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

Editorial

Twilight Zone Filibusters

July 19, 2007
The New York Times
 

The nation’s anguish over the Iraq war was kept on hold in the Senate yesterday as the Republican minority maintained serial threats of filibuster to buy time for President Bush’s aimless policies. Last week, the House debated and voted along party lines for a timetable for an American troop withdrawal by next spring. But a similar measure was allowed no such decisive expression in the Senate. Instead, the G.O.P. insisted on the approval of a “supermajority” of 60 of 100 senators before putting to a vote a measure that would apply real pressure on the president to shift his disastrous course in Iraq.

Republicans have the right to filibuster under centuries-old rules that this page has long defended. It is the height of hypocrisy for this band of Republicans to use that power since only about two years ago they were ready to unilaterally ban filibusters to push through some of Mr. Bush’s most ideologically blinkered judicial nominees.

But beyond that, the Republicans are doing the public a real disservice and playing an increasingly risky hand by delaying sober consideration of the war. The filibuster threat on Iraq also is part of a broader Republican tactic of demanding supermajorities on a raft of major issues in the hopes of paralyzing the Senate and then painting the Democrats as a do-nothing, marginal majority.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tested the opposition’s stated appetite for unhampered debate by staging an all-nighter Tuesday replete with cots and pizzas. A measure containing a withdrawal timetable failed to get the 60 votes it needed, but it did draw a 52-vote majority, including four Republicans, that amounted to more handwriting on the wall for Bush loyalists. A year ago, a nonbinding withdrawal measure drew 39 votes. The tide is shifting, even if the White House and its Republican backers won’t recognize it.

The minority leader, Mitch McConnell, notes the Democrats engaged in similar guerrilla tactics when they were in the minority. But Mr. McConnell should keep in mind that voters can tell the difference between principled resistance and political showmanship. The Democrats’ former minority leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, lost his seat three years ago when he was roundly attacked by the opposition for running a partisan, obstructionist minority.

The Iraq war stands apart as a watershed issue — a downward spiral that the public increasingly sees as a colossal waste of the nation’s blood and treasure.

In postponing real action to September and beyond, Republicans laughed off the all-night debate as a “slumber party” of “twilight zone” theatrics by the Democrats. In fact, Bush loyalists seem trapped in the twilight zone, ducking their responsibility to represent constituents by applying credible pressure on the president to come up with an end to his sorry war.

    Twilight Zone Filibusters, NYT, 19.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/opinion/19thur1.html

Top U.S. Official Asks Congress

Not to Put Limits on Iraq Mission

July 16, 2007
The New York Times
By BRIAN KNOWLTON

WASHINGTON, July 15 — A top Bush administration official urged Congress on Sunday to drop its efforts to limit the American troop mission in Iraq, at least until a more definitive progress report comes in September, and he appeared to try to set lower expectations for what the report would show.

Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, gently rebuffed a proposal from two leading Republicans who favor a changed policy on Iraq, Senators Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and John W. Warner of Virginia. Their proposal would give President Bush until October to submit a plan to begin limiting the involvement of American forces in Iraq.

“They’ve done a useful service in indicating the kinds of things that we should be thinking about,” Mr. Hadley said on ABC’s “This Week,” “but the time to begin that process is September.”

Appearing on four Sunday morning news programs, he said that the administration’s troop-increase plan, fully in place only since mid-June, deserved breathing room. He pointed to the September deadline for a progress report to be submitted by the top United States military commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, and the senior civilian official, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker.

An interim report issued Thursday showed mixed progress, with advances in eight “benchmark” areas, especially in military areas, but inadequate progress in eight others, particularly on political matters. But with September looming, Mr. Hadley appeared to try to reset the standard for success.

While predicting “more progress on the security side” in coming weeks, he said that political reconciliation would largely trail those advances, coming more slowly to Baghdad than to some provinces. “Political reconciliation, particularly at the center, is going to be a lagging indicator,” he said.

But in a nod to the growing concerns of many lawmakers and to the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, Mr. Hadley underscored the importance of regional diplomacy. He said that Mr. Bush would make significant remarks Monday on Middle East peace and on supporting Palestinian aspirations for a peaceful two-state solution.

The administration showed in one crucial Senate vote last week that it still held the votes to block efforts to derail its war policy. It was “a pretty good week,” Mr. Hadley said.

He played down the criticism implied by the Lugar-Warner plan, saying the senators were “not calling for an arbitrary withdrawal deadline.” Still, asked if he could live with their proposal, Mr. Hadley replied, “No.”

But Mr. Warner, who appeared with Mr. Lugar on the ABC program after Mr. Hadley, said he thought that Mr. Bush would have no choice but to alter course this fall. “The president will have to make some changes,” he said, “and I’m confident the president will do so.”

    Top U.S. Official Asks Congress Not to Put Limits on Iraq Mission, NYT, 16.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/16/washington/16policy.html

Immigrant Bill Dies in Senate; Defeat for Bush

June 29, 2007
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR and CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, June 28 — President Bush’s effort to overhaul the nation’s immigration policy, a cornerstone of his domestic agenda, collapsed Thursday in the Senate, with little prospect that it can be revived before Mr. Bush leaves office in 19 months.

The bill called for the biggest changes to immigration law in more than 20 years, offering legal status to millions of illegal immigrants while trying to secure borders. But the Senate, forming blocs that defied party affiliation, could never unite on the main provisions.

Rejecting the president’s last-minute pleas, it voted, 53 to 46, to turn back a motion to end debate and move toward final passage. Supporters fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to close the debate.

Mr. Bush placed telephone calls to lawmakers throughout the morning. But members of his party abandoned him in droves, with just 12 of the 49 Senate Republicans sticking by him on the important procedural vote that determined the fate of the bill.

Nearly one-third of Senate Democrats voted, in effect, to block action on the bill.

The vote followed an outpouring of criticism from conservatives and others who called it a form of amnesty for lawbreakers.

The outcome was a bitter disappointment for Mr. Bush and other supporters of a comprehensive approach, including Hispanic and church groups and employers who had been seeking greater access to foreign workers.

Supporters and opponents said the measure was dead for the remainder of the Bush administration, though conceivably individual pieces might be revived.

The vote reflected the degree to which Congress and the nation are polarized over immigration. The emotional end to what had been an emotional debate was evident, with a few senior staff members who had invested months in writing the bill near tears.

“The bill now dies,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who helped write the measure.

The outcome also underscored the challenge that Mr. Bush faces in exerting authority and enacting an agenda as members of his party increasingly break with him and Democrats no longer fear him. Having already given up on other ambitious second-term plans like overhauling Social Security, the administration has little prospect of winning any big new legislative achievements in its final months.

The collapse also highlighted the difficulties that the new Democratic leadership in Congress has had in showing that it can address the big problems facing the nation. In this case, Democratic leaders asserted that the failure of the immigration bill reflected on Mr. Bush, and not on their party.

Senator David Vitter, the Louisiana Republican who helped lead opposition to the bill, said: “The proponents did not get even a simple majority. The message is crystal clear. The American people want us to start with enforcement at the border and at the workplace and don’t want promises. They want action. They want results. They want proof, because they’ve heard all the promises before.”

In voting to end the debate, the 12 Republicans were joined by 33 Democrats and one independent. Voting against the motion to end the debate were 15 Democrats, one independent and 37 Republicans, including the minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

“I had hoped for a bipartisan accomplishment,” Mr. McConnell said. “What we got was a bipartisan defeat.”

Among the Democrats voting no were several up for re-election next year, including Senators Max Baucus of Montana, Tom Harkin of Iowa and John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia.

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said he spoke to Mr. Bush after the vote and thanked him for his work in support of the bill.

But, Mr. Reid said, “There just was not enough Republican support for the president’s approach.”

Mr. Bush, in Rhode Island for a visit to the Naval War College, said: “Legal immigration is one of the top concerns of the American people, and Congress’s failure to act on it is a disappointment. A lot of us worked hard to see if we couldn’t find common ground. It didn’t work.”

In the end, many groups that had supported segments of the bill urged the Senate to pass it in the hope that it could be “improved” in the House.

Representative Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat who is chairwoman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, said: “The Senate vote effectively kills comprehensive immigration reform for this Congress. It’s a vote for the status quo, which most Americans are not satisfied with.”

Supporters of the bill agreed with opponents on one point, that many Americans believe that the government lacks the ability to carry out the huge responsibilities it would have had. “People look out and they see the failures of government, whether it’s Hurricane Katrina or the inability to get enough passports out for people, and they say, ‘How is the government going to accomplish all of this?’ ” Mrs. Feinstein said.

Opponents of the bill were elated.

Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, said: “The American people won today. They care enough for their country to get mad and to fight for it. Americans made phone calls and sent letters and convinced the Senate to stop this bill.”

Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, a leading opponent of the bill, said talk radio was “a big factor” in derailing it.

Supporters of the bill wanted to pass it quickly, “before Rush Limbaugh could tell the American people what was in it,” Mr. Sessions said.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, chief Democratic architect of the bill, said many senators “voted their fears, not their hopes.”

Referring to opponents, Mr. Kennedy said: “We know what they don’t like. What are they for? What are they going to do with the 12 million who are undocumented here? Send them back to countries around the world? Develop a type of Gestapo here to seek out these people that are in the shadows? What’s their alternative?”

Without a new immigration law, Mr. Kennedy said, “The situation is going to get worse and worse and worse.”

As the vote was conducted, several House members of Hispanic descent gathered on the Senate floor, and tourists in the gallery listened to the final arguments with rapt attention.

A bipartisan group of 12 senators working closely with the administration wrote the bill in closed sessions over three months. After two weeks of debate, it appeared to die on June 7, when the Senate voted, 50 to 45, against ending debate.

Mr. Reid pulled the bill off the floor, but later agreed to return it under a procedure that bundled 27 proposed amendments into one package.

Opponents and some supporters said Senate leaders had made a mistake in taking the bill directly to the floor without hearings or review by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Not just conservatives voiced reservations. Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine who is running for re-election, said: “I just don’t think the bill struck the right balance. People were troubled by the proposed solution for the 12 million people here illegally. We did not get that part right.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, a co-author of the bill, said a majority of Americans supported it when told of other provisions like increased money for border security, a new employee verification system, a guest worker program and a new merit-based system to select immigrants.

But Senator Harkin said, “The bill, as a whole, has evolved into an unworkable mess, and I cannot support it.”

Guest workers could drive down wages for Americans “on the lower rungs of the economic ladder,” Mr. Harkin said, and under the employee verification system, some citizens could have been denied jobs “because of errors in a government database.”

Among important early backers who fell away was Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, who said he received two calls from Mr. Bush in recent days. Mr. Domenici said the secrecy surrounding the bill’s drafting had left people confused and “caused it to flop.”

Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska and another recipient of a call from Mr. Bush, concluded that the bill was beyond repair after having backed efforts to advance it.

“This bill is not only hopelessly flawed, it is unsalvageable,” Mr. Nelson said. “We have to start over.”

Janet Murguía, president of the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic rights group, predicted that “the growing and increasingly energized Latino electorate” would hold lawmakers accountable for failing to pass a comprehensive bill.

Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.

    Immigrant Bill Dies in Senate; Defeat for Bush, NYT, 29.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/washington/29immig.html?hp

White House Is Subpoenaed on Wiretapping

June 28, 2007
The New York Times
By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, June 27 — The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday issued subpoenas to the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and the Justice Department after what the panel’s chairman called “stonewalling of the worst kind” of efforts to investigate the National Security Agency’s policy of wiretapping without warrants.

The move put Senate Democrats squarely on a course they had until now avoided, setting the stage for a showdown with the Bush administration over one of the most contentious issues arising from the White House’s campaign against terrorism.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the committee, said the subpoenas seek documents that could shed light on the administration’s legal justification for the wiretapping and on disputes within the government over its legality.

In addition, the panel is seeking materials on related issues, including the relationship between the Bush administration and several unidentified telecommunications companies that aided the N.S.A. eavesdropping program.

The panel’s action was the most aggressive move yet by lawmakers to investigate the wiretapping program since the Democrats gained control of Congress this year.

Mr. Leahy said Wednesday at a news conference that the committee had issued the subpoenas because the administration had followed a “consistent pattern of evasion and misdirection” in dealing with Congressional efforts to scrutinize the program.

“It’s unacceptable,” Mr. Leahy said. “It is stonewalling of the worst kind.”

The White House, the vice president’s office and the Justice Department declined Wednesday to say how they would respond to the subpoenas.

“We’re aware of the committee’s action and will respond appropriately,” said Tony Fratto, White House deputy press secretary.

“It’s unfortunate that Congressional Democrats continue to choose the route of confrontation,” Mr. Fratto added.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Cheney said his office would respond later, while a Justice Department spokesman said, “The department will continue to work closely with the Congress as they exercise their oversight functions, and we will review this matter in the spirit of that longstanding relationship.”

Under the domestic eavesdropping program, the N.S.A. did not obtain warrants before listening in on phone calls and reading e-mail messages to and from Americans and others in the United States who the agency believes may be linked to Al Qaeda. Only international communications — those into and out of the country — were monitored, according to administration officials.

The Senate panel’s action comes after dramatic testimony last month by James B. Comey, former deputy attorney general, who described a March 2004 confrontation at the hospital bedside of John Ashcroft, then attorney general, between Justice Department officials and White House aides over the legality of the wiretapping program.

Before Mr. Comey’s testimony, the White House had largely been able to fend off aggressive oversight of the N.S.A. wiretapping since it was first disclosed in December 2005. The Republican-controlled Congress held hearings last year, and even considered legislative proposals to curb the scope of the eavesdropping. But Mr. Cheney repeatedly pressured Republican Congressional leaders to pull back.

