History > 2007 > USA > Politics > Congress

House of Representatives (I)

House Minority Leader John Boehner, right,

handed the gavel to newly elected Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Associated Press

Jubilant Democrats Assume Control on Capitol Hill

NYT

5 January 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/washington/05cong.html

Panel Urges Speed

in Opening Nazi Files

March 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:58 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- With the number of Holocaust survivors dwindling, a House committee voted Tuesday to urge seven European nations to quickly approve the opening of millions of Nazi files on concentration camps and their victims.

Earlier this month, an 11-nation body overseeing the long-secret archive set procedures to open the war records stored in Bad Arolsen, Germany, by the end of the year. Before the material can be accessed, all 11 must ratify an agreement adopted last year to end the 60-year ban on using the files for research.

The resolution approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee calls on member countries who have not yet ratified to do so quickly in the interest of elderly Holocaust survivors.

Israel, the United States, Poland and the Netherlands have completed ratification.

Germany, Britain and Luxembourg have said they would ratify before the commission meets again in May. National elections in France and Belgium could cause delays in those countries, officials said, and the status in Italy and Greece was unclear.

The Associated Press, which was granted extensive access to the archive in recent months on condition that victims not be fully identified, has drawn attention to the documents.

AP researchers have seen letters by Nazi commanders, Gestapo orders and vivid testimony from victims and observers of the brutality of camp life and the ''death marches'' when camps were ordered cleared of prisoners at the end of the war.

Scholars say the Bad Arolsen files will fill gaps in history and provide a unique perspective gained from seeing original Nazi letters, the minutiae of the concentration camps' structures, slave labor records and the testimony of victims and ordinary Germans who witnessed the brutality of the Gestapo.

In the last 60 years, the International Committee of the Red Cross' Tracing Service has responded to 11 million requests from survivors and their families. Most inquiries have resulted in delays lasting years and produced sketchy replies.

The files have been used since the 1950s to help determine the fate of people who disappeared during the Third Reich. Later, the files were also used to validate claims for compensation.

    Panel Urges Speed in Opening Nazi Files, NYT, 27.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Nazi-Archive.html

Dems Challenge Bush

With Iraq Timetable

March 24, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:03 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House voted Friday for the first time to clamp a cutoff deadline on the Iraq war, agreeing by a thin margin to pull combat troops out by next year and pushing the new Democratic-led Congress ever closer to a showdown with President Bush.

The 218-212 vote, mostly along party lines, was a hard-fought victory for Democrats, who faced divisions within their own ranks on the rancorous issue. Passage marked their most brazen challenge yet to Bush on a war that has killed more than 3,200 troops and lost favor with the American public.

He dismissed their action as ''political theater'' and said he would veto the bill if it reached his desk. The Senate is about to take up its own version.

The $124 billion House legislation would pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year but would require that combat troops come home from Iraq before September 2008 -- or earlier if the Iraqi government did not meet certain requirements. Democrats said it was time to heed the mandate of their election sweep last November, which gave them control of Congress.

''The American people have lost faith in the president's conduct of this war,'' said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. ''The American people see the reality of the war, the president does not.''

Just over an hour following the vote, Bush angrily accused Democrats of playing politics and renewed his promise to veto the spending legislation if it included their withdrawal timetable, despite administration claims that the money is needed next month by troops.

''These Democrats believe that the longer they can delay funding for our troops, the more likely they are to force me to accept restrictions on our commanders, an artificial timetable for withdrawal and their pet spending projects. This is not going to happen,'' he said.

Congress so far has provided more than $500 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including about $350 billion for Iraq alone, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Across the Capitol, the Senate planned to begin debate Monday on its own war spending bill, which also calls for a troop withdrawal -- and also has drawn a Bush veto threat.

The Senate's $122 billion measure would require that Bush begin bringing home an unspecified number of troops within four months with a non-binding goal of getting all combat troops out by March 31, 2008.

These bills ''offer a responsible strategy that reflects what the American people asked for in November -- redeploying our troops out of Iraq and refocusing our resources to more effectively fight the war on terror,'' said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

While Friday's House vote represented the Democrats' latest intensifying of political pressure on Bush, they still face long odds of ultimately forcing him to sign such legislation.

In the Senate, Democratic leaders will need 60 votes to prevail -- a tall order because that would mean persuading about a dozen Republicans to join them.

And should lawmakers send Bush a measure he rejects, both chambers would need two-thirds majorities to override his veto -- margins that neither seems likely to muster.

Voting for the House bill were 216 Democrats and two Republicans -- Wayne Gilchrest of Maryland and Walter Jones of North Carolina. Of the 212 members who opposed it, 198 were Republicans and 14 were Democrats.

Those opposing Democrats included seven of the party's more conservative members, including Georgia Rep. Jim Marshall, Tennessee Rep. Lincoln Davis and Mississippi Rep. Gene Taylor, who say they do not want to tie the hands of military commanders.

The other seven dissenters were members of a liberal anti-war caucus who routinely oppose war spending and would accept only legislation that would bring troops home immediately.

Fearing that other liberals would join them and tip the scales, Pelosi had spent days trying to convince members that the bill was Congress' best shot at forcing a new course in Iraq -- an argument that was aided when the Democrats added more than $20 billion in domestic spending in an effort to lure votes.

Pelosi received a boost this week when several of the bill's most consistent critics said they would not pressure members to vote against it, even though they would oppose it themselves.

The vote was considered a personal victory for the new speaker, whose husband watched the debate Friday from the gallery overlooking the House floor.

Anti-war groups remained divided on whether passage of the bill was a good thing, and protesters tried to disrupt debate Friday and pressure members to oppose the bill.

''This is just the beginning of the beginning of the end of this war,'' said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., among those who opposed the bill.

The emotional debate surrounding the bill echoed clashes between lawmakers and the White House over the Vietnam War four decades ago.

''We're going to make a difference with this bill,'' bellowed Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a Vietnam War veteran who helped write the legislation.

''We're going to bring those troops home. We're going to start changing the direction of this great nation,'' he said, bringing a standing ovation and hugs from his colleagues.

Republicans countered that the bill would be tantamount to conceding defeat.

''The stakes in Iraq are too high and the sacrifices made by our military personnel and their families too great to be content with anything but success,'' said Republican Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said they planned to try to strip the withdrawal language from the Senate bill -- which would probably require a difficult-to-achieve 60 votes.

''We're not prepared to tell the enemy, 'hang on, we'll give you a date when we are leaving,' said McCain, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee.

    Dems Challenge Bush With Iraq Timetable, NYT, 24.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html

House Narrowly Backs Iraq Timetable

March 23, 2007
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY and DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, March 23 — The House of Representatives voted today, by the narrowest possible margin and after an unusually emotional debate, to set a timetable for bringing American troops home from Iraq.

The bill received 218 votes in favor, the minimum needed for passage in the 435-seat chamber. There were 212 votes opposed. The Democratic leadership held the voting open for two additional minutes past the originally scheduled 15 to lock up the majority. Vote-counters had predicted beforehand that the outcome would be very close.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the legislation, which took the form of an emergency spending bill, “a giant step to end the war and responsibly redeploy our troops out of Iraq” and concentrate on Afghanistan, “where the war on terrorism is.”

A few hours before the vote, Ms. Pelosi summoned Democrats to a closed-door meeting in the Capitol basement, hoping to impress them one more time with the importance of the proposed legislation, the Democrats’ boldest step yet to try to end the war.

“It’s historic,” Ms. Pelosi said in a brief interview, “for our party and our country.”

No, Republicans countered on the House floor. Several said the measure would amount to micromanaging the war, to the detriment of military commanders and front-line troops. “Its prevailing tone is one of defeat,” Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the minority whip, said of the legislation.

The debate was highly emotional, with lawmakers applauding loudly at several points. There were occasional outbursts from the House gallery, which was packed with spectators.

Representative Patrick Murphy, a Pennsylvania Democrat and a veteran of the Iraq war, urged passage of the legislation on behalf of the 19 soldiers in his command who were killed in the war. “This is our opportunity, this is our chance to lead,” said Mr. Murphy, who is 31.

Another perspective was offered by an older veteran of a different war. “We must seize this opportunity,” said Representative Sam Johnson, Republican of Texas. American troops “need the full support of their country, and their Congress,” he said. Mr. Johnson, 76, was an Air Force fighter pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1966 and held as a prisoner of war until 1973.

The withdrawal timetable provision, which calls for most American troops to be out of Iraq by Sept. 1, 2008, is part of a bill to provide about $100 billion to finance the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill would also impose a series of performance benchmarks, for Baghdad and for Washington, to show progress in the new Iraq. Withdrawal would be required even sooner if progress on those benchmarks could not be demonstrated.

Passage of the legislation by no means signals that it will emerge from the full Congress, since the Democrats’ majority in the House (there are 233 Democrats, to 201 Republicans) is too small to overcome a veto by President Bush, which the White House says would be certain if it ever reached the President’s desk. Besides, the Senate is about to debate its own Iraq-pullout measure, which differs in substantial ways.

Still, the House legislation is hugely significant as a gauge of political support for the Bush administration’s war strategy. Several times, the House erupted in applause as the debate went on.

In the closing round of the debate, most Democrats focused on elements of the bill that they said would protect American troops by requiring better training and longer periods of rest between deployments.

Representative Ike Skelton, the Missouri Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee, said the bill would help bolster an American military that has been strained by the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I’m deeply concerned about the readiness of our forces,” he said.

But several Republicans derided the total of nearly $25 billion in domestic spending — benefiting spinach growers and citrus farmers, salmon fishermen and peanut storage, as a few G.O.P. lawmakers noted — that Democrats put into the bill in addition to the war financing, to make it more palatable.

“This legislation should remain focused on the needs of the troops, and not become an extraneous vehicle for spending and policy proposals,” said Representative J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois and the former Speaker. “It holds our troops hostage to nonemergency spending.”

Representative Patrick McHenry, Republican of North Carolina, ticked off a list of nonmilitary spending items in the bill and threw up his hands. “They do this in the name of funding the troops?” he said, his voice rising. “This is Washington hypocrisy at work.”

