation to do so, that we will uphold the law,
and decisions made are made understanding we have an obligation to protect the
civil liberties of the American people."
"I told the American people I would do everything in my power to protect the
country, within the law, and that's exactly how I conduct my presidency," he
said.
The president suggested that the disclosure was not as big an issue as the news
media and policy makers were making it out to be.
"It's not the main story of the day," Mr. Bush said. "The main story of the day
is the Iraqi election."
But leading members of Congress from both parties made clear that they
considered the eavesdropping program to be a major issue, raising what they
described as troubling questions about the president's use of his authority to
combat terrorism.
Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who leads the Judiciary
Committee, promised full oversight hearings into the program, saying, "There is
no doubt that this is inappropriate."
Mr. Specter said the hearings would "take precedence over every other item that
that committee has scheduled," except for the nomination of Judge Samuel A.
Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court, and he added that he intended to call N.S.A.
officials and the attorney general as witnesses.
Mr. Specter and other lawmakers from both parties questioned the legality of Mr.
Bush's executive order.
"The law prohibits this type of electronic surveillance," Mr. Specter said, "and
there are a lot of basic questions that need to be answered about how this
program was authorized and used."
"I want to know precisely what they did," he said. "How N.S.A. utilized their
technical equipment; whose conversations they overheard; how many conversations
they overheard; what they did with the material; what purported justification
there was - and I use the word 'purported' to emphasize - and we will go from
there."
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, denounced the program as
"Big Brother run amok," while Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of
Wisconsin, said the disclosure "ought to send a chill down the spine of every
American and every senator."
"You want to talk about abuses?" Mr. Feingold asked. "I can't imagine a more
shocking example of an abuse of power, to eavesdrop on American citizens without
first getting a court order based on some evidence that they are possibly
criminals, terrorists or spies."
Some lawmakers called for an immediate end to the program. Among them was
Senator Chuck Hagel, a moderate Republican from Nebraska who sits on the
Intelligence Committee and voted to block extension of the antiterrorism law.
"This is a very serious issue, a very serious story," Mr. Hagel told reporters.
"If, in fact, this is true, then it needs to stop. It's very clear in the law
that the National Security Agency is prohibited from domestic spying, from
spying on citizens of the United States unless there are extenuating
circumstances. But we need some answers to this."
Mr. Specter said the report had been "very, very problemsome, if not
devastating," to his effort to reauthorize the antiterrorism law.
But opponents of the extension said that, with support building for the
filibuster all week, the outcome would probably have been the same.
"This was the will of the Senate," said Senator John E. Sununu, Republican of
New Hampshire, who led the opposition among Republicans.
The two Democrats who broke ranks to oppose the filibuster were Senators Tim
Johnson of South Dakota and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
Ever since the adoption of the antiterrorism law, critics have said it failed to
strike the proper balance between protecting national security and personal
privacy. The measure that was blocked in the Senate on Friday was the product of
intense negotiations with the House, which passed it earlier this week. It would
make 14 of the 16 major provisions permanent and would extend three others for
four years. It would also add new safeguards, including some provisions for
judicial oversight.
But Mr. Sununu and other opponents, including Senators Larry E. Craig of Idaho
and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, both Republicans, said those safeguards did not go
far enough.
It is now up to the White House and Mr. Frist to decide whether to negotiate or
let the 16 provisions lapse.
Publicly, Mr. Frist insisted he would do neither. He took the tactical step on
Friday of switching his vote at the last minute to side with the backers of the
filibuster, a maneuver that allows him to bring the measure up for consideration
again. After the vote, he said he would do so.
In holding fast, Mr. Frist and other Republicans may be calculating that
Democrats would suffer at the polls for rejecting extension of the antiterrorism
law, just as, the Republicans argued, they suffered in 2002 for defeating
legislation to create the Department of Homeland Security.
But the chief Democratic opponent of the antiterrorism law, Senator Patrick J.
Leahy of Vermont, said the votes would not change.
James Risen contributed reporting for this article.
Senators Thwart Bush Bid to Renew Law on Terrorism, NYT, 17.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/17/politics/17patriot.html
US House,
Senate OK Katrina bill,
casinos
get break
Fri Dec 16, 2005 8:24 PM ET
Reuters
By David Lawder
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate and
House of Representatives approved a revised $8 billion tax incentive package to
help rebuild the hurricane-devastated Gulf Coast on Friday after resolving
differences over tax breaks for casinos and affordable housing.
The measure provides a variety of tax subsidies aimed at jump-starting
reconstruction in the federally declared Gulf Opportunity Zone disaster area, in
parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, including $14.8 billion in
tax-exempt bond financing.
"By significantly lowering the cost of capital for small, medium, and large
businesses alike, the provisions in this legislation will spur business
investment on the Gulf Coast, increase the supply of affordable housing, and put
dislocated employees back to work," said Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott.
Lott, a Republican who lost a home to the storm, brokered a deal with House
leaders that allows casino owners to tap into $2 billion in investment
subisidies for new facilities except gaming equipment and gaming room
construction.
They will be able to claim a first-year bonus depreciation deduction for 50
percent of the cost of rebuilding main buildings, hotel facilities, restaurants
and entertainment venues.
The measure extends the benefit to businesses investing in the Gulf Opportunity
Zone for structures built before the end of 2008 and equipment bought before the
end of 2007. Small businesses get additional expensing allowances.
An earlier House version of the bill denied tax benefits to casinos, massage
parlors and certain other businesses, but Louisiana and Mississippi lawmakers
argued the casino exclusion discriminated against the Gulf Coast's largest
employers, which provide some 50,000 jobs.
The measure, which will cost the U.S. Treasury over $8 billion in foregone tax
revenues over 10 years, was passed by unanimous consent by both bodies and sent
to President George W. Bush for signature.
Treasury Secretary John Snow applauded the measure, saying it "will be an
important part of the recovery."
The measure authorizes tax-exempt bonds to finance reconstruction of homes and
businesses, with $7.9 billion in issuance for Louisiana, $4.8 billion for
Mississippi and $2.1 billion for Alabama.
The plan is similar to the $8 billion New York Liberty bond program enacted to
help rebuild lower Manhattan in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The bill will also allow municipalities to restructure their debts by allowing
bond issuers one additional advance refunding before January 1, 2011. These are
capped at $4.5 billion for Louisiana, $2.25 billion for Mississippi and $1.125
billion for Alabama, and the measure also provides $350 million in financing to
help communities meet their debt payments.
The measure also follows the House bill's more generous $1 billion subsidy to
encourage construction of low-income housing in the Gulf Opportunity Zone,
estimated to provide some 12,000 new housing units.
The bill also creates an additional $1 billion worth of "new markets" tax
credits for businesses investing in low-income communities lacking access to
capital.
US
House, Senate OK Katrina bill, casinos get break, R, 16.12.2005,
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=
2005-12-17T012425Z_01_SIB666010_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-SUBSIDIES.xml
Senate Panel Probes New Orleans Levees
December 15, 2005
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:44 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal engineers trying to
stop New Orleans flooding were unsure who was in charge of fixing the levees
amid the confusion of Hurricane Katrina, according to interviews with
congressional investigators released Thursday by a Senate panel.
In a Nov. 15 interview with investigators, Army Corps of Engineers Col. Richard
P. Wagenaar recounted an instance after Katrina hit when federal workers
attempted to fill in the breached London Avenue canal and were told to stop.
That led to a discussion of ''who is in charge?'' Wagenaar said.
''I mean, where's the parish president? Where is the mayor? And then the state,
well they work for DOTD,'' Wagenaar said in the interview, referring to the
Louisiana's Department of Transportation and Development.
''At some point, you know, you've got to make some stuff happen. Because this
was a bad situation,'' he said.
At Thursday's hearing by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee, lawmakers questioned whether officials at all levels of government --
federal, state, and local -- should share in some blame.
''All of you didn't do the job that you were supposed to be doing,'' said Sen.
George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio.
The interviews, combined with Thursday's testimony, indicate vast confusion
about who was ultimately responsible for the levees.
Regulations show that the Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for building
levees and conducting annual inspections, and the state is charged with training
and overseeing New Orleans levee district officials.
The Orleans Levee District, headed by a board of politically appointed
commissioners, is responsible for day-to-day maintenance and repair of levees --
usually by staff engineers. An Aug. 16 work order released by the Senate panel,
for example, shows that inspection crews did check the levees but also cut
nearby grass and green space.
The former president of the commission described a lax -- if festive --
inspection process by its appointed members.
''You have commissioners,'' former president James P. Huey told investigators in
a Nov. 29 interview. ''They have some news cameras following you around, and all
of this stuff. And you have your little beignets, and then you have -- you go do
the tourist and that and you have a nice lunch somewhere or whatever. They have
this stop-off thing or whatever. And that's what the inspections are about.''
Asked about other levee inspections that might be more thorough, Huey told
investigators: ''When you say inspections -- and I don't really know and I
couldn't even answer to tell you -- how do you inspect levees other than if you
see seepage?''
Huey resigned from the board in October amid questions about no-bid contracts to
his relatives in the days after the Aug. 29 storm.
The Senate hearing came as a House panel considered whether to subpoena the
White House to get documents detailing the government's response to Katrina. The
chairman of the panel, Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., asked lawmakers to wait until
after a private briefing Thursday at the White House before deciding whether to
go ahead with a subpoena.
Davis issued a subpoena Wednesday to the Pentagon to get internal communications
about the military's response to the storm from Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld and eight of his top deputies.
Pentagon spokesman Army Maj. Paul Swiergosz said the panel's requests for
information have been ''very far-reaching and very broad, and we're doing
everything we can to answer them as quickly as we can.''
''We're going to provide the documents as fast as we can,'' Swiergosz said. ''No
one has been dragging their feet on these things.''
The House committee, which plans to issue its findings Feb. 15, requested
hundreds of thousands of documents more than two months ago from the
administration and Gulf Coast state and local officials.
Senate Panel Probes New Orleans Levees, NYT, 15.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Katrina-Congress.html
William Proxmire,
Senator Who Abhored
Waste,
Dies
December 15, 2005
The New York Times
By RICHARD SEVERO
William Proxmire of Wisconsin, the longtime
gadfly of the United States Senate who thrived on exposing frivolous federal
spending and dispensed Golden Fleece Awards to spotlight what he considered bad
uses of taxpayers' money, died today at a nursing home in Sykesville, Md. He was
90 and had remained a resident of the Washington metropolitan area after he
announced in 1987 that he would not seek re-election, ending a colorful Senate
career of 31 years.
Mr. Proxmire, who was also remembered for his championing of regimens of daily
exercise (in his prime, he jogged nearly 10 miles a day) and spartan diet,
learned he had Alzheimer's disease in 1995 and made it public three years later.
A man who was proud of his keen intellect, it was a disease he feared and
perhaps had a premonition about: in 1987 The Chicago Tribune reported that
shortly before he retired, a full eight years before he received his diagnosis,
he asked the Senate doctor what his odds were of living to the age of 80 without
getting Alzheimer's disease, which is a degenerative disorder of the brain .The
disease did not run in his family but he was worried about it. He said more than
once that he did not want to be a senator if his intellect was for any reason
diminished. He thought he could see the infirmities of old age on the horizon
when he said he would not run again.
Mr. Proxmire, a Democrat, was first elected in 1957 to fill the unexpired term
of the late Joseph R. McCarthy, the Republican who was censured for reckless
attacks on those he accused of being communists or fellow travelers. McCarthy's
successor could not have provided more of a contrast.
Senator Proxmire was fervid in his opposition to unnecessary spending. His
Golden Fleece of the Month Award, in which he identified some "ridiculous"
government outlay, became "as much a part of the Senate as quorum calls and
filibusters," Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia once observed.