When the Democrats won the 2006 midterm elections, many observers predicted that the N.S.A. program — which a federal judge declared unconstitutional — would be one of the first Bush administration operations to undergo new scrutiny. But in January, the administration announced that it was placing the program under the legal framework of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a move it had previously refused to consider.

The Democrats have largely focused on objections to the Iraq war in their first months in power, and have appeared reluctant to take aggressive steps to challenge policies on harsh interrogation practices, secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons and domestic wiretapping for fear of being labeled soft on terrorism.

For instance, at a confirmation hearing on June 19 for John A. Rizzo as general counsel of the C.I.A., no member of the Senate Intelligence Committee directly challenged the agency’s secret detention or harsh interrogation practices.

Mr. Rizzo successfully dodged tougher questions by saying he preferred to answer them in closed session. The Senate Intelligence Committee has conducted closed-door oversight of the wiretapping, but it has not been as aggressive as the Judiciary Committee in publicly challenging the administration over it.

But Mr. Comey’s testimony has given Democrats an opening to argue that they are focusing on the legal issues of the program, rather than on the merits of monitoring the phone calls of terrorist suspects.

“The Comey testimony moved this front and center,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who is a member of the Judiciary Committee. “Alarm bells went off. His testimony made it clear that there had been an effort to circumvent the law.”

The Senate panel has been asking the administration for documents related to the program since Mr. Comey testified. But the White House had not responded to a letter from Mr. Leahy and Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the panel. As a result, the panel voted 13 to 3 last Thursday to authorize Mr. Leahy to issue the subpoenas, with three Republicans voting in favor of issuing them. Separately, the House Judiciary Committee has also threatened to issue subpoenas for the same documents.

The wiretapping is just one of several legal issues on which Congress and the administration are squaring off. For example, the White House is under pressure to respond to subpoenas issued two weeks ago by the House and Senate Judiciary Committees for witnesses and documents related to the dismissal of federal prosecutors. Thursday is the deadline for the White House to turn over documents linked to Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and Sara M. Taylor, the former White House political director.

If the White House fails to produce the material, the House and Senate could begin a process leading to contempt resolutions to force compliance. Meanwhile, Mr. Cheney is in a separate standoff with Congress and the National Archives over his office’s refusal to follow an executive order concerning handling of classified documents.

Mr. Cheney declared that his office did not have to abide by the order that all executive branch offices provide data to the Archives about the amount of material they have classified. His office said that he is not a member of the executive branch, because he is president of the Senate.

David Johnston and Scott Shane contributed reporting.

    White House Is Subpoenaed on Wiretapping, NYT, 28.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/28/washington/28nsa.html?hp

Senate Passes Pro - Renewables Energy Bill

June 22, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:53 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats celebrated a step toward reducing U.S. dependence on oil as the Senate approved a bill calling for more ethanol and the first boost in gas mileage in decades.

Now the House plans to follow suit, perhaps as early as next week.

The Senate late Thursday voted 65-27 to pass the first energy bill since Democrats took control of Congress in January. But it was far from a complete victory.

Resistance to the new auto fuel economy standards threatened passage until the final hours. Democratic leaders held off a vote until shortly before midnight as senators were called back to the Capitol to assure the votes needed to overcome a threatened filibuster by opponents of the tougher fuel regulations.

The bill finally passed even as Republican senators grumbled that it did virtually nothing to increase production of traditional domestic fuels such as oil and natural gas.

Democrats saw it differently.

''This bill starts America on a path toward reducing our reliance on oil,'' Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., proclaimed.

The legislation would require ethanol production for motor fuels to grow to at least 36 billion gallons a year by 2022, a sevenfold increase over the amount of ethanol processed last year.

And it calls for boosting auto fuel economy to a fleet average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020, a 40 percent increase over current requirements for cars, SUVs, vans and pickup trucks.

The legislation also calls for:

--Price gouging provisions that make it unlawful to charge an ''unconscionably excessive'' price for oil products, including gasoline. It also gives the federal government new authority to investigate oil industry market manipulation.

--New appliance and lighting efficiency standards and a requirement that the federal government accelerate use of more efficient lighting in public buildings.

--Grants, loan guarantees and other assistance to promote research into fuel-efficient vehicles, including hybrids, advanced diesel and battery technologies.

But Democrats had wanted more for renewables than they got.

Earlier in the day Reid could not hide his displeasure as Republicans blocked one of the Democrats' top priorities, a $32 billion tax package aimed at boosting renewable fuels, energy efficiency and clean energy programs. The Republicans didn't like the $29 billion in additional taxes on oil companies that the plan required to pay for the new alternative energy subsidies.

''Big Oil seems to do pretty well here on Capitol Hill,'' Reid told reporters, making no effort to hide his sarcasm.

Democrats also failed to get a provision that would have required electric utilities to produce at least 15 percent of their electricity from wind, biomass or other renewables after Republicans refused to allow the measure to come up for a vote.

Intense negotiations among a small group of senators produced a compromise on the auto fuel economy matter that emerged as the crown jewel of the Senate-passed bill.

It requires automakers to make a 40 percent increase in the fuel efficiency of their vehicles by 2020 and for the first time puts SUVs, vans and small trucks under the same regulation as passenger cars.

Under the bill each vehicle group must achieve a 10 mpg increase in fuel economy by 2020 with an overall average requirement for a manufacturer's fleet increasing to 35 mpg. Currently cars must meet a fleet average of 27.5 mpg; light trucks -- including SUVs and vans -- must achieve an average of 22.2 mpg.

''We've been fighting to reach this day for over 20 years,'' said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who was involved in the negotiations that led to the compromise. ''For the first time in a generation we've overcome powerful opposition to make our cars more fuel efficient.''

Congress last passed a federal auto fuel economy standard in 1975 and the current requirement for cars of 27.5 mpg has not changed since 1989.

The House has yet to act on its energy legislation. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has said reductions in auto gasoline use are needed and Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said he plans to work ''to ensure that the House matches the Senate's action.''

''It's clear the political movement to increase our nation's fuel economy ... has shifted out of neutral into drive,'' said Markey, responding to the Senate action Thursday.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who opposed the Senate provision and had fought to instead pass a more auto industry-friendly fuel economy measure, said one reason for his effort's failure was growing public concern about global warming.

''The public wants action, rightfully so, on global warming,'' Levin said in an interview. And he added, the auto industry is ''a juicy target.''

------

On the Net:

A text of the bill, H.R. 6, may be found http://thomas.loc.gov

    Senate Passes Pro - Renewables Energy Bill, NYT, 22.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Congress-Energy.html

4 in Senate Seek Penalty for China

June 14, 2007
The New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, June 13 — Four leading Democratic and Republican senators proposed legislation Wednesday aimed at penalizing China over its export practices and predicted that they would have the votes to pass it in Congress this year even if it was vetoed by President Bush.

The administration indicated it would oppose the bill, which appeared certain to aggravate tensions with China at a time when Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. has sought to use negotiations to change Chinese economic policies, particularly those keeping the value of its currency low in relation to the dollar.

The legislation would set up an elaborate mechanism to punish China if it did not change its policy of intervening in currency markets to keep the exchange value of the currency, the yuan, low. Such low Chinese currency rates are a spur to exports by making them cheaper for foreign consumers..

One of the four senators, Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, said, “This bill requires the Treasury Department to take firm but fair action when other nations play games with the U.S. dollar.” He said the bill would pass by “a veto-proof majority in the House and Senate.”

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, said that the bill was not intended to start a fight with China and that he hoped it would persuade the Chinese to voluntarily change their practices before any penalties were imposed.

Senators Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, were also co-sponsors. They had sponsored a tougher version of the bill last year, calling for tariff increases of 27 percent on Chinese goods if the authorities in Beijing did not raise the value of their currency.

That legislation was withdrawn under pressure from the administration, and Mr. Schumer and Mr. Graham acknowledged that its mechanism for imposing duties on Chinese goods would have violated international trade rules. They said the new bill would lead to penalties while complying with the rules.

Mr. Paulson was briefed on the bill but issued no comment. Clay Lowery, the Treasury Department’s acting under secretary for international affairs, indicated that the administration would resist it as likely to increase tensions with Beijing.

“We believe that the best way to engage China on these issues is through dialogue and negotiations, and not necessarily through legislation,” Mr. Lowery told reporters at a briefing accompanying a separate Treasury action on China, a report released Wednesday assessing its currency practices.

The new legislation is one of several bills aimed at Beijing and introduced in the House and the Senate at a time of mounting criticism over Chinese economic policies that have promoted exports and restricted Chinese markets for foreign investment and goods.

The United States trade deficit with China last year was $232 billion, about a third of the total American deficit with its trading partners. After years of accumulating trade surpluses, the Chinese are sitting on an estimated $1.4 trillion in foreign exchange, and have started to use some of that vast reserve to purchase American companies, including a stake in the Blackstone Group last month.

Administration officials say that Mr. Paulson, a former Goldman Sachs executive who for years conducted business deals in China, has repeatedly warned the Beijing authorities to expect anti-China legislation if they did not open their economy more to outside investment and imports, and make more progress in letting the currency float more freely.

“We have told the Chinese that there will be legislation on China,” an administration official said, declining to be further identified. “Our hope is to work with Congress to make sure it does not damage relations with China.”

Mr. Paulson helped persuade Mr. Schumer and Mr. Grassley last year, arguing that the cabinet-level “strategic economic dialogue” with the Chinese he and colleagues recently conducted was a better way of bringing about change.

Chinese and American officials met in Beijing in December and last month in Washington to move the process along, but with limited results.

The bill announced on Wednesday reflected a widespread feeling in Congress that Mr. Paulson’s approach had failed, especially on the currency matter. Mr. Paulson said last month that the dialogue was aimed at achieving long-term reforms in China, though he praised the Chinese for taking some limited steps in the short term.

In issuing a separate, semiannual report to Congress on exchange rate policies of American trading partners, the administration took the same position it had in the past — that China did not meet the “technical requirements” of being labeled a currency “manipulator,” a label that could bring sanctions.

Mr. Lowery said that it had been hard to assign motives to Chinese currency practices and therefore impossible to label China a manipulator. But the Treasury’s report said it had forcefully raised the question of currency values “at every available opportunity and will continue to do so.”

It repeated accusations by Mr. Paulson and others that China’s rapid economic growth reflected a “severely unbalanced” economy driven by exports and policies that discouraged domestic consumption.

The currency report, which the law requires every six months, contained no surprises, nor was it a surprise that Democrats and Republicans denounced the administration for not labeling China a manipulator. The same criticism came from manufacturers’ groups critical of Chinese trade and investment barriers.

China critics cite a range of impediments to trade and investment, but the main focus of Congressional anger has been on the value of the yuan. Beijing has acknowledged that it must change its currency practices, but has appealed for patience.

The yuan’s value has appreciated by about 8 percent in relation to the dollar since July 2005. But many economists say that if it were allowed to float in the open market, it would appreciate by at least 20 percent to 30 percent. Instead, China uses its export revenue to buy dollars so that the value of the yuan is seen as artificially low.

European leaders have also begun warning China over its trade and currency practices. Peter Mandelson, the European Union’s trade commissioner, said last week that China was “at a crossroads” in its economic relations with the West.

The Bush administration, while trying mostly to use persuasion in getting China to change its economic practices, has moved toward a harder line in the last six months. Early in the year, the administration threatened new tariffs, arguing that China was illegally subsidizing some exports.

It has also taken China to court proceedings at the World Trade Organization, contending that its policies on subsidies and on the protection of copyrights and trademarks are illegal.

These actions have drawn a reaction from Chinese officials, who warn that they would only strengthen the hand of hard-line elements.

World Trade Organization rules bar protectionist measures except under some limited circumstances. The legislation proposed by Senators Baucus, Grassley, Schumer and Graham was intended to let the United States define currency practices as a form of “dumping,” or selling goods below cost.

Countries belonging to the trade organization may impose duties on imports if they are dumped, but it was not clear whether the legislation would meet the W.T.O.’s definition.

The legislation would require the Treasury Department to report on “fundamentally misaligned currencies” that would require “priority action” leading to consultations with the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. If these talks failed, certain penalties would kick in.

Among these would be curbing China’s voting rights at the I.M.F., limiting federal procurement of Chinese goods and services, and opposing United States government-backed loans or World Bank lending for China. The president could waive these penalties on carefully defined national security grounds, but Congress could register its disapproval of any such waiver.

    4 in Senate Seek Penalty for China, NYT, 14.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/business/worldbusiness/14trade.html

Immigrant Bill, Short 15 Votes, Stalls in Senate

June 8, 2007
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, June 7 —The sweeping immigration overhaul endorsed by President Bush crumbled in the Senate on Thursday night, leaving the future of one of the administration’s chief domestic priorities in serious doubt.

After a day of tension and fruitless maneuvering, senators rejected a Democratic call to move toward a final vote on the compromise legislation after Republicans complained that they had not been given enough opportunity to reshape the sprawling bill. Supporters of cutting off debate got only 45 of the 60 votes they needed; 50 senators opposed the cutoff.

“We are finished with this for the time being,” said Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada and the majority leader, as he turned the Senate to work on energy legislation.

Mr. Reid did, however, leave the door open to revisiting the immigration issue later this year and said he would continue to explore ways to advance a plan. “We all have to work, the president included, to find a way to get this bill passed,” he said.

The outcome, which followed an outpouring of criticism of the measure from core Republican voters and from liberal Democrats as well, was a significant setback for the president. It came mainly at the hands of members of his own party after he championed the proposal in the hope of claiming it as a major domestic policy achievement in the last months of his administration.

The collapse of the measure came as Mr. Bush was in Europe for an international economic summit, and it was not immediately clear how hard he would fight to resurrect the bill upon his return next week.

Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman, said the White House still held hope that a bill could be passed.

“We are encouraged that the leadership of both parties in the United States Senate indicated that they would bring this legislation back up for consideration,” Mr. Stanzel said. “And we will continue to work with members of the United States Senate to make sure this process moves forward.”

The defeat was also crushing for a bipartisan group of about a dozen senators who met privately for three months to broker a compromise that tried to balance a call for stricter border enforcement with a way for many of the 12 million people who are illegally in the country to qualify for citizenship eventually.

“The vote was obviously a big disappointment, but it makes no sense to fold our tent, and I certainly don’t intend to,” said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and a chief author of the bill. “Doing nothing is totally unacceptable”

Other proponents said they still saw life in the legislation despite the blow in the Senate.

“This matter is on life support, but it is not dead,” said Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and another central architect of the plan.

Senate conservatives fought the legislation from the start, saying it rewarded those who broke the law by entering the country illegally. After winning a few important changes in the measure, Republican critics demanded more time and drew support for their calls for more opportunity to fight it out on the Senate floor.

“I simply do not understand why some of my colleagues want to jam this legislation through the Congress without a serious and thorough examination of its consequences,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.

Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican who was another leading opponent, said he believed lawmakers responded to constituent complaints about the flaws in the measure. “I was not going to support a piece of legislation that will not work,” Mr. Sessions said.

Mr. Reid said the critics were simply stalling and would never be satisfied. Noting the Senate had considered more than 40 amendments and held 28 roll call votes, he attributed the failure of the bill to Republican recalcitrance.

In the end, 38 Republicans, 11 Democrats and one independent voted not to shut off debate; 37 Democrats, 7 Republicans and one independent voted to bring the issue to a head.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said he believed Republicans would have eventually relented had they been given more time to work out an agreement on what amendments would be considered. “I think we are giving up on this bill too soon,” Mr. McConnell said.

The vote was the second attempt of the day to cut off a debate that had gone on for nearly two weeks, interrupted by the Memorial Day recess. On the initial showdown in the morning, the Senate fell 27 votes short of the 60 required; every Republican and 15 Democrats opposed the move.

The morning vote sent Senate leaders and backers of the legislation scrambling, trying to reach an agreement to salvage the measure with the help of administration officials. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was also consulted by phone.

The progress of negotiations was uncertain throughout the day. As late as 6:30 p.m., Mr. Kennedy was still uncertain where many senators stood on the call to force an end to the debate. “It’s touch and go,” Mr. Kennedy said. “It’s extremely close at this time. Republicans have held their cards.”

The compromise legislation was announced on May 17 by authors who hailed it as a “grand bargain.” It held together through much of the debate because the negotiators — embodied on the right by Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, a Republican, and on the left by Mr. Kennedy — agreed to block proposals they thought would sink the measure. That led to such odd moments as when Mr. Kyl on Wednesday opposed an amendment he had helped write for last year’s unsuccessful immigration measure.

But the legislation began running into problems late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning as the Senate approved a Democratic proposal to limit a guest-worker program sought by business interests and backed by Republicans. Backers of the bill hoped to reverse that result if the measure moved forward.

“It is indispensable to have a guest-worker program to take care of the needs of the economy,” said Mr. Specter. “If we don’t, we will just encounter more people coming over illegally.”

At the same time, some Democrats were growing increasingly uneasy.

Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, said the bill had become “more punitive and more onerous” because of amendments adopted in the last few days. Mr. Menendez pointed, for example, to one that denied the earned-income tax credit to illegal immigrants who gain legal status under the bill.

Cecilia Muñoz, a vice president of the National Council of La Raza, the Hispanic rights group, said she had similar concerns. Changes approved by the Senate this week make the bill “not only more punitive, but also less workable,” Ms. Muñoz said.

Trying to bolster Democratic support, the Service Employees International Union urged senators Thursday to vote for a limit to the debate. In a letter to the Senate, Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of the union, listed many serious objections to the bill, but said, “The time to move forward is now.”

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a coalition of civil rights groups, also backed cloture, saying, “A small handful of immigration restrictionists’ in the Senate should not be allowed to prolong the debate indefinitely.”

In addition to the limit on the guest worker program, supporters of the bill said they would also try to change an amendment that gives law enforcement and intelligence agencies access to certain information in unsuccessful applications filed by illegal immigrants seeking legal status. Despite the strong Republican vote against ending debate, party leaders said throughout the day they wanted to reach some accommodation. Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the No. 2 Republican, urged his colleagues to stiffen their spines and try to resolve one of the nation’s most pressing problems.

“Are we men and women or mice?” Mr. Lott asked. “Are we going to slither away from this issue and hope for some epiphany to happen? No. Let’s legislate. Let’s vote.”

Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting from Midland, Tex.

    Immigrant Bill, Short 15 Votes, Stalls in Senate, NYT, 8.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/08/washington/08immig.html?hp

General Tells Senate U.S. Must Prevail in Iraq

June 7, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN HOLUSHA

The Army officer named to be the Bush administration’s war-coordination “czar” told a Senate panel today that America continues to have vital interests in the Middle East, and that it must prevail in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Testifying during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the officer, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, said that “America’s at war, and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan represent what we in the military call the main effort in the long war.”

He acknowledged that he had been skeptical about the current strategy of sending more American troops to Iraq and trying more aggressively to secure Baghdad, known as the surge strategy. The results so far have been uneven, he said: “Conditions on the ground are deeply complex and are likely to continue to evolve, meaning that we will need to constantly adapt.”

Although the committee was warm in its welcome for General Lute today, the divisions among its members over war policy were plain. The chairman, Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said that General Lute’s job would make him “responsible for bringing coherence to an incoherent policy, a policy that is still floundering after more than four years of war in Iraq.”

General Lute characterized the task a bit differently, saying his assignment was to help “provide our troops and civilians in the field with increased focus, full-time, real-time support here in Washington.” He said he would brief the president daily on the status of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then convey the President’s instruction to commanders in the field.

“The aim is to bring additional energy, discipline and sense of urgency to the policy process,” he said.

Some senators expressed doubt that General Lute could make much difference in the prolonged conflicts. “I just fear you are going to be placed in an impossible situation,” said Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island. “It’s another public relations play rather than a significant change in strategy.”

Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, said: “You’ve been given a tough assignment. I share my colleagues’ concern that a good man has been put in a very difficult spot.”

    General Tells Senate U.S. Must Prevail in Iraq, NYT, 7.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/washington/07cnd-lute.html?hp

Immigration Bill Suffers Setback in Senate Vote

June 7, 2007
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR and CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, June 7 — The Senate refused at midday to shut off debate on the immigration overhaul bill and move toward a vote, leaving the fate of the legislation uncertain and setting up another, all-important procedural vote this evening.

The move to end debate was rejected by 63 to 33, so the bill’s backers fell 27 votes short of the 60 needed to invoke what is known as cloture and set up a yes-or-no vote on the legislation itself.

The result was a setback not only for the bill’s supporters but also for President Bush, who has made a comprehensive immigration bill one of his top legislative priorities.

Nevertheless, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, scheduled another, make-or-break cloture vote for this evening. If that vote also falls short, Mr. Reid is expected to shelve the bill, meaning that changes in immigration law might not be considered again for many months.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and an architect of the bill, vowed to work “all day long” to muster support for this evening’s vote. The day-long debate offered the bill’s opponents a chance to be heard yet again and leave their mark on the bill with amendments.

The midday move to end debate failed chiefly because a significant number of conservative Republicans wanted more time to offer amendments to make the measure more to their liking.

The 33 “yes” votes were all cast by Democrats, except for the one cast by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who won re-election last fall as an independent. Even Republicans who support the overall bill voted against ending debate.

“We are not there yet,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader, said of the move to end debate.

“It is not yet ready,” another Republican, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, said of the bill.

Some 12 hours before the noontime cloture vote, the bill’s supporters suffered a setback when the Senate voted to put a five-year limit on a new guest worker program that would be created under the legislation. By a vote of 49 to 48 shortly after midnight, the Senate approved the limit, in the form of an amendment by Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota.

The temporary worker program is an important element of the “grand bargain” on immigration forged in three months of negotiations by a small group of senators from both parties.

If the Senate votes this evening to end debate, the bill will have cleared a major hurdle — but by no means the last one. The House has yet to take up its version of the immigration legislation, and the issue has deeply divided the representatives. Many conservatives want to do more to restrict immigration and to toughen border enforcement. Many liberals, including members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, want to do more to protect immigrants’ rights and promote family-based immigration. The Senate bill, which embodies a fragile compromise strongly supported by the president, would offer most of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States the chance to obtain legal status. It calls for the biggest changes in immigration law in more than two decades.

Supporters contend that it would address the problem of millions of illegal aliens without giving them amnesty; that it will further secure the nation’s borders, and that through its guest-worker program it will help immigrants and American employers. Its opponents have argued that there are far too many deficiencies in its nearly 400 pages.

The vote on Mr. Dorgan’s amendment was a surprise because the Senate had previously rejected a similar proposal.

Employers say they want to hire foreign workers because they cannot find Americans to fill all the jobs in hotels, restaurants, nursing homes, hospitals and the construction industry.

But Mr. Dorgan said, “The main reason that big corporations want a guest worker program is that it will drive down U.S. wages.”

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, a co-author of the Senate bill, denounced Mr. Dorgan’s proposal as “an attempt to kill the legislation.”

On Wednesday, the Senate signaled support for other provisions of the immigration bill by rejecting many proposed amendments, including one that would have made it much harder for many illegal immigrants to achieve legal status.

Mr. Reid said, “We have made a lot of progress,” adding, “The end really is in sight.”

Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, who opposes the bill, said, “The train is moving down the tracks.”

While senators struggled with the complex legislation, executives from high-tech companies descended on Capitol Hill to express concerns.

Steven A. Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, was among the businessmen pleading with Congress to increase the number of H-1B visas and green cards available to skilled foreign professionals. Ginny Terzano, a spokeswoman for Microsoft, said such visas were urgently needed to help meet “a talent crisis” in the industry.

Two amendments intended to reunify families, by providing additional visas for close relatives of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents, failed on procedural votes. The amendments were offered by Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, both Democrats.

Republicans raised points of order, saying the proposals violated budget rules because they would increase federal spending with no way to offset the costs.

By a vote of 51 to 46, the Senate on Wednesday rejected an amendment proposed by Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, that could have made hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants ineligible for legal status.

Under Mr. Cornyn’s proposal, gang members, terrorists and other convicted felons would have been permanently barred from the United States and denied immigration benefits. Most significant, the amendment would have denied legal status to illegal immigrants who had flouted deportation orders or been convicted of identity theft or fraudulent use of identification documents.

Mr. Cornyn said his purpose was not to cater to “racists, nativists or know-nothings,” but to exclude “felons who have shown contempt for American law.” But Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said Mr. Cornyn’s amendment would “gut the bill.” And Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the chief Democratic architect of the bill, said: “Almost every hard-working immigrant in this country has been forced, at one time or another, to use false documents to get a job.”

Mr. Cornyn said his amendment was a defining issue for presidential candidates. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, a co-author of the overall bill, voted against Mr. Cornyn’s amendment and for a Democratic alternative.

The four senators seeking the Democratic nomination — Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, Mrs. Clinton, Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Barack Obama of Illinois — also voted against Mr. Cornyn’s proposal.

Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, voted for it.

By a vote of 66 to 32, the Senate approved the Democratic alternative, which would increase penalties for illegal immigrants who have been convicted of sex offenses, crimes of domestic violence or the use of firearms in alien-smuggling operations.

In a surprise, the Senate approved another Cornyn amendment that would give law enforcement and intelligence agencies access to information in applications for legal status that are denied. The vote was 57 to 39.

Mr. Cornyn said his proposal would give law enforcement “a critical tool to prevent document fraud and to prosecute those who have broken our immigration laws.”

But Mr. Kennedy said that without the guarantee of confidentiality, illegal immigrants would be extremely reluctant to come forward and apply for legal status.

The Senate rejected a proposal to change the structure of the bill’s guest worker program. Under the program, foreign workers could get two-year visas, which could be renewed twice, but the guest workers would have to leave the United States for a year in between their stays here.

Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, said the requirement for workers to leave the country would “cause enormous instability in the work force.” Mr. Bingaman proposed an amendment to admit guest workers for a maximum of six consecutive years, but the Senate rejected it, 57 to 41.

    Immigration Bill Suffers Setback in Senate Vote, NYT, 7.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/washington/07cnd-immig.html?hp

Senate Rejects Immigration Stricture

June 6, 2007
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, June 6 — The Senate rejected a measure this afternoon that would have made it much harder for many illegal immigrants to eventually achieve legal status under a proposed overhaul of the immigration system.

By a vote of 51 to 46, the senators defeated a proposal to bar legal status for aliens who disobey deportation orders or who engage in identity fraud. The proposal was made in the form of an amendment, offered by Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, to an overall immigration bill that is being debated.

The Cornyn amendment was considered crucial, because many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States commit some kind of identity fraud, for example when they use bogus Social Security cards in trying to get jobs.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and a sponsor of the overall bill, argued against the Cornyn amendment, declaring that to approve it would be “undermining the basic core” of the legislation.

Mr. Kennedy offered an amendment of his own, which was approved by 66 to 32, to deny legal resident status to gang members, sex offenders and people who are guilty of domestic violence — but not to those who engage in document fraud. In effect, Mr. Kennedy’s amendment offered political cover to lawmakers who favor the overall legislation but do not want to appear too easy on immigrant law-breakers.

After the votes, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, said he thought the Senate was “making good progress” on the legislation, and that he hoped to gain cooperation in whittling down the number of amendments remaining to be voted upon.

