History > 2007 > USA > Politics > Congress (I)

Photograph: ABC News via AP

House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Chairman

Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa.,

discusses President Bush's new policy changes in Iraq

Sunday during the taping of This Week

with George Stephanopoulos at ABC studios in Washington

Bush, Cheney

say congressional opposition won't halt troop buildup

UT

15 January 2007

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-14-bush-iraq_x.htm

Southern clout in Congress

at lowest point in 50 years

31.3.2007
USA Today
By Ben Evans, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Rep. Howard "Judge" Smith of Virginia routinely frustrated the Washington establishment by leaving town when leaders tried to push legislation he didn't like through the Rules Committee he chaired for 12 years.
Once in 1957, he blocked a major civil rights bill from President Eisenhower by saying he needed to tend to a barn that had burned down on his farm.

At the time, Smith's antics were hardly out of place. Colorful Southern politicians ruled the roost on Capitol Hill, presiding with near-authoritarian control over panels that wrote the nation's tax laws, set federal spending, and steered subsidies to cotton and peanut farmers back home. Near the end of Smith's tenure in 1965, Southerners chaired about two-thirds of the committees in the House and Senate.

But Dixie's heyday in Congress has come and gone. Today it's rare to find anyone with a Southern accent in a position of power, and after the Democratic victories in November, congressional historians say the region's clout has dropped to its lowest level in at least 50 years.

In the current Congress, there are no Southern committee chairmen in the Senate, and there are just four in the House — fewer than from California alone. Only one Southerner, House Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina, sits in the top tier of majority leadership.

"It really is the end of the era," said Christian Grose, a Vanderbilt University professor who studies Southern politics.

There are plenty of reasons for the change, not the least of which is the South's shift toward the Republican Party that was cemented in the 1990s. When Republicans lost control of Congress in last year's elections, the region's clout took a hit.

But even under Republican control last year, signs of waning influence were evident, with just a handful of Southern committee chairmen. Through deaths, retirements and a more competitive political environment, the South has simply lost the seniority that gave it such outsized influence.

"There was a time when Southerners just got re-elected and re-elected over and over again. You stick around long enough, you get powerful," said former Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin, a former Democrat who switched parties in the middle of his 24-year House career before retiring in 2004. "But it's not the old, genteel South anymore. It's a brutal political playing field now."

The change has far-reaching consequences, political experts say, not just on the earmarked federal spending but also on larger issues such as the Iraq war.

Brad Fitch, CEO of Knowledgis, a government relations firm that ranks lawmakers' power, said regional dynamics play a particularly strong role on legislation such as the farm bill.

"The debate in the farm bill is almost never partisan," Fitch said. "It's all regional. It's about whether the peanut farmers in Georgia are going to get more help than the dairy farmers in Wisconsin or the corn farmers in Nebraska."

The good news for the region, he said, is that the South still has heavy representation on the agriculture committees. The bad news is that just one Southerner, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, made the top 10 lists in his 2007 "preseason" scorecard.

That wouldn't have been the case 50 years ago. Dating back to the Depression, the South was so dominated by conservative Democrats that lawmakers who behaved reasonably well — and even some who didn't — could hold office virtually as long as they wanted, earning seniority and privileges that their colleagues could only dream of matching.

The political monopoly produced legislators like Rep. Jamie Whitten of Mississippi, known as the "permanent secretary of agriculture" because he held such a grip over farm spending during a 54-year career.

Sen. Russell Long — scion of Huey Long's Louisiana political dynasty — was called the "fourth branch of government" for his mastery of the nation's tax code during 15 years as Finance chairman.

Committee chairmen held far more power and independence than they do under today's centralized system, and Southerners often made clear their disdain for contrary views.

In 1972, for example, near the end of a 36-year career, Rep. Edward Hebert of Louisiana forced two Western liberals to share a chair because he didn't want them on his Armed Services Committee.

Smith of Virginia, who chaired the Rules Committee, where legislation goes just before reaching a vote, served as a gatekeeper, according to historical accounts.

"He would literally put the bill in his back pocket and go home," said David Cohen, a former civil rights lobbyist.

Nobody has that kind of power anymore, said Rep. David Price, a North Carolina Democrat on leave from his job as a Duke University political scientist. Even if Southerners did, he said, they wouldn't have nearly the impact on the national agenda because the South's distinct interests have faded.

"Southern members are more like members everywhere," he said. "We don't wear white linen suits anymore. We don't fight civil rights bills. It's a new Democratic party. We're mainstream Democrats for the most part."

Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, the Senate's second-ranking Republican and former majority leader, noted that as recently as the 1990s, Southerners like him and Newt Gingrich of Georgia held nearly all the top leadership positions in Congress.

While agreeing that the era of Smith, Whitten and Long is over, he called the South's current low point an "aberration." Regional influence ebbs and flows, he said, and the South will be back.

As evidence, he pointed to the title of a 1977 book by David Leon Chandler that explored the South's influence in Washington.

"It's because of what Chandler said: The Natural Superiority of Southern Politicians," Lott said, grinning.

    Southern clout in Congress at lowest point in 50 years, UT, 31.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/legislative/2007-03-31-south_N.htm

Bush, Democrats blast each other

over Iraq spending bill

31.3.2007
AP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush, seeking to one-up Congress' Democratic majority in a showdown over the Iraq war, suggested Saturday that lawmakers should be ashamed that they added non-war items to an Iraq spending bill.

"I like peanuts as much as the next guy, but I believe the security of our troops should come before the security of our peanut crop," Bush said in his weekly radio address, referring to a provision in the war funding legislation that earmarks $74 million for secure peanut storage.

The Senate has passed a bill calling for most U.S. combat troops to be out of Iraq by March 31, 2008, while the House version demands a September 2008 withdrawal. In both houses, the timelines are attached to legislation providing money to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year.

Bush repeated his promise to veto the bills if the timelines stay in — and if the unrelated earmarks stay in as well — because they "undercut our troops in the field."

"Each bill would impose restrictive conditions on our military commanders," the president said. "Each bill would also set an arbitrary deadline for surrender and withdrawal in Iraq, and I believe that would have disastrous consequences for our safety here at home."

House and Senate negotiators will have to reconcile the different versions, and lawmakers left town for a two-week spring break without doing so. Earlier Friday, the White House, claiming that money for troops is already beginning to run out, complained that the House should have at least named its negotiators before leaving.

But Democrats have said that any blame for shorting troops and their families of what they need will fall at Bush's feet if he vetoes a spending bill Congress sends him. "It's his responsibility," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

In the Democrats' weekly radio address, a veteran of the Iraq war asked Bush to resist the urge to veto the legislation.

"Both houses of Congress have done their jobs and will soon finish a bill that will provide for the troops," retired Marine Lt. Col. Andrew Horne said Saturday. "When they're done, the only person who could keep funds from reaching troops would be the president."

Horne, who ran unsuccessfully for a Kentucky congressional seat in 2006, added: "If the president vetoes this bill because he doesn't want to formally demonstrate progress in Iraq, never in the history of war would there be a more blatant example of a commander in chief undermining the troops. There is absolutely no excuse for the president to withhold funding for the troops, and if he does exercise a veto, Congress must side with the troops and override it."

In his radio address, Bush took aim at budget blueprints approved recently by the Democratic-controlled Congress.

The House plan promises a big surplus in five years by allowing tax cuts passed in the president's first term to expire. It awards spending increases next year to both the Pentagon and domestic programs, but it defers difficult decisions about unsustainable growth in federal benefit programs such as Medicare.

The Senate blueprint is similar but would not generate surpluses since it assumes lawmakers will renew the most popular of the tax cuts due to expire at the end of 2010.

Bush equates letting the cuts expire to a tax increase. He said Saturday the blow would amount to nearly $400 billion over five years — what he said would be "the largest tax increase in our nation's history."

"Whether you have a family, work for a living, own a business or are simply struggling to get by on a low income, the Democrats want to raise your taxes," the president said. "With their budgets, the Democrats have revealed their true intentions."

    Bush, Democrats blast each other over Iraq spending bill, UT, 31.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-31-weekly-address_N.htm

Bush Clashes With Congress on Prosecutors

March 21, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, March 20 — President Bush and Congress clashed Tuesday over an inquiry into the firing of federal prosecutors and appeared headed toward a constitutional showdown over demands from Capitol Hill for internal White House documents and testimony from top advisers to the president.

Under growing political pressure, the White House offered to allow members of Congressional committees to hold private interviews with Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser and deputy chief of staff; Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel; and two other officials. It also offered to provide access to e-mail messages and other communications about the dismissals, but not those between White House officials.

Democrats promptly rejected the offer, which specified that the officials would not testify under oath, that there would be no transcript and that Congress would not subsequently subpoena them.

“I don’t accept his offer,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. “It is not constructive, and it is not helpful to be telling the Senate how to do our investigation or to prejudge its outcome.”

Responding defiantly on a day in which tension over the affair played out on multiple fronts, Mr. Bush said he would resist any effort to put his top aides under “the klieg lights” in “show trials” on Capitol Hill, and he reiterated his support for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose backing among Republicans on Capitol Hill ebbed further on Tuesday.

“We will not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants,” the president told reporters in a brief and hastily convened appearance in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House.

The pointed exchange was set off by a Democratic inquiry into whether the White House let politics interfere with law enforcement by dismissing eight of the nation’s 93 United States attorneys. The dismissals and the way the Justice Department informed Congress about them have created an uproar in both parties, as Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have demanded explanations.

Tuesday’s confrontation was the sharpest yet between the Bush White House and the new Democratic majority in Congress on a matter of oversight, and it set the stage for a legal showdown over executive privilege. Democrats threatened to subpoena Mr. Rove and the others unless they testified publicly and under oath, while the White House vowed to fight subpoenas in court.

The fallout from the dismissals continued to ripple across the capital.

In the Senate, lawmakers responded to the furor over the firings by voting overwhelmingly to revoke the authority they had granted the administration last year under the USA Patriot Act to install federal prosecutors indefinitely without Senate confirmation.

Lawmakers also spent the day poring over 3,000 pages of newly released e-mail messages that provided a glimpse inside the Justice Department as officials planned the dismissals and then reacted to the issue as it ignited into a political crisis.

The administration has voluntarily released e-mail messages from inside the Justice Department but has drawn the line at releasing communications among members of the White House staff, citing the tradition that a president is entitled to advice from his aides that does not have to be couched out of concern that it will become public.

The e-mail messages showed that the agency only gradually appreciated how seriously it had miscalculated the response the firings would provoke. As late as early February, D. Kyle Sampson, who stepped down last week as Mr. Gonzales’s chief of staff, suggested the uproar would blow over, writing, “The issue has basically run its course.”

With many Democrats and a growing number of Republicans calling for Mr. Gonzales to step down, Mr. Bush placed an early morning telephone call to his beleaguered attorney general, to offer him “a very strong vote of confidence,” said Tony Snow, the White House press secretary. Still, Mr. Gonzales’s support among Republicans appeared increasingly thin.

“His ability to effectively serve the president and lead the Justice Department is greatly compromised,” Representative Adam H. Putnam of Florida, chairman of the House Republican Conference, said during a lunchtime interview with reporters. “I think he himself should evaluate his ability to serve as an effective attorney general.”

Against that backdrop, the White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding, went to Capitol Hill to make what Mr. Bush called a “reasonable proposal” to permit members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to conduct private interviews with Mr. Rove; Ms. Miers; William Kelley, the deputy White House counsel; and Scott Jennings, a deputy to Mr. Rove.

In a carefully worded letter to the committees, Mr. Fielding said the White House was prepared to give Congress “a virtually unprecedented window into personnel decision-making within the executive branch.”

One of two Republican lawmakers who attended the meeting, Representative Chris Cannon of Utah, said in an interview afterward that he had pressed Mr. Fielding on whether he “understood that a lie would be prosecutable,” even if the interview was not conducted under oath. “He said, ‘Yes, we understand that,’ ” Mr. Cannon said. Lying to Congress can be a crime even if the false statements are not made under oath.

But Democrats dismissed Mr. Fielding’s offer as window dressing. Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, suggested that the administration had misled him, and released a Justice Department letter that said it was not aware that Mr. Rove had played any role in the decision to appoint one of his former deputies as United States attorney in Arkansas.

“I want to hear Karl Rove testify under oath about the role he played in this whole affair,” Mr. Reid said.

As the war of words escalated, people on both sides acknowledged a legal fight carried political risks. Beth Nolan, who was counsel to President Bill Clinton and twice testified to Congress under subpoena, said she suspected the clash would lead to more negotiations, and not a court fight. “There’s the legal path to the fight and the political path,” she said. “It’s much more likely that you’ll see a political path.”

The Bush administration has been a fierce defender of presidential powers but has solved most of the issues without going to court. For instance, the president and Vice President Dick Cheney agreed to be interviewed by the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, although they did so behind closed doors and not under oath. Nevertheless Mr. Bush said Tuesday that he would “oppose any attempts to subpoena White House officials.” Asked if he would be willing to go to court over the matter, Mr. Bush said, “Absolutely.”

Mr. Bush once again defended the dismissals, and he said it was “natural and appropriate” for members of the White House staff to discuss them with the Justice Department. At the same time, he offered an apology to the dismissed United States attorneys, saying, “I regret that these resignations turned into such a public spectacle.”

The motivation for the dismissals is still not fully understood. Democrats, including Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who is leading the inquiry in the Senate, and Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, have said they want to know whether prosecutors were dismissed to thwart public corruption investigations.

“The time for slippery explanations is over,” Mrs. Feinstein said Tuesday, after the Senate voted 94 to 2 to repeal the Patriot Act provision. “We don’t intend to stop now. We intend to flesh out who did what, when and why.”

The Justice Department e-mail messages did little to flesh that out. They contain no mention that the firings were motivated by any particular prosecutors’ action or inaction in any public corruption cases. Nor do the messages show that the Bush administration had a batch of replacement candidates in place in seven of the eight United States attorney’s offices.

But the documents do show how unprepared the Justice Department was early this year for the response. On Dec. 7, 2006, the day the prosecutors were told they were being removed, Gerald Parksy, a prominent California Republican fund-raiser and friend of the president’s, “put in an outraged call” to the White House protesting the dismissal of the United States attorney in San Francisco, Kevin Ryan, according to an e-mail message from a White House official to the Justice Department.