A Golden Fleece was awarded, for example, to the National Science Foundation in
1975 for spending $84,000 to determine why people fell in love. Mr. Proxmire
said that such study was better left to "poets and mystics, to Irving Berlin, to
thousands of high school and college bull sessions, Dear Abby, Ann Landers ... "
Another Golden Fleece went to the National Institute for Mental Health, which
spent $97,000 to study, among other things, the doings in a Peruvian brothel.
The researchers said they had made repeated visits to the seraglio in the
interests of accuracy, interviewing scarlet women "formally and informally.,"
They later infuriated some government officials by informing them they couldn't
have a free copy of the book the taxpayers had paid for, that they'd have to buy
it to find out what was seen and said.
The Federal Aviation Administration also felt Mr. Proxmire's wrath for spending
$57,800 on a study of the physical measurements of 432 airline stewardesses,
paying special attention to the "length of the buttocks" and how their knees
were arranged when they were seated. Other Fleece recipients were the Law
Enforcement Administration, for spending $27,000 to determine why prisoners
wanted to get out of jail, and the Pentagon, for a $3,000 study that sought to
determine if people in the military should carry umbrellas during rainshowers.
Over the years that the award was given, Senator Proxmire provided steady
material for reporters and headline writers and made the nation laugh.
But he counted among his most significant accomplishments the government's 1986
approval of an international treaty outlawing genocide, for which he had
delivered more than 3,000 speeches in the Senate over a 19-year period and which
President Ronald Reagan finally signed into law in 1988. It took 40 years for
the United States to join 97 other countries in a treaty outlawing genocide and
it would not have done so were it not for Mr. Proxmire's tenacity. For two
decades he would deliver a speech in favor of the treaty every morning the
Senate was in session.
He also was credited with helping to block federal financing for the SST
supersonic transport plane in 1970; in that battle, Mr. Proxmire bested the
Nixon administration, Boeing, and his fellow Democratic senators Henry Jackson
and Warren Magnuson, who desperately wanted the SST to create jobs in their home
state of Washington.
He was tireless in pursuit of laws requiring lenders and credit card companies
to disclose true lending rates and legislation enabling consumers to determine
their credit ratings. He led forays against the practice by banks of "redlining"
neighborhoods.
As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, he pushed for repeal of the
Glass-Steagall Act, a landmark piece of New Deal legislation that, through
strict regulation, sought to wipe out corrupt self-dealing in the financial
system by separating banking from the brokerage business.
His penny-pinching was the bane of defense contractors, social scientists and
fellow senators, whose raises and hefty campaign funds he opposed. Conservatives
regarded him as a loose cannon at times; Norman C. Miller, writing in The Wall
Street Journal in 1967, said Mr. Proxmire had led "fiery fights for hopeless
causes." But not everything he did pleased the liberals, either; some of his
fellow Democrats thought he was a self-centered grandstander. His reputation as
a maverick was well earned.
In 1982, a convention of feminists booed him because he had voted against
liberalizing abortion rights. Democrats were also upset when he voted to approve
the conservative William H. Rehnquist as chief justice of the United States.
His Wisconsin constituents were not always pleased with him either, even though
they kept voting for him. He just did not bring home the bacon the way other
senators did. On one occasion, the people of LaFarge wanted some federal money
to improve a lake. Congress was more than willing but Senator Proxmire shot it
down, calling it a waste. The lake became a mud hole and someone in LaFarge put
up a sign calling it "Lake Proxmire."
And the senator had a bittersweet relationship with New York. After he was named
chairman of the powerful Senate Banking Committee in 1975, he worked assiduously
to get Washington to approve a $2.3 federal loan guarantee to bail out New York
City, which in 1977 seemed surely headed for bankruptcy.
Mr. Proxmire argued that the aspect of the nation's greatest city going belly up
would have a ripple effect across the country and serve to introduce uncertainty
into the municipal bond market, with the result that cities all over the United
States would probably have to pay higher interest rates on the bonds they
issued, no matter what their financial health. This, in turn, would result in
higher taxes for ordinary Americans, something Mr. Proxmire opposed vigorously.
Having helped to save New York, Mr. Proxmire then publicly criticized it for its
profligacy and excoriated the City Council for seeking a 50 percent pay raise.
He also said that municipal workers made too much money and that their pensions
and welfare benefits were too cushy. He added that the politicians presiding
over such a mess seemed rather silly to continue free tuition at the City
University. For such criticism The Daily News called him "Senator Scrooge" in a
large headline. Mr. Proxmire minded that not a jot; he showed up at his staff's
Christmas party that year wearing a "Senator Scrooge" name tag.
Edward William Proxmire was born Nov. 11, 1915, in Lake Forest, Ill., the son of
Dr. Theodore Proxmire, a prominent physician and steadfast Republican, and his
wife, the former Adele Flanigan. He had an older brother and a younger sister,
both long ago deceased. When young Edward was about 6 years old, he saw a movie
starring William S. Hart, the legendary cowboy of the silent screen. He was so
taken with Mr. Hart's independent, loner kind of heroism that he insisted from
that day on that he be called William, not Edward.
The family was well to do, and he was sent to the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa.
There he was referred to as "the biggest grind" and "the biggest sponger." After
his graduation in 1934, he went to Yale, where he became an English major.
He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1938 and immediately enrolled at
Harvard, where he became a teaching fellow and got a master's degree in business
administration. He then went to New York, where he got an entry level job with
J.P. Morgan. When the United States entered World War II, he enlisted in the
Army as a private; assigned to counterintelligence work, he was discharged in
1946 as a first lieutenant. He returned to Harvard and in 1948 got a second
master's degree - this one in public administration - and tried to figure what
he wanted to do with his life.
In 1949, Mr. Proxmire became a reporter for The Capital Times in Madison, Wis.
They fired me after I'd been there seven months, for labor activities and
impertinence," he once said, conceding that his dismissal was merited.
He moved on and briefly worked for a union newspaper where he found it not
difficult at all to characterize certain individuals as "no friend of labor." He
also briefly had a weekly radio show called "Labor Sounds Off," which was
sponsored by the American Federation of Labor.
In 1950, he ran for the Wisconsin State Assembly and won, defeating a six-term
incumbent in the Democratic primary and trouncing his Republican opponent in the
general election. Mr. Proxmire found that he loved campaigning - meeting people,
pressing the flesh, hearing what they had to say and telling them what his own
vision was.
He then decided he wanted to be Wisconsin's governor and ran three times
unsuccessfully; twice against Walter J. Kohler, an incumbent Republican, and
once against another Republican, Vernon Thompson. When he ran for the Senate
seat left vacant by the death of Joe McCarthy, his opponent was Walter J. Kohler
again. But this time, Mr. Proxmire won. The next year, when he ran for a full
term, he easily defeated his Republican challenger, Ronald J. Steinle.
From the beginning of his service in Washington, found himself frequently at
odds not just with Republicans but with members of his own party. He had early
clashes with Lyndon B. Johnson, the Senate majority leader, because he thought
Mr. Johnson was inclined to excessive compromise on civil rights legislation. He
also did not like Mr. Johnson's support of the oil depletion allowance, which he
regarded as a windfall for the petroleum industry.
Nor did Mr. Proxmire approve of President John F. Kennedy's nomination of John
B. Connally as secretary of the Navy. The senator filibustered for 19 hours in
an effort to prevent Mr. Kennedy's appointment of Lawrence J. O'Connor to the
Federal Power Commission.
He always supported the notion of a strong military but after 1975, when he
started issuing his Golden Fleece Awards, various nodes of the military
establishment were frequent recipients of this honor.
For example, he gave a Fleece award to the Office of Naval Research and the
National Science Foundation after he learned that they jointly spent around
$500,000 to determine why rats, monkeys and people clenched their teeth when
they got angry or upset. He gave another award to the Department of Defense for
spending $100,000 to send brass to an Army-Navy game that was held on the West
Coast.
But he also went after the National Endowment for the Humanities after it made a
$2,500 grant to researchers in Virginia, who wanted to know why people were
unruly and ill-mannered and why so many of them lied and cheated when they
played tennis. He gave a Fleece to the Department of Agriculture, which spent
$46,000 to calculate the precise time Americans spent cooking their breakfast
eggs (it discouraged Agriculture from doing proposed studies on lunch and
dinner).
In 1980, his "The Fleecing of America" was published by Houghton Mifflin and in
it, Senator Proxmire conceded that some researchers thought he had been unfair
and simplistic and needlessly hurtful. He acknowledged that academics, in
particular, were needlessly stung when he highlighted certain research projects
that were not easily understood. One scientist in Michigan who had been
ridiculed by the senator for studying jaw-clenching monkeys sued him for libel
in 1979 and there was an out-of-court settlement. In 1980, the senator
reimbursed the Treasury for some of the money the Senate had paid out in its
unsuccessful defense of the lawsuit.
Mr. Proxmire did not like it when a Cornell professor gave him the "Earth Is
Flat Award." The professor noted that when Columbus left Spain, he had no firm
evidence that North America existed. The professor suggested that had Senator
Proxmire been working for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, Europeans might
still be wondering if there was a New World.
Mr. Proxmire also believed he would be cheating his constituents if he was not
present in Washington attending to business so he set records in his time for
Senate attendance and consecutive roll-call votes. His most-votes record, set
when he cast his 12,134th vote on April 27, 1990, was broken by Senator Byrd.
His aversion to spending money extended to himself. Throughout his career, he
wore inexpensive suits of the type worn by new employees who start work in the
mailroom. They bore the label of "Robert Hall."
Mr. Proxmire also paid for his own plane rides when he went home to Wisconsin,
which was often. He refused to spend any significant money to win re-election.
'I think fully two-thirds of the senators could get re-elected without spending
a penny," he declared. He financed his own campaigns. Usually his campaign
budget was well under $200 and some of that money went for postage to return
money his constituents had donated to him.
His pronouncements did not stop him from being lobbied. Sometimes, the lobbyists
would show up at his home in the Cleveland Park section of Northwest Washington
and tried to jog with him as he ran the 4.9 miles to work at the Capitol every
morning (after doing between 100 and 200 pushups). He jogged better than eight
miles an hour and most lobbyists - victims of too many butterfat-and-martini
luncheons - could not keep up with him.
Senator Proxmire was twice married. His first marriage to Elsie B. Rockefeller,
a great-grandniece of John D. Rockefeller, ended in divorce in 1955. The
following year he married Ellen Hodges Sawall, a former executive secretary of
the Wisconsin Democratic Party. For years, even after he became ill, Mr.
Proxmire was a great promoter of smiling. He was very conscious of the way he
looked. He had a series of hair transplants, which the Washington press corps
knew about and wrote about. He also had a face lift, which, it seems, almost
nobody knew about. He even wrote a book explaining his outlook on exercise and
life style called "You Can Do It: Senator Proxmire's Exercise, Diet and
Relaxation Plan," which was published in 1973.
In retirement, he had a little office in the Library of Congress next to the La
Follette Reading Room. He especially liked the location, since Robert La
Follette had been Wisconsin's great progressive Senator and was one of Mr.
Proxmire's heroes. He would jog there, too, just as he had to the Capitol. But
there came a time when he began to fall. And he noticed that he could not
remember anything he had read.
"I can't remember what I've read," he told a reporter. "Sometimes I can't
remember where I am." But he added, "Regardless of what happens to you, get a
smile on your face and keep it there."
William Proxmire, Senator Who Abhored Waste, Dies, 15.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/national/15cnd-proxmire.html
Oversight
Senate Is Set
to Require Details on Secret
Prisons
December 15, 2005
The New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 - The Senate is poised to
approve a measure that would require the Bush administration to provide Congress
with its most specific and extensive accounting about the secret prison system
established by the Central Intelligence Agency to house terrorism suspects.
The measure includes amendments that would require the director of national
intelligence to provide regular, detailed updates about secret detention
facilities maintained by the United States overseas, and to account for the
treatment and condition of each prisoner. The facilities, established after the
Sept. 11 terror attacks, are thought to hold two dozen to three dozen terrorism
suspects, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is said to be the mastermind of
the attacks.