Mr. Reid assessment was important because he said on Tuesday that the Senate would vote Thursday on whether to limit debate on the bill, a process called cloture that requires 60 votes to succeed. If the cloture vote fails, the bill could be blocked indefinitely by a filibuster. Mr. Reid said he would pull the bill from consideration if he fails to get the necessary votes.

The majority leader said he wanted to complete work on the legislation this week, and he suggested that Republicans were trying to stall the bill with amendments.

“When is enough enough?” he asked, asserting that Republicans were looking for excuses to kill the bill. His announcement provoked an outcry both from Republican supporters and Republican opponents of the compromise bill, who said the Senate needed more time.

Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the chief Republican architect of the bill, said “it would be a big mistake” to try to invoke cloture this week.

“A motion to cut off debate would be an extreme act of bad faith,” Mr. Kyl said, and he asserted on Tuesday afternoon that “we are not anywhere near finishing this bill.”

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said, “The overwhelming majority of our conference would insist on having additional days to make sure that all of our important amendments have been given an opportunity to be considered.”

Even Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, a strong supporter of the bill, said, “I would not support cloture at this point because I don’t think that enough of our members have had an opportunity to have their amendments heard.”

Behind the scenes, senators were trying to work out agreements on what amendments to consider, so the legislation would not fail on a motion to limit debate.

Democrats have offered amendments to promote unification of families, by providing more green cards for relatives of American citizens and lawful permanent residents who want to come to the United States. For their part, Republicans have offered amendments to deny legal status to illegal immigrants who have defied deportation orders.

Mr. Reid said that if he could not muster the votes needed for cloture, he would move on to other matters — a vote of no confidence in the attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, and then energy legislation.

Mr. Reid said he saw only a tiny possibility that the Senate might return to immigration at a later date, but he added, “I never say never.”

David Stout contributed reporting for this article.

    Senate Rejects Immigration Stricture, NYT, 6.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/06/washington/06cnd-immig.html?hp

Senate Votes to Keep Plan to Make Immigrants Legal

May 25, 2007
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, May 24 — The Senate on Thursday turned aside the most significant challenge to the comprehensive immigration bill now under debate, voting 66 to 29 to keep a provision that offers legal status to most of the nation’s 12 million illegal immigrants.

The legalization program is, by far, the most contentious part of the bill. But it is also an indispensable element of the fragile bipartisan compromise that the bill embodies.

Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, who offered the proposal to eliminate the program, called it “amnesty, pure and simple.” He said it would act like a magnet, encouraging more illegal immigration.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the chief Democratic architect of the bill, defended the program. To obtain legal status, he said, illegal immigrants would have to pay fines, pass background checks and, in most cases, hold jobs.

“Legalization is important for our national security,” Mr. Kennedy said. “We have to know who is in the United States. Legalization is important in terms of our economic prosperity. And legalization is important for the families. Do we think we’re going to deport children — 3.5 million American children who have parents that are undocumented?”

President Bush endorsed that argument. Referring to illegal immigrants, he said, “You can’t kick them out.” That solution is “just not real,” he said Thursday at a news conference, where he urged the Senate to pass the immigration bill.

The bill, a product of secret negotiations between the White House and a dozen senators, has survived four days of impassioned debate on the Senate floor. It is uncertain whether it has gained enough momentum to survive continuing attacks from both ends of the political spectrum.

Senators return home on Friday for a weeklong recess over the Memorial Day holiday. Many said they expected a barrage of questions from constituents upset with the legalization program.

But architects of the bill said they were pleased.

One of them, Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, said: “It’s been a good week. The bill is moving forward.”

A co-author of the bill, Senator Ken Salazar, Democrat of Colorado, said, “We are still together, and we are moving forward,” despite opposition from “bomb-throwers” on the right and the left.

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said the architects of the bill were confident that they would prevail when the Senate resumes work next month.

“We’ve got a long, tough road ahead of us,” Mr. Specter said. But he added, “We see essentially no enormous roadblocks, no poison pills, no killer amendments ahead that we can’t deal with.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said: “Time is on our side. The longer we have to discuss the bill among our colleagues, the bigger the buy-in.”

Critics, Mr. Graham said, will feel better if they have time “to vent their frustrations about the bill and to amend it.”

In other action on Thursday, the Senate approved an amendment that would increase fees imposed on employers who hire highly skilled temporary workers with H-1B visas. The money would be used to finance scholarships for American citizens studying mathematics, engineering, health care and computer science.

The vote was a victory for Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, who had proposed the amendment, which was approved 59 to 35.

With the scholarships, he said, “young Americans can get the education they need for these jobs, so employers don’t have to go abroad.”

The Senate narrowly rejected two proposals that could have upset the deal on immigration. In both cases, the vote was 49 to 48.

One proposal would have ended a guest worker program for less-skilled workers after five years.

The other would have encouraged state and local officials to help enforce federal immigration laws — its purpose being to prevent cities from offering sanctuary to illegal immigrants.

Many Republicans see the guest worker program as an essential element of the bill.

But the proposal to end it after five years looked as if it might pass. During the roll call, Mr. Kennedy persuaded another Democratic senator, Daniel K. Akaka of Hawaii, to switch his vote, thereby preserving the program.

Defending the guest worker program, President Bush said, “I would much rather have people crossing the border with a legitimate card, coming to work on a temporary basis, than being stuffed in back of an 18-wheeler.”

The proposal encouraging state and local agencies to help enforce the immigration laws was offered by Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota. It said that state and local employees could ask people about their immigration status whenever the employees had “probable cause” to believe that the people were not here legally.

“Several cities have passed ordinances or issued executive orders forbidding local law enforcement to even ask the question as to whether a person is in the United States lawfully,” Mr. Coleman said.

In adopting such “gag orders,” Mr. Coleman said, cities prevent their employees from finding and arresting illegal immigrants who may go on to commit violent crimes.

Senator Salazar denounced the proposal, saying it would force schoolteachers and hospital emergency room workers to become “the cops of our immigration laws.”

Mr. Kennedy said Mr. Coleman’s amendment would deter illegal immigrants from reporting crimes or cooperating with the public health authorities.

For example, he said, illegal immigrants with tuberculosis might be reluctant to seek treatment, and they could infect United States citizens.

    Senate Votes to Keep Plan to Make Immigrants Legal, NYT, 25.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/washington/25immig.html

Senate Rejects Changes in Immigration Bill

May 24, 2007
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, May 24 — - The Senate narrowly rejected two proposals today that would have upset the delicate compromise embodied in a bipartisan bill to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws.

In both cases, the vote was 49 to 48.

One proposal would have ended a proposed guest worker program after five years. The other proposal would have encouraged state and local government employees to help enforce federal immigration laws.

The purpose of the second proposal was to prevent cities from offering any type of sanctuary to illegal immigrants.

The bill, a product of secret negotiations between the White House and a dozen senators, has survived four days of impassioned debate on the Senate floor. But it is unclear whether the legislation has gained enough momentum to survive continuing attacks from the left and the right.

Senators are scheduled to leave for home on Friday for a weeklong recess over the Memorial Day holiday. Many said they expected to get angry questions from constituents upset with a provision of the bill that offers legal status to the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.

Architects of the bill said they were pleased.

“We made progress this week,” said Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the chief Democratic sponsor of the bill. But he quickly added that he foresaw “difficult and challenging times ahead.”

A co-author of the bill, Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, said: “It’s been a good week. The bill is moving forward.”

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said the architects of the bill were confident that they could deal with any “roadblocks, poison pills or killer amendments” that might be offered when the Senate continues work on the bill in June.

At a news conference today, President Bush urged the Senate to pass the measure and insisted that it did not provide amnesty to lawbreakers, as many conservatives have asserted.

“I knew this was going to be an explosive issue,” Mr. Bush said. “We’ve been through immigration debates in this country, and they can bring out the worst, sometimes, in people.”

Defending the guest worker program, Mr. Bush said, “I would much rather have people crossing the border with a legitimate card, coming to work on a temporary basis, than being stuffed in back of an 18-wheeler.”

The proposal encouraging state and local employees to help enforce the immigration laws was offered by Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota. It said state and local employees could ask people about their immigration status whenever the employees had “probable cause” to believe that the people were not legally present in the United States.

“Several cities have passed ordinances or issued executive orders forbidding local law enforcement to even ask the question as to whether a person is in the United States lawfully,” Mr. Coleman said.

In adopting such “gag orders,” Mr. Coleman said, cities prevent their own employees from finding and arresting illegal immigrants who may go on to commit violent crimes.

Senator Ken Salazar, Democrat of Colorado, denounced the proposal, saying it would force schoolteachers and hospital emergency room workers to become “the cops of our immigration laws.”

Mr. Kennedy said Mr. Coleman’s amendment would deter immigrants from reporting crimes or cooperating with public health authorities

Illegal immigrants who seek medical care could expose themselves to deportation, Mr. Kennedy said, so they will be reluctant to “come forward for programs essential to public health and safety.” For example, he said, immigrants with tuberculosis might be reluctant to seek treatment, and they could infect United States citizens.

    Senate Rejects Changes in Immigration Bill, NYT, 24.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/washington/24cnd-immig.html?hp

Senate Votes to Cut Guest Worker Program

May 23, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:12 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate voted Wednesday to slash the number of foreign workers who could come to the U.S. on temporary visas as part of a broad bipartisan immigration bill.

A new guest worker program would be capped at 200,000 a year under the proposal, which passed 74-24 over strong opposition by the Bush administration.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said the change, proposed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., would interfere with a ''central component'' of the White House-backed immigration measure. That plan provided for 400,000 worker visas annually, plus an option to increase that number to 600,000 if market conditions demand it.

''The Bingaman amendment would eliminate this critical flexibility and cut the size of the temporary worker program in half,'' Gutierrez said in a statement.

His comments came as the administration urged the Senate to approve the immigration legislation despite fresh criticism from presidential hopefuls and lawmakers in both parties.

''The proposal offers a much-needed solution for our nation's broken immigration system,'' the White House budget office said in a statement. ''This proposal would deliver an immigration system that is secure, productive, orderly and fair.''

The measure would grant an estimated 12 million unlawful immigrants quick legal status, toughen border security. It also would create a new workplace verification system to bar undocumented workers from getting jobs.

It would set up a point system for future immigration applicants that would place less emphasis on family connections and more on education and skills in demand by U.S. businesses.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, a Democratic presidential hopeful, announced plans to challenge the point system, saying it devalued family.

The scheme ''constitutes at minimum a radical experiment in social engineering and a departure from our tradition of having family and employers invite immigrants to come,'' Obama said, adding that he would work to phase it out.

A 2008 rival, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, said she would seek to lift new caps the measure would place on visas for family members of legal permanent residents.

Republicans sought to respond to conservative critics by trying to bolster security provisions and make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to get on a path to citizenship.

Sen. Lindsey Graham proposed cracking down on illegal border crossers with mandatory prison sentences.

''Everyone needs to know that America is changing its immigration laws. We're going to be serious about enforcing them. If you break our laws, you do so at your own peril, and you will lose your freedom,'' said Graham, R-S.C.

The Senate was also considering a proposal by Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, that would allow visas to be revoked without court review.

''Current law allows aliens to run to the steps of our country's courthouses and take advantage of our system,'' Grassley said. He said potential terrorists could stay in the country unless lawmakers approved his change.

Democrats heard objections from labor unions and immigrant groups about the guest worker program and focused on shrinking or altering it.

The temporary worker plan would bring in laborers to stay for up to three two-year stints, provided they left the United States for a year between each stay. A Democratic attempt to strip the program altogether failed Tuesday in the first major test of the fragile immigration compromise.

The conservatives, liberals and centrists who worked out the deal are struggling to keep it intact.

Senate leaders in both parties, however, say it is important to have a vigorous debate. They have postponed a final vote until June.

    Senate Votes to Cut Guest Worker Program, NYT, 23.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Congress-Immigration.html

Illegal Migrants Dissect Details of Senate Deal

May 20, 2007
The New York Times
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and JULIA PRESTON

TUCSON, May 19 — Under the shade of a mesquite tree here one morning this week, waiting for work that did not come, Elías Ramírez weighed the hurdles of what could be the biggest overhaul in immigration law in two decades.

To become full legal residents, under a compromise Senate leaders announced Thursday, Mr. Ramírez and other illegal immigrants would have to pay a total of $5,000 in fines, more than 14 times the typical weekly earnings on the streets here, return to their home countries at least once, and wait as long as eight years. During the wait, they would have limited possibilities to bring other family members.

“Well, it sounds difficult, but not impossible,” said Mr. Ramírez, 24, a native of Chiapas, Mexico, who has been here a year. “I would like to be here legally in the future, so these things are what I might have to do.”

Another man among the group gathered outside a church here that serves as a hiring site for day laborers overheard Mr. Ramírez and approached with disdain.

“It’s almost impossible to bring your family,” he said, rattling off information he had gleaned from a Spanish-language newspaper. “You have to go back first, and what are you going to do in Mexico while you are there and there is no work? I’ve been here 20 years and I still work and support my family, so why would I do any of these things?”

The compromise bill has offered a glimmer of hope to illegal immigrants here, 60 miles from the border, and elsewhere. But they and others, through news reports, advocates and lawyers, are just now learning the fine print.

Advocacy groups here said they would lobby lawmakers to reject the bill, saying it would place onerous restrictions on illegal workers who want to win legal status and also hurt efforts to unify immigrant families.

“This is an unprecedented shift from family unity being the cornerstone of our immigration policy,” said Isabel Garcia, a lawyer and a chairwoman of Derechos Humanos, an advocacy group here. Ms. Garcia also objected to what she called “insurmountable” obstacles in the bill.