Mr. Kelley, the deputy White House counsel, asked one Justice Department official to provide more details of the firings to White House political aides so that they could help Mr. Rove answer calls about the action. As the uproar mounted, officials at the department headquarters scrambled to prepare a list of reasons for removing the prosecutors, struggling at times to find substantial causes, particularly for Daniel Bogden in Nevada, Margaret Chiara in Michigan and David C. Iglesias of New Mexico.

Reporting for this article was contributed by John M. Broder, Carl Hulse, David Johnston, Eric Lipton and Jim Rutenberg.

    Bush Clashes With Congress on Prosecutors, NYT, 21.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/us/politics/21attorneys.html?hp

Lawmakers Aim to Curb Loan Abuses

March 17, 2007
The New York Times
By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, March 16 — Senior Democrats in Congress, worried that the rising number of homeowners who cannot repay their mortgages could cause broader economic problems, have begun drafting legislation to curtail predatory lending practices.

The provisions include requiring mortgage lenders to determine if borrowers have the financial ability to repay loans and making issuers and buyers of predatory mortgages more legally accountable.

The legislation still faces significant political obstacles, including opposition from a well-financed, well-connected industry. But proponents of the measures have significant political momentum, as defaults continue to rise and the markets are roiled by failing mortgage companies.

Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the House Financial Services Committee, said in an interview on Friday that he intended to move legislation in the coming weeks. He said the measure he was preparing would discourage abusive loans by imposing legal liability “up the chain.” It would give borrowers and others the ability to sue the Wall Street firms that package those mortgages and then sell them as mortgage-backed securities, as well as the purchasers of those securities in the secondary market.

“Anybody, including the original borrower, can make a claim, and the liability would go up the chain,” he said. “People say it may discourage certain kinds of lending. But that’s precisely what we want to do. We will pass a bill that won’t allow companies to loan people more money than they can pay back or loans for more than the value of the house.”

Mr. Frank said he expected the committee would approve the legislation in the spring. His counterpart in the Senate, Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, said in an interview on Friday that he was also considering a legislative approach, although his preference was to first see if the problems could be resolved through a more aggressive response by regulators.

“I have two public policy goals,” said Mr. Dodd, who is a presidential candidate. “One is to make sure that what’s been going on stops. That is the easier of the two issues to address. And the second is what can we do to keep people in these homes. What if anything can be done to prevent flooding the market with these delinquencies.”

Recent testimony before Mr. Dodd’s banking committee by one housing expert, Martin Eakes of the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonpartisan research organization, indicated that more than two million families would lose their homes to foreclosures that could have been avoided through better lending practices.

“I’m not averse to legislating on it,” Mr. Dodd said. “My preference is to see whether it could be better managed by the regulators knowing that legislation can be so difficult to get through.”

For years, Mr. Frank and other House Democrats have unsuccessfully sought legislation to curtail predatory lending practices. But with Democrats now in control of Congress, and at a time of increasing defaults and problems at several large lending institutions, the supporters of legislation are hoping that their bills will finally gain traction.

House and Senate committees have announced a series of hearings beginning next week on predatory lending and problems in the subprime market. The House-Senate Joint Economic Committee, led by Senator Charles E. Schumer, is preparing a report that examines the effect of defaults and subprime lending on housing values and the economic security of families.

“While no one is sure of the systemic risk,” Mr. Schumer said, “there is a growing consensus that there’s too great a risk for the people who are getting these loans, and there is a pretty strong consensus that the brakes have to be put on this kind of lending.” He predicted that the Senate would approve legislation in the next six months.

Industry executives are hoping that a series of steps taken by the bank regulatory agencies will relieve the pressure on Congress to act.

This month, federal bank regulators issued a proposed policy statement instructing lenders that make adjustable-rate mortgages to people with weak, or subprime, credit, to consider the ability of the borrowers to pay back the loans in full, and not just whether they can make initial low payments. They also told the mortgage companies to verify the income of borrowers and to be clear in describing the risks of loans.

Concerned about the prospects for new laws that will make it harder to issue loans, industry officials have urged the lawmakers to move cautiously. They have said that any overly burdensome new requirements on the lending companies will roil markets by tightening credit for those most in need.

“There is always a danger of Congressional overreaction,” said Kurt Pfotenhauer, a senior vice president and the top lobbyist for the Mortgage Bankers Association. “I expect we will get a spate of what I consider symbolic legislation. Lawmakers want to go on record for or against something. The main event will be when the committee staff at the direction of the chairman begins to mark up legislation. And every time a presidential candidate gets up and speaks on the issue, it increase the chances we will get legislation this year.”

In addition to Mr. Dodd, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, a New York Democrat who is running for president, has expressed concerns about the growing rate of loan defaults.

“The fact that the entire home mortgage market has such a high rate of foreclosures should be an alarm bell,” Mrs. Clinton said in an interview on Bloomberg Television on Thursday.

Mr. Pfotenhauer said that the industry would support legislation that set uniform standards and preempted more stringent state laws. He criticized a proposal to set new liability standards that could be used against the holders of mortgage-backed securities, saying it would promote a wave of new litigation.

“Any time there is a foreclosure you can end up in the courts litigating these things,” he said.

    Lawmakers Aim to Curb Loan Abuses, NYT, 17.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/business/17mortgage.html

Divided Congress Prepares to Debate Financing and Strategy for Iraq War

February 28, 2007
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY and ROBIN TONER

WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 — The Democratic-controlled Congress on Tuesday entered a critical five-week struggle over the financing of the war in Iraq and the overall mission there, divided over strategy, stymied by ideological divisions, but still hoping to escalate pressure on the White House to change the course of the war.

In the Senate, a proposal to repeal the 2002 Congressional war authorization faced skepticism on two fronts. Some liberal Democrats expressed unease at the prospect of approving a new military mission, even a narrower one, while moderate Republicans said they preferred to look ahead rather than revisit the past.

In the House, Democrats debated what conditions should be attached to the nearly $100 billion spending bill for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, scheduled for a floor vote in March. Democratic leaders convened a spirited meeting of their caucus to begin sorting out the lawmakers’ varying views, hoping to defend against Republican charges that they were planning a cutoff in troop financing.

As members of Congress returned to Capitol Hill after a weeklong break at home, Democrats searched for a way to translate a tide of public sentiment against the war into legislation that makes practical — and political — sense.

“Personally, I don’t believe there are any good alternatives in Iraq,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic majority leader. Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, Mr. Hoyer and other leaders met with their fellow Democrats for about an hour in a closed session on Tuesday evening. They emerged to say that the military spending bill would place a new emphasis on the war on terrorism and provide additional financing for the American effort in Afghanistan.

They also sought to rebut the Republican charge that the troops would suffer from their efforts to change the administration’s troop buildup in Iraq.

“Let me be clear,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters. “We will fund the troops.”

While Democrats have yet to settle on a final spending plan, Ms. Pelosi spoke favorably of a proposal put forward by Representative John P. Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, that would establish strict standards for the training, readiness and equipment of troops about to be deployed to Iraq. Mr. Murtha has said his legislation would protect American forces, yet make Mr. Bush’s troop buildup impossible to sustain.

The new Democratic proposal would allow those standards to be waived, although they would require the president to do it. “He will have to have his name on that,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the Democratic conference chairman.

The Murtha proposal had come under heavy fire from Republicans, who asserted that it would amount to a crippling financial drain if the Pentagon would fail to meet the standards. Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, scoffed at the new Democratic approach Tuesday night, saying, “Sounds like retreat to me.”

Democratic leaders said their plan would set new benchmarks for the Iraqi government and force the president to be accountable for the condition of the troops. Still, some Democrats pledged not to be silenced in their efforts to reduce military spending.

In the Senate, Democratic leaders temporarily set aside Iraq deliberations to consider a debate on implementing recommendations from the 9/11 Commission. Families of the victims persuaded Senate leaders not to bog down the debate with Iraq amendments.

Michael Luo contributed reporting.

    Divided Congress Prepares to Debate Financing and Strategy for Iraq War, NYT, 28.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/washington/28cong.html

Congress Finds Ways to Avoid Lobbyist Limits

February 11, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 — The 110th Congress opened with the passage of new rules intended to curb the influence of lobbyists by prohibiting them from treating lawmakers to meals, trips, stadium box seats or the discounted use of private jets.

But it did not take long for lawmakers to find ways to keep having lobbyist-financed fun.

In just the last two months, lawmakers invited lobbyists to help pay for a catalog of outings: lavish birthday parties in a lawmaker’s honor ($1,000 a lobbyist), martinis and margaritas at Washington restaurants (at least $1,000), a California wine-tasting tour (all donors welcome), hunting and fishing trips (typically $5,000), weekend golf tournaments ($2,500 and up), a Presidents’ Day weekend at Disney World ($5,000), parties in South Beach in Miami ($5,000), concerts by the Who or Bob Seger ($2,500 for two seats), and even Broadway shows like “Mary Poppins” and “The Drowsy Chaperone” (also $2,500 for two).

The lobbyists and their employers typically end up paying for the events, but within the new rules.

Instead of picking up the lawmaker’s tab, lobbyists pay a political fund-raising committee set up by the lawmaker. In turn, the committee pays the legislator’s way.

Lobbyists and fund-raisers say such trips are becoming increasingly popular, partly as a quirky consequence of the new ethics rules.

By barring lobbyists from mingling with a lawmaker or his staff for the cost of a steak dinner, the restrictions have stirred new demand for pricier tickets to social fund-raising events.

Lobbyists say that the rules might even increase the volume of contributions flowing to Congress from K Street, where many lobbying firms have their offices.

Some lawmakers acknowledge that some fund-raising trips resemble the lobbyist-paid junkets that Congress voted to prohibit.

Jennifer Crider, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said its leaders had decided to stop holding fund-raising events for lobbyists with political action committees because of the seeming inconsistency.

So the committee canceled its annual Colorado ski weekend for lobbyists and lawmakers to raise money for the next campaign. Gone, too, is its Maryland hunting trip with Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, the avid hunter who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

But other Congressional party campaign committees have not stopped their events, including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s annual Nantucket weekend for donors who contribute $25,000. And individual lawmakers are still playing host to plenty of events themselves.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who sometimes invites lobbyists to join him for fund-raising hunting trips, called such events an innocuous fact of life.

“If you are not going to have publicly financed elections and you are getting your support from private individuals — which I believe in — I don’t see any problem with having events where private individuals who give you money can talk to you,” said Mr. Graham, who like the other senators quoted in this article voted for the ethics reform. He added, “Hunting is a very popular attraction in South Carolina.”

Representatives John R. Kuhl Jr. of New York and Greg Walden of Oregon, both Republicans, each recently invited lobbyists to a rock concert by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band. And three Republican lawmakers, Mr. Walden and Representatives Darrell Issa and Mary Bono of California, have invited lobbyists to join them next month at a Who concert in Washington.

“They’re her favorite rock ’n’ roll band,” said Frank Cullen, Ms. Bono’s chief of staff.

Among Democrats, Senator Thomas R. Carper of Delaware recently returned from his annual ski trip to the Ritz-Carlton Bachelor Gulch in Beaver Creek, Colo. Senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, just got back from a skiing and snowmobiling trip to his state and has planned two golfing and fly-fishing weekends as well. Expeditions of lobbyists attend each trip. The top prices for the events are meant for lobbyists with political action committees.

Meredith McGehee, policy director of the Campaign Legal Center, which advocates for tighter campaign finance rules, said that organizing a fund-raising trip was not the same as accepting a free vacation. But she added: “At the end of the day, it is the same thing.”

Representative Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican famous on K Street for his annual fund-raising weekends in Beverly Hills and South Beach, has recently invited lobbyists to join him for some expensive cups of coffee. A $2,500 contribution from a lobbyist’s political action committee entitles the company’s lobbyist to join Mr. Cantor at a Starbucks near his Capitol Hill office four times this spring.

“What’s next? Come help me pick up my dry cleaning?” said Massie Ritsch, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, a group that tracks political fund-raising.

The excursions would be illegal under the new ethics rules if lobbyists or their employers paid for them directly. (The rules, passed by both houses in early January, have already taken effect in the House and are expected to take effect in the Senate later this spring.) And some outings involving personal entertainment or recreation for lawmakers could also run afoul of legal restrictions on the personal use of campaign money if they were paid for by a lawmaker’s re-election campaign.

But they are allowed, and increasingly common, because of a combination of loopholes. First, the ethics rules restrict personal gifts but not political contributions, so paying to attend a fund-raiser is still legitimate. Second, the “personal use” restrictions apply to lawmakers’ re-election campaigns but not to their personal political action committees, which can spend money on almost anything. Lawmakers use their personal PACs to sponsor most of the events. (Lawyers disagree about whether Congressional ethics rules restrict personal use of members’ PACs.)

The lawmakers’ so-called leadership PACs began proliferating about two decades ago, initially as vehicles for senior members of Congress to build loyalty among their colleagues by funneling money to their campaigns.

These days, however, even the newest members of Congress usually start them. Two newly elected Democratic senators, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jim Webb of Virginia, already have. And many use them mainly to pay for travel or miscellaneous other costs.

Over the last two years, the roughly 300 PACs controlled by lawmakers raised a total of about $156 million and used only about a third of that on federal campaign contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a group that tracks political fund-raising.

Vacationlike fund-raising events with lobbyists are not new. Former Representative Tom DeLay’s trips to Puerto Rico were legendary on K Street, for example. But the new ethics rules barring lobbyists from treating lawmakers to less-expensive amusements have given new importance to such getaways.

“I have to have some personal contacts to be a lobbyist,” said James Dyer, a lobbyist at the firm of Clark & Weinstock. “If the only ticket in terms of contact is these fund-raising events, it is going to be costly,” Mr. Dyer said. “The fund-raising part of our lives is a very expensive tool.”

Thomas Susman, a lawyer who was an editor of the American Bar Association lobbying manual, said that at a recent presentation about the new rules to the lobbyists trade group, “the biggest question was, Is this going to drive everything to the fund-raising side? Is that going to be the way to have social contact with members?”

Some members of Congress said it would not bother them if the upshot of the new rules turned out to be more contributions.

“I am not going to hide from the fact that we have to raise money,” said Representative Devin Nunes, a California Republican who has invited donors to his political action committee on a wine-tasting tour in June, modeled after the movie “Sideways.” “Only a moron would sell a vote for a $2,000 contribution,” Mr. Nunes said.