An agreement reached Wednesday between Democrats and Republicans called for the
measure to be approved by unanimous consent, but it was unclear on Wednesday
night when a final vote might occur.
While the C.I.A. has provided limited briefings to members of Congress about the
detention facilities, the information has generally been shared with only a
handful of Congressional leaders, who are prohibited from discussing the
information with their colleagues. The Senate measure would widen that circle
considerably, by requiring the director of national intelligence to provide
reports each 90 days to the House and Senate intelligence committees. Among
other things, the reports would be required to address the size, location and
cost of each detention facility; "the health and welfare" of each prisoner
there, and whether the treatment of those prisoners had been humane.
The new Senate measure, part of a bill authorizing intelligence spending, is
separate from an amendment by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, that
is still being debated as part of a military spending bill. Both reflect a
widening sense of unease in Congress about the treatment of prisoners captured
and held by the United States as part of what the administration calls its war
on terrorism. The McCain amendment would prohibit the cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment of prisoners in American custody anywhere in the world,
including at secret facilities run by the C.I.A.
The Bush administration has never officially acknowledged that secret detention
facilities exist, but the basic facts surrounding them have been described by
current and former government officials. The location of the prisons in
particular remains a carefully guarded secret, though the European Union is
seeking information to confirm a report by The Washington Post last month that
said that at least two were in Eastern Europe.
In a bow to that nuance, the Senate bill uses the phrase "if any" to describe
the secret prisons and specifies that the reports about them remain classified,
to minimize the prospect of public disclosure.
Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the top Republican on the Senate intelligence
panel, agreed to include the amendments in a measure that was to be presented to
the Senate for unanimous approval, Congressional officials said.
The new reporting requirement is not in a version of the intelligence bill that
has been approved by the House, so the amendments to the Senate measure would
have to be endorsed by a House-Senate conference committee, and then win final
passage from the House and Senate before they could become law.
Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House
Intelligence Committee, said she would seek to persuade the conference committee
to approve the new requirement. "There is more information that should
legitimately come to the full intelligence committee," Ms. Harman said in an
interview.
No senator has publicly objected to the amendments, which were introduced by the
two Senate Democrats from Massachusetts, Edward M. Kennedy and John Kerry.
Another measure included in the bill, also introduced by Mr. Kennedy, would
require the White House to provide classified intelligence documents on Iraq
that have until now been withheld from Congress.
Senate Is Set to Require Details on Secret Prisons, NYT, 15.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/politics/15intel.html
Negotiators Say
Differences Over Ban on
Abuse Remain
December 12, 2005
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE
and ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 - The Senate majority
leader, Bill Frist, predicted on Sunday that Congress and the Bush
administration would reach agreement this week over a proposal to ban torture of
terror detainees, but lawmakers engaged in the negotiations said major
differences remained.
With Congress trying to finish its work for the year, Mr. Frist, Republican of
Tennessee, said in a television interview that he expected the dispute over
language banning "cruel, inhumane and degrading" treatment of prisoners would be
resolved, clearing the way for approval of two stalled Pentagon measures.
"I think an agreement will be reached and we will come to some understanding,
which will allow us, in ways consistent with our values, that is legal, to get
the appropriate information to protect us," he said on "Fox News Sunday."
But other lawmakers and Congressional officials, appearing on television and in
separate interviews, said that the White House and the members of Congress who
insist on the language remained far apart.
"We're not close to a deal," said Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina
Republican who has been working on the issue with Senator John McCain,
Republican of Arizona, on the NBC program "Meet the Press."
One Senate official, who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to
talk about the negotiations, said the two sides remained at a virtual
standstill. "It's very, very hard to predict what will happen," the official
said.
Mr. McCain, a former prisoner of war who wrote the antitorture provision,
expressed a similar view in an interview broadcast Saturday on CBS News. "We
still have a difference," he said, "the same one we had from the beginning:
whether people have immunity automatically for anything that they may have done,
and unfortunately we have not made progress."
The Senate has twice approved Mr. McCain's measure, which would make the Army
field manual the standard for interrogations by all American personnel, and ban
the use of cruel and degrading treatment. The House has not addressed these
provisions.
The White House originally threatened to veto both the military spending bill
and the military budget bill if they contained the McCain language. But
administration officials have since backed off that threat in light of strong
support for Mr. McCain's measure in both chambers.
The sticking point in talks between Mr. McCain and Stephen J. Hadley, President
Bush's national security adviser, hinges on narrow language the White House is
seeking that could make it harder to prosecute intelligence officers charged
with violating torture standards.
Mr. McCain is balking at agreeing to any exemption for intelligence officials,
members of his staff say. Instead, he has offered to include some language,
modeled after military standards, under which a soldier can provide a defense if
a "reasonable" person could have concluded that he was following a lawful order
about how to treat prisoners.
Mr. McCain and Mr. Hadley spoke again by telephone on Saturday, said Frederick
Jones, a White House spokesman, who offered no details. "We're still in
discussions with all the parties," Mr. Jones said Sunday.
Mr. Graham indicated that he and others would be reluctant to agree to a broad
exemption to the antiterror provision. "If we start allowing American political
figures to waive the law, grant immunity or create exemptions from existing law
that the international community has signed up to, what stops the next country
from doing the same thing to our own people?" he asked on NBC.
The dispute over the provision had tied up the Pentagon spending bill, usually
one of the first approved by Congress each year, but Congressional leaders are
determined to pass that measure before adjourning as early as the end of the
week. It was also added to a separate Senate bill on Pentagon budget and policy,
which also includes provisions on the legal rights of detainees held at
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as a call by the Senate for the Iraqi government
to become much more responsible for its own security in 2006.
On Sunday, Senate negotiators on the budget and policy measure sent the House an
offer in an effort to resolve their differences with a hope of completing their
work on Monday. John Ullyot, a spokesman for Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia
Republican and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said tentative
plans called for the House to vote on the bill on Wednesday followed by the
Senate on Thursday.
Negotiators Say Differences Over Ban on Abuse Remain, NYT, 12.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/politics/12abuse.html
Senator Eugene McCarthy talks to campaign
workers
at his Bedford, N.H., campaign headquarters on March 12, 1968.
Associated Press
December 10, 2005
NYT
11.12.2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/national/11mccarthy.html
Former Minnesota Senator Eugene J. McCarthy
in Washington in 1996.
Paul Hosefros/The New York Times
December 10, 2005
Eugene J. McCarthy, Senate Dove Who Jolted
'68 Race, Dies at 89
NYT 11.12.2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/national/11mccarthy.html
Eugene J. McCarthy,
Senate Dove Who Jolted
'68 Race,
Dies at 89
December 11, 2005
The New York Times
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
Eugene J. McCarthy, the sardonic Senate dove
who stunned the nation by upending President Lyndon B. Johnson's re-election
drive amid the Vietnam War turmoil of 1968, died early yesterday. He was 89.
A courtly, sharp-witted presence in capital politics for half a century, Mr.
McCarthy, a Minnesota Democrat, died in his sleep at an assisted-living home in
the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, where he had lived for the last
several years.
His son, Michael B. McCarthy, said the cause was complications of Parkinson's
disease.
Eugene McCarthy left his mark in a generation's skepticism toward war and the
willfulness of political leaders.
"There is only one thing to do - take it to the country!" Senator McCarthy
angrily declared in a Capitol corridor 15 months before the 1968 election, after
hearing the Johnson administration make its case for the legality of the war.
Mr. McCarthy, a man of needling wit, triggered one of the most tumultuous years
in American political history. With the war taking scores of thousands of
American and Vietnamese lives, he rallied throngs against this "costly exercise
in futility" and stoked a fiery national debate over the World War II model of
an all-powerful presidency. He challenged Johnson in a primary, and the
president, facing almost certain defeat, ended up withdrawing from the race.
Mr. McCarthy was a disarming presence on the stump as he mixed a wry tone and a
hard, existential edge in challenging the White House, the Pentagon and the
superpower swagger of modern politicians.
An acid-tongued campaigner, Mr. McCarthy was sometimes a puzzlement, veering
from inspired speechifying to moody languishing. But he was the singular
candidate of the Vietnam War protest, serving up politics and poetry, theology
and baseball in a blend that entranced the "Clean for Gene" legions who flocked
to his insurgent's call.
"We do not need presidents who are bigger than the country, but rather ones who
speak for it and support it," he told them. His supporters were delighted by
what they saw as his candor, yet some were troubled by the diffidence that
marked his public persona.
"I'm kind of an accidental instrument, really," he said, "through which I hope
that the judgment and the will of this nation can be expressed."
A Self-Styled Outcast
Typically, he only frustrated his followers
when he allowed that he was at least "willing" to be president and, yes, might
even be an "adequate" one. Questions arose about his passion on the campaign as
he built a reputation as an unapologetic contrarian.
In his 1968 challenge and for decades thereafter, Mr. McCarthy played the
self-outcast of the Democratic Party, even shunning Jimmy Carter to endorse
Ronald Reagan, the Republican candidate for president in 1980. He was a chronic
presidential campaigner, running in 1972, 1976 and 1988, 18 years gone from the
Senate. He endorsed trade protectionism, the strategic defense initiative
advocated by Reagan that was often referred to as Star Wars and, most
passionately, the junking of the two-party establishment whose rules he came to
despise.
"It's much easier for me to understand politicians who don't walk away from it,"
he said when, at age 71, he once more knew he could not win but ran anyway,
hectoring the latest Beltway incumbents.
Mr. McCarthy stayed busy writing poetry and books about the decline of American
politics, and kept his eye on Washington from his farmhouse in bucolic
Rappahannock County, Va., 70 miles to the west, on 14 acres set amid the Blue
Ridge Mountains.
"I think he has a rejection wish," Maurice Rosenblatt, a Washington lobbyist who
was a longtime friend, once said of the senator's perplexing mix of quixotic
impulse and lethal hesitancy. "He wants to reject others and be rejected by
them."
But others, conceding his quirks, rated Mr. McCarthy the one stand-up, cant-free
politician of their generation. "Besides his conscience, there is his civility,"
Joe Flaherty wrote in the antiwar heyday of The Village Voice.
Mr. McCarthy delighted in commenting obliquely on politics and himself by
reciting poetry on the hustings. His more zealous volunteers yearned for clarion
calls, not pentameter. But this was not the style of a man steeped in the
Thomistic tangents of his training as a Roman Catholic college professor.
Standing a lean 6-foot-4, gray-haired and dryly smiling, the candidate McCarthy
gave a memorable rendering of Yeats ("An Irish Airman Foresees His Death") in
suggesting why he ran:
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds.
As a speaker, Mr. McCarthy was an original but hardly stem-winding presence.
"Usually the cheers were greater when he came in than when he finished
speaking," noted the poet Robert Lowell, who frequently traveled with the
candidate.
Mr. McCarthy, once a semiprofessional baseball player, liked to burnish a kind
of knuckleball oddness. In one of his own later poems, "Lament for an Aging
Politician," he wrote:
I have left Act I, for involution
And Act II. There, mired in complexity
I cannot write Act III.
He identified simplistic partisanship as the ultimate enemy in the domestic
strife over the Vietnam War. Invoking Whitman's call to human goodness -
"Arouse! for you must justify me" - candidate McCarthy's basic message to
Americans was Daniel Webster's dictum to never "give up to party what was meant
for mankind."
A Soft-Spoken Campaigner
As crowds rallied to him, he promised no new
deals or frontiers. Rather, he slowed his baritone for a plain definition of
patriotism: "To serve one's country not in submission but to serve it in truth."
He showed more passion as contrarian than as dogged campaigner. At the 1960
Democratic National Convention, Senator McCarthy showed that speaker's fire so
longed for by his later followers when he boldly nominated Adlai E. Stevenson, a
twice-defeated presidential candidate, one more time despite - or because of -
John F. Kennedy's lock on the nomination.