The compromise Senate bill proposes an initiative to give legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. It also portends a major shift in the priorities and values of American immigration for the future. It would gradually change a system based primarily on family ties, in place since 1965, into one that favors high-skilled and highly educated workers who want to become permanent residents.

In the future, low-skilled workers like the men waiting for work here would largely be channeled to a vast new temporary program, where they would be allowed to work in the United States for three stints of two years each, broken up by one-year stays in their homeland.

“This is a different architecture,” said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, and commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1993 to 2000.

Illegal workers already here would gain a provisional legal status, known as a Z visa, fairly quickly. But to become permanent residents they would have to pay the big fines and get in an eight-year line behind others who have already applied legally for green cards, as permanent resident visas are known.

Still, despite the outcry from immigrant advocates, a reading of the details of the legislation suggests important benefits for relatives of legal immigrants and naturalized American citizens who have been waiting for green cards for as long as 22 years in some cases.

A first step is to eliminate, within eight years, the backlog of 4 million people who have applied to come legally to the United States, allotting 440,000 visas a year for that purpose, according to summaries provided by the Department of Homeland Security and the office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who was a chief author of the bill.

“We are adding to our family-based system, we are not substituting merit for family,” said Laura Capps, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kennedy.

After the backlog is cleared, a slowly increasing number of permanent visas would be approved through a merit system, based on points granted for English language proficiency (an acute hurdle for the men waiting for work here, as none spoke English), level of education and job skills, among other factors.

Siblings and adult children of legal immigrants will no longer be able to apply for visas, and visas for parents of United States citizens will be limited to 40,000 a year.

In his weekly radio address on Saturday, President Bush said that the measure “will improve security at our borders. It will give employers new tools to verify the employment status of workers and hold businesses to account for those they hire.”

Mr. Bush added, “The legislation will clear the backlog of family members who’ve applied to come to our country lawfully, and have been waiting patiently in line. This legislation will end chain migration by limiting the relatives who can automatically receive green cards to spouses and minor children. And this legislation will transform our immigration system so that future immigration decisions are focused on admitting immigrants who have the skills, education, and English proficiency that will help America compete in a global economy.”

The immigration debate has long stirred politics, sometimes dividing members of the same party and forcing lawmakers to reconsider positions. This bill is no different.

Last year, as he sought re-election, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, a Republican, was critical of giving illegal immigrants legal status. But this week Mr. Kyl stood with John McCain, Arizona’s senior senator and a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, as the compromise was announced, saying ideological sacrifices had to be made.

The proposal, though, divided the two Democratic members of Congress from here in southern Arizona, Gabrielle Giffords and Raúl M. Grijalva.

Ms. Giffords called it a positive step while Mr. Grijalva, whose father was a migrant farm worker, told The Arizona Daily Star it was “tentative and unfinished.”

In south Tucson, outside the Southside Presbyterian Church, where immigrants — mostly men — have gathered for decades to find work, the immigration debate is also playing out as the men wait for jobs.

There are people like Mr. Ramírez, who spent several years just over the border in Sonora before finally coming to Arizona for construction and other work. He has not seen his family, he said, for 10 years.

Sipping from a bottle filled with ice as the day’s heat soared, Mr. Ramírez occasionally broke away when pickup trucks and other vehicles approached, joining others begging for a day’s work.

The biggest obstacle, Mr. Ramírez said, would probably be paying the $5,000 in fines on the way to permanent legal status. He does not have health insurance now, which he would be required to provide for his family if he decided to return to Mexico and come back as a temporary worker. “I don’t know who sells that or what it costs,” he said.

Still, all in all, “the important thing is saving. The fines are similar to what we pay polleros,” Mr. Ramírez said, using a Spanish slang term for the smugglers who guide people across the border.

Teoforo Valdés, 32, nodded in agreement. He has lived in and around Tucson for 10 years and still makes occasional trips home to Sonora, evading the Border Patrol.

But Mr. Valdés has grown tired of the journey, he said, and, at least upon first look at the proposal, sees reason for optimism.

“Right now, we have nothing, no real way to legalize ourselves,” he said. “This government is giving us steps and so we have to think how we can take them.”

As the morning wore on, the number of potential employers driving past grew thin. The workers began to disperse, though some stayed behind to use the bathroom and a shower at the church.

Jesús Antonio Rodríguez, 49, who said he was a legal resident and acts as an informal adviser to the men, summed up the dilemma.

“People do not believe it but we really do come to work,” Mr. Rodríguez said. “We are not delinquents here. We have to work. And we want to cooperate, but everything is always so hard here.”

Randal C. Archibold reported from Tucson, and Julia Preston from New York.

    Illegal Migrants Dissect Details of Senate Deal, NYT, 20.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/us/20immig.html?hp

Senate Rejects Iraq Funding Cutoff

May 16, 2007
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY and CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, May 16 — Democrats who are highly critical of President Bush’s Iraq war strategy suffered a stinging defeat today when the Senate overwhelmingly rejected a measure to cut off money for the military campaign by March 31, 2008.

The measure, in the form of an amendment to an unrelated water-projects bill, was effectively rejected, 67 to 29, with 19 Democrats voting against it in a procedural vote. Sixty “yes” votes were required for the measure to advance, so it fell short by 31 votes.

Though the vote was largely symbolic, the outcome was nevertheless significant, in that it underscored the divisions among Democrats over how to oppose the administration’s Iraq policy, as well as widespread fear of being seen as undercutting American troops.

This morning’s vote was preceded by an emotional debate. “Too many blank checks have been given to this president,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, who was a sponsor of the cutoff measure along with Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin.

“As we speak, more than 150,000 brave American troops are in the middle of a violent civil war,” Mr. Feingold said. “Meanwhile, the president has repeatedly made it clear that nothing — not the wishes of the American people, not the advice of military and foreign policy experts, not the concerns of the members of both parties — will discourage him from pursuing a war that has no end in sight.”

“Congress cannot wait for the president to change course,” Mr. Feingold said. “We must change the course ourselves.”

One Democrat voting against Mr. Feingold’s measure was Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. He has been critical of the administration’s conduct of the war, but he said he did not want to send the wrong message to American soldiers. “We’re going to support those troops,” he said.Moderate Republicans who have been critical of Mr. Bush’s war strategy also rejected the Reid-Feingold amendment. “I don’t think it’s responsible,” said Senator Susan Collins of Maine. “It’s a disservice to the brave men and women who are fighting in Iraq.”

No Republicans voted for the amendment. The only non-Democrat who did was Senator Bernard Sanders, an independent from Vermont who usually votes with the Democrats.

The symbolic vote was also important in terms of presidential politics. Two candidates for their party’s nomination in 2008, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, said for the first time on Tuesday that they would support legislation to curtail major combat operations in Iraq by March 31, 2008, cutting off financing for all but a limited mission of American forces.

Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton made separate announcements on the eve of today’s Senate debate concerning the use of the Congress’s power of the purse to bring the war to an end. For weeks, the two senators had declined to state their positions, but they issued statements after rivals — and liberal groups — criticized their silence.

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Democrat of Connecticut who is seeking to draw more attention to his presidential candidacy, began broadcasting advertisements on Tuesday in states with early primary elections, highlighting his support for the legislation. “Unfortunately, my colleagues running for president have not joined me,” he said. Hours later, at least two of them did.

As the Senate prepares for final negotiations with the House over Iraq war spending, presidential politics have, once again, become intertwined with the debate in Congress. Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, aides said, had resisted signing onto the plan, fearful of being portrayed as cutting off money for the troops, even though supporters say the bill will not prevail.

The defeated Reid-Feingold measure called for a troop withdrawal to begin within 120 days. Senate Democratic leaders agreed to let the Feingold proposal come up for a vote on Wednesday as a prelude to negotiating with Republicans and the White House over an Iraq spending plan.

Mr. Obama said he did not believe that cutting off money for all but a limited mission was the “best answer.” But he concluded he would support it, he said, “to send a strong statement to the Iraqi government, the president and my Republican colleagues that it’s long past time to change course.”

Mrs. Clinton, who has struggled to explain her initial support of the war to some potential voters in Democratic primaries, said she would vote to support the Feingold plan “because we, as a united party, must work together with clarity of purpose and mission to begin bringing our troops home and end this war.”

The dispute over the war spending bill has consumed Congress for weeks and prevented the administration from getting the roughly $95 billion it is seeking for the Pentagon for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The vote today allowed those Democrats most opposed to the Iraq war to vent their frustration before the Senate proceeds to efforts to find a compromise with the White House over war spending.

Mr. Reid and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, have been negotiating over how to win quick Senate approval of a preliminary war spending measure, so that compromise talks can begin with the House and White House over a final bill. Mr. Reid was adamant on Tuesday that Congress would not break for the Memorial Day recess until it produced a final Iraq spending measure that would be accepted by President Bush.

“We’re going no place until we finish this bill,” Mr. Reid said Tuesday evening on the Senate floor.

But Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the House majority leader, raised the possibility that meeting next week’s deadline would be difficult. If Congress does not meet the deadline, it will, for the second time, leave for a recess without finishing the Iraq spending measure.

While the Iraq votes on Wednesday may not have a significant impact on the immediate war spending bill, the results will reflect Senate sentiment on conditions in Iraq, which could influence the war debate as it proceeds throughout the summer.

Senate Republicans were offering options of their own. One included a proposal sponsored by Senators John W. Warner of Virginia and Ms. Collins, requiring the president to report to Congress on the progress in Iraq by July 15 and Sept. 15. The Warner-Collins proposal got 52 “yes” votes today, eight short of the 60 needed. Forty-four senators voted against it.

The proposal would have allowed some economic aid to be withheld if the president did not certify that Iraq was meeting benchmarks for success. But at the request of the White House, the proposal was changed to allow the president to waive that penalty.

While the two parties aired their public differences over Iraq on Tuesday, lawmakers and aides said the talks over a final spending plan still centered on providing money for the war tied to conditions on the Iraqi government to show progress in unifying Iraq politically and stabilizing it from a security standpoint.

“I think there’s widespread frustration with the Iraqi government, and, clearly, these benchmarks are going to be directed toward the Iraqi government and its performance, or — at least so far — its lack of performance,” Mr. McConnell said.

    Senate Rejects Iraq Funding Cutoff, NYT, 16.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/washington/16cnd-cong.html?hp

Senate Approves Tighter Policing of Drug Makers

May 10, 2007
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, May 9 — By a vote of 93 to 1, the Senate passed a bill on Wednesday that would give the Food and Drug Administration new power to police drug safety, order changes in drug labels, regulate advertising and restrict the use and distribution of medicines found to pose serious risks to consumers.

The bill calls for a fundamental change in the philosophy and operations of the drug agency, requiring it to focus on the entire life cycle of a drug — not just the years before its approval — as well as the experience of patients who later take it.

Under the bill, the government would establish a surveillance system to track the adverse effects of prescription drugs. Scientists would analyze data on tens of millions of patients, looking for signals that particular drugs pose serious risks.

In passing the measure, the Senate sent a clear signal that it wanted stronger action by the agency to protect public health. Senators said the bill responded to a widespread loss of confidence in the ability of the agency to protect consumers against the dangers of drugs like Vioxx, a popular painkiller withdrawn from the market in 2004.

Major provisions of the bill, which would carry out recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences, appear broadly acceptable to the House and are likely to become law.

The Bush administration has not actively opposed the measure, although it says the agency already has all the regulatory authority it needs. Within the agency, officials have been divided about whether they have the enough power.

The bill is widely seen as “must pass” legislation because it renews authority for the government to collect fees from drug companies to speed reviews of their products. Without action by Congress, the authority expires on Sept. 30.

Billy Tauzin, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the main trade group for manufacturers of brand name drugs, applauded the passage, of the bill, saying it “will preserve and even strengthen the F.D.A.’s ability to do its job.”

Drug company executives succeeded in their efforts to block a proposal to legalize imports of lower-priced medicines from Canada. And many were happy that the final Senate version sidestepped a multibillion-dollar question, how to give consumers access to lower-cost copies of biotechnology drugs that cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

Lawmakers from both parties said they intended to create a procedure for approval of such copycat drugs, sometimes called generic biologics.

Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, a consumer organization, said: “The bill’s improvements in F.D.A. authority are important but inadequate. The bill would increase collaboration between the agency and the drug industry by increasing the agency’s reliance on user fees to finance drug reviews.”

Work on the bill began long before Democrats won control of Congress. At a time bills often pass or fail on party-line votes, the Senate drug bill was a product of bipartisan cooperation. Republicans were full partners in drafting it.

“This legislation will make a major difference for families in America, ensuring the safety of our prescription drug system,” said the chief sponsor of the bill, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts.

Senator Michael B. Enzi, Republican of Wyoming, said the bill was the “most comprehensive drug safety overhaul in more than a decade.”

The no vote was cast by Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, an outspoken critic of the pharmaceutical industry who said he was “extremely disappointed” that the bill did not legalize imports.

Just minutes before the bill passed, the Senate voted, 64 to 30, to double the maximum civil fine that could be imposed on a drug company for violating a drug safety plan approved by the F.D.A. The maximum fine would be $2 million.

“If fines are nothing more than the cost of doing business, you cannot deter bad behavior,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who proposed the increase.

Under current law, the government and drug companies sometimes haggle for months over changes in drug labeling, and the drug agency can request but not compel manufacturers to perform studies after a drug has been approved.

Under the Senate bill, the government could order changes in a label and require the manufacturer to conduct more studies and clinical trials of a drug already on the market.

“For Vioxx, it took 14 months to change the drug’s label to warn doctors and patients of the danger,” Mr. Kennedy said. “Companies routinely promise to conduct studies that are never even started, much less completed.”

The bill would also require the government to establish a public database of clinical trials and their results. Lawmakers said this would make it difficult for drug companies to hide evidence of safety problems, as, they said, some companies had done.