Fund-raising consultants for both parties said they saw a golden opportunity. “We are definitely seeing an increase in the number of events across the board,” said Dana Harris of Bellwether Consulting, a Republican firm that specializes in courting lobbyists’ political action committees. “Fund-raising events will provide a safe haven for lobbyists to talk to members.”

Among the coming events Ms. Harris’s firm helped organize: a trip this month to the Yacht and Beach Club Resort at Disney World for Senator Mel Martinez of Florida, for a $5,000 PAC contribution, and a May trip to the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia for Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, for $2,500 a head.

Some private jet companies are trying to capitalize on the rules as well. Lawmakers can no longer fly on a company’s corporate jet and then reimburse the owner at a discount. But lawmakers can still use their PACs to pay the actual cost for the use of jets, as Mr. Cantor and others have done.

Marco Larsen, vice president for publicity at Blue Star Jets, a broker that sells single flights on private planes, said his company planned to hold an event in Washington to promote its services to members of Congress. Because of concerns about appearances, Mr. Larsen said, “We wanted to stay away right after the rules were passed, but I think it is a better time now.”

Lawmakers are usually reluctant to talk about their fund-raising events. Asked in an interview in the Capitol why he was taking lobbyists on a Montana hunting trip, Mr. Baucus said only, “To show off the beauty of our state,” then retreated behind a guarded door.

Mr. Martinez, who will be spending next weekend with lobbyists at Disney World, said, “I’ve heard from many other members that they have had very successful weekend events.” He added, “People can bring their families to it and bring their children, and it’s going to be fun.”

    Congress Finds Ways to Avoid Lobbyist Limits, NYT, 11.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/us/politics/11trips.html?hp&ex=1171256400&en=b915f145d76f3e0f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

G.O.P. Senators Block Debate on Iraq Policy

February 6, 2007
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 — Republicans on Monday blocked Senate debate on a bipartisan resolution opposing President Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq, leaving in doubt whether the Senate would render a judgment on what lawmakers of both parties described as the paramount issue of the day.

The decision short-circuited what had been building as the first major Congressional challenge to President Bush over his handling of the war since Democrats took control of Congress last month, and left each party blaming the other for frustrating debate on a topic that is likely to influence the 2008 presidential and Congressional races.

At issue is a compromise resolution drawn up chiefly by Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, that says the Senate disagrees with President Bush’s plan to build up troops and calls for American forces to be kept out of sectarian violence in Iraq.

The deadlock came after Democrats refused a proposal by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, that would have cleared the way for a floor fight on the Warner resolution in return for votes on two competing Republican alternatives that were more supportive of the president.

One of those alternatives, by Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, would declare that Congress should not cut off any funds for forces in the field. That vote was seen as problematic for Democrats because many of them opposed any move to curtail spending, raising the prospect that it could have attracted the broadest support in the Senate.

The procedural vote, which divided mostly along party lines, left the Democratic leadership 11 votes short of the 60 needed to begin debate on the bipartisan resolution. Forty-seven Democrats and two Republicans voted to open debate on the resolution; 45 Republicans and one independent were opposed.

The Republicans run a risk with their resistance in the event Democrats are able to persuade the public that Mr. Bush’s allies are stonewalling in the Senate and shielding the president from criticism over an unpopular war. But their show of unity, with war critics including Mr. Warner of Virginia and Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, siding with the leadership, lent some credibility to Republican claims that Democrats were being unfair. “I am confident that somehow this matter will be worked out,” Mr. Warner said.

But Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said that “time was tenuous” and that he would not guarantee that Democrats would try again to bring up the resolution. He did promise that there would be more clashes over Iraq policy as the Senate turned to measures like the president’s request for $100 billion in emergency Iraq spending.

“You can run but you can’t hide,” Mr. Reid told his Republican colleagues on the floor. “We are going to debate Iraq.”

The results left the future of the Iraq fight unsettled, though Senate leaders indicated that they would continue to negotiate over ways to restart the debate. Lawmakers on all sides of the issue said they anticipated that the Senate would ultimately approve a resolution of some kind because of intense public interest in the issue. Mr. Reid changed his vote and sided with Republicans at the end, a procedural move to allow him the option to reopen the issue.

Still, as they jousted over the terms of debate, senators provided a taste of what a floor fight over the resolution would look like as they traded tough words about the meaning of a resolution challenging Mr. Bush and what would happen if Congress remained silent.

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the independent who sided with Republicans in agreeing not to take up the resolution, called the proposal “a resolution of irresolution,” saying it criticized the president’s plan but did nothing concrete to stop it. He goaded colleagues who opposed the buildup to take more definitive action if that was their view. “Have the courage of your convictions to accept the consequences of your convictions,” he said.

Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, a Democratic co-author of the resolution who typically promotes comity in the Senate, accused Republicans of stalling. “If not now, when?” he said. “If not now, do we wait for more troops to die before we oppose the president’s plan?”

In addition to the resolution introduced by Mr. Gregg, declaring that Congress should not cut off financing for forces in Iraq, Republican leaders had sought a Democratic commitment for a vote on another alternative, one introduced by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. That measure would set 11 conditions for the Iraqi government if it wanted to retain American support. The Republican approach would need 60 votes for passage.

Democrats said that the Gregg initiative was meant as a distraction and that they wanted to focus on the question of whether senators supported Mr. Bush’s plan or opposed it. “We are witnessing the spectacle of a White House and Republican senators unwilling even to engage in a debate on a war that claims at least one American life every day and at least $2.5 billion dollars a week,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat.

Some Republicans admitted that they were unsure how long the unity would last and whether Republicans could continue to make a case against the resolution on procedural grounds. And two Republicans facing re-election in 2008, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Norm Coleman of Minnesota, joined Democrats in voting to begin the debate.

Democrats tried to immediately pounce on the vote, with Mr. Reid saying Republicans had given Mr. Bush the green light to begin his buildup. They also warned of political consequences for Republicans given public frustration with the war.

“Senator McConnell led his Republican troops off the cliff,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

The White House welcomed the Senate vote. “All sides have a right to be heard in this debate, and we support Senator McConnell’s and the Republicans’ right to be able to offer the amendments they want to offer,” said a spokeswoman, Dana Perino.

Senator John Sununu, a Republican of New Hampshire who is also up for re-election next year, acknowledged that voters were likely to be unhappy with the procedural wrangling over an issue as grave as Iraq.

Mr. Sununu, who sided with Republicans, but declined to say whether he would ultimately vote to oppose the Iraq plan, said, “It may come as a surprise to my colleagues, but most voting members of the American public think that the Senate spends all too much time talking and not enough time casting votes.”

    G.O.P. Senators Block Debate on Iraq Policy, NYT, 6.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/washington/06cong.html?hp&ex=1170824400&en=243d1aa790e2a104&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush Sends Congress a $2.9 Trillion Budget

February 5, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:39 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush sent a $2.9 trillion spending plan to a Democratic-controlled Congress on Monday, proposing to spend billions more to fight the war in Iraq while squeezing the rest of government to meet his goal of eliminating the deficit in five years. Democrats widely attacked the plan and even a prominent Republican said it faced bleak prospects.

Bush's spending plan would make his first-term tax cuts permanent, at a cost of $1.6 trillion over 10 years. He is seeking $78 billion in savings in the government's big health care programs -- Medicare and Medicaid -- over the next five years.

Release of the budget in four massive volumes kicks off months of debate in which Democrats, now in control of both the House and Senate for the first time in Bush's presidency, made clear that they have significantly different views on spending and taxes.

''The president's budget is filled with debt and deception, disconnected from reality and continues to move America in the wrong direction,'' said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, D-S.C., said, ''I doubt that Democrats will support this budget, and frankly, I will be surprised if Republicans rally around it either.''

Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, agreed with the bleak assessment of Bush's prospects of getting Congress to approve his budget as proposed.

''Unfortunately, I don't think it has got a whole lot of legs,'' Gregg said, contending there is a wide gulf between the two parties. ''The White House is afraid of taxes and the Democrats are afraid of controlling spending,'' Gregg said.

The president insisted that he had made the right choices to keep the nation secure from terrorist threats and the economy growing.

''I strongly believe Congress needs to listen to a budget which says no tax increase and a budget, because of fiscal discipline, that can be balanced in five years,'' Bush told reporters after meeting with his Cabinet.

Just as Iraq has come to dominate Bush's presidency, military spending was a major element in the president's new spending request. Bush was seeking a Pentagon budget of $624.6 billion for 2008, more than one-fifth of the total budget, up from $600.3 billion in 2007.

For the first time, the Pentagon included details for the upcoming budget year on how much the Iraq war would cost -- an estimated $141.7 billion for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the cost of repairing and replacing equipment lost in combat.

But White House spokesman Tony Fratto cautioned that the 2008 projection was likely to change. ''We're not saying the number for '08 is the final number.''

The Bush budget includes just $50 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in 2009 and no money after that year. But the president rejected the suggestion that the administration was setting a timetable for troop withdrawal.

''There will be no timetable set,'' Bush told reporters. He said that would send the wrong signal to the enemy, the struggling Iraq democracy and the troops.

Bush projected a deficit in the current year of $244 billion, just slightly lower than last year's $248 billion imbalance. For 2008, the budget year that begins next Oct. 1, Bush sees another slight decline in the deficit to $239 billion. He sees that decline continuing over the next three years until the budget records a surplus of $61 billion in 2012, three years after Bush has left office.

Democrats, however, challenged those projections, contending that Bush only achieves a surplus by leaving out the billions of dollars Congress is expected to spend to keep the alternative minimum tax from ensnaring millions of middle-class taxpayers. His budget includes an AMT fix only for 2008.

Bush projects government spending in 2008 of $2.9 trillion, a 4.9 percent increase from the $2.78 trillion in outlays the administration is projecting for this year. However, the administration notes that the 2007 total is only an estimate, given that Congress is still working to complete a massive omnibus spending bill to cover most agencies for the rest of this fiscal year.

To help achieve what would be the government's first surplus since 2001, Bush is proposing $95.9 billion in savings in mandatory spending, the part of the budget that includes the big benefit programs of Social Security and health care.

Medicare, which provides health insurance for 43 million older and disabled Americans, would see the bulk of those savings -- reductions of $66 billion over five years. That would come about primarily by slowing the growth of payments to health care providers.

Additional savings would be achieved by charging higher income Medicare beneficiaries bigger monthly premiums.

While Bush said something had to be done to get control of spiraling health care costs, Congress refused to go along last year with Bush's effort for smaller reductions in Medicare.

Bush would seek to eliminate or sharply reduce 141 government programs for a five-year savings of $12 billion. But many of those reductions he has proposed in past budgets -- only to see them rejected by Congress.

Bush once listed overhauling Social Security as the No. 1 domestic priority of his second term. But his effort two years ago to accomplish this goal by diverting some Social Security taxes into private investment accounts went nowhere in Congress. He included the private accounts again in this year's budget. But to minimize the impact, he only showed the program taking effect in 2012, when the private accounts would cost $29.3 billion.

The president's budget also includes an initiative to expand health care coverage to the uninsured through a complex proposal that would give every family a $15,000 tax deduction for purchasing health coverage but would make current employee-supplied health coverage taxable for certain taxpayers.

Bush is also proposing to increase the maximum Pell grant, which goes to low-income students, from the current $4,050 to $4,600. Democrats are pushing for even larger increases.

Bush's energy proposals would expand use of ethanol and other renewable fuels with a goal of cutting gasoline use by 20 percent over the next decade.

    Bush Sends Congress a $2.9 Trillion Budget, NYT, 5.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Budget.html

A Shift in Power,

Starting With ‘Madam Speaker’

January 24, 2007
The New York Times
By KATE ZERNIKE

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 — The first two words of the evening on Tuesday were evidence of how much has changed here: “Madam Speaker,” boomed Congressional escorts, “the president of the United States.”

Even Mr. Bush acknowledged the transformation, setting off a wave of applause. “Tonight, I have the high privilege and distinct honor to begin a speech with the words ‘Madam Speaker,’ ” he said in a nod to Representative Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to be speaker of the House.

But all the courtesies and flourishes of the evening could not paper over the reminders of how power has flowed away from the president in the new Washington.

Not just because for the first time Mr. Bush delivered his address with a Democrat staring down his back. Not just because his poll numbers are dismal. Not just because the mayor of the nation’s capital rejected the White House’s invitation to sit with the first lady, Laura Bush, in her box and instead came as Ms. Pelosi’s guest. Even Republicans, while noting that it was “the president’s day,” as Senator John W. Warner of Virginia described it, yielded only a share of the spotlight.

Mr. Warner and others were working with Democrats, whom six months ago they derided as Defeatocrats, on resolutions opposing Mr. Bush’s proposal to increase the number of troops in Iraq. They unveiled their resolutions in the days before the speech and were planning to take them up the morning after.

The boxes on either end of the chamber — Ms. Pelosi’s on one, the first lady’s on the other — were a tableau of change.

In some years past, Mr. Bush invited Iraqis to make his case for the war, including Ahmed Chalabi, the exile-turned-advocate for the war who has now fallen from favor, as well as ordinary Iraqis with ink-stained fingers to prove that they had cast their ballots in their first democratic elections. This year, the only reminders of Iraq were a few soldiers; the box was mostly filled with educators, entrepreneurs, an energy researcher and those with heartwarming 9/11 stories.

The Democrats, meanwhile, invited people who symbolized the legislation they have passed in their first two weeks in office: advocates of embryonic stem cell research, those who fought for national security reforms after the Sept. 11 attacks, and labor leaders who backed an increase in the minimum wage.

In preparation for the president’s address, Ms. Pelosi of California had been coached by her staff to keep a neutral face. They warned that any raised eyebrow or pursed lip would be captured by the cameras trained on the president.

But while Ms. Pelosi emphasized that she would be “respectful,” her very choice of words earlier in the day signaled the new dynamic. “We always give the president a warm welcome as our guest in the chamber,” she said, with the operative word, “guest.”

Democrats had decided it not in their interest to look churlish during the speech. Lawmakers were advised to take their cues on when to stand, sit down and applaud from Ms. Pelosi. She sat on the dais next to Mr. Cheney, her junior by several months, but an emblem of a generation of white male politicians. They exchanged few words as they waited for the parade of lawmakers to assemble. At some points during the speech, Ms. Pelosi beat Mr. Cheney in jumping to an ovation.