"Do not reject this man who made us all proud to be Democrats," rang Mr.
McCarthy's electrifying loser's plea.
In Congress, Mr. McCarthy was an unabashed liberal unafraid to take on Senator
Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin and his alarmist warnings about the Communist
menace. More often, as he restlessly paced the backs of committee rooms or
brought a tome to read during hearings, Eugene McCarthy was viewed by peers as
something of a ruminator and a curmudgeon.
Yet he was the one who dared to step forward and bell the White House cat when
other Democrats would only complain. Grasping the unpopularity of the deepening
war, he sought to make a party issue of it, announcing his primary candidacy
against President Johnson, a fellow Democrat, in the hope of building pressure
for a policy change.
"There comes a time when an honorable man simply has to raise the flag,"
declared the senator, a onetime novice monk whose political role model was Sir
Thomas More, the English statesman martyred in resisting Henry VIII's seizure of
church power.
Mocked by Johnson loyalists as a mere "footnote in history," Mr. McCarthy
prevailed well enough in his time to observe, after driving Johnson into
retreat, "I think we can say with Churchill, 'But what a footnote!' "
Senator McCarthy's challenge was intended to prod, more than destroy, the
president. But in unnerving Johnson in office, he shook Senator Robert F.
Kennedy of New York from his irresolution about challenging the president. The
critical moment came in the New Hampshire primary of March 1968, when Mr.
McCarthy beat the pundits' predictions and won 42 percent of the vote. Johnson,
despite his incumbent's grip, could score only 49 percent.
Within days, Senator Kennedy entered the race, embittering McCarthy supporters,
not to mention their champion. Two weeks later, Johnson pre-empted greater
popular rejection and astonished the nation by suddenly announcing in a
postscript to a televised speech that he would not seek re-election and would
devote his energies to ending the war.
The Chicago Convention
The year's tumult continued. Kennedy was
assassinated in June in California as he edged out the McCarthy forces in a key
round of the antiwar competition. The Democrats staggered to their convention in
Chicago, where civic mayhem erupted.
The party machine forced the nomination of Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey to
face Richard M. Nixon, over the objections of war protesters, including
draft-ripe college students. Many demonstrators were beaten in the streets by
the Chicago police of Mayor Richard J. Daley, a party stalwart.
"I can still smell the tear gas in the Hilton Hotel," Mr. McCarthy said in an
interview nearly 30 years later. "I said before the vote we were not going to
win, and there was no point in having the student delegations in the streets
thinking we could."
"The party hasn't recovered from Chicago; sort of its integrity was lost," he
contended in his ninth decade, saying that modern issues of importance were
being sidestepped as candidates ran to the drumbeat of the focus group for the
office of "Governor of the United States."
Robert Kennedy's brother, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, said in a
statement yesterday: "Gene's name will forever be linked with our family. In
spite of the rivalry with Bobby in the 1968 campaign, I admired Gene enormously
for his courage in challenging a war America never should have fought. His life
speaks volumes to us today, as we face a similar critical time for our country."
Mr. McCarthy viewed himself as the classic "messenger who brought the bad news"
to the party, never to be forgiven. He withheld his endorsement of Humphrey
until a week before the 1968 election, using the intervening time to demand
antiwar concessions, but also, in a characteristic display of aloofness, to
cover the World Series for Life magazine.
Baseball was his metaphor for politics and life. "We know Nixon's stuff," he
said well before Nixon resigned in disgrace from the presidency. "He's got a
slider. And he's thrown a spitter so many years he's got seniority rights on
it."
Eugene Joseph McCarthy, of Irish-German descent, was born March 29, 1916, in
Watkins, Minn., the son of Michael J. and Anna Baden McCarthy. He graduated from
St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., in 1935 and then earned a master's
degree in economics and sociology at the University of Minnesota. He taught
social science in Minnesota high schools for several years, then economics and
education at St. John's and sociology at the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul.
The young McCarthy thought he might want to be a Benedictine monk, but he left
the monastery after a nine-month novitiate trial. He later married a fellow
teacher, Abigail Quigley. They had four children. Soon after the 1968 campaign,
the McCarthys separated after 24 years of marriage. They never divorced.
In addition to Michael McCarthy, of Seattle, Mr. McCarthy is survived by two
daughters, Ellen A. McCarthy of Bethesda, Md., and Margaret A. McCarthy of
Takoma Park, Md.; and six grandchildren. He is also survived by a brother,
Austin McCarthy of Wilmer, Minn.; and a sister, Marian Enright of Walnut Creek,
Calif. A daughter, Mary A. McCarthy, died in 1990, Michael McCarthy said.
Public Figure, Private Man
Mr. McCarthy remained active until the last
few months. In January, he published a 173-page paperback collection of essays
and poems, "Parting Shots From My Brittle Bow: Reflections on American Politics
and Life."
Stirred to politics by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Mr. McCarthy was
elected to the House of Representatives in 1948 and served five terms before
being elected to the Senate, where he served 12 years.
In the 1968 campaign, Mr. McCarthy was the sort of candidate who could accept
with equanimity a critic's charge that he ran "against the powers of the
presidency."
In manner, he was faulted for arrogance; in strategy, for not broadening his
antiwar constituency with stronger ties to blacks and the working poor, as
Robert Kennedy did. The McCarthy civil rights record was considered exemplary,
yet when asked about the issue at a rally, he dismissively advised his
questioner to look up his record.
"Record, hell! Tell us what you feel!" the citizen shot back at the candidate.
Although his image was warm and witty on television, Mr. McCarthy stepped back
from playing the candidate who engaged by self-revelation. Abigail McCarthy,
respected in her own career as a writer, once said, "The essential thing about
Gene is that he's a private person, and in an all-confessional age, that's
considered almost treachery."
The senator who defied his president and party was confessional in his reliance
on Thomas More as "the first modern man, the first political man."
"He was forced to make a kind of individual and personal choice at a time when
there was great upheaval," Mr. McCarthy noted with satisfaction as he tried to
explain himself to a nation also in upheaval.
Eugene J. McCarthy, Senate Dove Who Jolted '68 Race, Dies at 89,
NYT, 11.12.2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/national/11mccarthy.html
Senate presses
for paring terrorism
insurance
Thu Dec 8, 2005
6:48 PM ET
Reuters
By Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With the clock ticking
toward a December 31 deadline, U.S. Senate Republicans leaned on the House (of
Representatives) on Thursday to accept their plan for renewing -- but cutting
back -- a government backstop for terrorism insurance.
Aides to key senators declared there was not enough time left this year to
negotiate on the two chambers' differences over the program, which the House
wants to expand, but the Senate and the White House want to pare back.
But a House aide countered that there was plenty of time to talk. Industry
lobbyists watched the sparring warily.
Called the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002, the program requires insurers
to make terrorism insurance available and, in return, the U.S. government
guarantees it will reimburse insurers for losses over certain thresholds, up to
$100 billion a year.
It was originally enacted after the September 11, 2001 attacks, when insurers
were reluctant to offer coverage, saying they could not judge the likelihood of
another attack. The 2001 attacks caused some $30 billion in damage.
The insurance and real estate industries have been urging Congress to renew the
measure before it expires at year's end, saying the nation's economic security
depends on it.
The House on Wednesday passed a bill that would make additions to the terrorism
insurance program as well as renew it. But the Senate bill passed last month
seeks to minimize the program and its influence on private markets.
A spokesman for Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, sponsor of the
Senate-passed bill, said there was not time for the usual House-Senate
negotiations toward a deal.
"We don't believe there will be time to complete a conference (on the competing
bills) this year," the spokesman, Andrew Gray, told Reuters. Shelby is an
Alabama Republican.
It would be preferable for the House to accept the Senate-passed bill, Gray
said. A spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee
Republican, said he concurred with that assessment.
But Peggy Peterson, spokeswoman for House Financial Services Chairman Mike
Oxley, said there was plenty of time for talks and noted the House had already
named its negotiators.
She said the Senate should act, either to appoint negotiators, or to look again
at the House bill. "The House has already spoken," she said.
Both the Senate and House bill attempt to reduce the program in part by raising
the magnitude of losses that trigger federal aid from $5 million under the
current program to $50 million in the first year of its extension and $100
million in the second year.
But the House bill, which the White House opposes, would expand the backstop to
cover damages from attacks by domestic terrorists, such as the Oklahoma City
bombing. The Senate bill only backs up losses by foreign perpetrators.
A spokeswoman for the American Insurance Association said the two chambers would
have to find a way to reconcile their differences. "Time is short," Julie
Rochman said. "We hope that even if there is no formal conference, there will be
dialogue in order to get that done."
Senate presses for paring terrorism insurance, R, 8.12.2005,
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2005-12-08T234831Z_01_KNE884761_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-TERRORISM-INSURANCE.xml
House, Senate reach deal on Patriot Act
Posted 12/8/2005 11:24 AM
Updated 12/8/2005
12:11 PM
USA Today
WASHINGTON (AP) — House and Senate negotiators
reached an agreement Thursday to extend the USA Patriot Act, the government's
premier anti-terrorism law, before its major provisions expire at the end of the
month.
"All factors considered it's reasonably good, not perfect, but it's acceptable,"
said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, as he
announced the deal.
The agreement would extend for four years two of the Patriot Act's most
controversial provisions — authorizing roving wiretaps and permitting secret
warrants for books, records and other items from businesses, hospitals and
organizations such as libraries. Those provisions would expire in four years
unless Congress acts on them again.
Also extended for four years are standards for monitoring "lone wolf" terrorists
who may be operating independent of a foreign agent or power. While not part of
the Patriot Act, officials considered that along with the Patriot Act
provisions.
The Republican-controlled House had been pushing for those provisions to stay in
effect as long as a decade, but negotiators decided to go with the
GOP-controlled Senate's suggestion.
Most of the Patriot Act becomes permanent under the reauthorization.
The ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy of
Vermont, has not yet decided whether to support the agreement, a spokesman said.
But the GOP-majority negotiating committee has enough votes to send the House
and Senate the compromise if all of the Republican negotiators agree to it.
The Senate is expected to vote on the compromise next week, Specter said. That
would give them enough time to deal with any filibuster threats before the
Patriot Act provisions expire on Dec. 31.
Congress overwhelmingly passed the Patriot Act after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks. The law expanded the government's surveillance and prosecutorial powers
against suspected terrorists, their associates and financiers.
The compromise also makes changes to national security letters, an investigative
tool used by the FBI to compel businesses to turn over customer information
without a court order or grand jury subpoena.
Under the agreement, the reauthorization specifies that an NSL can be reviewed
by a court, and explicitly allows those who receive the letters to inform their
lawyers about them.
The Bush administration contends that such consultation already is allowed,
citing at least two court challenges to NSLs. However, in a letter obtained by
the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act and posted on its website, the FBI
prohibits the recipient "from disclosing to any person that the FBI has sought
or obtained access to information or records under these provisions."
House, Senate reach deal on Patriot Act, UT, 8.12.2005,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-12-08-patriot-act_x.htm
Terri Schiavo's widower
takes aim at
politicians
Wed Dec 7, 2005
9:47 PM ET
Reuters
By Jane Sutton
MIAMI (Reuters) - Terri Schiavo's widower
launched a political action committee on Wednesday aimed at defeating elected
officials he accused of exploiting a tragedy for political gain by trying to
block court orders that allowed his brain-damaged wife to die.
Michael Schiavo said in a news release that the group, TerriPAC, would raise
money to campaign against members of Congress, mostly Republicans, who drafted
and voted for legislation to intervene in the case.
Among Republicans it is targeting are Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of
Tennessee, Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas.
Frist, a medical doctor who appeared to diagnose Terri Schiavo on the Senate
floor based on a video clip on the Internet, has said he would not run for
re-election in 2006 but many believe he might run for president in 2008.