Democrats were no less emotional. “Some bemoan and say we’re micromanaging,” Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois said, pointing toward the Republican side of the chamber. “I would say to you, ‘You rubber-stamped four years of micromanagement.’ ”

    House Narrowly Backs Iraq Timetable, NYT, 23.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/washington/23cnd-cong.html?hp

House Panel Approves

Subpoenas for Top Bush Aides

March 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:12 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A House panel on Wednesday approved subpoenas for President Bush's political adviser, Karl Rove and other top White House aides, setting up a constitutional showdown over the firings of eight federal prosecutors.

By voice vote, the House Judiciary subcommittee on commercial and administrative law decided to compel the president's top aides to testify publicly and under oath about their roles in the firings.

The White House has refused to budge in the controversy, standing by embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and insisting that the firings were appropriate. White House spokesman Tony Snow said that in offering aides to talk to the committees privately, Bush had sought to avoid the ''media spectacle'' that would result from public hearings with Rove and others at the witness table.

''The question they've got to ask themselves is, are you more interested in a political spectacle than getting the truth?'' Snow said of the overture Tuesday by the White House via its top lawyer, Fred Fielding.

''There must be accountability,'' countered subcommittee Chairwoman Linda Sanchez, D-Calif.

The panel approved, but has not issued, subpoenas for Rove, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, their deputies and Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' chief of staff, who resigned over the uproar last week. The full Judiciary Committee would authorize the subpoenas if Chairman John Conyers of Michigan chose to do so.

The committee rejected Bush's offer a day earlier to have his aides talk privately to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, but not under oath and not on the record.

Authorizing the subopenas ''does provide this body the leverage needed to negotiate from a position of strenghth,'' said Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass.

Republicans called the authorization premature, though some GOP members said they would consider voting to approve the subpoenas if Conyers promises to issue them only if he has evidence of wrongdoing.

Conyers agreed. ''This (authority) will not be used in a way that will make you regret your vote.''

Several Republicans said, ''No'' during the voice vote, but no roll call was taken.

For his part, Bush remained resolute.

Would he fight Democrats in court to protect his aides against congressional subpoenas?

''Absolutely,'' Bush declared Tuesday.

Democrats promptly rejected the threat. The Senate Judiciary Committee planned to approve subpoenas for the same officials on Thursday.

''Testimony should be on the record and under oath. That's the formula for true ccountability,'' said Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Bush said he worried that allowing testimony under oath would set a precedent on the separation of powers that would harm the presidency as an institution.

If neither side blinks, the dispute could end in court -- ultimately the Supreme Court -- in a politically messy development that would prolong what Bush called the ''public spectacle'' of the Justice Department's firings, and public trashings, of the eight U.S. attorneys.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the Senate panel's former chairman, appealed for pragmatism.

''It is more important to get the information promptly than to have months or years of litigation,'' Specter said.

Bush, in a late-afternoon statement at the White House, decried any attempts by Democrats to engage in ''a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants.''

''It will be regrettable if they choose to head down the partisan road of issuing subpoenas and demanding show trials when I have agreed to make key White House officials and documents available,'' the president said.

Bush defended Gonzales against demands from congressional Democrats and a handful of Republicans that Gonzales resign over his handling of the U.S. attorneys' firings over the past year.

''He's got support with me,'' Bush said. ''I support the attorney general.''

Democrats say the prosecutors' dismissals were politically motivated. Gonzales initially had asserted the firings were performance-related, not based on political considerations.

But e-mails released earlier this month between the Justice Department and the White House contradicted that assertion and led to a public apology from Gonzales over the handling of the matter.

The e-mails showed that Rove, as early as Jan. 6, 2005, questioned whether the U.S. attorneys should all be replaced at the start of Bush's second term, and to some degree worked with former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and former Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson to get some prosecutors dismissed.

In his remarks Tuesday, Bush emphasized that he appoints federal prosecutors and it is natural to consider replacing them. While saying he disapproved of how the decisions were explained to Congress, he insisted ''there is no indication that anybody did anything improper.''

Nonetheless, the Senate on Tuesday voted 94-2 to strip Gonzales of his authority to fill U.S. attorney vacancies without Senate confirmation. Democrats contend the Justice Department and White House purged the eight federal prosecutors, some of whom were leading political corruption investigations, after a change in the USA Patriot Act gave Gonzales the new authority.

''What happened in this case sends a signal really through intimidation by purge: 'Don't quarrel with us any longer,''' said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a former U.S. attorney.

The White House had signaled last week that it would not oppose the legislation if it also passed the House and reached Bush's desk.

In an op-ed in Wednesday's editions of The New York Times, one of the eight, David Iglesias of New Mexico, responded to the president: ''I appreciate his gratitude for my service -- this marks the first time I have been thanked. But only a written retraction by the Justice Department setting the record straight regarding my performance would settle the issue for me.''

    House Panel Approves Subpoenas for Top Bush Aides, NYT, 21.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Fired-Prosecutors.html?hp

Subject of C.I.A. Leak Testifies

March 16, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, March 16 — Valerie Plame Wilson testified today that the career she loved as an undercover C.I.A. agent was “over in an instant” when her role was disclosed in the summer of 2003.

Speaking in public for the first time about the episode that touched off a scandal in the Bush administration, Ms. Wilson told a House committee that her undercover status “was not common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit,” as some people have suggested. Nor did she recommend her husband for a now-famous trip to Africa as some of the couple’s critics have asserted, Ms. Wilson said.

Ms. Wilson said she felt as though she had been “hit in the gut” when her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, dropped a newspaper on their bed on the morning of July 14, 2003, and she saw that the columnist Robert D. Novak had mentioned her C.I.A. status in passing.

Ms. Wilson said she realized at once that “I could no longer perform the work for which I had been highly trained.”

“It was over in an instant,” she told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “That career path was terminated.”

Ms. Wilson appeared before the panel while the memory of the conviction of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, was still fresh, and the committee’s Democrats, led by Chairman Henry A. Waxman of California, seemed to relish the opportunity to flail the administration.

Ms. Wilson did not disappoint, telling the panel she felt hurt and betrayed by members of the administration who not only failed to protect her identity but, indeed, “were the ones who destroyed my cover.” She said they knocked her off a career path that had included numerous secret trips overseas and exciting, satisfying work in the unit of the Central Intelligence Agency that tries to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

“I loved my career because I love my country,” she said. Nor did she have “a desk job” at C.I.A. headquarters in Virginia, as some administration allies have asserted, Ms. Wilson said.

“I could count on one hand the number of people who knew who my true employer was,” Ms. Wilson testified.

Ms. Wilson said she considered intelligence-gathering “more an art than a science,” but that intelligence is useless, or worse, if it is tainted by political considerations. “I feel passionately about that,” she said.

Intelligence, and whether it was tainted for political reasons, was a big part of the episode that led to Ms. Wilson’s appearance today.

Her husband, a former diplomat with considerable experience in Africa, traveled to the continent in 2002 to investigate rumors that Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire uranium from Niger to build Iraq’s nuclear arsenal. In July 2003, an Op Ed essay by Mr. Wilson in The New York Times expressed deep skepticism about Iraq’s arsenal, and by implication skepticism about President Bush’s justification for the war that toppled the Iraqi dictator.

Soon afterward, Ms. Wilson was unmasked by Mr. Novak. That incident led to an investigation to find who had leaked her name, possibly in violation of the law. While no one was prosecuted for the leak itself, Mr. Libby was found guilty of lying to grand jurors and F.B.I. agents during the investigation. Administration critics have long asserted that Ms. Wilson’s name was leaked to intimidate others who differed with the White House.

Ms. Wilson said she was shocked at what the Libby trial showed about the extent of the administration’s efforts to discredit her husband and retaliate for his findings. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, the White House political adviser Karl Rove and the former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer are all known to have discussed Ms. Wilson’s C.I.A. employment with reporters in the summer of 2003.

Ms. Wilson told the committee that, despite what has been written and said repeatedly, she did not recommend her husband for the trip to Africa. In fact, she said, she had unhappy visions “of myself at bedtime with a couple of two-year-olds” to handle alone if her husband went overseas. (The Wilsons have young twins.)

“I did not recommend him, I did not suggest him, there was no nepotism involved,” she said. “I did not have the authority.”

Ms. Wilson said she did sound out her husband about the trip after she was asked to do so, but that her husband was picked for the trip because of his background in Africa.

Committee Democrats seized on the opportunity to paint the Bush administration in an unflattering light. Their questions to Ms. Plame contained allusions to unrelated episodes, like the firing of Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill; the early predictions of Gen. Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, that several hundred thousand troops would be required to keep the peace in Iraq, and even the administration’s stance on global warming.

Under questioning from the committee’s top Republican, Representative Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia, Ms. Wilson said that she was not demoted after her covert status was revealed, and that she went on to “other jobs with commensurate responsibilities.”

But the job she enjoyed most, and the possibility that she might go overseas again when her children were older “came to an abrupt end,” she said.With her covert life ended, Ms. Wilson is to move with her husband to Santa Fe, N.M. She hopes to write a book about her life in the C.I.A. and what happened after her cover was blown.

    Subject of C.I.A. Leak Testifies, NYT, 16.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/washington/16cnd-plame.html?hp

House Democrats Push Bill

to End Iraq War

March 15, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:52 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Democratic plan to require the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq passed its first test on Thursday as the House Appropriations Committee voted to endorse the proposal, overcoming Republican opposition.

Members voted 37-27 along party lines to uphold a provision in a $124 billion war spending legislation that calls for troops to leave Iraq before September 2008, and possibly sooner if the Iraqi government does not meet certain benchmarks. Republicans had proposed stripping out the timetable.

The vote gave Democrats a victory, if only for the moment, in their effort to challenge President Bush's war policies and pressure him into starting a withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The committee was expected to approve the overall spending bill by later Thursday, but its longer-range fate is dim. In the Senate, minority Republicans can use procedural moves to block the troop withdrawal language and the White House has threatened to veto the bill if it contains the provision forcing the removal of troops.

Rallying enough support for the bill, which allots $95.5 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been a challenge for Democratic leaders. Many party members support bringing troops home sooner than the 2008 deadline, while others have been reluctant to embrace a firm deadline to end the war.

The defeated Republican amendment would have eliminated the 2008 deadline and inserted language that would promise not to cut funding for troops.

''We are trying to end the authorization of the war if the Iraqis and the administration don't perform,'' said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., committee chairman.

''Nobody wants our troops out of Iraq more than I do'' but ''we can't afford to turn over Iraq to al-Qaida,'' said Rep. Bill Young of Florida, top Republican on the subcommittee that oversees military spending.