The database would also make it easier for patients to learn of clinical trials testing drugs that could save their lives.

Mr. Enzi said the bill could speed the approval of new drugs, by giving the agency more tools to protect patients after treatments had been approved. The agency would no longer have to rely on “the nuclear option, which is pulling a drug completely off the market,” an extreme step that may disrupt patients’ care, Mr. Enzi said.

The agency could instead require a manufacturer to adopt a “risk evaluation and mitigation strategy” for a drug that posed serious risks.

As part of a risk-management plan, the agency could require that any television or radio advertisements for a drug describe its risks “in a clear and conspicuous neutral manner,” with fines for false or misleading commercials.

To make that sure patients could have access to drugs with extraordinary risks like thalidomide, for a type of cancer, and Tysabri, for multiple sclerosis, the drug agency could require additional precautions like special training for doctors and close monitoring of patients.

Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, said any restrictions on using or marketing a drug would have to be based on “sound science.”

The bill would give financial incentives to drug companies to study the effects of their products in children. The reward would be scaled back for drugs that already had sales of more than $1 billion a year in the United States.

Experts estimate that two-thirds of the drugs prescribed for children have not been studied or labeled for pediatric use.

Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said Wednesday that he shared the goals of the Senate bill.

“Incidents like the recall of the arthritis drug Vioxx have created a crisis of confidence in the Food and Drug Administration,” Mr. Dingell said.

Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Democrat of New Jersey who is the chairman of the health subcommittee, said the House would hold hearings this month and probably write its bill next month, with a vote by the full House likely in July.

    Senate Approves Tighter Policing of Drug Makers, NYT, 10.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/washington/10drug.html?hp

Senators Wary of Bush's Wiretap Proposal

May 2, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:41 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP)-- Citing FBI abuses and the attorney general's troubles, senators peppered top Justice and intelligence officials Tuesday with skeptical questions about their proposal to revise the rules for spying on Americans.

Senate Intelligence Committee members said the Bush administration must provide more information about its earlier domestic spying before it can hope to gain additional powers for the future.

''Is the administration's proposal necessary, or does it take a step further down a path that we will regret as a nation?'' asked Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-V.Wa., as he convened a rare public hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee he chairs.

For two hours, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, National Security Agency Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein and their lawyers tried to parry increasingly dubious and hostile questions. They deferred many answers to a committee session closed to the public.

With little apparent success, they portrayed the administration bill as merely an adjustment to technological changes wrought by cell phones, e-mail and the Internet since the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was enacted in the 1970s. Under current rules, McConnell said, ''We're actually missing a significant portion of what we should be getting.''

But Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., responded, ''We look through the lens of the past to judge how much we can trust you.'' Like other senators, he said that trust was undermined by recent disclosure that the FBI had abused so-called National Security Letters to obtain information about Americans.

Whitehouse added another factor. ''The attorney general has thoroughly and utterly lost my confidence,'' he said in reference to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' shifting explanations for the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys.

Rockefeller pressed a demand for documents in which he was joined by Republican vice chair Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri.

''There is simply no excuse for not providing to this committee all the legal opinions on the president's program,'' Rockefeller said.

The committee asked a year ago for Bush's order -- and the Justice legal opinions supporting it -- that directed the National Security Agency after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to eavesdrop without warrants on Americans believed to be in contact with terrorists.

Democrats and civil liberties and conservative groups complained that the directive violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires warrants from a secret court for intelligence surveillance of Americans. Bush agreed last January to put the program under the court's supervision.

In 2006, the surveillance court approved all but one request to eavesdrop on people in the United States, according to the Justice Department. The court approved a total of 2,176 warrants. The FISA court also approved 43 warrants allowing investigators access to business records of suspected terrorists and spies.

Even though the administration insists the warrantless wiretapping was legal under the president's constitutional powers, the administration bill contains a provision blocking lawsuits against telephone companies that cooperated. The administration has won most of the court battles so far over that spying, but one judge declared it illegal.

''Congress is being asked to enact legislation that brings to an end lawsuits that allege violations of the rights of Americans,'' Rockefeller said. ''We cannot legislate in the blind.''

The senators were not calmed by reassurances from the witnesses that the domestic wiretapping is still operating under the secret court's supervision.

''There is nothing in this bill that confines the president to work within'' the surveillance act in the future, said Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif. The same issue was raised by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

McConnell said the administration wants to work under the surveillance law now, but acknowledged ''that does not mean the president would not use ... (constitutional powers) in a crisis.''

''We want to go after the bad guys,'' Nelson said, ''but we want to prevent the creation of a dictator who takes the law in his own hands.'' He said some senators and others legitimately believed Bush broke the law.

Earlier in the day, the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts reported that state prosecutors obtained a record number of criminal wiretap warrants last year to listen to more than 3 million phone conversations, mostly in drug cases. Federal prosecutors got only a third as many of these wiretaps, all in cases unrelated to terrorism.

------

On the Net:

Senate hearing site: http://intelligence.senate.gov/hearings.cfm?hearingId2643

2006 Wiretap Report: http://www.uscourts.gov/wiretap06/contents.html

    Senators Wary of Bush's Wiretap Proposal, NYT, 2.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Domestic-Spying.html

Bush Vetoes Bill Tying Iraq Funds to Exit

May 2, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON, May 1 — President Bush vetoed a $124 billion war spending bill on Tuesday, setting up a second round in his long battle with Congressional Democrats who are determined to use the financing measure to force the White House to shift course in Iraq.

The veto was only the second of Mr. Bush’s presidency. In a six-minute televised speech from the White House, the president called the measure a “prescription for chaos and confusion,” and said, as he has for weeks, that he could not sign it because it contained timetables for troop withdrawal.

“Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure, and that would be irresponsible,” Mr. Bush said. He said the measure would “impose impossible conditions on our commanders in combat” by forcing them to “take fighting directions from politicians 6,000 miles away in Washington, D.C.”

The veto added new punctuation to a major war powers clash between Democrats in Congress — buoyed what they regard as a mandate in last November’s elections and seeking to force an end to the fighting in Iraq — and a president working to defy what he regards as an incursion on his authority as commander in chief.

Democrats concede they do not have enough votes to override the veto. But, speaking in the Capitol shortly after Mr. Bush’s remarks, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, and the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said they would not be deterred from pushing the president as hard as they could to bring the troops home.

“If the president thinks by vetoing this bill he will stop us from working to change the direction of the war in Iraq, he is mistaken,” Mr. Reid said. He added, “Now he has an obligation to explain his plan to responsibly end this war.”

The fight has been brewing for nearly three months, ever since Mr. Bush sent Congress his request for emergency financing for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, including money to support his troop buildup. The next chapter begins Wednesday, when Congressional leaders are expected to meet Mr. Bush at the White House to open negotiations on a new bill. They are expected to look for ways to preserve the benchmarks for Iraqi progress that were included in the initial bill while eliminating the timetables for troop withdrawal that Mr. Bush has emphatically rejected.

Several Republican leaders said Tuesday that they were likely to support such benchmarks, and White House aides said Tuesday that Mr. Bush, who has supported goals and benchmarks for the Iraqi government, might back such a measure — but only if the benchmarks are nonbinding.

Mr. Bush issued the veto from the Oval Office at about 5:30 p.m., using a pen given to him by the father of a fallen marine. It came just hours after Democrats had themselves staged an unusual signing ceremony in the Capitol, timed to coincide with the four-year anniversary of the so-called Mission Accomplished speech, when Mr. Bush stood on an aircraft carrier and declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended.

Mr. Bush spent much of the day in Tampa, Fla., at MacDill Air Force Base, headquarters of the United States Central Command, which coordinates Iraq operations. While he did not directly address the Iraq spending bill there, he warned that an early exit could turn Iraq into “a cauldron of chaos.”

Even as the political stagecraft played out on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue — and in Florida — on Tuesday, there were signs that Republicans and Democrats might be able to compromise on establishing benchmarks for the Iraqi government to show progress. But it remained an open question whether broad agreement was possible within Congress, much less with the White House, about whether to insist on consequences if those benchmarks were not met.

“There are a number of Republicans who do think that some kind of benchmarks, properly crafted, would actually be helpful,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.

Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the Republican whip, did not reject the concept of establishing benchmarks but said any hard-and-fast timetables or deadlines would be resisted. “Our members will not accept restraint on the military,” Mr. Blunt said.

Financing for the troops is likely to run out by June. With the Democrats still wrestling over what approach to take, some are discussing passing two bills, one to provide short-term financing for the troops, the other to deal with questions of Iraq policy. Throughout the day, Democrats lined up to deliver floor speeches observing the fourth anniversary of the president’s speech on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. At the front of the House chamber, Democrats positioned a blown-up photograph of Mr. Bush standing on the carrier deck on May 1, 2003.

Aides to the president were openly angry about the reminders, and the Democrats’ unusual legislative signing ceremony.

“It’s a trumped-up political stunt,” Dana Perino, the deputy White House press secretary, told reporters traveling aboard Air Force One. Others grumbled privately that Congress had sent plenty of bills to Mr. Bush without such pomp and circumstance.

“We’ve got the lights, we’ve got the characters, we’ve got the action for some fine political theater in the House of Representatives today,” said Representative Lynn A. Westmoreland, Republican of Georgia. “It’s time for the majority to take off their costumes and exit stage left. We owe it to our nation and our troops to see the ending of this story.”

In Tampa, Mr. Bush made his case for the spending bill without ever specifically mentioning it. After huddling with American military commanders, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, Mr. Bush addressed a conference of representatives from some of the roughly 90 countries that the United States considers allies in the global campaign against terrorism.

“Failure in Iraq should be unacceptable to the civilized world,” Mr. Bush said. “The risks are enormous.” He added that there were “signs of hope” even though the troop buildup was in its early stages.

The veto, announced by Mr. Bush at 6:10 p.m., just before the network news broadcasts began, was quickly seized on by Democratic groups.

Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, a group financed, in part, through labor union money, presented a television advertisement criticizing the White House and Congressional Republicans. The group also planned a series of rallies across the country. In the Capitol, several Democrats and Republicans said they were eager to find common ground on the Iraq spending bill and bring an end to the bitter fight.

“Unfortunately, people are getting locked down in their respective positions,” said Senator Olympia Snowe, Republican of Maine. “The White House wants to have open-ended latitude on how to conduct a war, but I don’t think that is simply an option at this point.”

Carl Hulse contributed reporting.

    Bush Vetoes Bill Tying Iraq Funds to Exit, NYT, 2.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/washington/02policy.html?hp

Senate Passes Bill Seeking Iraq Exit; Veto Is Expected

April 27, 2007
By CARL HULSE
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, April 26 — The Senate on Thursday sent President Bush a $124 billion war spending measure that he has promised to veto, forcing Democrats to begin confronting the difficult question of what to do after the president acts.

Lawmakers and senior Democratic aides in the House and Senate acknowledge that there is no consensus among the party’s leadership on how to respond legislatively to the veto, with members of the House and Senate advocating competing options and some outside antiwar groups urging the Democrats to hold firm.

“It gives new meaning to the notion of a fluid process,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, after the Senate voted 51 to 46 over serious Republican objections to approve the emergency war measure. Two Republicans joined 48 Democrats and one independent in supporting the bill that would order troops to begin leaving Iraq by Oct. 1 at the latest; 45 Republicans and one independent opposed it.

The White House reaction was swift and harsh. “Eighty days after President Bush submitted his troop funding bill, the Senate has now joined the House in passing defeatist legislation that insists on a date for surrender, micromanages our commanders and generals in combat zones from 6,000 miles away, and adds billions of dollars in unrelated spending to the fighting on the ground,” said Dana Perino, the administration spokeswoman.

With the veto coming, some Democrats argue that the bill should simply be stripped of the timelines that have drawn Mr. Bush’s ire and sent back with the benchmarks and troop readiness rules intact. Others say Congress has made its antiwar statement and should now give the president the money without conditions.

Another wing, including House Democrats who are influential on military policy, prefers providing money for the troops for a few months while keeping pressure on the White House through other Pentagon-related legislation. Still others want to turn the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group into law.

Each alternative carries its own risk because Democratic leaders might not be able to muster the votes for passage of an alternate bill because a substantial bloc of Democrats opposes providing more money without some demand for a withdrawal.

One senior House aide summarized the problem succinctly: The president does not want the bill Democrats have passed, and Democrats might not be able to pass the bill the president wants.

But the Democratic leadership was not ready Thursday to contemplate the tough course ahead in public. With the Senate joining the House in approving the spending bill, Democrats delivered their most significant challenge to Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy since they took power in January after an election that many Democrats saw as a referendum on the president and his handling of the war.

“We have carried forth the wishes of the American people,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate Democratic leader.

Recent public opinion polls show the Democrats, with a push for a timeline for leaving Iraq, have struck a chord. A New York Times-CBS News poll found that those surveyed favored a timeline for withdrawal in 2008 by a wide margin, 64 percent to 32 percent. The poll of 1,052 people conducted April 20-24 also found public support for Congress to have the final say on troop levels in Iraq, 57 percent to 35 percent.

The poll also showed that those surveyed said 56 percent to 36 percent that they believed Congress should allow the war money to go forward without timelines once Mr. Bush vetoes the bill.

Senate Republicans called the measure a wasted exercise. Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the Republican whip, joined the White House in declaring the bill “dead before arrival.”

Others pointed to statements by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander in Iraq who met privately with lawmakers on Wednesday, that Al Qaeda is a primary source of violence in Iraq.

“They are attacking Americans,” said Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas. “They are attacking Iraqis. They are trying to take over Iraq so they will have the capability to spread their terrorism throughout the world.”