"I was a lifelong Republican before Republicans pushed the power of government
into my private family decisions," Schiavo said in a statement. "And it is not
so simple to forget those politicians who shamelessly sought to squeeze
political leverage out of my family's most emotional hour."
The Republican National Committee did not return calls seeking comment on
Schiavo's effort.
Terri Schiavo, 41, suffered massive and irreversible brain damage during a
cardiac arrest in 1990 and died on March 31 this year after a prolonged court
battle between her husband and her parents, who wanted her to be kept alive.
The Florida courts granted Michael Schiavo's request to honor what he said were
his wife's wishes and halt the tube-feeding that had kept her alive for 15
years.
The decision prompted a fevered public battle over the right to die and
government jurisdiction in what the courts had traditionally treated as a family
medical decision.
Urged on by conservative Christian supporters, the Republican-led U.S. Congress
and President George W. Bush rushed back from vacation in March to enact
last-ditch legislation giving the federal courts authority to intervene, which
they declined to do.
Michael Schiavo, a nurse who now works at the Pinellas County Jail in Florida,
on Wednesday described the Congressional intervention as "a sickening exercise
in raw political power."
He teamed with the November Group, a campaign management company in Coral
Gables, Florida, that generally works for Democrats, to launch his PAC and set
up a Web site, www.TerriPac.org.
Political action committees are private but regulated bodies organized to
promote or oppose candidates or legislation. Schiavo's PAC was first disclosed
by the Web site Salon.com.
Terri
Schiavo's widower takes aim at politicians, R, 7.12.2005,
http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=
2005-12-08T024735Z_01_KNE802112_RTRUKOC_0_US-SCHIAVO.xml
Senate Summons Pentagon
to Explain Effort
to Plant News Stories
in Iraqi Media
December 2, 2005
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT
and DAVID S. CLOUD
WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 - The chairman of the
Senate Armed Services Committee summoned top Pentagon officials to a closed-door
session on Capitol Hill on Friday to explain a reported secret military campaign
in Iraq to plant paid propaganda in the Iraqi news media. The White House also
expressed deep concerns about the program.
Senior Pentagon officials said on Thursday that they had not yet received any
explanation of the program from top generals in Iraq, including Gen. John P.
Abizaid, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. and Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, the three most
senior commanders for Iraqi operations.
After reports about the program circulated this week, General Casey initially
protested that it should not be discussed publicly because it was classified.
One senior Pentagon official said, however, that General Casey was told that
response was inadequate. The official asked for anonymity to avoid possible
reprisals for disclosing the general's reaction.
At a briefing with reporters, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan,
responded to a barrage of questions about the program, which military
contractors and officials said also pays friendly Iraqi journalists with monthly
stipends.
"We're very concerned about the reports," the White House spokesman said. "We
have asked the Department of Defense for more information."
Under the program, the Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations firm
working in Iraq, was hired to translate articles written by American troops into
Arabic and then, in many cases, give them to advertising agencies for placement
in the Iraqi news media.
At a time when the State Department is paying contractors millions of dollars to
promote professional and independent media, the military campaign appeared to
defy the basic tenets of Western journalism.
Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services
Committee, said he had directed Pentagon aides to describe and justify the
program on Friday in a closed briefing for senators and staff aides.
"I am concerned about any actions that may undermine the credibility of the
United States as we help the Iraqi people stand up as a democracy," Mr. Warner
said in a statement.
"A free and independent press is critical to the functioning of a democracy, and
I am concerned about any actions which may erode the independence of the Iraqi
media," the committee chairman's statement said.
Asked about the issue on Thursday, the top military spokesman in Baghdad
appeared to defend the practice without referring specifically to the Lincoln
Group's activities.
The spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, said that Iraq's most-wanted militant, Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born head of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, was also
using the news media to advance his terrorist goals.
But General Lynch said the similarities ended there because the American
military was disseminating truthful information.
"He is conducting these kidnappings, these beheadings, these explosions, so that
he gets international coverage to look like he has more capability than he truly
has," General Lynch said. "He is lying to the Iraqi people."
General Lynch continued: "We don't lie. We don't need to lie. We do empower our
operational commanders with the ability to inform the Iraqi public, but
everything we do is based on fact, not based on fiction."
One Pentagon official said it was possible that the program began as an effort
to buy space in Iraqi publications for articles identified as coming from the
United States government and then evolved into something where the government
and contractor roles were hidden.
"If the whole intent of this is really an effort to provide false information to
the people of Iraq, then that's more of a problem," said the official, who added
that officials could decide to refer to the matter to Defense Department
inspector general.
The Lincoln Group, which includes some businessmen and former military
officials, was hired last year after military officials concluded that the
United States was failing to win over Muslim public opinion.
In Iraq, the effort is seen by some senior commanders as an essential complement
to combat operations in the field.
Lincoln's media work for the Pentagon in Iraq included a multimillion dollar
campaign to influence Sunni Arab voters in Anbar Province before the national
referendum on the new Iraqi Constitution in October, according to military
contractors and officials.
The campaign, the officials said, included television and radio spots that did
not disclose their American sponsorship and the disbursement of more than $1
million in cash.
"It wouldn't be obvious it came from Americans," said one official, referring to
the media messages.
Laurie Adler, a spokeswoman for Lincoln, confirmed the company worked for the
military in western Iraq but refused to provide any details.
The company's most senior executive in Iraq is Paige Craig. His résumé,
contained in Pentagon documents spelling out some of Lincoln's work, highlights
his role in "designing and leading the development of numerous government and
corporate intelligence projects."
It goes on to say "Paige Craig graduated first in class from the Navy and Marine
Corps Intelligence Training Center in 1996."
The descriptions of the Lincoln Group's activities, first reported by The Los
Angeles Times on Wednesday, have spurred debate in Washington about how the
United States should promote free and independent news media in the Middle East
and other parts of the world.
"The State Department is working with journalists in Iraq to help them develop
the skills that you all have in terms of reporting and journalistic ethics and
practices," the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, told reporters on
Thursday.
"That's important," the department spokesman said. "This is a country where free
media didn't exist for decades, so they are learning. We think it's important to
assist them in that."
But if the nascent Iraqi news media are perceived by ordinary Iraqis to be a
tool of American interests, that effort will be ruined, some lawmakers said.
"How are people going to get information that's reliable?" said Senator Richard
G. Lugar, an Indiana Republican who heads the Foreign Relations Committee. "Who
can they trust? If you are a devout Shiite or Sunni, and you suspect that the
press has been bought, why, then you wouldn't respect the press."
Jeff Gerth contributed reporting for this article.
Senate Summons Pentagon to Explain Effort
to Plant News Stories in Iraqi Media,
NYT, 2.12.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/politics/02propaganda.html
Look Who's Talking
About Making a Comeback
in the Senate
November 27, 2005
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 - Trent Lott is talking
again - and again and again and again.
It has been three years since White House officials and some Senate Republicans
orchestrated Mr. Lott's ouster as Senate majority leader amid an uproar over
racially insensitive remarks. Now, as he contemplates his future, Mr. Lott is
tweaking the Republican elite at every turn and jangling the nerves of official
Washington as never before.
As he ponders re-election next year, Mr. Lott, Republican of Mississippi, is
also dropping hints about a possible bid for a return to the Senate leadership.
Democrats are enjoying the show. Some Republicans are cringing, but others are
eyeing Mr. Lott with some appreciation.
During an appearance last weekend at the University of Mississippi, Senator John
McCain, Republican of Arizona, predicted that Lott would become Republican
leader again, adding, "I will tell anyone that of all the majority leaders we've
had in the United States Senate, I believe that Trent Lott was the finest leader
we've had."
Others say Mr. Lott seems liberated. "He's a free agent," said Senator John
Cornyn, Republican of Texas.
"A happy warrior," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, adding, "I
think he kind of relishes being a bomb thrower right now."
He also relishes keeping people guessing. After spending more than half his life
in Congress, Mr. Lott, 64, is coy about plans. Personally, the senator has had a
difficult year; his mother died in July, and in August his home in Pascagoula
was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Now, Mr. Lott, who says he feels an
obligation to constituents who have lost as much or more than he has, is
weighing whether to stay or leave for a more lucrative opportunity.
"It's difficult," he said, dashing between meetings in the Capitol on a recent
afternoon. "I've been here a long time, 33 years, and I have to think that
through."
Meanwhile, he is having a blast. "My outlook on life," he declared, "is whatever
you do in life, do it with gusto and have fun. And I am."
So Mr. Lott is taking aim where he will. When Harriet E. Miers, the White House
counsel, withdrew her nomination to the Supreme Court, Mr. Lott, who had been
openly critical of Ms. Miers, was practically gleeful. "In a month," Mr. Lott
said, in an interview on the Fox News Channel, "who will remember the name
Harriet Miers?"
The senator has also thrown darts in the direction of Karl Rove, President
Bush's chief political adviser. With Mr. Bush's poll ratings dropping, Mr. Lott
has said the White House might consider "bringing in some new people" - a jab at
Mr. Rove, who helped engineer Mr. Lott's departure as Republican leader.
The current majority leader, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, also seems to be
in Mr. Lott's sights. In his book, "Herding Cats: A Life in Politics," published
in August, Mr. Lott wrote that he considered Mr. Frist's leadership bid in 2002
"a personal betrayal."
When Mr. Frist pushed for a Congressional inquiry to determine the source of a
Washington Post article about secret prisons run by the C.I.A., Mr. Lott
complicated matters by suggesting the leak may have come from a Republican.
Some wonder if Mr. Lott's recent barbs are a preretirement parting shot. Others
say he remains deeply bruised from his fall in 2002 and is exacting payback. His
close friends, who expect Mr. Lott to make a decision about his future by year's
end, try to dismiss the notion of revenge.
"I wouldn't say it's revenge," said Robert L. Livingston, the Republican
congressman from Louisiana who was due to become House speaker in 1998 but left
Congress amid revelations of an extramarital affair. "But he has a long memory."
Mr. Lott's downfall as Republican leader stemmed from his comments at a
100th-birthday tribute to Strom Thurmond, the since-deceased Republican senator
from South Carolina who in 1948 ran for president as a segregationist.
Mississippi voted for Mr. Thurmond, and Mr. Lott said if the rest of the country
had done so, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years."
Some thought Mr. Lott would quietly slink away, but instead he rebuilt his
career as sort of a Republican Greek chorus. On any given Tuesday in the
Capitol, when Republicans meet for their policy luncheons, Mr. Lott can be found
afterward lingering in the corridors, surrounded by reporters eager for sharp
sound bites from the former leader.
"He has to be in the soup," Mr. Livingston said, "and I think he's been
frustrated over the last couple of years, not being in the position of
leadership that he once was."
Though Mr. Frist, who is eyeing a White House bid, is set to leave the Senate at
the end of 2006, Mr. Lott is unlikely to run for leader; that spot has already
been sewn up by Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, the current
whip.
Mr. Lott, who served as whip in both the House and the Senate, could run for the
whip's job, particularly if Senator Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania Republican
who has designs on that spot, does not win re-election. Or he could run for some
lesser post.
Mr. Lott would not talk about his plans, though in October, Roll Call, the
Capitol Hill newspaper, quoted him as saying that he "probably would try to get
back into a leadership position of some kind" if he stays in the Senate.
Whether he would be welcomed back by fellow Republicans is anyone's guess; when
asked about Mr. Lott, most parse their words carefully, as did Senator Jeff
Sessions, Republican from Alabama.
"Trent has a lot to offer," Mr. Sessions said, pausing to think for a moment,
"and we have a number of talented people who served well in the leadership."
Conservative advocates have also complained that he was too accommodating to
Democrats as leader. But one, Paul M. Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation,
has changed his mind. "I think if he came back he would be a strong leader," Mr.