Democrats said the timetable was necessary to force the Iraqis to step up, and by another 37-27 partyline vote pushed through a provision promising to ''fully support the needs'' of service members in combat.

Young proposed a separate amendment that would have restricted funding to steps needed to carry out a troop withdrawal. He said he would vote against it but was an issue that should be settled.

Sensing an effort to lure them into a vote that could be used against in re-election campaigns, Democrats opposed Young's proposal as well and it failed 64-0.

Republicans accused Democrats of micromanaging the war, taking over a role best left to the generals. Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky accused Democrats of an ''ill-advised and precipitous withdrawal'' plan. And Rep. Roger Wicker of Mississippi said the legislation was a backdoor method of cutting off funds for the troops -- a charge that Obey disputed.

The political landscape was different across the Capitol, where Republicans expressed confidence they had the votes to defeat an alternative approach advanced by Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Democrats.

Their proposal sets a goal of a troop withdrawal by March 31, 2008. A mid-afternoon vote was expected.

The Iraq debate spilled over to the 2008 campaign for the White House.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Democratic presidential candidate, said in a New York Times interview that if elected she would maintain a scaled-down American military force in Iraq that would stay off the streets in Baghdad and no longer would try to protect Iraqis from sectarian violence.

She cited ''remaining vital national security interests'' for a continued deployment of U.S. troops in Iraq aimed at fighting al-Qaida, deterring Iran, protecting Kurds and possibly supporting the Iraqi military, the newspaper reported Wednesday night on its Web site.

She said her plan was consistent with the Senate resolution, saying it called for ''a limited number'' of troops to stay in Iraq to protect the U.S. Embassy and other personnel, train and equip Iraqi forces and conduct ''targeted counterterrorism operations.''

While the House bill is unlikely to sail through unchecked, Democrats say its passage -- even if by a slim majority -- would be a loud message to the president to end the war. Pelosi was trying to line up votes from party liberals who want troops out of Iraq sooner than the 2008 deadline, as well as more conservative Democrats who are concerned the bill would micromanage the war.

A total of 10 peaceful anti-war protesters were arrested, both inside the committee room and outside the building where the debate was unfolding.

Sgt. Kimberly Schneider of the Capitol Police said they would be charged with unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct. ''They were being loud and boisterous. They were told to stop and they didn't so they were arrested,'' she said.

    House Democrats Push Bill to End Iraq War, NYT, 15.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html

Democrats Want Iraq Pullout

by Fall 2008

March 8, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:20 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a direct challenge to President Bush, House Democrats unveiled legislation Thursday requiring the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the fall of next year.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the deadline would be added to legislation providing nearly $100 billion the Bush administration has requested for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

She told reporters the measure would mark the first time the new Democratic-controlled Congress has established a ''date certain'' for the end of U.S. combat in the four-year-old war that has claimed the lives of more than 3,100 U.S. troops.

The White House had no immediate reaction, although Bush has repeatedly rejected talk of establishing a deadline for troop withdrawals.

Within an hour of Pelosi's news conference, House Republican Leader John Boehner attacked the measure. He said Democrats were proposing legislation that amounted to ''establishing and telegraphing to our enemy a timetable'' that would result in failure of the U.S. military mission in Iraq.

''Gen. (David) Petraeus should be the one making the decisions on what happens on the ground in Iraq, not Nancy Pelosi or John Murtha,'' the Ohio Republican added. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, has been heavily involved in crafting legislation designed to end U.S., participation in the war.

According to an explanation of the measure distributed by Democratic aides, the timetable for withdrawal would be accelerated if the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki did not meet goals for providing for Iraq's security.

Democrats won control of Congress last fall in midterm elections shadowed by public opposition to the war, and have vowed since taking power to challenge Bush's policies.

Pelosi made her announcement as Senate Democrats reviewed a different approach -- a measure that would set a goal of a troop withdrawal by March of 2008. Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada called a closed-door meeting of the rank-and-file to consider the measure.

In the House, Pelosi and the leadership have struggled in recent days to come up with an approach on the war that would satisfy liberals reluctant to vote for continued funding without driving away more moderate Democrats unwilling to be seen as tying the hands of military commanders.

The decision to impose conditions on the war risks a major confrontation with the Bush administration and its Republican allies in Congress.

But without a unified party, the Democratic leadership faced the possibility of a highly embarrassing defeat when the spending legislation reaches a vote, likely later this month.

To make the overall measure more attractive politically, Democrats also intend to add $1.2 billion to Bush's request for military operations in Afghanistan, where the Taliban is expected to mount a spring offensive.

The bill also would add $3.5 billion to Bush's request for veterans' health care and medical programs for active duty troops at facilities such as the scandal-scarred Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington.

Democrats also proposed $735 million for a health care program for low-income children. The program is popular among governors of both political parties, but the administration has not signaled its acquiescence to the additional money.

As described by Democrats, the legislation will require Bush to certify by July 1 and again by Oct. 1. whether the Iraqi government is making progress toward providing for the country's security, allocating its oil revenues and creating a fair system for amending its constitution.

They said if Bush certified the Iraqis were meeting these so-called benchmarks, U.S. combat troops would have to begin withdrawing by March 1, 2008, and complete the redeployment by Sept. 1.

Otherwise, the deadlines would move up.

If Bush cannot make the required certification by July 1, troops must begin a six-month withdrawal immediately. If Bush cannot make the second certification, the same six-month timetable would apply.

The legislation also requires the Pentagon to adhere to its existing standards for equipping and training U.S. troops sent overseas and for providing time at home between tours of combat.

Pelosi said the provision was designed to make sure the government would ''not be sending our troops into battle without the proper training, the proper equipment.''

Yet it also permits Bush to issue waivers of these standards. Democrats described the waiver provision as an attempt to embarrass the president into adhering to the standards. But they concede the overall effect would be to permit the administration to proceed with plans to deploy five additional combat brigades to the Baghdad area over the next few months.

The measure emerged from days of private talks among Democrats following the collapse of Rep. John Murtha's original proposal, which would have required the Pentagon to meet readiness and training standards without the possibility of a waiver.

Murtha, D-Pa., and chairman of a House Appropriations military subcommittee, said its implementation would have starved the war effort of troops because the Pentagon would not have been able to find enough fully rested, trained and equipped units to meet its needs.

Several moderate Democrats spoke out against it, though. And Republicans sharply attacked it as the abandonment of troops already in the war zone.

------

Associated Press reporters Jim Abrams

and Anne Flaherty contributed to this story.

    Democrats Want Iraq Pullout by Fall 2008, NYT, 8.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Democrats-Iraq.html?hp

House Panel Subpoenas

4 Prosecutors of 8 Ousted

March 2, 2007
By DAVID JOHNSTON
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, March 1 — A House Judiciary subcommittee voted Thursday to issue subpoenas requiring testimony from four of the eight United States attorneys recently dismissed by the Justice Department.

The vote followed remarks this week in which one of the four, David C. Iglesias of New Mexico, said he believed that the motives for his ouster had been political. He and the three others subpoenaed — H. E. Cummins III of Arkansas, John McKay of Seattle and Carol C. Lam of San Diego — were chosen to give testimony because the circumstances of their dismissal are thought to be representative of those surrounding the removal of all eight, Congressional officials say.

The subpoenas order the four to testify at a hearing of the House subcommittee on Tuesday. The Senate Judiciary Committee has also invited dismissed prosecutors to testify that day and may consider issuing its own subpoenas if they do not. Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Democratic member of the committee who has led an investigation of the dismissals, said Thursday, “The U.S. attorneys will be coming, and now we will finally get to the bottom of this.”

The House panel acted after the prosecutors privately told lawmakers that they would not testify voluntarily, not wanting to get in the middle of what has grown into a serious political embarrassment for the Justice Department, but that they would give testimony if compelled.

In floor speeches and at a hearing last month, Democrats have repeatedly attacked the dismissals as a politically motivated effort to replace independent-minded prosecutors with more pliable operatives of the Bush administration.

Several of the prosecutors had been engaged in politically sensitive cases involving Republicans, for instance Ms. Lam’s continuing corruption investigation in the wake of a related guilty plea in 2005 by Representative Randy Cunningham of California.

Others had irritated Republicans in their state. Mr. McKay, for one, had decided against impaneling a grand jury to examine accusations of voter fraud in Washington State’s 2004 election for governor, won by a Democrat, Christine Gregoire.

Justice Department officials have denied that any of the prosecutors, all appointed by President Bush in his first term, were removed for political reasons.

“We have been very forthcoming with members of Congress about personnel decisions related to U.S. attorneys, through hearings, multiple briefings, letters, other documents, and a D.O.J. official will again testify next week,” said Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the department.

“We have never removed a United States attorney in an effort to retaliate against them or inappropriately interfere with a particular investigation, criminal prosecution or civil case,” Mr. Roehrkasse added. “Any suggestion otherwise is completely wrong.”

At a hearing last month, Paul J. McNulty, the deputy attorney general, said most of the dismissals had been related to job performance, an assertion that brought protests from the ranks of the ousted prosecutors.

Several said they had been given no reason for their removal. Most had received favorable job evaluations from the Justice Department in formal performance assessments based on interviews with judges, law enforcement agencies and members of the office staff.

    House Panel Subpoenas 4 Prosecutors of 8 Ousted, NYT, 2.3.3007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/washington/02attorney.html

A Divided House Denounces Plan

for More Troops

February 17, 2007
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY and MICHAEL LUO

WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 — A sharply divided House of Representatives passed a resolution on Friday formally repudiating President Bush’s decision to send more than 20,000 new combat troops to Iraq.

The rare wartime rebuke to the commander in chief — an act that is not binding, but that carries symbolic significance — was approved 246-to-182, with 17 Republicans breaking ranks to join all but two Democrats in supporting the resolution.

Passage was never in doubt, but the debate, lasting full days and much of three nights, brought nearly every member to the floor to declare, briefly but often vehemently, where they stood on a short, resolution affirming support for the troops but denouncing Mr. Bush’s new approach to the war.

“We owe our troops a course of action in Iraq that is worthy of their sacrifice,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat. “Today, we set the stage for a new direction in Iraq.”

With 392 members speaking, the debate lasted twice as long as when Congress voted in 2002 to authorize the use of force against Iraq.