Democrats said that Republicans were once again trying to tie the terrorism threat to what is predominantly a civil war in Iraq and that a withdrawal there would in fact allow American forces to concentrate better on terrorism.

“Redeploying our troops who are bogged down in the middle of an Iraqi civil war will enable us to refocus on our top national security: the global fight against Al Qaeda and its affiliates,” said Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin.

“It is time to come home,” said Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey.

As they begin to fashion their post-veto strategy, Democrats say they will listen carefully to what Mr. Bush says in rejecting the bill, studying the nuances for negotiating room beyond his call for a spending measure with no restrictions.

Republican leaders in the House and Senate have recently indicated an openness to legislation that contains some form of benchmark to better chart the progress of the Iraqi government.

“There are a number of members of my conference who do think that benchmarks could be helpful, depending upon how they’re crafted,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. “And that’ll be among the many items we discuss in moving forward and getting the money to the troops as quickly as possible.”

Mr. McConnell said he and Mr. Reid had already had preliminary talks about how to proceed after the veto.

Democrats said Mr. Bush was going to have to engage them as well.

“Maybe if he does veto this bill, maybe we’ll come to the conclusion that it’s time to change direction in this war, and he will sit and talk to us,” said Mr. Reid, who said a new bill might not be ready before June 1.

Another factor in the Democratic strategy is the influence of outside groups allied with the party against the war, some of which may be very reluctant to relent in the showdown with Mr. Bush. As soon as Mr. Bush vetoes the measure — perhaps as early as Tuesday, on the fourth anniversary of his 2003 “mission accomplished” appearance — a network of groups plans to spring into action with hundreds of rallies and news conferences around the country to bolster the Democrats.

And a poll released Thursday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that many backers of both Republicans and Democrats were not eager for compromise. The survey of 1,508 adults conducted April 18-22 found that 54 percent of those who support a timeline for withdrawal do not want Democrats to strike a deal; the same percentage of those against a timeline say Mr. Bush should follow through with his veto.

Add in the determination of Congress and the White House to shift blame for any delay in money for the armed forces, and it is clear that finding a final agreement will be a challenge. Officials predict that the next 10 days could prove critical.

“It ain’t going to be easy,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid. “But it will get done.”

Rice Balks at House Iraq Subpoena

OSLO, April 26 — A day after receiving a subpoena from Congress, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signaled here on Thursday that she would resist the order to appear before a House committee to answer questions about how the White House handled prewar intelligence about Iraq.

“This is an issue that has been answered and answered and answered,” she said at a news conference before a meeting of foreign ministers of NATO countries. “I am more than happy to answer them again — in a letter, because I think that is the way to continue this dialogue.”

Ms. Rice said she had worked in the White House, as national security adviser, during the prewar period and was therefore not legally obligated to testify before Congress.

    Senate Passes Bill Seeking Iraq Exit; Veto Is Expected, NYT, 27.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/washington/27cong.html?hp

Reid: Bush in Denial Over War in Iraq

April 23, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:17 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday President Bush is in a state of denial over Iraq, ''and the new Congress will show him the way.'' Holding his ground, Bush renewed his staunch opposition to timetables for U.S. troop withdrawals.

''I believe strongly that politicians in Washington shouldn't be telling generals how to do their job,'' Bush said at the White House after meeting with Army Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the Iraq war. ''I believe artificial timetables for withdrawal would be a mistake.''

Reid, D-Nev., said the Democratic-controlled House and Senate will soon pass a war funding bill that includes ''a fair and reasonable timetable'' for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops. In a speech prepared for delivery later Monday, he also challenged Bush to present an alternative if, as expected, he vetoes the measure.

Reid's office released excerpts of the speech a few hours before Bush made his comments.

The president said that Petraeus will go to Capitol Hill to tell lawmakers what's going right in Iraq -- and what's not.

''It's a tough time, as the general will tell Congress,'' Bush said. Still, the president insisted, progress is being made in Iraq as more U.S. troops head into the country to provide security.

Reid drew criticism from Bush and others last week when he said the war in Iraq had been lost.

The Nevada Democrat did not repeat the assertion in his prepared speech, saying that ''The military mission has long since been accomplished. The failure has been political. It has been policy. It has been presidential.''

Congress is expected to pass legislation this week that contains a nonbinding timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by spring of 2008.

In addition, Democratic officials have said the measure will require the military to meet its own standards for equipping, training and resting troops who are sent to Iraq. Bush would be able to waive the requirements.

Officials also say the measure will set standards for the Iraqi government to meet as it tries to establish itself as a democratic society.

Bush has pledged repeatedly to reject any bill that includes a timetable for a troop withdrawal, and there is no doubt that Republicans in Congress have the votes to sustain his veto.

That would require Congress to approve a second funding bill quickly to avoid significant disruptions in military operations.

Reid's speech blended an attack on Bush, an appeal for patience to the anti-war voters who last fall gave Democrats control, and an attempt to shape the post-veto debate.

''I understand the restlessness that some feel. Many who voted for change in November anticipated dramatic and immediate results in January,'' he said.

''But like it or not, George W. Bush is still the commander in chief -- and this is his war,'' Reid said.

Reid said Democrats have sought Republican support for their attempts to force Bush to change course. ''Only the president is the odd man out, and he is making the task even harder by demanding absolute fidelity from his party.''

Looking beyond Bush's expected veto, he said, ''If the president disagrees, let him come to us with an alternative. Instead of sending us back to square one with a veto, some tough talk and nothing more, let him come to the table in the spirit of bipartisanship that Americans demand and deserve.''

Reid noted disapprovingly that in a speech last week, Bush repeatedly said there were signs of progress in Iraq in the wake of a troop increase he ordered last winter.

''The White House transcript says the president made those remarks in the state of Michigan. I believe he made them in the state of denial,'' said Reid.

Democratic officials have also said they intend to add a minimum wage increase to the war funding bill. Key lawmakers announced agreement late last week on a package of business tax breaks to accompany the boost in the wage floor, which would total $2.10 cents an hour in three equal installments.

Apart from the clash over war policy, Bush has pledged to veto the funding bill if Democrats go ahead with plans to include billions of dollars in domestic spending.

    Reid: Bush in Denial Over War in Iraq, NYT, 23.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html

Reid: U.S. Can't Win the War in Iraq

April 20, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:18 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday the war in Iraq is ''lost,'' triggering an angry backlash by Republicans, who said the top Democrat had turned his back on the troops.

The bleak assessment -- the most pointed yet from Reid -- came as the House voted 215-199 to uphold legislation ordering troops out of Iraq next year.

Reid said he told President Bush on Wednesday he thought the war could not be won through military force, although he said the U.S. could still pursue political, economic and diplomatic means to bring peace to Iraq.

''I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and -- you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows -- (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday,'' said Reid, D-Nev.

Republicans pounced on the comment as evidence, they said, that Democrats do not support the troops.

''I can't begin to imagine how our troops in the field, who are risking their lives every day, are going to react when they get back to base and hear that the Democrat leader of the United States Senate has declared the war is lost,'' said Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

The exchange came before the House voted to endorse legislation it passed last month that would fund the war in Iraq but require combat missions to end by September 2008. The Senate passed similar, less-sweeping legislation that would set a nonbinding goal of bringing combat troops home by March 31, 2008.

''Our troops won the war clearly, cleanly and quickly,'' said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the Appropriations Committee. ''But now they are stuck in a civil war,'' and the only solution is a political and diplomatic compromise. ''And there is no soldier who can get that done,'' he added.

The House voted mostly along party lines to insist congressional negotiators trying to reconcile the House and Senate bills retain the firm timetable.

Despite the vote, which was orchestrated by Republicans to try to embarrass Democrats, aides said Democrats were leaning toward accepting the Senate's nonbinding goal. The compromise bill also is expected to retain House provisions preventing military units from being worn out by excessive combat deployments; however, the president could waive these standards if he states so publicly.

Bush pledged to veto either measure and said troops were being harmed by Congress' failure to deliver the funds quickly.

The Pentagon says it has enough money to pay for the Iraq war through June. The Army is taking ''prudent measures'' aimed at ensuring that delays in the bill financing the war do not harm troop readiness, according to instructions sent to Army commanders and budget officials April 14.

While $70 billion that Congress provided in September for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has mostly run out, the Army has told department officials to slow the purchase of nonessential repair parts and other supplies, restrict the use of government charge cards and limit travel.

The Army also will delay contracts for facilities repair and environmental restoration, according to instructions from Army Comptroller Nelson Ford. He said the accounting moves are similar to those enacted last year when the Republican-led Congress did not deliver a war funding bill to Bush until mid-June.

More stringent steps would be taken in May, such as a hiring freeze and firing temporary employees, but exceptions are made for any war-related activities or anything that ''would result immediately in the degradation of readiness standards'' for troops in Iraq or those slated for deployment.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino called the Democrats' stance ''disturbing'' and all but dared Reid to cut off funding for the war.

''If this is his true feeling, then it makes one wonder if he has the courage of his convictions and therefore will decide to de-fund the war,'' she said.

Reid has left that possibility open. The majority leader supports separate legislation that would cut off funding for combat missions after March 2008. The proposal would allow money to be spent on such efforts as counterterrorism and training Iraqi security forces.

Reid and other Democrats were initially reluctant to discuss such draconian measures to end the war, but no longer.

''I'm not sure much is impossible legislatively,'' Reid said Thursday. ''The American people have indicated . . . that they are fed up with what's going on.''

Associated Press writer Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.

    Reid: U.S. Can't Win the War in Iraq, NYT, 20.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html

In Testimony, Gonzales Says Firings Were Justified

April 19, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, April 19 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales encountered anger and skepticism from senators today as he insisted that he had nothing to hide in the dismissals of eight United States attorneys, an episode that has cast a shadow on the Justice Department and brought calls for his resignation.

“I am here today to do my part to ensure that all facts about this matter are brought to light,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning, noting that the panel’s inquiry into the dismissals had already yielded thousands of pages of internal departmental communications and hours of interviews with department officials.

“These are not the actions of someone with something to hide,” Mr. Gonzales said in his opening remarks.

But his reception from Democrats and Republicans alike signaled the extent of Mr. Gonzales’s problems. He is trying to hold on to his job amid accusations that he has been less than forthcoming, at best, about his role in the firing of the federal prosecutors, and senators from both parties pressed him on the matter today.

“Today, the Department of Justice is experiencing a crisis of leadership perhaps unrivaled during its 137-year history,” said the panel’s chairman, Senator Patrick J. Leahy. “The Department of Justice should never be reduced to another political arm of the White House — this White House or any White House. The Department of Justice must be worthy of its name.”

Mr. Leahy, a Democrat of Vermont, made it clear that he was not persuaded by the repeated assertions from President Bush and his allies that the dismissals of the United States attorneys, who are political appointees and serve at the pleasure of the president, were above board.

“Indeed,” Mr. Leahy said, “the apparent reason for these terminations had a lot more to do with politics than performance.”

Democrats have questioned whether at least some of the eight prosecutors were fired because they were being too aggressive in investigating possible crimes linked to Republicans, or not aggressive enough in going after Democrats, or both.

“I did not do that,” the grim-faced attorney general told the senators. “I would never do that, nor do I believe that anyone else in the department advocated the removal of a U.S. attorney for such a purpose.”

But Mr. Leahy pressed Mr. Gonzales on conversations he had with Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political adviser, about removing David C. Iglesias, the United States attorney in New Mexico. “So, when was David Iglesias added to the list of U.S. attorneys to be replaced?” Mr. Leahy asked.

When Mr. Gonzales said he did not remember, although he thought Mr. Iglesias was slated for removal between Oct. 17 and Dec. 15, Mr. Leahy responded: “He was added either before or after the elections, but you don’t know when. Is that what you’re saying?”

Mr. Gonzales insisted that he did not recall the timing. So Mr. Leahy asked why Mr. Iglesias was let go, since Mr. Gonzales himself had earlier expressed confidence in him: “When and why did he lose your confidence?”

Mr. Gonzales said in reply that Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, had expressed concerns about Mr. Iglesias. “He called me and said something to the effect that Mr. Iglesias was in over his head,” Mr. Gonzales said, adding that the senator was concerned that Mr. Iglesias was not focusing enough on “public corruption cases.”

The circumstances surrounding Mr. Iglesias’s firing have aroused particular interest, since Mr. Domenici is known to have queried Mr. Iglesias about the prosecutor’s refusal to pursue a possible voter-fraud case.

Another dismissal in the spotlight is that of Carol Lam, who was the United States attorney in San Diego and who successfully prosecuted former Representative Randy Cunningham, a Republican, on corruption charges. Still another high-profile dismissal was that of H. E. Cummins 3rd in Arkansas, removed to make way for J. Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Mr. Rove.

Mr. Gonzales conceded that his accounts of the firings, and his role in them, had been marked by imprecision and “misstatements.” But his expression of contrition did not seem to help him this morning.

Mr. Leahy and the panel’s ranking Republican, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, had already recalled inconsistencies in Mr. Gonzales’s recollections in their opening remarks, especially the fact that Mr. Gonzales’s former chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, testified that Mr. Gonzales was “incorrect” in his earlier declarations that he was not involved in discussions about letting the prosecutors go.

“I’d like you to win this debate,” Mr. Specter told Mr. Gonzales. “But you’re going to have to win it.”

Mr. Specter wondered aloud whether Mr. Gonzales “had been candid — more bluntly, truthful” in his earlier assertions that he was not involved in the dismissals, or at least not deeply involved. “Were you prepared for the press conference where you said there weren’t any discussions involving you?” Mr. Specter said, alluding to a March 13 news conference.

“Senator, I’ve already said that I misspoke,” Mr. Gonzales said. “It was my mistake.”