Weyrich said, "because he has taken to heart some of the criticism."
Some Republicans still turn to Mr. Lott for advice, citing his knack for cutting
deals and his contacts in both chambers of Congress. When Senator Collins was
shepherding legislation to overhaul the nation's intelligence system, she said,
Mr. Lott got her out of a jam with a powerful House member, whom she would not
name, threatening to vote against the bill unless changes were made.
"Trent found out he wasn't going to be here for the vote anyway, so for me to
accommodate him wasn't necessary," she said. "I never would have been able to
find out that little tidbit."
Democrats, for their part, are delighted with Mr. Lott; they say they cannot
wait to pick up the morning newspaper to read his latest remarks. Senator Byron
Dorgan of North Dakota, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, laughed aloud at the
mere mention of the former Republican leader's name.
Mr. Dorgan said, "We ought to have to pay admission to watch this."
Look
Who's Talking About Making a Comeback in the Senate,
NYT, 26.11.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/politics/27lott.html
Senate's Tax Bill Includes Incentives
for Charity Gifts
November 22, 2005
The New York Times
By LYNNLEY BROWNING
The tax bill passed by the Senate last week
includes several provisions to encourage giving to charities and could lead to a
significant increase in donations.
The bill would add tax breaks for people who make small charitable contributions
and for those who want to donate directly from their individual retirement
accounts.
The Senate measure would have to be reconciled with the House's tax bill, which
is now under consideration and lacks any substantial provisions on charitable
giving.
Under the Senate bill, people who do not itemize deductions on their federal
income tax returns would for the first time be able to deduct the amount they
gave if it exceeded certain thresholds. The minimum would be $210 for
individuals and $410 for married couples.
Taxpayers must now itemize, instead of taking the standard deduction, if they
want a tax break for their gifts.
The provision would last two years and could increase charitable giving by $1
billion a year at little cost to the government, said Patrick Lester, director
of public policy for the United Way of America, the nation's largest charitable
organization.
"This is by far the most important provision" in the Senate tax bill, Mr. Lester
said, adding that he was particularly pleased there was no maximum amount that
could be donated tax free.
Because lower-income taxpayers are less likely to itemize, the provision could
prompt charitable giving to nonprofit organizations like churches and soup
kitchens.
Another provision in the Senate bill would make it possible for taxpayers who
reach age 70 1/2 and who have not yet fully tapped into their individual
retirement accounts to make tax-free donations to charities straight from the
accounts. Taxpayers must now cash out of their accounts and pay taxes on the
amount withdrawn before making donations.
The provision could lead to several billion dollars of additional charitable
giving a year, according to estimates by the Congressional Joint Committee on
Taxation. But it would cost the Treasury some $914 million a year in lost taxes.
Universities and nonprofit hospitals are expected to benefit the most from such
a measure.
The Senate also intends to curb some abuses of the rules on charitable giving.
The Internal Revenue Service has said that tax dodges through nonprofit
organizations are the fastest-growing type of tax crime. The bill would make
tax-exempt organizations liable for penalties if they participated directly or
indirectly in prohibited tax shelters. A typical abuse involves a charity's
temporarily holding taxable assets owned by a commercial entity.
Curbing abuses with life insurance contracts is another goal of the legislation.
It would levy an excise tax, equal to the acquisition cost of the insurance
contract, on any buyer of a contract that is then used partly to benefit a
charity.
The Senate is hoping to clamp down on donor-advised funds, which are set up by
individuals, families or businesses to make contributions to specific charities.
Such funds have been a source of abuse, with some supporting lavish travel and
other improper perks by family members.
C. Eugene Steuerle, a tax policy analyst at the nonpartisan Urban Institute, a
research organization in Washington, said yesterday that the Senate tax bill was
unusual in that it both "expands incentives and cuts back on abuses."
The combination, Mr. Steuerle said, "has ended up to be a fairly good one."
Senate's Tax Bill Includes Incentives for Charity Gifts, NYT, 22.11.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/politics/22charity.html
The Congress
In the Senate,
a Chorus of Three Defies the
Line
November 21, 2005
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 - On a July evening in the
Capitol, Vice President Dick Cheney summoned three Republican senators to his
ornate office just off the Senate chamber. The Republicans - John W. Warner of
Virginia, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina - were
making trouble for the Bush administration, and Mr. Cheney let them know it.
The three were pushing for regulations on the treatment of American military
prisoners, including a contentious ban on "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
or punishment." The vice president wanted the provision pulled from a huge
military spending bill. The senators would not budge.
"We agreed to disagree," Mr. Graham said in an interview last week.
That private session was an early hint of a Republican feud that spilled into
the open last week, as Senate Republicans openly challenged President Bush on
American military policy in Iraq and the war on terrorism. In the center of the
fray, pushing Congress to reassert itself, were those same three Republicans.
Though their views on the war differ, they have much in common: each is a member
of the influential Senate Armed Services Committee, each has a strong maverick
streak and each has personal ties to the military - and to one another, mostly
through Mr. McCain.
Senator Warner, the committee chairman and a veteran of World War II and the
Korean War, was secretary of the Navy when Mr. McCain's father commanded the
armed forces in the Pacific and Mr. McCain was a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
That experience, he says, "bonded me with John McCain."
Senator Graham, a former military lawyer, was co-chairman of Mr. McCain's 2000
campaign for president in South Carolina and still has bitter memories of the
tactics used by operatives for Gov. George W. Bush. Should Mr. McCain make a
White House bid in 2008, as is widely expected, Mr. Graham says he will be
there.
Their relationships with Mr. Bush are respectful, though not especially close,
and each has a different political agenda. Mr. Warner, 78, aspires mostly to
maintain his status as an elder statesman in the Senate. Mr. McCain, 69, covets
the White House. And Mr. Graham, 50, is still a rising star.
But their "little triumvirate," as Mr. Graham calls it, has become a powerful
political force at a time when President Bush's popularity is sinking and all of
Washington is consumed with debate over the direction of the war in Iraq.
On that score, the three are not in lockstep. Last week, Mr. Warner prodded the
Senate to require the Bush administration to provide Congress with quarterly
progress reports on the war, spawning a raucous House debate over whether troops
should withdraw and setting the stage for Iraq to dominate the 2006 midterm
elections. But Senators McCain and Graham, who have steadfastly called for more
troops, not fewer, voted against Mr. Warner's plan, saying it smacked of a
timetable for withdrawal.
Yet the three are firm in their conviction that Congress, having ceded authority
on military matters to the executive branch, must flex its muscles. In addition
to sticking together on the so-called torture ban - despite a White House veto
threat - they joined last week in backing a bipartisan compromise, sponsored by
Senator Graham, giving "enemy combatants" in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, limited
rights of appeal in federal court.
"This was a huge 'Congress getting into the ballgame' week," Mr. Graham said.
Mr. Warner said wryly, "You know, Congress is a co-equal branch."
But Congress is hardly united, and now the three senators must contend with
House Republicans. On Thursday, Mr. Warner met with his House counterpart,
Representative Duncan Hunter of California, to discuss the military spending
bill, which lacks the torture provision in the House version.
Mr. Hunter said afterward that each man promised to give the other "a fair
hearing." But Mr. Warner said he made his position clear.
"I told him as an opening salvo, 'I'm solid with John McCain,' " Mr. Warner
said.
All three senators are also in the "Gang of 14," a bipartisan group that struck
a deal on President Bush's judicial nominees. They trace their alliance on
military matters to last year's revelations of detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib
prison in Iraq.
The scandal prompted Senator Warner, the committee chairman, to conduct
hearings, over the objections of some Republicans who said he was handing a
political issue to Democrats.
Mr. Graham says he became convinced at that time that Congress needed "a
holistic approach" to the delicate issues surrounding those in American
government custody. So he asked the committee chairman for permission to hold
hearings on the legal rights of detainees. He recounts Mr. Warner's reply:
"He said: 'Go to it, young man.' "
Mr. McCain says he pressed for the torture provision because "frankly, we never
got answers to some of the questions that were asked" about Abu Ghraib. The
measure would require all American troops to use only interrogation techniques
authorized in a new Army manual; the White House is now pressing to make
clandestine Central Intelligence Agency activities exempt. Mr. McCain said last
week that he was "hopeful, but not confident" the negotiations could produce a
compromise.
"I think I can help the administration by forcing this through," he said. "I
think I can help them more effectively pursue the war on terror in general and
the war in Iraq in particular."
Not everyone in the Capitol is so convinced, and Mr. Graham says the three have
"withstood a lot of pressure." The McCain provision received only nine "no"
votes in the Senate, but four were from Republicans on the Armed Services
Committee - a tally that suggests a possible rift within the panel. One of the
four, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, complained last week that his colleagues had
given Democrats an opening to politicize the Iraq war.
"I think McCain galvanized opinion on this issue because of who he is and what
he's been through," Mr. Cornyn said, "in a way that probably no one else could."
For Democrats, who have spent months trying to put the public spotlight on the
issues of detainee treatment and the war in Iraq, the three Republicans are like
some kind of gift from the political gods. After the Senate overwhelmingly
adopted Mr. Warner's measure on the war, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat
of Delaware, stood slack-jawed.
"It's gigantic," Mr. Biden said.
Perhaps that is because Mr. Warner, who characterizes his own military service
as "very modest," has such strong defense bona fides: He has been associated
with the armed services, in one form or another, for 60 years. But Mr. Biden
said military ties are not the main reason Senators Warner, McCain and Graham
have such strong credibility.
"I think their credibility," Mr. Biden said, "is mainly, they're Republicans."
In
the Senate, a Chorus of Three Defies the Line, NYT, 21.10.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/politics/21trio.html
J.D. Crowe Alabama
The Mobile Register Cagle
17.11.2005
http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/crowe.asp
George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States
Bid to renew anti-terror act stalled
Fri Nov 18, 2005
7:28 PM ET
Reuters
By Thomas Ferraro
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A proposed renewal of
the anti-terror USA Patriot Act stalled in Congress on Friday, and Senate foes
said they had the votes to block it unless protection of civil liberties were
increased.
Backers said they remained confident they would muster needed support, when
Congress returns next month from a holiday break, to extend or make permanent
key provisions of the act set to expire on December 31.
The Patriot Act, a centerpiece of President George W. Bush's war on terror, was
first passed after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. It
expanded federal investigative powers to track down suspected terrorists.
"We can't let key provisions to just die," said a senior Senate aide. "Somehow
this will all be worked out."
"We have to move ahead with it," said Rep. David Dreier of California, a member
of the House Republican leadership.
Backers argue the Patriot Act has bolstered national security. But critics
charge it has also undermined civil liberties, and that the proposed renewal
failed to adequately address concerns.
On Wednesday, Republican-led negotiators reached a tentative agreement to extend
or make permanent about 20 expiring provisions, including ones covering
wiretaps, Internet surveillance and access to personal records.
NO MAJOR REVISIONS EXPECTED
The Republican-led House of Representatives and Republican-led Senate had hoped
to pass the accord by Friday so Bush could quickly sign it into law. But amid
bipartisan complaints, backers were unable to get enough signatures from Senate
negotiators to do so.
Some possible modifications will now be considered, Republican Senate aides
said, but no major revisions were expected.
Assistant Senate Democratic leader Dick Durbin of Illinois said, "We hope that
the leaders on both sides of the Rotunda will come to realize that they have a
strong bipartisan coalition for meaningful Patriot Act reform."
"If they do not ... I believe we can demonstrate on the floor of the United
States Senate that a substantial bipartisan majority opposes this Patriot Act as
it's been currently proposed," Durbin, flanked by a dozen fellow lawmakers, told
a news conference.
Republicans, who hold 55 of the Senate's 100 seats, largely support the proposal
to renew the Patriot Act. But opponents would needed just 41 votes to sustain a
procedural hurdle known as a filibuster.