And it illustrated how the partisan divide over the war has deepened. While Democratic leaders had purposefully written the resolution to attract a bipartisan following, the number of Republicans who joined them was only about half of what some Democrats had predicted.

“Republicans may have lost the vote on this nonbinding resolution,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican minority leader. “But we won the debate.”

The Senate is expected to consider Saturday whether to move toward a vote on an Iraq resolution, but there, enough Republicans are expected to hold ranks to block the Democrats’ approach, at least for now. In political terms, the resolution carries weight because of public sentiment, particularly from voters who placed Democrats in control of Congress.

Several historians compared its significance to the repeal by Congress in 1971 of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing the Vietnam War. That vote did not halt the conflict as members of Congress approved continued financing for two more years.

The House resolution stood out, historians said, because it criticized a specific battlefield tactic proposed by the president. It also could set the stage for a more consequential clash with the White House if Congress begins exercising broader power and authority in an effort to bring the war to a close, possibly by restricting financing.

“Never before in our history has Congress attempted to control or restrict strategic battlefield decisions,” Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, said. “It is wrong as a matter of policy and it will come back to haunt us for years to come.”

The deliberations represented the third major Iraq debate in four years, but with Democrats controlling Congress, the rules, tone and outcome changed. Republicans were not allowed to offer their own alternative proposal, but they forcefully defended the president and his policy.

Now, questions of financing the conflict loom large for Democrats in Congress. The White House and Republicans pre-emptively accused the party of starting along a path to cut financing for the troops, a suggestion Democratic leaders denied. But some of their rank and file are pressing for exactly that.

On Friday afternoon, as the debate neared an end, people seated in the gallery applauded when Ms. Pelosi praised the fortitude of American forces. Lawmakers and spectators rose as she called for a moment of silence to honor the more than 3,100 United States troops who have died in Iraq since the conflict began.

The resolution specifically stated Congress’s disapproval of the president’s plan to deploy more than 20,000 troops to Iraq, which Mr. Bush outlined in a speech on Jan. 10. But through more than 45 hours of deliberations, the debate grew far beyond the context of the resolution.

The arguments grew familiar as the hours marched past, with lawmaker after lawmaker rising to address what was typically a nearly empty chamber. Democrats argued that Americans should not referee a civil war, that previous efforts to pour more troops into Iraq had failed and that diplomatic measures were the only way out of the crisis.

Republicans, meanwhile, sought to portray the war in Iraq as a key battleground in a titanic global struggle against militant Islam and criticized the resolution as a slap in the face for troops on the battlefield. Failure in Iraq, they said, would lead to widespread instability in the region.

“What we’re doing with this resolution is not a salute to G.I. Joe,” said Representative Phil Gingrey, a Georgia Republican. “It’s a capitulation to Jihadist Joe.”

The White House, reacting to the vote, turned its attention to what many assume will be the next fight: the president’s spending request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The president,” Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said, “believes that the Congress should provide the full funding and flexibility our armed forces need to succeed in their mission to protect our country.”

Even before the House voted at midafternoon, senators had already started to speak about the resolution in their chamber. The Senate has been locked in a stalemate over Iraq for two weeks, but Democratic leaders are seeking to put Republicans on the record during a brief Saturday session.

Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the chairman of the Republican Conference, dismissed the significance of the weekend vote, which is on a procedural question, and announced that he and Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, were flying to Baghdad instead. Two Democrats scheduled to take the trip canceled.

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, planned to miss the vote to campaign in Iowa. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton planned to break away from campaigning in New Hampshire to vote.

Iraq has dominated this session of Congress. While Democrats are broadly aligned against the war, there is little unity on the next step. Some lawmakers seek to cut financing and cap troop levels while others propose delving into war strategy.

“There is a long tradition of Congressional dissent during wartime, but I don’t know that it’s ever formalized itself the way this is shaping up,” said the associate Senate historian, Donald Ritchie. “Taking a stand in opposition to a commander in chief’s decision on a war policy, that’s unusual.”

After the vote, Democratic leaders painted their victory as an expression of public outrage at the war and a sign that the new Congress intends to challenge the president. “It’s the first time he has had a review of his policy, rather than a rubber stamp,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Caucus.

Representative Boehner, the Republican leader, said the Iraq debate highlighted the intentions by Democrats to begin reducing financing of the war, which he described as “a slow-bleed policy that cuts off funding and reinforcements for our troops in harm’s way.”

Representative John P. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat who oversees defense appropriations, has said he would seek to block new deployments by requiring troops to meet a series of conditions and training guidelines. A day before the vote, he presented his plan in a 24-minute broadcast on MoveCongress.org, a Web site dedicated to ending the war.

Democratic lawmakers and senior aides said they believed Mr. Murtha’s appearance could have kept some Republicans from supporting the resolution, fearful of being linked to the antiwar coalition.

But for all the attention paid to the symbolic resolution, it remains an open question whether it will have much immediate effect.

“It is very hard to change war policy from Capitol Hill,” said Representative David R. Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat and chairman of the Appropriations Committee. “We won’t have a real solution on Iraq until Republicans walk down to the White House and say, Mr. President, the jig is up, this is a bad direction and you need to rethink what you’re doing.”

    A Divided House Denounces Plan for More Troops, NYT, 17.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/17/washington/17cong.html?em&ex=1171861200&en=92c6e53d1e1a0c54&ei=5087%0A

House Panel Questions

Monitoring of Cash Shipped to Iraq

February 7, 2007
The New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 — A House committee report on Tuesday questioned whether some of the billions of dollars in cash shipped to Iraq after the American invasion — mostly in huge, shrink-wrapped stacks of $100 bills — might have ended up with the insurgent groups now battling American troops.

The report was released by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at a hearing when Democrats sharply questioned the former American civilian administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, about lax management of the nearly $12 billion in cash shipped to Iraq between May 2003 and June 2004.

Mr. Bremer defended his performance as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, noting that the United States had to bring tons of American dollars into Iraq because the country had no functioning banking system.

“We had to pay Iraqis in cash,” Mr. Bremer said of the money, most of which came from Iraqi oil sales. “Delay would have been demoralizing and unfair to millions of Iraqi families.”

Government auditors have repeatedly criticized the American and Iraqi governments for failing to monitor the money once it reached Iraq.

Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is the committee’s new chairman, acknowledged that he had no evidence that Iraqi insurgent groups had received any of the cash. But he suggested that it was possible, given how much money was rushed into the country.

“We have no way of knowing if the cash that was shipped into the Green Zone ended up in enemy hands,” he said. “We owe it to the American people to do everything we can to find out where the $12 billion went.”

The hearing was evidence of the turnaround in Mr. Bremer’s standing in Washington.

Hailed by Republicans and Democrats alike when he last testified at a Congressional hearing in 2004, Mr. Bremer found himself the target of sharp criticism from Democrats on Tuesday. They questioned whether his decisions might help to explain the continuing turmoil in Iraq. He stepped down from his Iraq post in June 2004.

“I acknowledged that I made mistakes,” Mr. Bremer said. “And with the benefit of hindsight, I would have made some decisions differently.” But he said that given the chaos he found after arriving in Iraq in May 2003, “I think we made great progress under some of the most difficult conditions imaginable.”

Mr. Waxman, whose panel is pursuing investigations of fraud and abuse by the federal government and its contractors in Iraq, said he found it remarkable that the Bush administration had decided to send billions of dollars of American currency into Iraq so quickly after the United States occupied the country.

The committee calculated that the $12 billion in cash, most of it in the stacks of $100 bills, weighed 363 tons and had to been flown in on wooden pallets aboard giant C-130 military cargo planes. “Who in their right mind would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?” Mr. Waxman said. “That’s exactly what our government did.”

Republican committee members accused the panel’s Democratic leaders of rehashing old allegations against Mr. Bremer and the conduct of American forces in Iraq for political gain.

“Self-righteous finger-wagging will not make Iraq any more secure,” said Representative Tom Davis of Virginia, the panel’s ranking Republican. He said Mr. Bremer was asked to take charge of a “country with, basically, no government.”

    House Panel Questions Monitoring of Cash Shipped to Iraq, NYT, 7.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/07/washington/07bremer.html

Rev. Robert Drinan,

Ex-Congressman,

Dies at 86

January 29, 2007
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 (AP) — The Rev. Robert F. Drinan, a Jesuit who served in Congress for 10 years until stepping down in response to a papal order, died Sunday. He was 86 and lived here in housing for the Georgetown University Jesuit community.

A university statement Sunday night said Father Drinan had recently been ill with pneumonia and congestive heart failure.

An internationally known human rights advocate, Father Drinan represented Massachusetts in the House of Representatives for 10 years in the 1970s, stepping down only after a worldwide directive from Pope John Paul II barring priests from holding public office.

He was elected in 1970 as a Democrat, after defeating Representative Philip J. Philbin in a primary and again in the November election, when Mr. Philbin was a write-in candidate.

The only other priest to serve in Congress was a nonvoting delegate from Michigan in 1823.

Although a poll at the time showed that 30 percent of the voters in his district thought it was improper for a priest to run for office, Father Drinan considered politics a natural extension of his work in public affairs and human rights.

His bid for office came a year after he returned from a trip to Vietnam, where he said he discovered that the number of political prisoners being held in South Vietnam was rapidly increasing, contrary to State Department reports.

In a book the next year, he urged the Catholic Church to condemn the war as “morally objectionable.”

Father Drinan ran for Congress on a platform of opposition to the Vietnam War. During his Congressional tenure, he continued to dress in the robes of his clerical order and lived in a simple room in the Jesuit community at Georgetown.

But Father Drinan wore his liberal views more prominently. He opposed the draft, worked to abolish mandatory retirement and raised eyebrows with his more moderate views on abortion and birth control.

And he became the first member of Congress to call for the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon — although the call was not related to the Watergate scandal, but to what Father Drinan viewed as the administration’s undeclared war against Cambodia.

“Can we be silent about this flagrant violation of the Constitution?” Father Drinan asked. “Can we impeach a president for concealing a burglary but not for concealing a massive bombing?”

Decades later, at the invitation of Congress, he testified against the impeachment of another president, Bill Clinton. Father Drinan said Mr. Clinton’s misdeeds were not as serious as Nixon’s, and that impeachment should be for an official act, not a private one.

He told the Judiciary Committee members reviewing Mr. Clinton’s case that, in 1974, “the country knew there was extensive lawlessness in the White House.”