Her caucus said that they expected Ms. Pelosi to, in the words of Representative John B. Larson of Connecticut, show “poise, dignity, comity.”

Appearances were obviously important to Ms. Pelosi, who changed from the brown suit she had worn earlier in the day to a soft green one, which offered more contrast to her dark leather speaker’s chair.

The noise level in the chamber seemed more muted, as Democrats exercised their new majority by sitting on their hands and staying off their feet during many applause lines. Republicans, who had promised to be “boisterous” to make up for their diminished numbers, greeted Mr. Bush with a series of “ho’s!”

Democrats, in turn, shouted, “Hey!” and “Yeah!” when the president introduced Ms. Pelosi as the first female speaker. The president’s congratulations to the “Democrat majority” won only polite applause from both sides. The chamber erupted most unanimously and loudly for Wesley Autrey, the man who leapt into the tracks of a New York subway to save a fellow passenger. (The only ones not clapping, it appeared, were Mr. Autrey’s two young daughters, who napped beside him in their bubblegum-colored dresses.)

Democrats leapt to their feet with the Republicans when Mr. Bush said he wanted to balance the federal budget, provide affordable health care, leave medical decisions to doctors and patients rather than bureaucrats, reduce gasoline consumption and increase alternative fuels.

But the applause was more Republican-only when Mr. Bush said he could balance the budget without raising taxes. Almost no Democrats clapped when he said his candidates for federal judgeships should get quick “up or down votes.”

And there were lines that got little support from Mr. Bush’s own side of the aisle. When he pledged to uphold the “tradition of the melting pot,” the Republican House leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, grimaced and clapped just once. When Mr. Bush went further and vowed “comprehensive immigration reform” — code words for the plan the House rejected the Senate approved last year — two top House Republicans, Roy Blunt of Missouri and Adam Putnam of Florida, stayed seated, hands quiet.

And when the president addressed the issue that has dominated discussions on Capitol Hill in recent weeks, his proposed increase in troops in Iraq — there was little unanimity between the parties, or within them. Most Democrats remained seated as the president urged the chamber to “find our resolve.”

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York cast a disapproving eye on those who stood, including Senators Joseph I. Lieberman and John Kerry. And while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sat forward in her seat and nodded as he described the increase in troops, Republicans who have criticized the plan, including Mr. Warner, stayed off their feet. Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine sat stone still. Across the aisle, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa shuddered and shook his head, and Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling.

Perhaps the most poignant commentary on the war and the plan to increase troops came in the Democratic response to the speech, given by Senator James Webb of Virginia. He had been chosen because, as Senator Harry Reid, the Democrats’ leader, said, he understood what it meant to go to war. A former secretary of the Navy and ex-marine, his son is serving in Iraq.

In his speech, he held up a photograph of his father serving as an Air Force captain in Germany. He had carried it with him for most of his life, he said. And as a child, he had taken it to bed for three years as he prayed for his father’s safe return.

    A Shift in Power, Starting With ‘Madam Speaker’, NYT, 24.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/24/washington/24scene.html?hp&ex=1169701200&en=c7234ec3890b58f1&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Editorial

Chemical Insecurity

January 23, 2007
The New York Times
 

The new Democratic leadership in Congress has a chance to finally do what the Republican Congress and the Bush administration failed to do after Sept. 11: to protect the nation’s chemical plants from an attack. Lawmakers should stop the Homeland Security Department from adopting new regulations that would block state and local governments from doing more to protect their residents and should finally pass a federal law with teeth.

An attack on a single plant could release deadly chemicals that could put hundreds of thousands of people at risk of death or serious injury. But since Sept. 11, the chemical industry — a major campaign contributor — has managed to ward off any significant new federal rules that might require it to spend money to increase security.

Now it is going a step further by trying to get the federal government to “pre-empt,” or invalidate, state and local efforts to impose safety standards. Supporters of pre-emption always claim that they just want a uniform standard. But in situations like this one — where the federal law is absurdly weak — it is obvious that the real agenda is to block serious safety measures at every level of government.

Congress wisely refused to include a pre-emption provision in legislation it adopted last year. Now, however, the Homeland Security Department has proposed regulations that would give itself the authority to pre-empt state and local laws. If the proposed regulations were adopted, they could wipe away the serious chemical plant security law that New Jersey has passed, and prevent other states and cities from requiring the chemical industry to do more to protect their residents.

It is up to Congress to act. It should block these deeply flawed regulations and move quickly to pass a comprehensive law that imposes tough requirements on chemical plants to harden their facilities.

Last year Congress passed a bad rider, backed by the industry, that gives the chemical industry far too much leeway to decide on its own how its plants are vulnerable and how to protect them. The new law should contain specific requirements for plant safety. It should also require companies to switch to safer chemicals when the cost is not prohibitive, a key safety measure that the industry has resisted. And it should clearly state that federal chemical-plant laws do not pre-empt state and local laws. Congress should finally put the public’s safety ahead of the chemical industry’s bottom line.

    Chemical Insecurity, NYT, 23.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/23/opinion/23tue1.html

Editorial

Congress’s Challenge on Iraq

January 22, 2007
The New York Times

President Bush’s refusal to come up with a serious policy on Iraq means that the Democrats will have to goad him toward one. Congress needs to do more than just oppose the latest ill-conceived military escalation. It needs to insist that American troops are not captive to the destructive policies of an Iraqi government for which sectarian revenge counts for more than national unity and civil peace.

To do that, it needs to demand that Mr. Bush impose firm, enforceable benchmarks on Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki — if any American troops are going to remain in Iraq.

In the Senate a nonbinding, bipartisan resolution seems headed toward early passage. Sponsored by Joseph Biden, Chuck Hagel and Carl Levin, it expresses strong opposition to sending more troops, citing the failure of the Iraqi government to keep its past promises on national reconciliation.

Passing this resolution by the widest possible bipartisan margin would be a good first step. It would make clear to the American people (who called for a change last November), to President Bush (who didn’t listen) and to Mr. Maliki (who didn’t seem to notice) that the days of uncritical American support for Shiite misrule are over.

Already, the newly questioning tone in Congress has pushed Mr. Maliki to distance himself — at least publicly — from his ally Moktada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army has been responsible for some of the worst outrages against Baghdad’s Sunni population. It is too early to say whether this is a public relations ploy, or whether Mr. Maliki will now allow the Americans and his own army to move against Mahdi Army strongholds. The Senate resolution should make clear that that is the first prerequisite for continued American support.

Hortatory statements are unlikely to change Mr. Bush’s mind or Mr. Maliki’s behavior, so the Congress will likely have to go further. Both houses will need to find ways to use their power — including the power of the purse — to do what Mr. Bush refuses to do: set and enforce deadlines for the Iraqi government to disarm militias, share oil revenues and reintegrate the Sunni middle class into Iraqi life.

Funding limits that simply freeze the number of troops, like the one Senator Edward Kennedy now proposes, are inadequate. The much more difficult challenge is to figure out ways to compel Mr. Bush to come up with a policy that has at least some chance of letting American troops come home without leaving total chaos behind.

Even if the Congress could stop Mr. Bush from sending an additional 20,000 troops, there will still be 130,000 caught in Iraq’s maelstrom.

    Congress’s Challenge on Iraq, NYT, 22.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/opinion/22mon1.html

Dems Seek to Bar U.S. Attacks on Iran

January 19, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:41 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic leaders in Congress lobbed a warning shot Friday at the White House not to launch an attack against Iran without first seeking approval from lawmakers.

''The president does not have the authority to launch military action in Iran without first seeking congressional authorization,'' Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told the National Press Club.

The administration has accused Iran of meddling in Iraqi affairs and contributing technology and bomb-making materials for insurgents to use against U.S. and Iraqi security forces.

President Bush said last week the U.S. will ''seek out and destroy'' networks providing that support. While top administration officials have said they have no plans to attack Iran itself, they have declined to rule it out.

This week, the administration sent another aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf -- the second to deploy in the region. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the buildup was intended to impress on Iran that the four-year war in Iraq has not made America vulnerable. The U.S. is also deploying anti-missile Patriot missiles in the region.

The U.S. has accused Tehran of trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday that Iran would not back down over its nuclear program, which Tehran says is being developed only to produce energy.

Reid made the comments as he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., addressed the National Press Club on Democrats' view of the state of the union four days before Bush addresses Congress and the nation.

Meanwhile, Lee Hamilton, the Democratic co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Friday that the U.S. must try to engage Iran and Syria in a constructive dialogue on Iraq because of the countries' influence in the conflict.

The Bush administration, and several members of Congress, say they oppose talks with Iran and Syria because of their terrorist connections. Bringing the two countries into regional talks aimed at reducing violence in Iraq was one of the study group's recommendations.

''Do we have so little confidence in the diplomats of the United States that we're not willing to let them talk with somebody we disagree with?'' Hamilton asked.

    Dems Seek to Bar U.S. Attacks on Iran, NYT, 19.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iran.html

Bills on Climate Move

to Spotlight in New Congress

January 18, 2007
The New York Times
By FELICITY BARRINGER and ANDREW C. REVKIN

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 — The climate here has definitely changed.

Legislation to control global warming that once had a passionate but quixotic ring to it is now serious business. Congressional Democrats are increasingly determined to wrest control of the issue from the White House and impose the mandatory controls on carbon dioxide emissions that most smokestack industries have long opposed.

Four major Democratic bills have been announced, with more expected. One of these measures, or a blend of them, stands an excellent chance of passage in this Congress or the next, industry and environmental lobbyists said in interviews.

Many events have combined to create the new direction — forsythia blooming in lawmakers’ gardens in January, polar bears lacking the ice they need to hunt and Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” along with pragmatic executives seeking an idea of future costs and, especially, the arrival of a Democratic-controlled Congress. There was evidence of the changed mood all over Washington this week.

On Wednesday, leading scientists and evangelical pastors jointly declared their intention to fight the causes of climate change and the public confusion on the subject. Cheryl Johns, a professor at the Church of God Theological Seminary, called that problem “nature deficit disorder.”

Another news conference on Wednesday featured executives of the heavily regulated electric utility industry embracing Senators Dianne Feinstein of California and Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, both Democrats. The senators were offering separate bills to add regulations, including a cap on carbon dioxide emissions.

One sign of the Democrats’ determination to move on climate bills occurred when a Democratic Congressional aide confirmed that Speaker Nancy Pelosi wanted to create a special committee on climate, apparently an end run around Representative John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. Dingell, through an aide, Jodi Seth, said Wednesday that such committees were “as relevant and useful as feathers on a fish.”

Mr. Dingell’s firm support of the automobile industry, a leading source of carbon dioxide emissions, and his earlier lack of enthusiasm for climate measures have made him suspect among advocates of strong climate laws.

To add excitement, the man of the moment, Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, lent his name to the best-known brand in climate-change legislation, a measure by Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut.

That means that two of the three sponsors, Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, are leading presidential contenders in 2008.

Neither party is united around any one position. And for all the flurry of news conferences and proffered solutions, the big unanswered question was what will President Bush do?

A tantalizing hint came from James L. Connaughton, chairman of the president’s Council on Environmental Quality, in an interview on Tuesday.

“There are a number of pathways for getting to a shared goal, and we should explore all of them,” Mr. Connaughton said.

He added, “Part of that, by the way, is learning about some of the flaws in the design of the economywide cap-and-trade approach, which, if corrected, might make it a workable tool.”

That suggests that some version of an emissions cap may eventually win White House support. Persistent rumors that the president might support an emissions cap, circulating in Washington and Europe, were rejected Tuesday by his press secretary, Tony Snow.

But White House aides have hinted for months that Mr. Bush was planning a dramatic announcement on the subject in his annual address. Last year, the president said, “America is addicted to oil,” and stimulated a debate over dependence on foreign oil that has overlapped with environmental groups’ calls for cleaner-burning domestic fuels.

The mechanism that Mr. Snow ruled out is the basis for most of the Democratic measures, capping carbon dioxide emissions and then giving or selling to companies allowances, effectively permits to create a certain level of emissions.

Cleaner factories or utilities could then sell the allowances and gain a new revenue source. Factories with higher than allowable emissions would have to buy the permits they need.

Such a market, already in effect in Europe, in theory would set a price for a ton of carbon dioxide emissions, and the market would stimulate innovation in technologies that would reduce emissions or produce goods or power without the same high emissions common today.

Diplomats and environmental groups speculated in Washington this week that the Bush administration would look at other mandatory actions, perhaps not an emissions cap but rather expanding the decision to increase marginally fuel-economy standards for light trucks.

A similar move for passenger vehicles, coupled with a call for sharp increases in ethanol and other renewable fuels plus new money for research into clean-energy technologies would be a bouquet approach that would expand policies Mr. Bush has put forward.

European allies have been trying to nudge Mr. Bush toward their cap-and-trade model. The White House says that would shift jobs, and emissions from one country to another without slowing worldwide growth in emissions.

The president’ s opposition to mandatory caps retains strong support on Capitol Hill.

Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, the trade group of the utility industry, said Wednesday: “Everything is different, but it’s also the same in some ways. You still need 60 votes to get something big done in the Senate. And there are still many complex, thorny issues that stand in the way of enactment.”

The Democratic bills announced in the last two weeks cover a broad range. A proposal by Senator Jeff Bingaman, the New Mexico Democrat who is chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, would decrease the rate of emissions growth before capping emissions and would build in a “safety valve,” freeing industries from the caps in certain circumstances.

Groups like Environmental Defense say the safety valve would undermine market mechanisms.

In an interview, Mr. Bingaman said, “The way I look at it it’s a question of what we can get agreement on.”

Less draconian than that proposal is the Lieberman-McCain approach. It would tighten controls more gradually and include subsidies for nuclear power. An emissions cap for just utilities is the centerpiece of yet another bill, by Ms. Feinstein.

Some scientists and economists have expressed concern in recent weeks that the discussions here is overly focused on emissions caps, with too little attention on what they say is an essential need, greatly expanded government-financed research on nonpolluting energy technologies.

Richard G. Richels, a climate expert and an economist at the Electric Power Research Institute, an organization in Palo Alto, Calif., that conducts energy studies for the utility industry, said a carbon dioxide cap would mainly prompt industry to deploy existing cleaner technologies that provide gains, but fail to come close to solving the climate problem.