"Right now, we have the votes," Durbin said in a brief interview.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican who
helped negotiate the agreement, said he would like to see some changes.
Specter said he favored extending three expiring provisions by four years rather
than the seven stipulated in the accord.
But Specter also said he saw the agreement as bolstering anti-terror efforts as
well as safeguards on civil liberties.
"I'm prepared to sign the report (the agreement) if we cannot have an
improvement," Specter said. "The getting it done is more important than
improving it."
"But if we can improve it in the interim, when people understand it better and
we have a chance to talk to more people, and perhaps the White House will weigh
in, that's what I'd like to do," Specter said.
Bid
to renew anti-terror act stalled, R, 18.11.2005,
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-11-19T002839Z_01_MCC881203_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-CONGRESS.xml
Senate approves
$60 billion tax cut bill
Fri Nov 18, 2005 5:18 AM ET
Reuters
By Donna Smith
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate
approved a $60 billion tax cut bill on Friday that would impose a $5 billion tax
on big oil companies and provide new tax breaks to help rebuild hurricane
devastated regions.
The package, approved on a vote of 64-33, passed the Senate only after
provisions extending reduced tax rates for capital gains and dividends beyond
their 2008 expiration were dropped. Democrats and some moderate Republicans put
up solid opposition to those provisions.
The overall cost of the legislation was reduced by a number of revenue raising
measures, including an accounting provision that would raise about $5 billion
from big oil companies by temporarily changing the way they value oil
inventories.
Another measure would eliminate a $1 billion tax break for oil and gas
exploration that was included in energy legislation President George W. Bush
signed into law earlier this year.
But the Senate rejected attempts by some Democrats to include a windfall profits
tax on the record earnings of big oil companies and give the proceeds to
consumers.
The Senate bill also includes about $7 billion in tax breaks to help rebuild
regions destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and other provisions to encourage
charitable giving.
The bill extends a number of tax breaks for business, education and savings that
otherwise would expire at the end of the year. Among them is a $30 billion
measure that would keep millions of taxpayers from paying the alternative
minimum tax next year -- a tax originally intended for the very wealthy.
"If Congress does its job, taxpayers won't suffer any tax increase," said Senate
Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican.
While the Senate bill omitted the measure to extend the 15 percent tax rate on
dividends and capital gains, which had been backed by the administration, some
Republicans have vowed to restore the measure later in the process.
The lower rate on investment income was the centerpiece of Bush's 2003 tax cut
and is set to expire at the end of 2008. Unless Congress acts, the tax rate on
capital gains would go to 20 percent and investors would pay regular income tax
rates on dividends.
A competing tax bill pending in the House of Representatives would extend the 15
percent tax rate for capital gains and dividends through 2010.
The House Ways and Means Committee passed that legislation earlier this week and
the bill could be taken up by the full House possibly as early as Friday.
The tax legislation is part of a broader effort by congressional Republicans to
continue Bush's tax cuts while trimming federal domestic spending to reduce
deficits.
Democrats accused Republicans of putting too much of the deficit-cutting burden
on the poor while giving generous tax breaks to the wealthy.
"Essentially, they've targeted the most vulnerable in our communities --
children, the aged, the blind and disabled -- for spending cuts that pave the
way for tax cuts for the rich," said Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, the top
Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee.
Republicans argue that the tax cuts will help generate economic growth.
Senate approves $60 billion tax cut bill, R, 18.11.2005,
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-11-18T101828Z_01_RID821299_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-TAXES.xml
Tax-Cut Measure
Faces Bush Veto Threat
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 18, 2005
Filed at 11:04 a.m. ET
The New York Times
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A $60 billion bill the
Senate passed to continue expiring tax cuts and shelter 14 million families from
higher taxes faces a White House veto threat because it also includes a hefty
tax increase for oil companies.
The legislation passed by senators early Friday would spare millions of families
from paying increased taxes through the alternative minimum tax. Much of the
bill, passed 64-33, preserves tax cuts approved in previous years that are set
to expire unless lawmakers keep them alive.
But unlike a bill assembled by the House tax writing committee, it does not
preserve lower tax rates for capital gains and dividends scheduled to disappear
at the end of 2008. Congress lowered the maximum tax rate on that investment
income to 15 percent in 2003, and many Republicans want to act this year to keep
those rates in place in 2009 and 2010.
It was doubtful whether the House would vote on its bill before leaving for the
Thanksgiving holiday. ''It's a possibility that we'll move it if we're ready to
move it,'' Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said early Friday. ''We'll have to
see where the votes are.''
Most Democrats oppose the tax cuts for investment income. Senate leaders dropped
an extension from their bill because a key moderate Republican balked at its
inclusion.
GOP leaders vow it will reappear before the final tax bill reaches President
Bush's desk.
The White House wants to see another change in the Senate bill: elimination of a
$4.3 billion tax increase on oil companies.
''This provision would result in a retroactive tax increase by changing a
long-accepted accounting practice,'' the White House said in a statement warning
that senior advisers would recommend that President Bush veto the legislation if
it's not removed.
The House omitted a major provision in the Senate bill, a change preventing a
tax hit on millions of families caused by the alternative minimum tax.
Originally intended as a levy to prevent the wealthy from avoiding taxation, the
alternative minimum tax must be tweaked every year to keep it from applying to
additional millions more families.
The House and Senate bills reduce taxes roughly $60 billion over five years.
Both preserve tax breaks scheduled to expire, including a business research and
development credit, a low-income saver's credit, investment incentives for small
businesses and a deduction for state and local sales taxes.
Both are versions of a $70 billion tax cut outlined in a budget drafted earlier
this year.
The Senate's bill would offer $7 billion in assistance to businesses and
individuals hit by Hurricane Katrina and other storms, filling in details of
President Bush's proposed Gulf Opportunity Zone. Taxpayers also would get new
incentives to make charitable contributions at the same time that tax-writers
put new curbs on charitable deductions deemed excessive.
A last minute change to the Senate tax bill would require corporate executives
to count as income the value of personal use of corporate aircraft.
------
The bill is S. 2020
Congressional information on the Net:
http://thomas.loc.gov/
Tax-Cut Measure Faces Bush Veto Threat, NYT, 18.11.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Congress-Taxes.html
Senate Renews
Terrorism Insurance Act
November 18, 2005
Filed at 11:01 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate on Friday voted
to renew a post-Sept. 11 act providing federal safeguards for the insurance
industry in the event of a devastating terrorist attack.
The voice vote extended for two years the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, while
putting more of the financial burden on the insurance industry.
''Sept. 11 proved that there needs to be a mechanism in place to allow the
economy to rebound more quickly and to protect American jobs in the unfortunate
event of another terrorist attack,'' said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid,
D-Nevada.
The bill extends the terrorism insurance act that was to expire on Dec. 31 while
increasing from $5 million to $50 million in 2006 and $100 million in 2007 the
amount of property and casualty losses that would trigger federal payments.
It reduces coverage in the program by excluding commercial vehicles, theft,
surety and other items and raises the deductibles for insurers before federal
help begins.
After the deductible is reached, the federal government covers 90 percent of
insured losses in 2006 and 85 percent in 2007.
The White House, in a statement, expressed support for the Senate bill, saying
it sends the proper signal to the marketplace that the program is envisioned to
be temporary and is consistent with administration goals of encouraging private
markets and reducing taxpayer exposure.
The American Insurance Association, in a statement, said enactment of the
legislation before the current law expires is essential for U.S. economic
security. The House is expected to take up the measure soon.
The original TRIA was enacted in 2002 in response to the economic slowdown and
reluctance of investors and construction companies to initiate new projects
because of concerns that they would be unable to obtain insurance needed to
cover devastating losses.
------
The bill is S. 467
On the Net:
Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov/
Senate Renews Terrorism Insurance Act, NYT, 17.11.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Terrorism-Insurance.html
Extension of Patriot Act
Faces Threat of
Filibuster
November 18, 2005
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 - A tentative deal to
extend the government's antiterrorism powers under the law known as the USA
Patriot Act appeared in some jeopardy Thursday, as Senate Democrats threatened
to mount a filibuster in an effort to block the legislation.
"This is worth the fight," Senator Russell D. Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat who
serves on the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview.
"I've cleared my schedule right up to Thanksgiving," Mr. Feingold said, adding
that he was making plans to read aloud from the Bill of Rights as part of a
filibuster if necessary.
The political maneuvering came even before negotiators for the House and Senate
had agreed on a final deal to extend the government's counterterrorism powers
under the act.
With a tentative deal in place on Wednesday, Congressional negotiators had been
expected to reach a final, printed agreement by early Thursday for the full
House and Senate to consider. But despite minute-by-minute updates about a
possible conclusion, the day passed on with no final agreement, causing no
shortage of nervousness among Bush administration officials and Republican
supporters of the tentative deal.
By Thursday evening, officials said negotiators had reached what amounted to an
impasse for the day, as those from the Senate pushed for further civil rights
safeguards that were seen as unacceptable to House leaders. Talks are expected
to pick up again on Friday, officials said.
The tentative deal reached by negotiators would make permanent 14 of the 16
provisions of the law that are set to expire at the end of the year. The
remaining two provisions - related to government demands for records from
businesses and libraries and its use of roving wiretaps - would have to be
reconsidered in seven years, as would a separate provision on taking aim at
people suspected of being "lone wolf" terrorists.
But in the eleventh-hour negotiations to complete the deal, Congressional
leaders discussed changing some crucial elements of the agreement in response to
concerns from lawmakers, officials said. One proposal would have lowered the
"sunset" on the three investigative provisions from seven years to something
closer to the four years approved by the Senate in its version of the bill
earlier this year.
In a letter Thursday, a bipartisan group of six senators said the tentative deal
had caused them "deep concern" because it did not go far enough in "making
reasonable changes to the original law to protect innocent people from
unnecessary and intrusive government surveillance."
Reflecting the political breadth of concerns about the law, the letter was
signed by three Republicans - Senators Larry E. Craig, John E. Sununu and Lisa
Murkowksi - and three Democrats - Senators Richard J. Durbin and Ken Salazar and
Mr. Feingold.
The group called for tighter restrictions on the government's ability to demand
records and its use of so-called "sneak and peak" warrants to conduct secret
searches without immediately informing the target, among other measures.
"We have worked too long and too hard to allow this conference report to
eliminate the modest protections for civil liberties that were agreed to
unanimously in the Senate," Ms. Murkowski, of Alaska, said in a separate
statement.
"There is still time for the conference committee to step back and agree to the
Senate's bipartisan approach. If the conference committee doesn't do that, we
will fight to stop this bill from becoming law."
Republican leaders said they remained confident that a deal would be worked out
that would accommodate the newly raised concerns from members of both parties.
But the late maneuvering could thwart the leaders' hopes to have a deal in place
before Congress breaks for Thanksgiving next week.
The Bush administration, which saw the negotiators' tentative agreement as a
strong endorsement of its demand for tough antiterror tools, has made the
reauthorization of the act one of its top legislative priorities, and officials
have been pushing for a quick resolution to avoid hitting a deadline at the end
of December, when several major surveillance and investigative powers in the law
would expire.
Extension of Patriot Act Faces Threat of Filibuster, NYT, 18.11.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/18/national/18patriot.html
In Setback for Bush,
Congress Fails to Pass
His Proposals
November 18, 2005
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE
and DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 - President Bush suffered
a series of setbacks and rebukes on Capitol Hill on Thursday and early today as
the Republican leadership was unable to push through some of his most cherished
policy goals for his second term.
As the House and Senate struggled with spending and tax measures, two of Mr.
Bush's main objectives - oil-drilling in Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge and
an extension of the deep cuts to taxes on capital gains and dividends - were
shelved by opposition from Democrats and some moderate Republicans.