“The documentation of appalling crimes was known by everyone,” he continued. “Abuse of power and criminality were apparent to the American people.”

Father Drinan left office in 1980 — “with regret and pain” — finally yielding to the increased pressure from his superiors, including the pope.

But he continued to be active in political causes. He served as president of the Americans for Democratic Action, crisscrossing the country giving speeches on hunger, civil liberties and the perils of the arms race. He spoke out against President Ronald Reagan and President Bush, and lectured and wrote about gun control, world hunger and the war on terrorism’s impact on human rights.

He also took a post as professor of law at Georgetown University in 1981, where he taught courses on human rights, constitutional law, civil liberties, legislation, ethics and professional responsibility.

    Rev. Robert Drinan, Ex-Congressman, Dies at 86, NYT, 29.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/us/29drinan.html

House Approves

Page Program Overhaul

January 19, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:32 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House voted Friday to overhaul the board that supervises its congressional page program, seeking to close the book on a sordid e-mail and sex scandal that sullied its reputation and became a Campaign 2006 issue.

Specifically, lawmakers voted 416-0 to provide that both parties have equal say in overseeing the program, as old as the institution itself.

The purpose of the resolution the members approved Friday was to ensure that teen-age pages no longer are vulnerable to the kinds of electronic-message come-ons associated with now-resigned Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla.

The bipartisan resolution resulted from the failure of the House Page Board's past Republican chairman, Illinois Republican John Shimkus, to notify other board members that Foley had sent questionable e-mails to a former page.

Pages are high school students who learn about Congress while running errands and attending a congressionally-run school

The new, eight-member board will include an equal number of lawmakers from each party and include a former page and the parent of a current or former page. The board also would have to meet regularly.

Foley resigned his seat last September after news accounts revealed how he became acquainted with male pages while they worked in Congress, and then sent them the improper messages after they left -- including sexually explicit instant messages.

The sponsors of the resolution are Reps. Dale Kildee, D-Mich., and Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., two page board members who were never informed by Shimkus of Foley's questionable e-mails to a former page until the lawmaker resigned last Sept. 29.

Shimkus had learned of Foley's e-mails in November 2005. While he went with the House clerk to confront Foley, Shimkus never convened a page board meeting and Foley failed to stop his messages to male former pages.

''The board must not only be free of partisanship, but must function so all of the members have access'' to allegations of misconduct, said Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald, D-Calif., chairman of the Committee on House Administration.

Rep. Vernon Ehlers, R-Mich., senior Republican on the committee, said the failure to convene the page board to deal with Foley ''made the problem even worse.''

The Kildee-Capito resolution expands the board membership to eight, including the former page and the parent. There also would be four House members -- equally divided by party -- as well as the clerk of the House and the sergeant-at-arms.

The previous board had five members: three lawmakers -- two from the majority -- plus the clerk and sergeant-at-arms.

''We look forward to operating the page program in an effective manner,'' Kildee said. The new board, he added, will ensure ''the well-being of the young people who serve this House as pages.''

Capito said the equal representation ''takes it out of the political realm. There's no way there should be a partisan upper hand when talking about the governance of the page board.''

She said she recalled only two or three meetings since joining the board in March 2005. Having a parent and former page gives the board ''another set of eyes and ears'' if a problem develops, she added.

The House ethics committee, in its report on the Foley case, said that former House chief clerk Jeff Trandahl warned Shimkus that Foley was a ''ticking time bomb'' who had been confronted repeatedly about his conduct.

The warning came in November 2005. The board chairman confronted Foley with Trandahl and told him to stop sending e-mails to a former Louisiana page.

When Foley resigned, Shimkus still had not convened the page board.

    House Approves Page Program Overhaul, NYT, 19.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-House-Pages.html

Ex-Congressman Sentenced to 30 Months in Prison

January 19, 2007
The New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON and JOHN HOLUSHA

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 — Former Congressman Bob Ney was sentenced to 30 months in prison today for accepting tens of thousands of dollars in illegal gifts in return for using his legislative influence to help his benefactors.

Prosecutors had sought a sentence of 27 months and Mr. Ney’s lawyers had asked for no more than two years.

Mr. Ney, a Republican from Ohio, pleaded guilty last year to two counts of conspiracy and making false statement in the scandals linked to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is in jail.

Prosecutors had asked for a sentence at the lower lend of the 27- to-33 month range recommended by federal sentencing guidelines because Mr. Ney had cooperated with investigators.

But Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, of the U.S. District Court in Washington, said Mr. Ney deserved additional time because of his “significant and serious abuse of the public trust.”

“You have a long way to make amends for what you have done,” she said. The sentence includes two years of probation after release from prison, 200 hours of community service and a $6,000 fine.

Mr. Ney, who did not run for reelection, blamed his problems on alcohol addiction and asked to be placed in a prison drug abuse program, which could have made him eligible for release after a year in prison.

Judge Huvelle noted the problem with alcohol, but said, “I don’t think that explains everything.” Nevertheless, she recommended that he be sent to a prison in Morgantown, W. Va., where there is a drug treatment program.

Mr. Ney, who appeared composed during the 20-minute sentencing procedure, issued a statement in which apologized to his family, friends and constituents. “I stand here today with deep regret and I stand here sorrowful.”

He said he was dealing with the “demands of an addiction that was always with me.”

The prosecutor, Mary Butler, said Mr. Ney “failed his constituents in Ohio, failed his colleagues in the House of Representatives.”

Mr. Ney’s seat was captured by a Democrat as that party won control of the House of Representatives at least partly by campaigning against Republican sale-of-influence scandals.

In his plea bargain last year, Mr. Ney admitted that he had essentially sold his office to Mr. Abramoff’s lobbying operation and others in return for a series of lavish gifts.

Those gifts included overseas trips, the use of skyboxes at Washington-area sports arenas, meals, concert tickets and thousands of dollars worth of gambling chips in London casinos.

    Ex-Congressman Sentenced to 30 Months in Prison, NYT, 19.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/19/washington/19cnd-ney.html?hp&ex=1169269200&en=77475bb26d97c30a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

House OKs bill that cuts student loan interest rates

Updated 1/17/2007 10:06 PM ET
AP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democratic-controlled House voted overwhelmingly to cut interest rates on need-based student loans Wednesday, steadily whittling its list of early legislative priorities.

The legislation, passed 356-71, would slice rates on the subsidized loans from 6.8% to 3.4% in stages over five years at a cost to taxpayers of $6 billion. About 5.5 million students receive the loans each year.

The Bush administration opposes the bill, and Senate Democrats plan to bring up a more comprehensive bill that could complicate its prospects.

Though clearly popular, the legislation sparked a debate over where to set the nation's education priorities — helping college graduates pay off their debts or expanding federal grants for low-income students.

Democrats conceded that Congress needs to do more to make college more affordable. But they said reducing student loan rates was a significant step toward tuition relief.

"Many young people find themselves where I was when I was at age 18, wondering what they will do with their lives," said Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., a daughter of immigrants who is still paying off her student loans. "To those students, especially those whose parents didn't go to college, the prospect of student loan debt is frightening."

The House bill aims to reduce the $6 billion cost by reducing the government's guaranteed return to lenders that make student loans, trimming the amount the government pays for defaulted loans and requiring banks to pay more in fees. Lending institutions opposed the bill.

"A strategy of raiding a financial aid program to fund modest proposals is inadequate to the challenge," said Kevin Bruns, executive director of the America's Student Loan Providers, which represents leading lenders.

Though the legislation matched the Democrats' pledge to pass a student loan measure in the first 100 hours of the new Congress, it fell short of their broader goal of lowering interest rates for parents who take out college loans for their children. During the 2006 congressional campaigns, Democrats also said they wanted to increase the maximum Pell grant award from $4,050 to $5,100. Pell grants go only to the neediest students and do not have to be paid back.

"We want to increase the Pell grant," said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the Education and Labor Committee. "We hope to be able to enlarge the tax deductions for parents paying for tuition and the cost of college beyond that."

Republicans argued that Democrats had chosen a politically expedient way to make good on a campaign promise instead of finding ways to increase federal college grants to help the poor meet rising college tuition.

"It is a whoop-de-do bill," said Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah. "But, to be honest, what it does for my kids in college is nothing. What it does for the friends of my kids in college is nothing. What it does for the students I taught in high school and are still in college is basically nothing when it could have done so much more." Still, 124 Republicans voted for the bill.

    House OKs bill that cuts student loan interest rates, UT, 17.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/college/2007-01-17-house-student-loans_x.htm

House Democrats Pass Bill on Medicare Drug Prices

January 13, 2007
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 — Defying a veto threat, the House on Friday passed a bill to require the government to negotiate with drug manufacturers to obtain lower drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries.

The vote, 255 to 170, was cast with lightning speed eight days after the new Congress convened. No Democrat voted against it, while 24 Republicans joined the 231 Democrats voting in favor.

Representative Christopher S. Murphy, a freshman Democrat from Connecticut, said, “This bill has symbolic importance, breaking the grasp of the drug industry on this town.”

It is, Mr. Murphy added, “the beginning of a process to repair the Medicare drug benefit.”

The measure is unlikely to become law in its current form. But some version, focusing on certain types of very expensive drugs, has bipartisan support in the Senate and could eventually be included in a measure to revamp the drug benefit, which a Republican-led Congress created in 2003.

The bill, which fulfills a Democratic campaign promise, says the secretary of health and human services “shall negotiate with pharmaceutical manufacturers the prices that may be charged” to Medicare drug plans.

The 2003 law prohibits such negotiations. The drug benefit is delivered by private insurers, subsidized by the government. These companies have negotiated substantial discounts with drug manufacturers. Under the House bill, insurers could seek discounts deeper than those negotiated by the government.

Representative Joe L. Barton, Republican of Texas, predicted that the bill would die “a nice benign death.”

The White House press secretary, Tony Snow, said, “If this bill is presented to the president, he will veto it.”

Democrats, who like to portray Republicans as a tool of special interests, said a veto would hand them an issue that could be used to good effect in the 2008 elections.

Some experts, including the Congressional Budget Office and Medicare actuaries, say they doubt that the bill would save money for older people or the government.

If the government, for example, tried to negotiate a discount for a particular drug and the manufacturer refused to lower its price, it is not clear what, if any, recourse Medicare would have. Without the ability to steer patients to particular drugs, the budget office said, Medicare would not have the leverage to obtain significant discounts.