Mr. Richels added that it would not spur long-term investments seeking breakthroughs like new ways to store intermittent power from windmills.

Felicity Barringer reported from Washington and Andrew C. Revkin from Portland, Ore. Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting from Washington.

    Bills on Climate Move to Spotlight in New Congress, NYT, 18.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/washington/18climate.html?hp&ex=1169182800&en=9599292dce4cf75b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush, Cheney say congressional opposition won't halt troop buildup

Updated 1/15/2007 5:17 AM ET
AP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush concedes he isn't popular, and that the war in Iraq isn't either. Yes, progress is overdue and patience is all but gone. Yet none of that changes his view that more U.S. troops are needed to win in Iraq.

"I'm not going to try to be popular and change principles to do so," Bush said in a television interview that aired Sunday night.

Digging in for confrontation, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney say they will not budge from sending more U.S. troops to Iraq no matter how much Congress opposes it.

"I fully understand they could try to stop me," Bush said of the Democrat-run Congress. "But I've made my decision, and we're going forward."

As the president talked tough, lawmakers pledged to explore ways to stop him.

"We need to look at what options we have available to constrain the president," said Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, a possible White House candidate in 2008. Democrats remain wary, though, of appearing unsupportive of American troops.

A defiant Cheney, meanwhile, said Democrats offered criticism without credible alternatives. He pointedly reminded lawmakers that Bush is commander in chief.

"You cannot run a war by committee," the vice president said of congressional input.

The aggressive White House reaction came as the House and Senate prepare to vote on resolutions opposing additional U.S. troops in Iraq.

As the White House watched even some GOP support peel away from the war plan, it went all-out to regain some footing.

Bush gave his first interview from Camp David, airing Sunday night on CBS' 60 Minutes. It was his second prime-time opportunity in five days to explain why he thinks adding U.S. troops can help stabilize Iraq and hasten the time when American soldiers can come home. He addressed the nation from the White House last Wednesday evening.

"Some of my buddies in Texas say, 'You know, let them fight it out. What business is it of ours?"' Bush said of Iraqis. "And that's a temptation that I know a lot of people feel. But if we do not succeed in Iraq, we will leave behind a Middle East which will endanger America."

Yet when asked if he owes the Iraqi people an apology for botching the management of the war, he said, "Not at all.

"We liberated that country from a tyrant," Bush said. "I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude."

Bush announced last week he will send 21,500 more troops to Iraq to halt violence, mainly around Baghdad, as an essential step toward stabilizing the country's government.

Democrats in Congress — along with some Republicans — were unimpressed and frustrated. Beyond promising to go on record in opposition to the president's approach, the Democratic leadership is considering whether, and how, to cut off funding for additional troops.

"You don't like to micromanage the Defense Department, but we have to, in this case, because they're not paying attention to the public," said Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat who helps oversee military funding.

It is unclear how any effort by Congress could affect Bush's plan. National security adviser Stephen Hadley said the White House already has money appropriated by Congress to move the additional forces to Iraq.

GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a potential 2008 presidential contender who endorses Bush's call for more troops, said votes to express disapproval were pointless.

"If they're dead serious then we should have a motion to cut off funding," he said of those fighting Bush's strategy.

Many Democrats favor a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops, along with new diplomatic efforts with Iraq's neighbors.

The Bush administration had hoped that the president's overhauled strategy would lead to some bipartisan unity or that the White House would at least get an extended hearing before legislative leaders made up their minds. Instead, it encountered majority opposition in Congress and a public that rejected by large polling margins the military and political ideas Bush announced.

In the CBS interview, Bush rejected an assertion that, time and again, his administration hasn't been straight with the American people about Iraq. He said his spirits were strong.

"I really am not the kind of guy that sits here and says, 'Oh gosh, I'm worried about my legacy,"' Bush said.

The president also said he saw part of the Internet-aired video of the execution of Saddam Hussein, which showed some Iraqis taunting Saddam as he stood with a noose around his neck on the gallows. He said it could have been handled a lot better.

Bush said he got no particular satisfaction from seeing Saddam hang. "I'm not a revengeful person," he said.

Hadley was interviewed on This Week on ABC and Meet the Press on NBC. Cheney was on Fox News Sunday. Obama was on CBS' Face the Nation. Murtha appeared on This Week.

    Bush, Cheney say congressional opposition won't halt troop buildup, UT, 15.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-14-bush-iraq_x.htm

Democrats Are Unified in Opposition to Troop Increase,
but Split Over What to Do About It

January 15, 2007
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and PATRICK HEALY

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 — The White House sought Sunday to head off building pressure in Congress to cut off or limit financing for sending more troops to Iraq.

But even as President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made it clear that they would proceed with their plan to increase the United States military presence in Iraq in the face of opposition from the House and Senate, Democrats exhibited splits within their ranks over how aggressively to oppose the plan.

Speaking on “This Week” on ABC News, Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the subcommittee on military appropriations in the House, said he expected Congress to move to restrict financing for new troop deployments — or at the very least tie approval to stringent conditions the White House would have to meet first.

“If we have our way, there will be some substantial change and tremendous pressure put on this administration to change direction,” Mr. Murtha said.

But Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CNN on Sunday that he did not believe Congress should “use the power of the purse” to halt the president’s plan and that it should go no further than approving nonbinding resolutions opposing it.

While most Democratic leaders have not endorsed taking steps beyond seeking to pass nonbinding resolutions opposing the troop increase, pressure has been mounting in the past week from opponents of the war to take more direct and assertive action to block Mr. Bush.

In an interview on “60 Minutes” that was broadcast Sunday night Mr. Bush said: “Listen, we’ve got people criticizing this plan before it’s had a chance to work. They’re saying, ‘We’re not even gonna fund this thing.’ ”

“I will resist that,” he added.

On “Fox News Sunday” Mr. Cheney acknowledged that Congress had fiscal oversight of the war but said, “You also cannot run a war by committee.”

Mr. Cheney said the Democrats would be undercutting the troops if they moved to block the president’s plan, adding, “I have yet to hear a coherent policy out of the Democratic side with respect to an alternative.”

Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, said on “Meet the Press” on NBC News that the White House had sufficient money in its control to deploy troops as planned, and he suggested that once they were in place, Congress would be reluctant to cut off financing.

“I think once they get in harm’s way, Congress’s tradition is to support those troops,” Mr. Hadley said.

The growing pressure on Democrats to confront the White House was highlighted by a speech delivered Sunday by John Edwards, the former Democratic senator from North Carolina who is seeking his party’s presidential nomination. Mr. Edwards, who voted to authorize the war when he was in the Senate in 2002 but has since said that it was a mistake, said Congress had a moral duty to cut off financing.

“If you’re in Congress and you know this war is going in the wrong direction, it is no longer enough to study your options and keep your own counsel,” Mr. Edwards said at Riverside Church in Manhattan, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once gave a speech denouncing the American campaign in Vietnam. “Speak out, and stop this escalation now. You have the power to prohibit the president from spending any money to escalate the war — use it.”

Mr. Edwards also called on fellow Democrats to support the immediate withdrawal of 50,000 troops.

In making his speech, Mr. Edwards staked out antiwar turf in the nascent Democratic presidential primary contest while challenging others to do the same — most notably Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who also voted to authorize military action in Iraq in 2002 but has yet to take a position on legislative options like withholding money. She visited Iraq on Saturday to speak with military commanders, and plans to explain her views in fuller detail when she returns Tuesday.

Howard Wolfson, a senior adviser to Senator Clinton, criticized Mr. Edwards’s remarks by taking aim at the former senator’s image, promoted by aides during the last presidential election, as an optimistic and unifying figure. “In 2004 John Edwards used to constantly brag about running a positive campaign,” Mr. Wolfson said. “Today, he has unfortunately chosen to open his campaign with political attacks on Democrats who are fighting the Bush administration’s Iraq policy.”

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, another likely Democratic candidate and a longtime war critic, has stopped short of calling for a clamp on financing for Mr. Bush’s plan.

While Congressional Democrats have been fairly unified in their opposition to the president’s plan, the splits that have emerged center on how to proceed against it. Some say that Democrats won control of Congress with promises to force change and have a responsibility to do so; others warn that the party could incite accusations of undercutting the troops by limiting funds for them.

But with opinion polls showing overwhelming opposition to the president’s plan — and support for some kind of intervention by Congress — the trajectory over the past two weeks has moved toward more aggressive Congressional action.

Two Democratic senators have backed away from earlier remarks in which they expressed openness to a temporary increase in troops: Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who is the majority leader of the Senate, and Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, a declared candidate for the 2008 presidential election.

Mr. Dodd said in a statement on Sunday that he planned to introduce a bill requiring Congressional authorization for the troop increase that would be similar — but not identical — to one that Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts introduced Wednesday.

Public frustration with the war, and political moves like Mr. Edwards’s on Sunday, will only heighten the pressure, especially on Democrats running for president, to put real limits or conditions on the White House war plan.

Advisers to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama — neither of whom is a declared candidate — said in interviews that the senators had yet to conclude that the financing issue was the best way to fight Mr. Bush.

Mr. Obama, on “Face the Nation” on CBS News, said: “The president has already begun these additional deployments. We, unfortunately, are not going to be voting on funding for several weeks, perhaps months.”

    Democrats Are Unified in Opposition to Troop Increase, but Split Over What to Do About It, NYT, 15.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/washington/politicsspecial/15troops.html

Bush’s Plan for Iraq Runs Into Opposition in Congress

January 12, 2007
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 President Bush’s call to increase the American military commitment in Iraq ran into intense Congressional opposition Thursday from Democrats and from moderate Republicans who expressed profound skepticism.

A day after the president set out a new strategy for bringing stability to Iraq, the White House found few allies on either side of the aisle when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The reception she received suggested that Mr. Bush’s prime-time address to the nation on Wednesday had done little to build political support for sending additional troops to Baghdad.

“I think what occurred here today was fairly profound, in the sense that you heard 21 members, with one or two notable exceptions, expressing outright hostility, disagreement and or overwhelming concern with the president’s proposal,” the committee’s new Democratic chairman, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, said at the conclusion of Ms. Rice’s testimony.

Republicans were more supportive in the House, where the new defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, and Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the Armed Services Committee. But Democrats were scathing in their criticism, and in both the House and the Senate, Democratic leaders moved ahead with plans to oppose Mr. Bush’s plan through nonbinding resolutions.

While saying they do not plan any immediate effort to try to thwart the Bush plan by cutting off funds, some Democrats said they would continue to consider placing limitations on the administration when Congress considers a war spending measure later in the year.

Despite the decision by many members of his party to break with the White House over the troop increase, the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said he would use parliamentary tactics to try to thwart the Democratic effort to adopt the Senate resolution opposing the plan.

In Baghdad, Iraq’s Shiite-led government responded tepidly to Mr. Bush’s announcement that he would send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq to bolster the effort to curb rampant sectarian violence.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki failed to appear as scheduled at a news conference and did not make any public comment.

Meanwhile, President Bush and his top cabinet officials spent Thursday traveling and testifying in support of his new Iraq strategy.

Early in the day, in an emotional ceremony at the White House, Mr. Bush awarded the Medal of Honor to the family of Cpl. Jason Dunham, a marine from Scio, N.Y., who was killed in Iraq in 2004 when he threw himself on a grenade to save the rest of his unit. The president began crying during the ceremony. It was the second Medal of Honor proceeding to come out of the Iraq war.

Afterward, he traveled to Fort Benning, Ga., where he spoke to Army soldiers about the Iraq plan. He said his approach would not produce an immediate reduction in violence but represented “our best chance for success.” Some of the troops based at Fort Benning have already served twice in Iraq and are scheduled for a third deployment.

Ms. Rice appeared on morning news programs before joining Mr. Gates at a news conference in the White House. Both then moved to Capitol Hill for a first substantive showdown with the new Democratic majority and an encounter with the shifting politics of the war.

At the House Armed Services Committee hearing, it was standing-room-only, with some spectators sprawled on the floor and others spilling out the door.

In the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing room, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a Republican who has been critical of the administration’s handling of the war, drew applause when he described the president’s proposals as a “dangerous foreign policy blunder,” and vowed to oppose them. Senator Russell D. Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat and a vigorous opponent of the war, spoke of it as “quite possibly the greatest foreign policy mistake in the history of our nation.”

Expressing doubt about whether Iraqis “are done killing each other,” Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota, said, “Why put more American lives on the line now in the hope that this time they’ll make the difficult choice?”

Several Republicans questioned the Bush plan without rejecting it outright, but their call for greater detail made it clear they remained unconvinced. Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire agreed that approving new legislation in Iraq on sharing oil revenue would be central to weaving estranged Sunni Arabs into the political process, but he said no United States government official could describe the law to him.

“It’s the most remarkable law that no one has ever seen,” he said.

Away from the Congressional hearings, White House and Pentagon officials held a series of private meetings with lawmakers on Thursday in an attempt to blunt the criticism, especially from Republicans.

Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new American commander in Iraq, waved off reporters as he shuttled between the offices of Republican Senators John W. Warner of Virginia and Jeff Sessions of Alabama. “Please, guys. Can I just make the rounds up here?” he said, declining to answer further questions.

During their testimony, Mr. Gates and Ms. Rice declined to specify a time limit on the troop increase and were cautious about predicting rapid improvements in security in Baghdad, where most of the additional troops will be positioned, saying progress is likely to come gradually.

“I think that we all know that the stakes in Iraq are enormous and that the consequences of failure would also be enormous not just for America and for Iraq, but for the entire region of the Middle East and indeed for the world,” Ms. Rice said.

The deployment schedule, in which more than 20,000 fresh soldiers and marines would roll into Iraq over several months, was intended to give the president time to reconsider the increase should the Iraqi government fail to provide its share of security forces as promised, Ms. Rice said.

“I have met Prime Minister Maliki,” she said. “I was with him in Amman. I saw his resolve. I think he knows that his government is, in a sense, on borrowed time, not just in terms of the American people, but in terms of the Iraqi people.”

Still, she spoke directly about Mr. Maliki’s failure to come through on his past promises to bring additional Iraqi troops into Baghdad. “They haven’t performed in the past and so the president is absolutely right, and we have all been saying to them, ‘You have to perform,’” she said.

Mr. Gates would not say when asked whether the planned American troop increases over the next few months could be withheld if additional Iraqi units promised for Baghdad failed to materialize.