The defeats for the White House on the oil-drilling and tax-cut proposals came
as Senate Democrats threatened to mount a filibuster against extension of the
USA Patriot Act, which was enacted just after the Sept. 11 attacks and is a
centerpiece of Mr. Bush's antiterrorism policies. Democrats have been joined by
several Republicans, some of them conservative, in contending that some parts of
the act intrude too much on personal privacy in the name of national security.
This morning, several senators who are hardly ideological soul mates - Richard
J. Durbin of Illinois, the liberal Democratic whip, and Larry E. Craig of Idaho,
a conservative Republican, for instance - reiterated their opposition to the act
as it now stands. So more negotiations are on the horizon.
And Mr. Bush's policy on Iraq has been condemned by a leading Democrat on
military affairs, Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, who said Mr.
Bush's approach was folly based on illusion, and that American troops should be
brought home. The comments of Mr. Murtha, a Vietnam combat veteran who is
usually hawkish on military matters and supported the 2002 resolution
authorizing force against Saddam Hussein, were still being discussed today on
Capitol Hill as word reached Washington of the latest carnage wrought by suicide
bombers in Iraq.
The House action on spending amounted to a rare defeat for Republican leaders as
well as the White House as 22 Republicans teamed up with Democrats on Thursday
to kill a major health and education spending measure. The 224-to-209 rejection
of the $142.5 billion in spending on an array of social programs was the first
time since the early days of the Republican takeover of the House a decade ago
that the majority had come out on the losing end of such a vote.
Hours after the loss on the spending front, the leadership early this morning
forced through a separate measure making nearly $50 billion in budget cuts over
five years after massaging the plan to reduce opposition from Republican
moderates. The vote was 217 to 215, and even that razor-thin victory was gained
only after moderate Republicans successfully resisted Mr. Bush's oil-drilling
plan.
Today, the Senate approved a resolution to provide money to keep the government
running through Dec. 17 while Congress works on the spending bills. The House
passed an identical measure on Thursday.
The struggle on the spending measure underlined the divide over spending policy
confounding House Republicans as they struggle to provide relief for hurricane
victims while placating party members alarmed about growth in federal spending.
It also focused attention once again on the difficulties of a leadership team
that has been somewhat off balance since September, when Representative Tom
DeLay was forced to step aside as majority leader after he was indicted in
Texas.
In rebelling against the spending measure, Democrats and some Republicans said
it fell woefully short of fulfilling federal commitments.
They pointed, for example, to $900 million in health care cuts that took a toll
on the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and on rural health
care. They opposed the elimination of $8 billion to prepare for a potential flu
pandemic. And they pointed to a provision that would strip money from a variety
of popular education programs and leave Pell Grants to college students frozen,
as part of the first reduction in education spending in a decade.
"The Republican bill to fund our nation's investments in health, education and
other important programs betrayed our nation's values and its future,"
Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland said.
The narrow passage of the budget cuts this morning came after a couple of false
starts in recent weeks and a bitter debate.
"Today we are simply slowing the future growth of government," said
Representative Chris Chocola, Republican of Indiana, as the House opened debate.
Mr. Chocola said the reductions, if translated to a typical family budget of
$50,000, represented a savings of $50.
President Bush's press office issued a statement from Pusan, South Korea, where
the president was meeting with leaders of Southeast Asia, praising the action on
the budget cuts.
"I applaud the Republican Members of the House who passed a significant savings
package that will restrain spending and keep us on track to cut the deficit in
half by 2009," the statement said. "We will continue to fund our priorities in a
fiscally responsible way and ensure that taxpayer money is spent wisely or not
spent at all. I urge the House and Senate to reach agreement promptly on a
spending-reduction package that I can sign into law this year."
Democrats said it was unfair to reduce spending on programs like food stamps and
health care for the poor to offset the costs of the hurricanes.
"This is the cruelest lie of all," said Representative Gene Taylor, a
Mississippi Democrat who lost his home to Hurricane Katrina, "that the only way
you can help people who have lost everything is by hurting somebody else."
In another indication of the turmoil in Congress, a tentative deal to extend the
government's antiterrorism powers appeared in some jeopardy, as Senate Democrats
threatened a filibuster in an effort to block the legislation.
In the Senate, Republicans claimed a victory early Friday morning as senators
voted 64 to 33 to approve a $60 billion tax-cutting package. Republicans
defeated Democratic efforts to impose a temporary tax on the sale of oil priced
over $40 a barrel. Under the bill, energy companies would have been taxed 50
percent on profits not reinvested in increasing domestic oil and gas supplies.
But one of Mr. Bush's objectives - extending the tax cuts of 2003 on capital
gains and dividends - fell by the wayside.
Members of both parties said the health and education spending measure fell
victim to a unusual confluence of legislative circumstances. Pressured by
conservatives to show dedication to spending discipline, negotiators stripped
the bill of special local projects sought by members, a decision that cut into
support, because House members who were already unhappy with the cuts had no
other incentive to back the bill.
"The combination of that was too much for them to swallow," Representative Jerry
Lewis, Republican of California, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said.
Some Republicans sat stunned on the House floor after the vote, which threw a
wrench into Republican plans to finish the spending measures and leave for the
Thanksgiving break. Senior lawmakers were debating whether to reopen
negotiations to fashion a bill that could pass, keep the programs operating
under a yearlong stop-gap bill or try to add the measure to a must-pass Pentagon
spending bill.
The defeat averted a Senate vote on the bill, which even the chief Senate
negotiator, Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, opposed. "There
is a totally insufficient allocation on that bill, beyond any question," Mr.
Specter said.
Over all, the House measure that was defeated called for spending more than $600
billion. But the vast majority of that money flows automatically through
Medicare and other mandatory programs, so the battle was over the $142.5 billion
for discretionary programs, an amount $164 million less than current levels.
The 22 Republicans opposing the bill represented a cross-section of ideologies
and had a variety of reasons for objecting. Representative Bill Thomas,
Republican of California, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said he
objected because of an unexpected acceleration in the timetable for halting
Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement for sexual impotence drugs.
Among Republicans from Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, only two broke
ranks to oppose the bill. They were Representatives Nancy L. Johnson and Rob
Simmons, both of Connecticut.
House supporters of the bill said that it provided a satisfactory level of
federal support for health and education programs and that new fiscal restraint
was called for, given the resources needed for the Gulf Coast hurricanes and the
war in Iraq.
"Maybe it is not as much as you like," said Representative Ralph Regula,
Republican of Ohio, chairman of the subcommittee responsible for the measure.
"But there is a lot of good in there."
Democrats said the measure, which would have ended more than 20 programs and
prevented the start of eight new ones, would shortchange Americans who need
assistance at the very time the House and Senate were advancing new tax cuts
that would benefit the more affluent.
"This is the day when the price of Republican tax cuts for the wealthy becomes
quite clear," said Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, senior Democrat on
the Appropriations Committee.
In
Setback for Bush, Congress Fails to Pass His Proposals,
NYT, 18.11.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/18/politics/18cnd-spend.html
Veto Threat
as Senators Approve
Pension
Bill
November 17, 2005
The New York Times
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
The Senate passed a bill yesterday aimed at strengthening
the nation's troubled system of company pension plans. But the White House
called the measure inadequate and warned that President Bush was likely to veto
it if it remained in its current form.
The bill requires companies to close any shortfalls in their pension funds and
gives most of them seven years to do so. But it allows the financially ailing
major airlines 20 years to close those gaps, a provision the White House said
was unacceptable.
It also requires companies to calculate pension benefits in a way intended to
avoid certain distortions that can make the funds look stronger than they really
are.
The bill would increase the insurance premiums that companies must pay to the
federal agency that guarantees pensions and would make them pay a fee to the
agency if they file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, terminate their
pension plans and then emerge from bankruptcy.
The White House raised numerous objections to these measures, saying they had
too many built-in delays and did not go far enough to close loopholes.
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the Senate
Finance Committee, a leading figure in the pension debate, said yesterday that
the Senate had struck a useful compromise, calling its bill "a huge leap forward
for retirement security." The measure was passed 97 to 2.
In the House, two bills have been approved by separate committees and are
awaiting reconciliation, possibly next month. Both houses of Congress have been
trying for months to plug loopholes in the current pension law, to make sure
that companies set aside enough money to pay the benefits they owe and to
provide adequate resources for the government agency, the Pension Benefit
Guaranty Corporation. Some analysts have warned that without such changes, the
whole pension system could eventually collapse, requiring a costly taxpayer
bailout.
But the legislative effort has been slowed by warnings from business executives
that if companies were forced to put unreasonable amounts of money into their
pension plans, they would have to stop offering pensions entirely.
Organized labor, fearful of hastening the demise of a valuable type of benefit,
has tended to side with business on the issue of pension funding, warning
lawmakers against pushing companies too hard to put more money behind their
promises.
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation has been analyzing the various
proposals. A recent study suggested that the Senate bill might not work as well
as the lawmakers hoped yesterday. That analysis, completed by the federal agency
in October, found that companies would contribute about 8 percent less to their
pension plans over the next 10 years under the Senate bill's provisions than if
nothing at all was done.
In 2006 alone, the analysis found that the bill - whose provisions would start
slowly - would save companies about $21 billion on their pension contributions.
The total savings over the next 10 years would be about $70 billion. And as
companies put less money into the pension plans over time, more plans would fail
and end up at the pension agency.
In January, the Bush administration outlined a vision of pension reform, but
companies with pension plans said it was unrealistically tough. According to the
pension guarantor's analysis, it would have required companies to put about $91
billion more into their pension funds over the next 10 years than under the
existing law.
The Senate bill passed yesterday did contain several important provisions
advocated by the administration, but with modifications that would make them
take effect less quickly or less harshly.
One would require companies to start taking the ages of workers into account
when measuring the total value of pension obligations. This method, called a
yield curve approach, acknowledges that companies need to set aside more money
as their workers approach retirement age, because the money will not have very
much time to compound before the benefits start coming due.
Many analysts have warned that the approach now used by most companies -
calculating their pension values as if their workers were all the same age - is
potentially dangerous because it understates the total value of the benefits,
particularly at companies with older work forces. If companies underestimate the
value of their pensions, they will set aside less money to pay them, weakening
the plans.
Companies have been particularly hostile to the idea of calculating pensions on
the basis of a yield curve. They have argued that this would be unacceptably
complicated. The Senate tried to address their complaints with a compromise that
required companies to place their workers into three age categories and measure
the pensions that way.
Another of the administration's goals was to take each company's financial
health into account in determining the way it handles its pension plans.
Companies with junk credit ratings, as the administration saw it, were much
likelier to default, not only on their bonds but on their pension obligations,
so they would have to handle their pension plans much more cautiously. The
Senate bill included this concept, but with a complicated array of phase-ins and
exclusions.
Another provision of the bill would require employers to rein in the benefits
they promise if their pension plans get into financial trouble. Under the
current law, for example, companies that pay pension benefits in a single big
check - called a lump-sum distribution - can keep on writing those checks even
if their pension funds start running out of money, as recently happened at Delta
Air Lines.
The Senate bill would brake such "bank run" situations, requiring companies to
stop paying lump-sum distributions if their pension assets fell below 60 percent
of total pension obligations. The administration had hoped for a tougher
standard, barring lump-sum payments if assets fell below 80 percent.
The bill would also make companies freeze the growth of additional benefits if
their pension assets fell below 60 percent of pension obligations. At the
moment, there is no requirement that companies freeze these benefit accruals, no
matter how weak their plans become.
Another provision of the bill would require companies to report the strength of
their pension plans to employees every year. Current disclosure requirements
make it quite difficult for an employee to find out if a pension plan is secure
or not.
On the floor of the Senate yesterday, Mr. Grassley said, "we are here to fulfill
the promise" of the 30-year-old pension law "and to let the American people know
that if you've been promised a pension, we're going to make sure you receive
it."
Veto Threat as
Senators Approve Pension Bill, NYT, 17.11.2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/17/business/17pension.html
|