Representative Tom Price, Republican of Georgia, described the bill as “a solution in search of a problem.” The cost of the drug benefit is lower than expected, Mr. Price said, and the number of drug plans available to beneficiaries — more than 40 in every state — is higher than expected.

In the House debate, each party used somewhat contradictory arguments. Republicans said the bill would not save any money because the government could not restrict access to drugs. But then they said the legislation would limit the drugs available to doctors and patients.

“A government bureaucrat will be empowered to determine what kinds of drugs our seniors have access to,” the Republican whip, Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, said. “If the government could not reach a deal with a drug company, seniors would not have access to those drugs.”

For their part, Democrats said Medicare was overpaying for drugs and could obtain much lower prices if it negotiated with drug manufacturers, as the Department of Veterans Affairs does. But Democrats said they did not want to give Medicare two of the most powerful tools used by the veterans agency: the ability to establish a “federal ceiling price” and a uniform list of covered drugs, known as a national formulary.

While sketchy about details of their proposal, Democrats were clear that their purpose was to help beneficiaries and to reduce drug companies’ profits in the Medicare market.

Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan and chief sponsor of the bill, said, “Those who insist that the sky will fall if drug companies negotiate lower prescription prices are arguing that those companies should continue to skin a fat hog at the expense of taxpayers and beneficiaries.”

Another Democrat, Representative Lois Capps of California, said: “We can vote in favor of large drug companies that have raked in record profits under the Medicare drug plan. Or we can vote in favor of our senior constituents. Common sense tells me that the big drug and insurance companies would not be so adamantly opposed to this bill if they did not fear that it could result in actual price reductions.”

Republicans said Medicare drug plans already had the power to negotiate drug prices and were using it. But Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, said, “This power is splintered now among numerous private plans.”

The Medicare bill was one of the high-priority measures that Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to pass in the first 100 hours of the new Congress.

    House Democrats Pass Bill on Medicare Drug Prices, NYT, 13.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/13/washington/13drug.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

House backs broader embryonic stem cell research

Thu Jan 11, 2007 5:52 PM ET
Reuters
By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The new Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives voted on Thursday to lift President George W. Bush's restrictions on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research.

But the vote of 253-174, largely along party lines, fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a promised presidential veto.

The measure passed after an emotional debate in which supporters touted the research as the best hope for potential cures for ailments such as Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injuries.

Opponents condemned it as unethical and immoral. Bush restricted funding for the research in August 2001.

Bush, whose support base includes conservative Christian voters who tend to oppose the use of stem cells taken from human embryos, in July used the only veto of his presidency to date to reject an identical measure.

The White House reiterated Bush's intention to use his veto power, saying American taxpayers should not pay for research involving the intentional destruction of human embryos.

The bill is part of a six-measure package that House Democrats vowed to vote on during their "first 100 legislative hours" after winning control of Congress from Bush's Republicans in November elections.

Already this week, the House passed two other bills in the Democrats' legislative package, one to bolster U.S. security and the other to raise the federal minimum wage.

The stem cell bill now goes to the Senate, where supporters believe it will pass with a veto-proof two-thirds majority.

The debate can transcend party politics, with some anti-abortion Republicans strongly supporting the research. Thirty-seven Republicans backed the bill on Thursday, while 16 Democrats opposed it.

SANCTITY OF LIFE

"I believe this legislation does not seek to destroy life," said House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland.

"It seeks to preserve and protect life," he said. "We have a moral obligation to provide our scientific community with the tools it needs to save lives."

Many scientists view embryonic stem cells as the potential raw material for a new era of regenerative medicine, hoping to harness the unique qualities of the cells to repair damaged tissue. Such therapies are seen as years in the future.

Stem cells are a kind of master cell for the body, capable of growing into various tissue and cell types. Those taken from days-old embryos are especially malleable but "adult" stem cells found in babies and adults also have shown promise.

Rep. Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican, favors research on stem cells not taken from embryos but opposes the current measure.

"Where will this all take us? If this bill were to be passed and signed into law, we would see the demise -- the destruction -- over time ... of millions of embryos," he said.

There is no U.S. law against human embryonic stem cell research. Bush's 2001 policy limited federal funding to research on the human embryonic stem cell colonies, or lines, that existed at the time.

Some scientists say many of those roughly 20 lines are deteriorating, contaminated or were developed through obsolete methods, making them inadequate to determine the potential therapeutic value of embryonic stem cells.

The bill would allow federal funding on research involving stem cell lines derived from embryos created at fertility clinics that would otherwise be thrown away because they are not needed to implant in a woman to make a baby.

The bill is sponsored by Reps. Mike Castle, a Delaware Republican, and Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat. Last year, the House passed the bill 235-193 before Bush's veto.

    House backs broader embryonic stem cell research, R, 11.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2007-01-11T225001Z_01_WAT006848_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-CONGRESS-STEMCELL.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-politicsNews-3

House, by a Wide Margin, Backs Minimum-Wage Rise

January 11, 2007
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 — The House overwhelmingly approved a $2.10-an-hour increase in the federal minimum wage on Wednesday, in a vote that Democrats hailed as overdue and a symbol of new leadership on Capitol Hill.

The Democrats, who campaigned against Republicans last year for repeatedly allowing Congressional pay raises when they were in the majority and yet refusing for almost a decade to raise the wage floor from $5.15, said the new, three-step increase for hard-pressed employees would be in sharp contrast to Republican tax cuts approved for the affluent.

“This is the day for the people who empty the bedpans, change the bed linens, sweep the floors and do the hardest work of America,” Representative Robert E. Andrews, Democrat of New Jersey, said before the 315-to-116 vote.

Several Republicans spoke against the legislation, a centerpiece of the House Democrats’ 100-hour domestic legislative agenda, on the ground that it would reduce the number of available jobs and so deny opportunities to those trying to enter the work force. But 82 Republicans joined all 233 Democrats in supporting the bill, unwilling to cast a vote that could have made them appear unsympathetic to Americans trying to get by on a minimum wage that has not been raised since September 1997.

“Let’s not trample on the market, but recognize that nine years is long enough,” said Representative Zach Wamp, Republican of Tennessee.

The measure would increase the minimum wage to $5.85 an hour 60 days after being signed into law, to $6.55 one year after that, and to $7.25 after an additional year. For a minimum-wage employee working full time, $7.25 would mean about $4,000 a year more than the current floor.

But the House vote is far from the final word. The legislation now goes to the Senate, where members of both parties have indicated that they intend to tie it to tax breaks for small businesses, to help offset any new costs arising from the wage increase. Linking the two is seen by many as a prerequisite to rounding up the 60 votes needed to overcome any filibuster and open the door to negotiations between the House and the Senate over a final bill. President Bush has indicated that he would sign a bill providing for a wage increase with related tax breaks.

“The 110th Congress is going to do the right thing and finally deliver a minimum-wage increase,” the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, said Wednesday. “And at the same time, we should help keep jobs available to America’s workers by helping small businesses absorb this wage hike.”

In recent years, Republicans repeatedly rebuffed Democratic proposals to raise the minimum, arguing that it could slow the economy. Under pressure from Republicans in swing districts, the leadership last year did allow a vote on an increase, but tied it to a repeal of the estate tax. Democrats, backed by organized labor and other interests, blocked that proposal in the Senate.

During the fall campaign, Democrats made inaction on the minimum wage a mainstay of their arguments against Republican control. Breaking an informal agreement with Republicans not to trade partisan charges over Congressional pay, they contrasted the stalled minimum-wage rate and lawmakers’ regular cost-of-living increases. Trying to insulate themselves, the Republicans agreed late last year that Congress would get no more pay raises until a minimum-wage increase was approved.

On Wednesday, Republicans criticized Democrats for blocking any efforts to change the House measure by including small-business tax breaks.

“It is troubling that this bill gives no thought to softening the impact on our engines of new job growth,” said Representative Wally Herger, Republican of California.

But Democrats were determined to raise the wage floor with no strings attached.

“Can’t you just give these workers an increase and be done with it?” Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and the new chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, asked his colleagues.

Despite their longstanding opposition, two mainstays of the Washington business lobby — the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business — made only a perfunctory effort to influence the House vote, sending members letters of opposition but otherwise conceding the issue.

“It was a foregone conclusion,” said Michael J. Donohue, a spokesman for the federation, which represents small businesses. “Our lobbyists assessed that this wasn’t the best way to spend their energy.”

The vote was celebrated by organized labor, which is seeing its influence in Congress enhanced with the return of a Democratic majority. But John J. Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., joined with Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and a longtime advocate of the wage increase, in urging the Senate to pass the measure without offsetting benefits for businesses.

“Business has enjoyed hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts since Bush took office,” Mr. Sweeney said in a statement, “while health care, secure retirements and the minimum wage have all been on government’s back burner.”

On the House floor, meanwhile, Speaker Nancy Pelosi beamed after the final vote as she brought down her gavel and Democrats cheered the lopsided margin.

    House, by a Wide Margin, Backs Minimum-Wage Rise, NYT, 11.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/washington/11wage.html

Editorial

Moving Ahead on Stem Cells

January 10, 2007
The New York Times

House Democrats are poised to push through a bill this week that would loosen President Bush’s restrictions on federal support of embryonic stem cell research. The bill will be opposed by legislators beholden to religious conservatives. Many are likely to cite a new study suggesting that broadly useful stem cells can be derived from amniotic fluid without destroying embryos to get them.

The new study, while certainly intriguing, in no way lessens the need to widen the array of embryonic stem cells available for research and ultimately therapy. The Democrats’ proposal is extremely modest — about the least that could be done to accelerate progress in this promising field. It deserves support from veto-proof majorities in both houses.

Under the policy enunciated by Mr. Bush in 2001, federal money can be used to support research on only 20 or so stem cell lines that existed before the policy was set. Many of these cell lines are deteriorating or contaminated. And their number is far too small to allow the full range of research needed to explore the value of stem cells for treating Parkinson’s, diabetes, spinal cord injuries and other serious ailments.

The Democrats’ bill would expand the number of lines by directing the secretary of health and human services to finance research using human embryonic stem cells regardless of when they were derived. The source of these cells would remain highly restricted. No embryonic stem cells could be tailor-made to study specific diseases or therapies. The stem cells would have to be derived only from surplus embryos that were originally created for fertility treatments and would otherwise be discarded.