“We are going to have a number of opportunities to go back to the Iraqis and point out where they have failed to meet their commitments,” he said, adding, “I think our assumption going forward is that they have every intention of making this work.”

Pressed repeatedly by members of both parties about what steps the Bush administration would take if Iraq continued to balk, he added, “We would clearly have to relook at the strategy.”

Mr. Gates said the Pentagon was revising rules governing mobilization of Army National Guard and Reserve members so troops who had already done a tour in Iraq in the past five years could now be sent back to Iraq if their units was remobilized. But the new policy would aim to shorten the time Guard members were mobilized to a maximum of a year.

He also announced a large permanent increase in the active duty Army and Marine Corps, a repudiation of the approach of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who argued for keeping ground force levels low and insisted that authorization for any additional troops be done temporarily.

Under Mr. Bush’s plan, the active duty Army total manpower over the next five years would grow to 547,000, an increase of 39,000 over the current level. In addition, the Marine Corps would grow to 202,000, an increase of 23,000. The expansions would have to be approved by Congress.

Democrats in both the House and Senate would not rule out eventually putting limitations on financing for the war if Mr. Bush continued on a course they contended defied the will of Congress and the American public. But they say that possibility, which could open them to Republican attacks, will have to be faced later when an emergency spending request and Pentagon spending are considered in the spring and summer.

Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, the Democratic chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that sets military spending and a leading party critic of the war, is exploring ways to attach conditions to a Pentagon measure.

Representative David R. Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin and chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said “a wide variety of ideas are bubbling forth,” for how the party should respond to the president. But beyond voting on a resolution to symbolically oppose the Iraq plan, he said it remained unlikely that Democrats could block the troop increase to Baghdad.

“If you were going to have a so-called surge, part of that is supposedly by keeping people there longer,” Mr. Obey said. “It’s pretty hard to shut off funds for troops who are already there, so it gets very, very complicated.”

Late Thursday, James A. Baker III and Lee Hamilton, the co-chairmen of the Iraq Study Group, whose report in November the Bush administration largely spurned, said in a statement that some of its recommendations were reflected in Mr. Bush’s plan and urged the White House to give “further consideration” to the panel’s remaining ideas.

At the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Mr. Biden issued a sharp warning to the administration after Mr. Gates discussed recent raids against Iranians in Iraq, including one in Erbil early Thursday, and described them as part of a new effort “to root out the networks” involved in bringing Iranian-supplied explosive devices into Iraq.

Mr. Biden responded by saying that the vote to authorize the president to order the use of force to topple Saddam Hussein should not be used as a vehicle for mounting attacks inside Iran, even in pursuit of cells or networks assisting insurgents or sectarian militias.

“I just want the record to show and I would like to have a legal response from the State Department if they think they have authority to pursue networks or anything else across the border into Iran and Iraq that will generate a constitutional confrontation here in the Senate, I predict to you,” Mr. Biden said.

Also, the State Department announced on Thursday that Timothy Carney, a retired Foreign Service officer who served as a senior civilian American authority in Iraq for three months in 2003, is the new coordinator for Iraq reconstruction.

Carl Hulse and Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.

    Bush’s Plan for Iraq Runs Into Opposition in Congress, NYT, 12.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/washington/12policy.long.html?hp&ex=1168664400&en=7854218e3a2f55ed&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Democrats Plan to Fight Expansion of Troops

January 11, 2007
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 — The new Democratic leaders of Congress on Wednesday accused President Bush of ignoring strong American sentiment against the war in Iraq and said they would build a bipartisan campaign against his proposed military expansion.

Democrats continued to debate how assertively to confront Mr. Bush over his plan. House Democrats said that they would seek to attach conditions to the spending request Mr. Bush will send to Congress soon and that those conditions, if not met, could lead Congress to limit or halt money for wider military operations.

“We are going to fund the troops that are there,” said Brendan Daly, an aide to Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House speaker. “Any escalation of troops we will subject to scrutiny. We will have hearings, and we will set benchmarks that the president must meet to obtain this money.”

Any challenge to Mr. Bush over paying for the additional troops is probably months away. House Democrats said their first step would be to vote on a nonbinding resolution opposing Mr. Bush’s plan. The Senate is planning to vote on a similar resolution as soon as next week.

“The president’s response to the challenge of Iraq is to send more American soldiers into the crossfire of a civil war,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, responding for his party immediately after Mr. Bush spoke. “The escalation of this war is not the change the American people called for in the last election.”

The criticism from Democrats resounded in near unison on Wednesday evening, a rare moment for a party that for more than four years has struggled to present a unified policy on Iraq.

Of more immediate concern to the administration was the bleak assessment from some Republicans.

Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota, delivered a strong rebuke to the plan in a speech on the Senate floor only hours before the presidential address. A recent trip to Iraq, Mr. Coleman said, confirmed his fears that Baghdad was besieged by irreparable sectarian violence.

“I refuse to put more American lives on the line in Baghdad without being assured that the Iraqis themselves are willing to do what they need to do to end the violence of Iraqi against Iraqi,” said Mr. Coleman, who is up for re-election in 2008.

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, one of the administration’s staunchest allies on Iraq, disagreed. Public opinion was not entirely against the war, Mr. McCain said, adding, “Americans want to be told how we can prevail in Iraq and how we can get out.”

Even though Mr. Bush proposed a bipartisan Congressional working group on Iraq, he set the stage for a major confrontation with Democrats, who won the majority last fall after the lingering war soured the climate for Republicans. The clash begins Thursday as Democrats open a series of hearings to scrutinize the president’s approach on Iraq.

“In the coming days and weeks, we should undertake respectful debate and deliberation over this new plan,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, a Democrat turned independent singled out by Mr. Bush for recommending a new bipartisan group focusing on the war on terror. “Excessive partisan division and rancor at home only weakens our will to prevail in this war.”

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, whose potential presidential ambitions are complicated by her previous support for the war, rejected the proposal to send more American troops to Iraq. Mrs. Clinton said more pressure should be placed on the Iraqi government to begin solving its own crisis.

“The president simply has not gotten the message sent loudly and clearly by the American people, that we desperately need a new course,” she said. “The president has not offered a new direction, instead he will continue to take us down the wrong road, only faster.”

The White House had asked Republicans to reserve judgment on the Iraq strategy — or to at least stay silent — but several Republicans distanced themselves from the president Wednesday. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, made calls and held meetings in an effort to stem political damage.

“This is a dangerously wrongheaded strategy that will drive America deeper into an unwinnable swamp at a great cost,” said Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska. “It is wrong to place American troops in the middle of Iraq’s civil war.”

Senator Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, who was among the first Republicans to drop his support of the administration’s Iraq policy, said he was opposed to a troop increase. “This is the president’s Hail Mary pass,” Mr. Smith said. “Now it is up to the Iraqi army to catch the ball.”

Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, said he had reservations about increasing troops, but declined to condemn the president’s plan until Congress had had the opportunity to study it.

“Blow the whistle, time out, until Congress has done its homework and its analysis,” Mr. Warner said. “But each day that goes by, all of us are pained by the casualties. We cannot dither about.”

Six hours before the president delivered his address, Congressional leaders from both parties were called to the White House for a briefing. Democrats dismissed the meeting as a last-minute procedural briefing, saying the president had failed to consult with them, as he promised to only a week ago.

Anne E. Kornblut contributed reporting.

    Democrats Plan to Fight Expansion of Troops, NYT, 11.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/washington/11reaction.html

Congress to Take Up Net’s Future

January 10, 2007
The New York Times
By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 — Senior lawmakers, emboldened by the recent restrictions on AT&T and the change in control of Congress, have begun drafting legislation that would prevent high-speed Internet companies from charging content providers for priority access.

The first significant so-called net neutrality legislation of the new Congressional session was introduced Tuesday by Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of South Dakota, and Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, one of the few Republicans in Congress to support such a measure.

“The success of the Internet has been its openness and the ability of anyone anywhere in this country to go on the Internet and reach the world,” Mr. Dorgan said. “If the big interests who control the pipes become gatekeepers who erect tolls, it will have a significant impact on the Internet as we know it.”

In the House, Representative Edward J. Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, said recently that he would introduce legislation soon and planned to hold hearings.

Despite the flurry of activity, the proposals face significant political impediments and no one expects that they will be adopted quickly. But the fight promises to be a bonanza for lobbyists and a fund-raising tool for lawmakers. It pits Internet giants like Google, Yahoo, eBay and Amazon, which support the legislation, against telecommunication titans like Verizon, AT&T and large cable companies like Comcast.

The debate may also affect the plans of the companies to develop new services and to consider certain mergers or acquisitions.

Consumer groups have allied themselves with content providers. The groups maintain that without the legislation, some content providers would be discouraged from offering services while others would impose costs on providers that would either discourage them from offering new services or pass them on to consumers. They also feel that small companies would be unable to compete.

But the telephone and cable companies say that efforts to limit their ability to charge for faster service would discourage the pipeline companies from making billions of dollars in investments to upgrade their networks, and would, as a practical matter, be even more harmful to consumers.

Beyond the debate, the fight over net neutrality is, like most regulatory political battles, a fight over money and competing business models. Companies like Google, Yahoo and many content providers do not want to pay for the kinds of faster Internet service that will enable consumers to more quickly download videos and play games.

In their thirst to continue to grow rapidly, content providers are looking to expand, but they consider any attempt by the telephone and cable companies to charge them for priority services as restricting their ability to move into new areas.

On the other hand, the telephone and cable companies — the so-called Internet pipes — want to be able to charge for access, particularly as they begin competing with content providers by offering their video services and programming.

The phone companies have also been studying a business model not unlike that of the cable TV industry: charging premiums to certain content providers for greater access to their pipes.

They say that existing rules, as well as sound business judgment, would preclude them from trying to degrade or slow their broadband service and that what they oppose is regulation that would prevent them from charging for offering a faster service. They also point out that many content providers are already charging customers for priority services, so that what they are proposing is not unduly restrictive.

While the debate has broken largely along partisan lines — with Democrats among the staunchest supporters and Republicans the biggest foes — there remains considerable Democratic opposition. Last June, a vote on an amendment by Mr. Markey similar to what he plans to introduce failed by 269 to 152, with 58 Democrats voting against the measure.

Many of those Democrats have been allied with unions, which have sided with the phone companies because they believe that the lack of restrictions will encourage the companies to invest and expand their networks.

In the Senate, where the party in the minority has considerably more power than in the House, the measure suffers from similar political problems. Last year the Republicans blocked the measure from reaching the Senate floor.

But several developments have given some momentum to the supporters of the measures. The House is now under the control of the Democrats, and the new speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, has been a vigorous supporter of the legislation. Ms. Pelosi’s district in San Francisco is near Silicon Valley, the home of many companies that have sought the legislation.

Moreover, the conditions that the Federal Communications Commission imposed on AT&T as a condition of its acquisition of SBC Communications represented an important political victory for proponents of the legislation. After one of the five members of the commission removed himself from the proceeding, the commission’s two Democrats forced the companies to agree to a two-year moratorium on offering any service that “privileges, degrades or prioritizes any packet” transmitted over its broadband service.

The conditions imposed no significant immediate costs on AT&T. The company does not yet have the equipment in place on its network to offer a priority service on a large scale. But the conditions imposed by the F.C.C. showed that, contrary to assertions of the phone companies, it was possible to draft language that would preclude the companies from discriminating against providers.

The conditions also set a political benchmark of sorts, and gave the supporters of the legislation two years to try to gain more momentum just as all of the companies are trying to figure out their next major sources of revenue.

    Congress to Take Up Net’s Future, NYT, 10.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/washington/10net.html

Democrats Plan Symbolic Votes Against Bush’s Iraq Troop Plan

January 10, 2007
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY and CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 — Democratic leaders said Tuesday that they intended to hold symbolic votes in the House and Senate on President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Baghdad, forcing Republicans to take a stand on the proposal and seeking to isolate the president politically over his handling of the war.

Senate Democrats decided to schedule a vote on the resolution after a closed-door meeting on a day when Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts introduced legislation to require Mr. Bush to gain Congressional approval before sending more troops to Iraq.

The Senate vote is expected as early as next week, after an initial round of committee hearings on the plan Mr. Bush will lay out for the nation Wednesday night in a televised address delivered from the White House library, a setting chosen because it will provide a fresh backdrop for a presidential message.

The office of Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, followed with an announcement that the House would also take up a resolution in opposition to a troop increase. House Democrats were scheduled to meet Wednesday morning to consider whether to interrupt their carefully choreographed 100-hour, two-week-long rollout of their domestic agenda this month to address the Iraq war.

In both chambers, Democrats made clear that the resolutions — which would do nothing in practical terms to block Mr. Bush’s intention to increase the United States military presence in Iraq — would be the minimum steps they would pursue. They did not rule out eventually considering more muscular responses, like seeking to cap the number of troops being deployed to Iraq or limiting financing for the war — steps that could provoke a Constitutional and political showdown over the president’s power to wage war.

The resolutions would represent the most significant reconsideration of Congressional support for the war since it began, and mark the first big clash between the White House and Congress since the November election, which put the Senate and House under the control of the Democrats. The decision to pursue a confrontation with the White House was a turning point for Democrats, who have struggled with how to take on Mr. Bush’s war policy without being perceived as undermining the military or risking criticism as defeatists.

“If you really want to change the situation on the ground, demonstrate to the president he’s on his own,” said Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. “That will spark real change.”

The administration continued Tuesday to press its case with members of Congress from both parties. By the time Mr. Bush delivers his speech, 148 lawmakers will have come to the White House in the past week to discuss the war, White House aides said Tuesday night, adding that most met with the president himself.

While Mr. Kennedy and a relatively small number of other Democrats were pushing for immediate, concrete steps to challenge Mr. Bush through legislation, Democratic leaders said that for now they favored the less-divisive approach of simply asking senators to cast a vote on a nonbinding resolution for or against the plan.

They also sought to frame the clash with the White House on their terms, using language reminiscent of the Vietnam War era to suggest that increasing the United States military presence in Iraq would be a mistake.

“We believe that there is a number of Republicans who will join with us to say no to escalation,” said the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada. “I really believe that if we can come up with a bipartisan approach to this escalation, we will do more to change the direction of that war in Iraq than any other thing that we can do.”