An alternative approach that attracted wide attention this week was described by scientists at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. They extracted stem cells from the amniotic fluid of pregnant women and used them to create muscle, bone, fat, blood vessel, nerve and liver cells. These stem cells, spun off by the developing fetus, seem to have some — though quite probably not all — of the versatility that allows embryonic stem cells to grow into a wide range of body tissues. The fetal cells are easily obtainable from the amniotic fluid during amniocentesis, a diagnostic procedure often performed in the second trimester of a pregnancy.

Even so, it would be a mistake to use this promising research, which has yet to be replicated or fully accepted by other scientists, as another excuse for hobbling embryonic stem cell research. The days-old embryonic cells are likely more versatile than fetal cells extracted months later from amniotic fluid, and they allow a range of research on the very earliest stages of human development.

Stem cell research holds enormous promise, though top researchers say it could take a decade or more to develop useful therapies from it. At this point, it is important to explore all approaches: using “adult” stem cells, which can grow into a very limited range of body tissues; the cells found in amniotic fluid, which may yield a broader range of tissues; and the most versatile cells of all, those derived from early human embryos.

    Moving Ahead on Stem Cells, NYT, 10.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/opinion/10wed1.html

House easily passes anti-terror bill

Updated 1/9/2007 10:11 PM ET
AP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — Anti-terror legislation sailed through the House on Tuesday, the first in a string of measures designed to fulfill campaign promises made by Democrats last fall.

Patterned on recommendations of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, the far-reaching measure includes commitments for inspection of all cargo carried aboard passenger aircraft and on ships bound for the United States.

The vote was a bipartisan 299-128.

"Our first and highest duty as members of this Congress is to protect the American people, to defend our homeland and to strengthen our national security," said Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md.

Several Republicans criticized the legislation as little more than political posturing in the early hours of a new Democratic-controlled Congress. Democrats want to "look aggressive on homeland security. This bill will waste billions of dollars, and possibly harm homeland security by gumming up progress already underway," said Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky.

In a written statement, the Bush administration listed several objections and said it could not support the measure as drafted but stopped short of a veto threat.

Democrats have pledged to make fiscal responsibility a priority in the new Congress, but they advanced the bill — their first of the year — without even a bare-bones accounting of the estimated cost. The funding will require follow-up legislation.

Legislation introduced in the Senate a year ago to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 commission had a price tag of more than $53 billion over five years.

The terrorism legislation is the first of six measures the House is expected to pass as Democrats work to get off to a quick start.

Next up is an increase in the minimum wage — set for passage on Wednesday — followed by relaxation of the limits on stem cell research conducted with federal funds and a measure directing the administration to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices for Medicare recipients.

Next week, the Democrats intend to clear legislation to cut the interest rate on student loans and to curtail tax breaks for the energy industry.

Each of the six bills would go to the Senate, and it could be months — if then — before they reach the White House.

Already, President Bush has signaled he would veto the stem cell bill, which is opposed by abortion foes. House supporters of the measure conceded at a news conference during the day that they do not have the two-thirds support needed to override a veto.

Depending on the outcome of that struggle, said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., "400,000 embryos will either be wasted or utilized to cure a disease."

The House labored over the terrorism bill as the Senate began work on legislation enacting stricter ethics rules — and Democrats continued to gain from last fall's elections.

Officials said that four of Bush's controversial appeals court appointees, their chances for confirmation doomed in the Democratic-controlled Senate, would not be renominated.

The four are William Haynes, William Myers, Terrence Boyle and Michael Wallace, all of whom were prevented from coming to votes last year when the Senate was under Republican control.

"The president is disappointed in this inaction and hopes that the days of judicial obstructionism are beyond us," said Dana Perino, deputy White House spokeswoman.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., saw it differently. "Democrats stand ready to work with the administration to confirm judges who are not extremists, either left or right," he said.

In the House, the anti-terror bill was fraught with political symbolism.

Democrats said it would enact virtually all of the unfulfilled recommendations of the 9/11 commission, and several members of the rank and file remarked that Republicans had failed to do so in five years since planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and scarred the Pennsylvanian countryside.

"Don't be fooled by those who say that this bill is moving too quickly," said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. "It has been five years since 9/11. It has been three years since the 9/11 commission issued its report."

"The fact is that the bipartisan 9/11 commission gave the last Congress F's and D's in implementing its recommendations," said Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va. "This Congress is determined to earn its A's in implementing its recommendations."

Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., noted disapprovingly that screeners at the Transportation Security Agency would receive collective bargaining rights under the bill.

And Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said the measure "gives false hope to the American people" because technology for scanning all cargo containers is not yet available.

The legislation directs the Homeland Security Department to establish a system for inspecting all cargo carried on passenger aircraft over the next three years. It also requires scanning of all containers bound for the U.S., using the best available technology. Large ports would be given three years to comply, smaller ports five years.

While much of the debate revolved around the provisions dealing with cargo, the bill also requires the government to take the risk of terror attacks into greater account when distributing homeland security grants to the 50 states.

The measure also would centralize the government's efforts at preventing nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists and would take steps to disrupt the black market for nuclear material.

"We will not be safe here as long as the worst weapons can fall into the worst hands," said Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash.

The measure also establishes a new program of grants to make sure local governments can communicate effectively in the event of a crisis.

One of the tragedies of 9/11 was the deaths of New York firefighters who were trapped inside the World Trade Center and could not hear urgent warnings to evacuate that were broadcast on police radios.

A companion measure, to establish a new House subcommittee with jurisdiction over intelligence matters, cleared on a vote of 239-188.

    House easily passes anti-terror bill, UT, 9.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-09-terrorbill_x.htm

After Many Years,

It’s Rangel’s Turn at the Helm

January 8, 2007
The New York Times
By ROBIN TONER

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 — It is the committee that produced the Social Security and Medicare laws, that created the modern welfare state and reinvented it in the 1990s, that raised taxes and slashed them, again and again and again. No committee, arguably, has more power or attracts more lobbyists than the Committee on Ways and Means. House members sometimes wait for years for a seat on it, then for decades to rise in seniority.

Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York, joined the committee in 1975, and now, at the age of 76, has finally arrived at the very top. He takes the chairmanship of the 41-member panel, with a new majority of 24 Democrats, at a moment fraught with risk and possibility. Over the next two years, the committee will play a central role in defining, and financing, the Democratic Party’s agenda after 12 years out of power.

In its sprawling meeting rooms (decorated with heroic portraits of chairmen past), the committee will now have to deal with all the Democrats’ conflicting promises, barely submerged tensions and competing visions from last year’s midterm elections.

The language may be arcane, the legislation incremental, but the issues before the members touch the lives of millions of Americans as they grapple with a changing and sometimes unsettling economy: how to balance the demands of globalization with the fears of many Americans that free trade no longer works for them. How to abide by the principles of fiscal responsibility, while investing in education, health care and other core benefits for an increasingly anxious middle class.

How to maintain the benefits and control the costs in Medicare as the first wave of baby boomers retires. What to do about the huge Bush tax cuts that begin to expire in 2010, a tempting target for liberals but a political landmine for Democrats trying to avoid the old charge of “taxing and spending.”

All over Washington, lobbyists, tax lawyers and business leaders, with vast amounts of corporate wealth and power on the line, are acutely focused on the committee — and on the man who now leads it. Moments after the Democratic transfer of power became official Thursday, Mr. Rangel walked across the crowded Capitol to a reception for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, a fellow New York Democrat, and almost everyone he passed offered a hand, a cheek, a business card, a heartfelt (and occasionally groveling) congratulation.

“Mr. Chairman, what do I do, kneel, genuflect, what?” one woman said. Another man, suddenly recognizing the chairman, blurted out: “We’ve got to set up a meeting!” One after another asked, almost meekly, “Can I give you my card?” Mr. Rangel seemed utterly enchanted by it all. When he arrived at the reception, he joined the other alpha male in the room, Mrs. Clinton’s husband, and settled happily into small talk, surrounded by flashing cameras, filming cellphones and beaming onlookers.

Mr. Rangel acknowledged, with a laugh, that he is now treated quite differently by the business and lobbying community. “I would be doing the same thing, to be honest with you,” he said. “You’ve got to get along with the people who make the decisions and chair the committees.” For example, Mr. Rangel added, business leaders consumed with expanding trade are suddenly displaying (at least in his presence) a “more sensitive understanding of the pain that it causes some people.” It is, in short, good to be king.

Mr. Rangel is in some ways an unlikely leader for the new Democratic Party, which regained its Congressional majority in large part because of suburban voters, often in very competitive districts. The first black representative to lead the committee, Mr. Rangel comes from an urban and exceedingly safe district; it had the largest margin of Democratic presidential votes in the country in 2004, with just 9 percent going to President Bush, according to the Almanac of American Politics.

Since he won his seat in 1970, defeating Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in a Democratic primary, Mr. Rangel has been easily re-elected, and able to deliver the federal largess that seniority brings. His district has had only two congressmen in more than 60 years.

Mr. Rangel is, by most measures, a liberal, although he said in an interview last month that he would no more be a “Harlem chairman” than Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, would be a “San Francisco speaker.” After 12 agonizing years in the minority, when friends urged him to leave the House and give up the distant prospect of the chairmanship, he says he is determined to make the job work and get things done. That means building consensus and reaching out, not just in his own party but across the aisle, to Congressional Republicans and the Bush administration.

He cannot work the way his predecessor, Representative Bill Thomas of California, did — by driving his own party hard and winning votes by absolute party unity. “Democrats don’t work in lockstep,” Mr. Rangel said. And even if they did, any purely partisan legislation faces the possibility of a presidential veto.

All this political caution and elaborate bipartisanship does not come easily to Mr. Rangel. He is given to speaking his mind, recently affirming, for example, his support for a return of the draft to highlight the unequal sharing of the burden of war. It is not a popular position, and Mr. Rangel said his party leaders “kindly” reminded him that “it wasn’t in my jurisdiction.”

During the midterm campaign, Republicans repeatedly, and at times successfully, tried to provoke Mr. Rangel. Vice President Dick Cheney said, at one point, that Mr. Rangel “doesn’t understand how the economy works” and would return to taxing and spending; Mr. Rangel unloaded in turn.

Now, he is trying hard to be restrained, about Mr. Bush, his administration and his tax cuts. When asked about Mr. Bush’s renewed insistence last week that Congress extend those tax provisions, Mr. Rangel paused and said, with almost visible effort, “Part of what I think is my responsibility is not to be critical of the president.”