On the eve of the president’s Iraq speech, the White House sent Frederick W. Kagan, a military analyst who helped develop the troop increase plan, to meet with the Senate Republican Policy Committee.

But Republican officials conceded that at least 10 of their own senators were likely to oppose the plan to increase troops levels in Iraq. And Democrats were proposing their resolution with that in mind, hoping to send a forceful message that as many as 60 senators believed strengthening American forces in Baghdad was the wrong approach. Democratic leaders said they expect all but a few of their senators to back the resolution.

In an interview on Tuesday, Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, said he was becoming increasingly skeptical that a troop increase was in the best interest of the United States. “I’m particularly concerned about the greater injection of our troops into the middle of sectarian violence. Whom do you shoot at, the Sunni or the Shia?” Mr. Warner said. “Our American G.I.’s should not be subjected to that type of risk.”

But the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, said Congress could not supplant the authority of the president. “You can’t run a war by a committee of 435 in the House and 100 in the Senate,” he said.

The White House press secretary, Tony Snow, criticized the Democrats’ plans. “We understand that the resolution is purely symbolic, but the war — and the necessity of succeeding in Iraq — are very real,” he said Tuesday night.

On Thursday, Democrats in the House and Senate will open a series of hearings on the Iraq war. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are among those who have agreed to testify.

Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is the new chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said that if he was not satisfied that Mr. Bush’s plan has sufficient incentives and penalties for the Iraqis, he might support a resolution or amendment to cap the number of American troops in Iraq.

“We have got to force the Iraqis to take charge of their own country,” Mr. Levin said at a breakfast meeting with reporters. “We can’t save them from themselves. It is a political solution. It is no longer a military solution.”

Lawmakers said Senate Democrats appeared broadly united in opposition to Mr. Bush’s approach during their private luncheon on Tuesday. While there were a few senators who favored cutting off money for any troop increase, a handful of others expressed uncertainty about challenging the president on a potential war-powers issue.

“We have to be very careful about blocking funding for any troops because we don’t want to leave our troops short-changed,” said Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana.

Yet a large share of the House Democratic caucus supports a stronger stance against the plan. It remained unclear whether a resolution would satisfy constituents.

“Twice in the past 12 months the president has increased troop levels in a last-ditch effort to control the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Iraq,” said Representative Martin T. Meehan, Democrat of Massachusetts, who proposed a resolution opposing a troop increase. “Rather than cooling tensions in Baghdad, the situation has descended further into chaos.”

Thom Shanker, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting.

    Democrats Plan Symbolic Votes Against Bush’s Iraq Troop Plan, NYT, 10.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/washington/10capitol.html?hp&ex=1168491600&en=ce88834dd053e588&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Congressional Memo

Giddy Sea of Fresh Faces in the Capitol, United by a Serious Mission

January 6, 2007
The New York Times
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 — Hours after casting his first votes in Congress, Representative Zack Space still beamed with excitement on Thursday, showing off the identification card that doubles as an electronic balloting device.

“I had to ask someone how to use it,” he said, proudly whisking the card out of its carrying case as he gave his family a tour of the Capitol.

Back in his office, a new receptionist apologized for hanging up on someone who called. “Sorry, second day on the job,” she chirped.

Even before his arrival in Washington this week, Mr. Space, 45, typified the incoming freshman class: A Democrat from Ohio, he campaigned hard on the issue of ethics reform in a race to succeed Representative Bob Ney, who pleaded guilty in a corruption case. Despite his political inexperience — and the fact that Democratic officials considered him one of their weakest candidates — Mr. Space beat his Republican rival, in an increasingly Republican district, 62 percent to 38 percent.

Now, he is one of 66 new members of the 110th Congress, part of a historic Democratic tide that swept Republicans from power after a dozen years and left President Bush on the defensive.

Although Mr. Space at times exudes a certain good-natured goofiness — his campaign Web logo featured a starry rendering of outer space, and one of his mottos is a riff on his father’s first name, Socrates (“being the son of Socrates, Zack Space knows a thing or two about ethics”) — he has a mission of the utmost seriousness in Congress. On Thursday, his first day, before all his boxes were unpacked and his shared apartment furnished, Mr. Space was given a high-profile role in introducing his party’s ethics reform package.

“The winds of change have brought me here,” Mr. Space said in his first speech on the House floor, arguing in favor of the package. “The time to act is now. We have an extraordinary burden to prove to those who have given us this honor. We must make clear to them that we are representing their interests, not bartering legislative favors in order to gain gifts and trips.”

On the other side of the Capitol dome, the incoming senators will not cast their first votes until next week (and the first one, a resolution honoring the late President Gerald R. Ford, will not exactly cause heartburn). Their transition will take longer in other ways: new senators are housed in temporary offices in the basement, while administrators try to establish which sitting senators intend to move.

That left freshman Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat who previously lived on an 1,800-acre ranch in Montana, squeezed into a small space in the bowels of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. In the office of Senator James Webb, Democrat of Virginia, the phone system was so problem-plagued that his line remained busy for hours on end.

But the wave of newcomers was most palpable in the House, where the dozens of arrivals circulated through welcome parties, herded their families on tours and waited in long lines to have their photographs taken with Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the new House speaker. Representative Carol Shea Porter, a New Hampshire Democrat who won an upset victory, let out an audible gasp when she set foot on the House floor the first time, said her chief of staff, Harry Gural.

“Walking in was a little bit like walking into the lights of Yankee Stadium, going out onto the field as a player rather than a spectator,” Mr. Gural said.

The cable network channel C-Span chronicled even the most anonymous new members, setting up a camera position in the Cannon House Office Building to lure members of the freshman class into interviews.

“So far, so good,” said Representative Mazie K. Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii (and one of two new Buddhist members of the Congress), as she concluded her 15 minutes of C-Span.

Ms. Hirono had a press schedule, but little else: unable to buy office gear until she was sworn in, the newest Democrat from the farthest state was working without computers.

Unlike earlier eras, when newcomers simply showed up in Washington and had to fend for themselves, freshmen now undergo a series of orientation programs in the weeks between Election Day and the swearing-in.

“It’s much different than when I came here. You were on your own,” said Representative George Miller, a California Democrat now in his 17th term.

Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts and another House lifer, offered the freshmen some advice: Learn time management, and how to resist invitations to social events.

“The default answer when people ask you to do things should be ‘no,’ ” Mr. Frank said.

Then there is the issue of housing, always tricky for members of Congress who are in Washington on weekdays but at home in their districts most weekends. Mr. Space and his new roommate, Representative Michael Arcuri of New York, moved into their “small, subterranean” apartment earlier in the week, an arrangement prompted in part by Mr. Arcuri’s fondness for Mr. Space’s Greek cooking. By Friday, they still appeared to be getting along.

And Mr. Space, grinning as he wandered the halls, had not grown disillusioned by Washington, he said, nor strayed from his pledges.

“Not yet,” he said, when asked if he had broken any campaign promises. Then he corrected himself. “I mean — no.”

    Giddy Sea of Fresh Faces in the Capitol, United by a Serious Mission, NYT, 6.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/washington/06frosh.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

News Analysis

For Democrats, a Choice: Forward or Reverse?

January 5, 2007
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 — Democrats realized their political and legislative dream Thursday. Now they must face reality.

As they take control of the House and Senate, members of the new majority must reconcile diverse ideological factions within their ranks and make a fundamental choice. They can spend their energy trying to reverse what they see as the flaws of the Bush administration and a dozen years in which conservative philosophy dominated Congress. Or they can accept the rightward tilt of that period and grudgingly concede that big tax cuts, deregulation, restrictions on abortion and other Republican-inspired changes are now a permanent part of the legislative framework.

The competing drives were on display amid the constitutional hoopla Thursday and the emotion surrounding Representative Nancy Pelosi’s election as speaker, a position filled until now by the likes of Sam Rayburn, Joseph Cannon and Nicholas Longworth — men whose names adorn nearby House office buildings. “We have broken the marble ceiling,” Mrs. Pelosi said after she was handed the gavel.

In a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus earlier in the day, Mrs. Pelosi made her own allusions to the competing tugs on Democrats, noting the party was rooted in its traditions but not hostage to the past. She promised a new direction “for all the people, not just the privileged few,” a reflection of the leadership’s political and policy calculation that Democrats need to champion the average guy.

“The agenda we have is about restoring economic security to a very vulnerable middle class,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Caucus. “The real activity will be in those areas.”

Yet many Democrats contend that President Bush and the Republican-led Congress that was his partner moved the dial too far to the right in many cases. And they believe it will be the work of Democrats to make a significant course correction.

“I think there are a lot of things the people of America want changed,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a tough critic of some Bush policies.

Mr. Leahy and others made clear that the new direction had to begin with American policy in Iraq.

But their domestic legislative agenda suggests that they are picking selected fights rather than going for wholesale change. On the economy, they will move swiftly to increase the minimum wage. On social policy, they will challenge Mr. Bush by calling for expanded stem cell research. They will try to pass legislation increasing college aid for the middle class. All of those issues have the twin advantages of broad popular appeal tied to measurable economic impact on individuals.

But Democrats are in no rush to engage in a fight with Mr. Bush over the ideological centerpiece of his domestic policy, his tax cuts. And they have showed no inclination to wade back into the abortion issue, despite its potency among many of their supporters.

“We have to keep our eye on the average American family and sort of push aside the interest groups left, right and center,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. “The world has changed, and it demands new solutions, not the old Democrat and Republican nostrums.”

But there is no dispute that Mr. Bush’s legislative and executive record will get a microscopic examination via a renewed emphasis on oversight, a Congressional function Democrats say was all but abandoned in recent years. And the results of those inquiries could determine what policies Democrats try to unravel if they uncover a strong case against them.

“The Bush administration has passed an entire architecture of laws that are going to be reviewed,” said Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio, one of the most liberal members of the House.

Republicans are waiting to see what develops, uncertain if Democrats sincerely want to join hands and produce some consensus on public policy. Or, as one senior Republican asked, will Democrats hostile to the Bush administration be more like the scorpion in the fable with the frog, unable to resist the urge to sting even if they hurt themselves?

Democrats acknowledge that with their minuscule majority in the Senate and one in the House that is not much larger, they lack the political muscle to go too far in reversing Bush policy even if that was their chief goal. And they already have their hands full with delivering on their own ambitious legislative agenda, following through on their pledges of bipartisanship and ethics overhaul and avoiding anything that costs the party its chance at the White House in 2008.

Leading Democrats say their best direction is forward, concentrating on establishing a new party legacy rather than obsessing with the perceived failings of Republican rule. The test for the party’s newly empowered leadership and the Congressional membership will be whether they can stick to that path.

    For Democrats, a Choice: Forward or Reverse?, NYT, 5.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/us/politics/05assess.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Smiles, Backslaps, Even a Civility Meeting: For a Day, at Least, Bipartisanship Reigns

January 5, 2007
The New York Times
By MARK LEIBOVICH

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 — Capitol Hill observed a National Day of Comity on Thursday. Against the sober backdrop of war and as Democrats ascended in both chambers, people of both parties spoke of how committed they were to working together and changing the political tone.

And how many times have we heard that before?

“Almost on an annual basis,” said Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, a three-decade veteran of civility vows in the capital. “It’s like our New Year’s ritual around here.”

But maybe this time really will be different. Like 63-degree weather in January (and cherry blossoms out of season), Washington seemed to have flipped on its head, power-wise, karma-wise, at least for a few hours.

There were children and flowers everywhere, and pictures of Vice President Dick Cheney and Senator Edward M. Kennedy mugging together.

And a warm-looking handshake between the only Muslim in Congress, the newly elected Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota, and Representative Virgil H. Goode Jr., a Virginia Republican who had condemned Mr. Ellison’s plan to use the Koran at his ceremonial swearing-in. (Mr. Ellison made history in more ways than one at that ceremony Thursday by using a Koran once owned by Thomas Jefferson.)

And dapper old senators saying things like this:

“The place is like a bubbling bottle of Champagne, overflowing with joy and hope and civility,” said Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia. And to think, this guy is in the minority now.

O.K., so maybe the venerable Mr. Warner was exaggerating a bit. Or indulging in a smidge of sarcasm. But his words and the big smile with which he delivered them neatly captured the spirit of the day.

The Senate’s top leaders, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, and Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, convened a bipartisan meeting at 9 a.m. to discuss bipartisanship.

“I’m here for the civility meeting,” declared one freshman, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, as she stepped out of an aide’s Honda outside the Capitol. She pretended to fuss with her hair, as if this were the first day of school and she was nervous. An upper classman, Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, sat in an idling Cadillac a few feet away.

Nearly all senators showed up for the civility meeting, which was held in the plush and ornate Old Senate Chamber. They left the doors open for several extra minutes so the photographers could come in to take pictures of the smiles and shoulder squeezes and hugs all around.

After a few minutes, the meeting reverted to the slightly awkward feel of a junior high school mixer, with the boys and girls (or Ds and Rs) repairing to separate sides of the room. There were a few exceptions, as when Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, took a seat next to Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, after working both sides of the chamber.

At the very least, no one was alleged to have acted in an uncivil manner.

“Of course not,” reported Senator John E. Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire, shocked — shocked — that anyone could even suggest such a thing.

“People want us to stop acting like kindergarten kids,” said Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee.

It was an open question as to how long this era of good feeling would last.

“What time is it?” Senator Claire McCaskill, a newly elected Democrat from Missouri, asked just before noon. “It’s still early yet.”

Not two minutes later, Senator Jim Bunning was asked a question — shouted a question, actually — about this latest of calls for civility.

“We hear them every year,” Mr. Bunning, a second-term Republican from Kentucky, said before storming off, uncivilly.

But that was the exception Thursday, as was the seemingly unhinged man who had apparently not gotten the comity memo and interrupted a television interview in the Russell Office Building, shouting profanity as he headed out the door with the Capitol police right behind him.

Back on the House side, fresh-faced Representative Patrick Murphy, Democrat of Pennsylvania, was clutching his 6-week-old daughter, Maggie, and talking about how he had choked up when taking the oath a little earlier.

An Army veteran who served in Iraq, Mr. Murphy said his mind had flashed to his time in the service, the oath he took there. And he nearly teared up again as he rubbed the soft cheeks of Maggie, who was sucking on a “Daddy’s Little Girl” pacifier.