He brushes off speculation about his party’s plans for the Bush tax cuts, many of which have been criticized by Democrats for years as a giveaway to the richest Americans; it is simply premature, he argues, since their expiration date is three years off. Stan Collender, a longtime budget analyst, says it makes no political sense for Congress to “deal with tax cuts before you have to, certainly not before the 2008 election.”

This almost painfully careful discussion underscores the stakes of the Ways and Means Committee’s agenda. This month, to set a framework for the discussion of the president’s budget, the committee will hold broad hearings on the state of the nation’s economy; those will be followed by more hearings on the budget itself, expected in early February. With the president’s fast-track authority to negotiate trade agreements expiring this summer, the debate over globalization will also be quickly joined.

Chairmen of the 218-year-old committee have traditionally been at the center of the great debates, including how to support a growing elderly population and how to deal with the excesses of capitalism. They often deal directly with presidents — Wilbur Mills with Lyndon Johnson, Dan Rostenkowski with Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush — and are linked to the great accomplishments of their eras. (They can also take major political falls, as did Mr. Mills and Mr. Rostenkowski.)

The chairmanship does not carry the power it once did; changes in House rules and political practice reined in the “old bulls.” But Mr. Rangel, who plans to fly to Chicago this month and confer with Mr. Rostenkowski, is already thinking about his legacy.

“I’m 76, and I can’t afford the luxury just to gridlock,” he said.

Still, there are real fault lines, even within his party. The recent elections showed a resurgent populism, a new skepticism on trade and a new alarm that global competition translates into lower wages and shakier benefits for too many Americans. Democrats who embraced free trade under President Bill Clinton are now having second thoughts.

Liberals like Robert B. Reich, the former secretary of labor, argue that the new Congress must provide “more economic security at home,” like affordable health insurance or better pension protection, to cushion workers in this rough, new, competitive environment. But at the same time, many Democrats argue that the Clinton-era emphasis on deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility must be restored, raising the question of how all their new spending (not to mention a fix to the alternative minimum tax) will be paid for.

Jared Bernstein, a liberal economist, said: “When the Ways and Means Committee has worked well, they’ve identified social needs and advocated for the funds to meet them. Will this committee do that? I hope so.”

Republicans, for their part, say they want to work with the Democrats where they can, in particular to “change the tone” on the committee after years of bitter partisanship, as Representative Jim McCrery of Louisiana, the panel’s senior Republican, put it. But the ideological gulf between the two parties is vast, not just on tax cuts, but on the role of government versus the private market in areas like health care.

Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, one of the influential young conservatives on the committee, says he fears that the Democrats’ policies will inevitably lead to abolishing “the pro-growth Bush tax cuts” and pushing Medicare back toward a “one-size-fits-all government monopoly.”

All of this now faces Mr. Rangel — an extraordinarily difficult job that he won, in part, by simply enduring. As he did his victory lap across the Capitol last week, he said he had no regrets. He could not stop smiling.

After Many Years, It’s Rangel’s Turn at the Helm, NYT, 8.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/washington/08rangel.html


 

A supporter wore a button Friday

celebrating Nancy Pelosi’s election as speaker of the House.

Democrats had an open house Friday for staffs,

supporters and lawmakers before the session’s first full day of work.

Jamie Rose for The New York Times

 House Tightens Disclosure Rules for Pet Projects        NYT        6.1.2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/washington/06cong.html
 

House Tightens

Disclosure Rules for Pet Projects

January 6, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 — The House voted on Friday to pull the shadowy tradition of Congressional earmarking into the daylight, requiring lawmakers to attach their names to the pet items they slip into spending or tax bills and certify that they have no financial interest in the provisions.

More than any of several ethics rules adopted by the House this week, the earmark measure could prevent the kind of corruption that led to several big scandals in recent years, including former Representative Randy Cunningham’s sale of earmarks to government contractors for cash, gifts and campaign contributions.

The cost of earmarks has tripled in the last 12 years, to more than $64 billion annually. Some lawmakers treated their share of that money as personal accounts to dole out to constituents or, in many cases, campaign contributors.

In what lawmakers of both parties called a recognition of the backlash against such corruption in the November elections, the earmark rule the Democrats passed extends far beyond the proposal they introduced last spring and campaigned on in the fall. That proposal applied only to earmarks that are typically already well publicized.

It also goes further than a measure the Republicans passed just weeks before the November election. As in other efforts to change the earmarking process, the Republican leaders foundered against the opposition of the powerful Appropriations Committee, which doles out earmarks as it writes spending bills.

The vote on the new earmark measure was linked to a rule known as “pay as you go” that would prohibit the House from increasing the deficit by passing any new tax cuts or entitlement spending programs without offsetting them with spending cuts or tax increases.

Republicans denounced the “pay as you go” rule as an excuse for Democrats to increase taxes. “I call it the Flip Wilson rule,” said Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, referring to the comedian whose signature line was, “The devil made me do it.”

Still, the changes were approved by a vote of 280 to 152, with 48 Republicans joining all 232 Democrats.

On the subject of earmarks, Mr. Pence and several other Republicans commended the Democrats as heeding the message the voters sent at the polls. “We went through an election where voters were rightfully outraged” by the practice of earmarking, said Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin.

In a signal that they, too, had heard the message, the Republican minority incorporated the same changes into the token alternative they proposed before the Democratic majority passed the new House rules.

“I’m pleased that Democrat leaders agree with Republicans that earmark reform is a critical issue,” Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, said.

Even as the Democrats were passing the strict new disclosure rules, however, at least one influential chairman suggested that he was less than fully committed to the full breadth of their application.

The rules would require lawmakers to disclose their sponsorship of not only spending earmarks but also narrowly focused tax or tariff reductions affecting fewer than 10 companies or people — something the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee had resisted just as the Appropriations Committee had for spending provisions.

After the vote on Friday on the new rule, Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York, the new Ways and Means Committee chairman, suggested that such resistance had not disappeared.

“You have to assume that everything we have done is subject to a revisit,” Mr. Rangel said. “We support the speaker and her drive to get things done within 100 hours,” he said, referring to Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But, he added, “These things are not locked in cement.”

Mr. Rangel and other Democrats also acknowledged that the adoption of the pay-as-you-go rules would force tough choices when it came to delivering on campaign promises like new education subsidies, some of which would fall under the rules.

In particular, the rules will make it more difficult to repair the alternative minimum tax, which, thanks to inflation, penalizes millions of middle-class households as well as its original targets, the rich. Repairing the tax is estimated to cost as much as $1 trillion in lost revenue over 10 years.

Mr. Rangel said he was determined to find $1 trillion of tax revenue elsewhere to pay for the repair, as much as possible by eliminating outdated tax loopholes. “You have to throw it right in the middle of the tax code and say, ‘We are removing this,’ and then you have to find the money,” he said.

In a meeting with reporters, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House majority leader, promised that Democrats would cut the number of earmarks in half in the next budget, for the 2008 fiscal year. But several Democrats emphasized that the new rules would not alone reduce the amount of earmarks, but could result in more restraint.

Lawmakers already race to take credit for earmarked projects for their districts. But it has often been impossible for outsiders to learn who sponsored earmarks no one took credit for, and unclaimed earmarks were often the ones that played a role in corruption scandals. The new rules will require disclosure of all earmarks in a bill, as well as their sponsors, their purpose and their costs. The rules will also prohibit party leaders from trading earmarks for members’ votes.

In contrast to the past opposition of appropriations chairmen, Representative David R. Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who now leads the committee, was a driving force behind the earmark rule, several Democrats involved in the matter said.

Mr. Obey said Friday that over the last 12 years of Republican control the number of earmarks in the labor, health and education spending bill had risen to 3,000, from zero.

“I think that is a gross exaggeration of what our staffs have the ability to review,” he said. “I don’t want a single earmark in any bill that the committee staff cannot review to make certain that the reputation of this House and the reputation of the committee are protected.”

In particular, Mr. Obey added the requirement for lawmakers requesting earmarks to clarify that they had no financial interest in the project, to prevent directing taxpayer money toward projects like the beautification of a relative’s shopping mall.

Although previous rules already prohibited such self-dealing, “when a member has to certify publicly, it focuses the mind,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland.

The Senate is expected to take up its own earmark rules next week. The initial proposal, based on a bill that passed the Senate last year but not the House, would apply to only a small fraction of earmarks, excluding those directed to military or other federal contracts, as well as those described in legislative reports instead of bill texts. Several lawmakers, however, have said they hope to strengthen the Senate rules, too.

    House Tightens Disclosure Rules for Pet Projects, NYT, 6.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/washington/06cong.html?hp&ex=1168146000&en=2d178cdef449c5d9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

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

First Muslim lawmaker takes oath with Quran

Updated 1/4/2007 10:35 PM ET
USA Today
By Richard Wolf

WASHINGTON — On the same day Nancy Pelosi became the first female speaker of the House, freshman Rep. Keith Ellison got almost as much attention.

The Minnesota Democrat, the first Muslim elected to Congress, used a Quran once owned by Thomas Jefferson rather than a Bible as he re-enacted his swearing-in with Pelosi.

The scene created a human traffic jam near the House floor. About 30 members of Ellison's extended family posed before about two dozen TV cameras, including one from the Arab network Al-Arabiya. James Billington, the librarian of Congress, walked the two-volume Quran, circa 1764, into the Capitol in a shoebox. Ellison's wife, Kim, held it.

Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., took exception last month to the 43-year-old Ellison's planned use of the Quran and said tougher immigration measures were needed to prevent the election of "many more Muslims." On Thursday, the two shook hands and agreed to have coffee.

"I congratulated him on being elected," Goode said, but added, "My concern is I do not want the United States to become a Muslim nation."

"I was glad to meet him," said Ellison, who was born in Detroit and converted to Islam. "The issue is, how can we knock down barriers of religion, color and culture?"

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, helped engineer the meeting. "They're two good people," he said. "It's an opportunity for healing."

The day's events were enjoyed by Ellison's mother Clida, a Catholic who told the Associated Press she attends Mass daily, and sons Isaiah, Elijah and Jeremiah. Daughter Amirah was "jazzed," Ellison said, "because the speaker is a girl, too. That's what she said."

    First Muslim lawmaker takes oath with Quran, UT, 4.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-03-ellison_x.htm