“It seems pretty collegial here,” said Mr. Murphy, basing his assessment on exactly 90 minutes in the House and on his orientation soon after the election, where a fellow newbie gave up his seat so Mr. Murphy’s wife, Jennifer, then very pregnant, could sit down.

“He was a Republican,” Mr. Murphy recalled. If only he could remember the nice man’s name. “I think he might have been from Florida.”

Put it down as a baby step on the comity journey.

    Smiles, Backslaps, Even a Civility Meeting: For a Day, at Least, Bipartisanship Reigns, NYT, 5.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/washington/05scene.html

Jubilant Democrats Assume Control on Capitol Hill

January 5, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 — In a day of transition and pageantry, exultant Democrats on Thursday took control of both houses of Congress for the first time in a dozen years and elected the first woman to be speaker of the House.

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California took the speaker’s gavel at 2:08 p.m. from Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, whom she defeated by a vote of 233 to 202, the 31-seat margin of the new Democratic majority. The floor and the packed galleries erupted in cheers when the vote was announced.

Even Republicans grudgingly acknowledged the unprecedented nature of the day on which a woman ascended to power on Capitol Hill by rising as one to applaud her.

“This is an historic moment,” Mrs. Pelosi said in her first remarks as speaker of the 110th Congress. “It’s an historic moment for the Congress. It’s an historic moment for the women of America. It is a moment for which we have waited for over 200 years.”

Earlier in the day, on the other side of the Capitol dome, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, became majority leader, a result of his party’s one-seat victory margin in the November elections.

Both Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi promised a new era of cooperation after years of partisan passion and gridlock. “Guided by the spirit of bipartisanship,” Mr. Reid said, “Democrats are ready to take this country in a new direction.”

The House opened the session by passing, by a large bipartisan margin, new ethics rules.

But there were signs, too, of division among Democrats over how hard to push to undo the fruits of years of Republican rule. Many Democrats say those years moved the nation too far right, but others argue that the big tax cuts and regulatory relaxations are part of the permanent legislative framework that should be accepted.

In her remarks, Mrs. Pelosi delivered the obligatory promise of partnership with Republicans. But she immediately added a blunt warning to Mr. Bush on the war in Iraq.

“The American people rejected an open-ended obligation to a war without end,” she said, bringing Democrats to their feet.

She signaled to Mr. Bush that any plan to increase the American military presence in Iraq would meet stiff opposition in the new Congress.

“It is the responsibility of the president to articulate a new plan for Iraq that makes it clear to the Iraqis that they must defend their own streets and their own security,” she said, “a plan that promotes stability in the region and a plan that allows us to responsibly redeploy our troops.”

Mrs. Pelosi’s triumphal 20-minute remarks were frequently interrupted by applause, much like a presidential State of the Union address, which is delivered annually from the same rostrum in the House chamber. Cheering her on from the gallery were members of her family, dozens of California supporters and celebrities including Tony Bennett, Carole King and Richard Gere.

Mr. Boehner sat glum and unmoving in his seat for much of the hour it took to record the vote that put Mrs. Pelosi in the speaker’s chair. The former speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, now just a Republican member of Congress from Illinois, stood hunched and hulking by the back rail of the chamber.

Mrs. Pelosi sat on the House floor with several of her grandchildren as her Democratic colleagues rose to record their votes, many adding footnotes. Representative Loretta Sanchez, Democrat of California, said she voted “for the empowerment of all women in the world.” Seventy-one women will be in the House, a record.

The jubilant Democratic takeover of the House was an echo of the Republican “revolution” of 1994 in which Republicans took control of the House after 40 uninterrupted years of Democratic dominance.

In the Senate, Vice President Dick Cheney, in his constitutional role as president of the chamber, swore in the members, including 10 new senators, only one a Republican, Bob Corker of Tennessee. A beaming Bill Clinton, accompanied by his daughter, Chelsea, and his mother-in-law, Dorothy Rodham, looked from the gallery as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York took the oath at the outset of her second term, perhaps dreaming of another oath-taking that might be two years hence.

The first order of business for the new Democratic-led House was passage of a measure to limit gifts to lawmakers from lobbyists and to restrict subsidized flights on private aircraft. The bill is part of a larger package of ethics changes that Democrats are pushing as part of a promise to voters to end what they called a “culture of corruption” in Congress that led to several indictments and resignations of members last year.

Next week, the Democrats plan a 100-hour blitz to raise the minimum wage, lift restrictions on federal financing of embryonic stem cell research and allow the government to negotiate price cuts with pharmaceutical companies for the Medicare prescription drug program, among other matters. By the time they have clocked the 100 hours of legislative debate, House Democrats also plan to have passed bills to cut interest rates on student loans and roll back subsidies for oil and gas producers, seeking to make a statement of priorities, pressure the Senate to act and put an active agenda before the country before Mr. Bush’s State of the Union address on Jan. 23.

In an early sign of bipartisanship, Senators Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, and Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, introduced a bill to repeal the individual alternative minimum tax, which is imposing an increasingly heavy burden on middle-income taxpayers.

But before much real business was conducted, Democratic lawmakers adjourned for a round of festivities to celebrate their victories and to lubricate their donors in what resembled nothing so much as a scaled-down presidential inaugural.

Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, who engineered the election of 42 new Democrats to the House as leader of the party’s Congressional campaign committee, threw a huge reception at Johnny’s Half Shell across the street from the Capitol. Mrs. Pelosi was the host of a gala at the National Building Museum at which Mr. Bennett and Ms. King were scheduled to perform.

Senator Claire McCaskill, the newly elected Democrat from Missouri and one of 16 women in the Senate, seemed a bit in awe after taking the oath of office on Thursday afternoon.

“Anybody who would go through that and not feel overwhelmed with the enormity of the institution and the men and women who have served there would have to be in a coma,” Ms. McCaskill said in the lobby outside the Senate chamber. “I’m sure there will be tough times ahead, but it’s thrilling to be part of one of this country’s enduring institutions.”

Robin Toner contributed reporting.

    Jubilant Democrats Assume Control on Capitol Hill, NYT, 5.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/washington/05cong.html?hp&ex=1168059600&en=9a45c901a0199fed&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Democrats set to take control of Congress

Thu Jan 4, 2007 5:59 AM ET
Reuters
By Thomas Ferraro and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats take control of the U.S. Congress from President George W. Bush's Republicans on Thursday, seeking a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and help for America's needy.

While both sides promised to try to work together, major battles seemed certain -- such as on Democratic efforts to build pressure to change Bush's war strategy, overturn his restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research and reduce the growing gap between America's rich and poor.

In a history-making moment, Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, was set to be elected the first woman to head the 218-year-old House of Representatives as its speaker.

Pelosi is determined to clean up Congress, which has been rocked the past two years by influence-peddling scandals. One of the first House votes will be to impose new restrictions on the relationship between lawmakers and lobbyists.

"No more taking gifts from lobbyists," said Rep. Marty Meehan, a Massachusetts Democrat who helped craft the ethics package. "No more lobbyists planning golf trips."

Bush tried to set a positive tone on Wednesday for dealing with the new 110th Congress, set to convene at noon EST. He called for spending cuts, a balanced budget and a consensus on Iraq.

"It's time to set aside politics and focus on the future," said Bush, who has two years remaining on his term.

Democrats were cautious.

"We welcome the president's newfound commitment to a balanced budget, but his comments make us wary," said incoming House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt of South Carolina. "They suggest that his budget will still embody the policies that led to the largest deficits in history."

"We hope that when the president says compromise, it means more than 'Do it my way,' which is what he's meant in the past," said New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer.

Democrats won control of the House and Senate in the November 7 elections, largely because of public discontent with the Iraq war and what critics called the "do-nothing" Republican Congress.

With polls showing Americans believed the country was headed in "the wrong direction," Democrats campaigned on an agenda, "A New Direction for America."

It includes: raising the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade; cutting interest rates on federal student loans; ending some tax breaks for big oil companies and bolstering homeland security.

Republicans complained Democrats were breaking a promise to give them a voice in the legislative process by taking these measures directly to the floor for a vote without a hearing or consideration of possible amendments.

Incoming House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer explained his party campaigned on these measures, all of which have been subjected to plenty of debate over the years.

"We told everybody, 'If you elect us this is what we are going to do immediately.' Not in 100 days. We said 100 hours," Hoyer, of Maryland, told reporters.

    Democrats set to take control of Congress, R, 4.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-04T105832Z_01_N03427070_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-CONGRESS.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C1-TopStories-newsOne-2

Ethics Overhaul Tops the Agenda in New Congress

January 4, 2007
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 — On the brink of regaining power after 12 years, House Democrats said Wednesday that they would move immediately to try to sever ties between lawmakers and lobbyists who figured into scandals that helped Democrats win control of Congress.

Democrats, who campaigned relentlessly last year on the theme of a Republican culture of corruption, introduced the proposed ethics rules as part of a week of choreography designed to deliver the message that they did not intend to do business as usual in Washington. In some cases, like restrictions on the use of corporate jets, the rules on gifts and travel by lobbyists go further than what Democrats had pledged earlier.

Another part of the Democrats’ package called for detailed disclosure of pet projects or special-interest tax benefits that individual lawmakers insert into major bills. On Wednesday, President Bush jumped into the debate on such spending projects, called earmarks, urging that their number and cost be cut in half this year, a proposal that Democrats immediately rejected.

The ethics issue continued to reverberate Wednesday, officially the last day of Republican control. Two House Republicans, Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania and Tom Feeney of Florida, agreed to pay for trips that the ethics committee determined had been improperly paid for by outside interests.

Mr. Feeney’s case involved a $5,640 trip to Scotland originally paid for by Jack Abramoff, the now-imprisoned lobbyist who was at the center of the Congressional corruption scandals. Mr. Weldon, who was defeated for re-election, will pay $23,000 for an undisclosed trip.

The rules changes would also take aim at the so-called K Street Project, the effort associated with the hardball tactics of the former Republican leader Tom DeLay, to pressure trade groups and lobbying firms to hire Republicans or face the legislative consequences. The proposal would prohibit lawmakers and staff members from trying to exert partisan influence on hiring decisions.

“I think this package is more than a good-faith effort,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director of the Campaign Legal Center, an ethics group. Referring to the incoming House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Ms. McGehee said, “If these rule changes are any indication, she is serious.”

But the ethics rules do not address the most valuable gifts that come from lobbyists and others interested in legislation: campaign donations. And the Democratic Party’s fund-raising machine — revved up by the advantages of being in the majority — continued apace this week with individual members inviting lobbyists and other contributors to a host of events.

On Thursday night, Mrs. Pelosi is having a $1,000-a-head fund-raiser with performances by Tony Bennett, Carole King, Wyclef Jean and the surviving members of the Grateful Dead. “Ms. Pelosi is a huge Dead fan,” her spokeswoman said.

Senator Richard J. Durbin was among those who stopped by a reception Wednesday evening for a fellow Illinois Democrat, Representative Melissa Bean, who won a close and expensive re-election race in November. The reception, at Johnny’s Half Shell, a restaurant on Capitol Hill popular with lobbyists and lawmakers, drew lobbyists from both parties.

As they prepared for the pomp and festivities that will mark the Capitol Hill power switch, Democrats got a taste of the potential difficulties of governing with thin majorities in the House and Senate as well as a Republican White House and a presidential election two years off.

While Democrats sought to introduce their ethics legislation at a news conference, the antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan and others interrupted with chants of “Troops home now; de-escalate, investigate.” The scene vividly illustrated the pressure that Democrats will face from the left wing of their party to challenge President Bush more aggressively on Iraq. Ms. Sheehan and other antiwar advocates felt they contributed to the Democrats’ takeover of Congress.

At the same time, Republicans made clear they intend to hold Democrats accountable for their pledge to allow more minority party participation in legislation. They assailed Democrats’ plans to push through major legislation right away without allowing Republican alternatives. Though the Republicans severely limited Democrats’ input when they were in charge, they rejected accusations that they were hypocritical.

“The important point here is that the American people were promised a new way of doing business in the United States Congress,” said Representative Adam H. Putnam of Florida, chairman of the House Republican Conference.

Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the new majority leader, said Republicans would get their chance after Democrats disposed of legislation on national security, minimum wage, prescription drug costs, stem cell research, student loan costs and energy.

“We said to the American people, ‘If you elect us, if you put us in charge, this is what we are going to do and we are going to do it in the first 100 hours,’ ” Mr. Hoyer told reporters.

Democrats were dogged by technical difficulties when a changeover in House Web sites delayed the formal posting of their ethics proposal.

The Senate will convene Thursday as well, with Democrats and Republicans meeting first in an unofficial closed-door session in the old Senate chambers to try to find some common ground. Aides said the Senate was going to take up its own ethics package next week, allowing a week or more of floor debate to shape legislation.

Besides the rules barring lawmakers from accepting gifts, meals or trips from lobbyists or the organizations that employ them, the House Democratic plan would also require preapproval from the Ethics Committee for any trips paid for by other outside groups aside from educational institutions.

On the subject of corporate jets, Democrats had previously discussed raising the rate at which lawmakers reimburse corporations or other sponsors for flights, but still allowing use of the jets. But the rules proposed Wednesday would bar lawmakers from any use of corporate jets.

Previous Democratic and Republican proposals about shedding light on earmarks, the pet projects lawmakers insert into major spending bills, left large loopholes, particularly in regard to military contracts.

In contrast, the new rules appear to apply to all spending earmarks as well as tax or tariff provisions that benefit fewer than 10 companies or people. They would also require disclosure of such items in each bill as well as the individual sponsors.

The rules would further require each House member requesting an earmark or limited tax provision to certify that he or she would not profit from the provision.

Democratic leaders also said that in February they would take up potential new restrictions on members of Congress and staff members becoming lobbyists, and that in March they would consider creating an outside panel to enforce the ethics rules — a step that lawmakers of both parties have resisted.

President Bush called for the Democrats to adopt even more drastic restrictions on earmarks, a perennial bane to executive branch officials who resent Congressional meddling in their budgets.

“One important message we all should take from the elections is that people want to end the secretive process by which Washington insiders are able to get billions of dollars directed to projects, many of them pork barrel projects that have never been reviewed or voted on by the Congress,” Mr. Bush said. He called on Democrats to require “full disclosure” of “the costs, the recipients, and the justifications for every earmark” as well as sponsors.

Ethics Overhaul Tops the Agenda in New Congress, NYT, 4.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/washington/04cong.html