That did not satisfy Mr. Specter at all. “I don’t think you’re going to win a debate about your preparation, frankly,” he said. “Let’s get to the facts.”

It was clear that, for at least some members of the committee, there was no longer a debate about whether Mr. Gonzales should stay. “It cannot make anyone happy to have to question the credibility and competence of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat and one of Mr. Gonzales’s harshest critics. “This is, however, a predicament strictly of the attorney general’s own making.”

“The circumstantial evidence is substantial and growing,” Mr. Schumer said, alluding to allegations of political interference with prosecutions, “and the burden is on the attorney general to refute it.”

The attorney general said each of the eight fired prosecutors is “a fine lawyer and dedicated professional,” and that the dismissals should have been handled more gracefully.

Mr. Gonzales got a friendly reception from Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama and a former United States attorney, who urged Mr. Gonzales to be “honest and direct” and predicted that the attorney general’s basic goodness “will show through.”

But, perhaps ominously for Mr. Gonzales, even Mr. Sessions said he thought Mr. Gonzales had been less than candid about his part in the firings, and that the entire affair had hurt the Justice Department.

“It has raised questions that I wish had not been raised, because when United States attorneys go into court, they have to appear before juries, and those juries have to believe that they’re there because of the merit of the case, and that they have personal integrity,” Mr. Sessions said.

“So this matter’s taken on a bit of life of its own, it seems,” he added. “Your ability to lead the Department of Justice is in question. I wish that weren’t not so, but I think it certainly is.”

    In Testimony, Gonzales Says Firings Were Justified, NYT, 19.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/washington/19cnd-gonz.html?hp

Senate Blocks Medicare Drug Price Bill

April 18, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:40 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON -- The Senate blocked legislation on Wednesday that would let the government negotiate Medicare drug prices. Democrats couldn't muster the 60 votes needed to bring the bill up for a vote.

Under the Medicare drug benefit, private insurance plans negotiate with drug makers over the price of medicine for their customers. About 22 million seniors and the disabled are enrolled in such plans. Some lawmakers, mostly Democrats, contend the government could use its leverage to drive a better bargain than individual insurers, which would lower the cost of the program for taxpayers and seniors.

But Republicans countered Wednesday that the program is costing much less than expected precisely because it's the private sector, not the secretary of Health and Human Services, conducting the negotiations. They successfully blocked a motion to proceed to the bill. The tally was 55-42, five short of the votes needed to move ahead.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the program will cost about $265 billion less than anticipated over the coming decade.

''I doubt a single government program in modern history, let alone one this big and this important has ever, ever come in under budget,'' McConnell said. ''So it's a mystery why our Democratic friends would want to tamper with this Medicare drug benefit. If it isn't broke, why fix it?''

Democratic lawmakers countered that they weren't aiming for a government takeover of the drug benefit, only to let the secretary of Health and Human Services intervene for particular kinds of drugs that have no substitute, such as some of the drugs taken by cancer patients.

''This bill does not take over the role of the private plans,'' said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. ''The question is, should we make it possible for the secretary of Health and Human Services to complement the role, to go beyond it and say that there are some circumstances where we should negotiate?''

The House of Representatives passed a much more ambitious bill earlier in the year that requires the secretary of HHS to negotiate drug prices, but Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., noted that the measure would not get the votes needed to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. Instead, he called for just lifting the restriction that bars government negotiations under Medicare. Even that alternative fell short Wednesday.

    Senate Blocks Medicare Drug Price Bill, NYT, 18.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Medicare-Drugs.html

Senate OKs stem cell funding bill

11.4.2007
USA Today
By Ken Dilanian

WASHINGTON — In a largely symbolic act, the Senate voted Wednesday to lift restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. President Bush has vowed to veto the measure, as he did last year, and backers acknowledged they don't have the votes to override him.

Still, proponents of the bill say they wanted to send the president a message: This issue isn't going away.

"We intend to continue to debate this and to pass legislation over and over if we have to," said Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., a sponsor of a House bill that passed in January. "This is too important to just let the president get away with vetoing it."

The Senate bill, sponsored by Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., passed 63-34 — not enough to overcome a veto, which requires a two-thirds majority. And neither side expects a veto override in the House, where DeGette's bill passed 253 to 174.

"The bill would compel all American taxpayers to pay for research that relies on the intentional destruction of human embryos," said a White House policy statement laying out Bush's opposition to the measure.

A White House spokeswoman said Bush would veto the Senate bill, which the House is likely to soon adopt and send to the president. If that happens, backers will seek to insert the measure in must-pass appropriation spending bills, DeGette said.

Stem cells are created in the first days after conception. They are typically culled from frozen embryos, which are destroyed in the process.

The legislation would overturn a policy Bush established in 2001, when he said federal funds could be used for research only on a limited number of stem cell lines in existence before the day of his announcement. The administration aimed to satisfy calls for scientific research funding without offending anti-abortion voters who had helped elect Bush in 2000.

Nearly two-thirds of the American public supports stem cell research, according to a CBS News poll in January. Six of the nine members of Congress running for president voted this year to lift the restrictions, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in yesterday's vote.

In recent weeks, Bush's appointee to head the National Institutes of Health spoke against the president's position, saying the federal stem cell policy is no longer working. "It is in the best interest of our scientists, our science and our country that we find ways, that the nation finds a way to go full speed across adult and embryonic stem cells equally," Elias Zerhouni said at a Senate hearing March 19. "It's not possible for me to see how we can continue the momentum of science and research with the stem cell lines we have at NIH that can be funded."

Given all that, Democrats entered a floor debate over the past two days relishing the chance to paint Bush as badly out-of-step with both science and public opinion, while Republicans who support embryonic stem cell research were placed in the uncomfortable position of having to criticize their party's leader.

"The president's policy has not lived up to its promise," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

During hours of debate, senators sounded familiar refrains: Proponents touted the potential benefits of embryonic research while opponents questioned the ethics of it.

There also were fresher arguments. Backers of the bill pointed out that the USA is losing ground to other countries that allow public funding of embryonic stem cell research, including Great Britain, China, India, Korea and Singapore.

"This is the first time I can ever remember that we as a nation have chosen a path that puts us behind the curve on meaningful new invention," said Peter Kiernan, chairman of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.

The Senate also voted overwhelmingly, 70-28, to approve a second bill, touted as a compromise measure, sponsored by Sens. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., and Johnny Isakson, R-Ga. It would authorize the government to fund research on stem cells from amniotic fluid or placentas or from embryos that are "naturally dead."

Embryonic stem cell research proponents called that bill a sham. "It's a political fig leaf designed to let opponents of stem cell research pretend to support it," said Sean Tipton of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., touted a Brazilian report showing that adult stem cells helped cure children with Type I diabetes. "We don't need to cross this ethical boundary (of) using taxpayer dollars to destroy human life."

Among Senate Democrats, Robert Casey of Pennsylvania and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, voted against the Harkin-Specter bill. Nelson voted no last year, but this was Casey's first vote on the issue since joining the Senate. "I remain opposed to federal funding for research that involves the destruction of living embryos," Casey said.

    Senate OKs stem cell funding bill, UT, 11.4.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-11-stemcell-bill_N.htm

Senate Passes War-Spending Bill With Iraq Deadline

March 29, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, March 29 — The Senate narrowly approved a war-spending bill today that calls for most American combat troops to be out of Iraq by March 31, 2008, and in so doing defied a veto threat by President Bush.

The 51-to-47 vote endorsed a $122 billion spending package, most of which would go to the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, although some domestic spending is included.

Even as the roll-call was under way, President Bush was meeting with House Republican leaders. Immediately after the meeting, he renewed his pledge to veto any measure “that restricts our commanders on the ground in Iraq,” a fault he sees not only in the Senate bill but in the significantly different House version.

“We stand united,” Mr. Bush said outside the White House with Representatives John Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, and Roy Blunt of Missouri, the minority whip. “We expect there to be no strings on our commanders.”

Asserting again that both the House and Senate bills have unnecessary spending tucked into their language, Mr. Bush added, “We expect the Congress to be wise about how they spend the people’s money.”

The Senate and House bills must now be reconciled through negotiations between the chambers. A key difference is that the Senate bill sets a nonbinding goal for withdrawing troops by March 31, 2008, while the House version demands that they be out by September 2008.

Today’s Senate vote was slightly anticlimactic, in that it was foreshadowed by a similarly narrow vote on Tuesday that rejected a move to strip the withdrawal-date language from the bill. But it was nonetheless politically significant as a reflection of Congressional Democrats’ solidarity against the president’s war policy, even though Democrats do not have enough votes to override Mr. Bush’s veto.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, immediately issued a statement disputing the president’s assertion that the Senate bill, like its House counterpart, is larded with unnecessary spending. “If the president uses his veto pen, he will be the one denying funding for the troops,” Mr. Reid said, adding that the bill includes money needed for homeland security, disaster relief and children’s health care in addition to military needs.

Two Republican senators, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, joined Democrats in voting for the bill today. Their “yes” votes had been expected, since both have been highly critical of the conduct of the war. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut who sides with the Democrats on most issues but supports the president on the war, voted against the bill. (Senator Mike Enzi, Republican of Wyoming was absent because of a family illness; Senator Tim Johnson, Democrat of South Dakota, is hospitalized.)

With both houses of Congress now firmly on record in favor of withdrawing from Iraq, President Bush has vowed not to negotiate a timetable with Democrats. “Now, some of them believe that by delaying funding for our troops, they can force me to accept restrictions on our commanders that I believe would make withdrawal and defeat more likely,” Mr. Bush told an audience of cattlemen and ranchers on Wednesday. “That’s not going to happen.”

Mr. Bush and Congressional Democrats are already deadlocked over the Democrats’ demands for testimony from top White House officials in an inquiry into the firing of federal prosecutors. Now, Mr. Bush is in the difficult position of fighting the new Democratic majority on two fronts, both the war spending and the prosecutors.

On Wednesday, he seemed in no mood to back down from the war spending fight. As he quoted a newspaper editorial — from The Los Angeles Times, though he did not mention it by name — accusing Democrats of “the worst kind of Congressional meddling in military strategy,” Mr. Bush appeared almost eager for a battle. And Democrats seemed eager to give it to him.

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House speaker, said Mr. Bush should “calm down with the threats,” and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said his impression was that Mr. Bush “doesn’t want anything other than a confrontation.”

The president has been saying for weeks that he will veto any war spending bill that contains a withdrawal date. He reiterated that threat on Wednesday, taking particular aim at Democrats for loading the military spending bills with unrelated special interest projects above the $100 billion he has asked for the war, including $3.5 million for visitors to “tour the Capitol and see for themselves how Congress works,” and $6.4 million for the House of Representatives’ “salaries and expense accounts.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Mr. Bush said wryly, “but it’s not related to the war and protecting the United States of America.”

Democrats have said they were ready to begin House-Senate negotiations quickly to produce a final version to send to the president. But with Congress scheduled to begin its Easter recess on Friday, it is nearly impossible for lawmakers to produce a final bill before the week of April 16. With Mr. Bush warning that funds will run out on April 15, forcing the Pentagon to draw from other accounts, the two sides seem certain to wind up in a blame game over who is responsible for holding up the money.

The Democratic leaders, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid, tried to strike a conciliatory tone, stressing that they would deliver all the money Mr. Bush requested. In a joint letter to the president, they said they stood ready to work with the White House.

“But your threats to veto a bill that has not even been presented to you indicate that you may not be ready to work with us,” the letter said.

While they are hoping to capitalize on Mr. Bush’s unpopularity, Democrats acknowledged privately that they were uncertain how the finger-pointing would play out. Some recalled President Clinton’s success in putting the blame on Republicans for a 1995 government shutdown.

Republicans say Mr. Bush may be unpopular, but his policy of sending additional troops to Iraq may have more support than he does. Despite a recent nationwide telephone poll by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press in which 59 percent of those who responded said they wanted their lawmakers to vote in favor of a timetable for withdrawal, aides to Mr. Bush say the public is beginning to see improvements on the ground in Iraq and is willing to give Mr. Bush’s troop buildup a chance.

“We hope it doesn’t have to come to this type of brinksmanship, staring down the Congress, but as you saw today the president feels very strongly,” said Dan Bartlett, counselor to Mr. Bush. “The feedback we’ve been getting from our allies on the Hill — and we agree with them — is that this is an issue we shouldn’t shirk from.”

Democratic officials say the shape of the measure that will be sent to the president remains unclear, but it is almost certain to have some timeline on Iraq, given the votes in both houses. But Democrats also say they intend to pare down some of the nonwar spending in the bill to quiet Republican accusations of pork-barrel politics.

Democrats also acknowledge that even with the unpopularity of the war, they must move carefully. The House bill passed with just 218 votes, the minimum necessary to guarantee passage, and in the Senate, the provision to set a goal of pulling out by March 31, 2008, also passed narrowly on Tuesday, 50 to 48.

“The president does have leverage on the troops, and given the close votes, we have to be cognizant of that,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic caucus. “But we have leverage on the policy and he has to be cognizant of that.”

Republicans say Mr. Bush must move carefully as well. Charlie Black, a Republican strategist who is close to the White House, said the administration could win the argument with the public “if they handle it right and communicate it well.” Republican leaders say they will back Mr. Bush as he tries to make the case to the public that Congress does not have the power to dictate the management of the war.

“We have a constitutional republic that says the commander in chief of our forces is the president,” said Senator Mel Martinez, the Florida Republican who is also chairman of the Republican National Committee. “It gives the power of the purse to Congress; it doesn’t give the power of moving troops around to Congress.”

Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Carl Hulse contributed reporting.

    Senate Passes War-Spending Bill With Iraq Deadline, NYT, 29.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/washington/29cnd-congress.html?hp

Senate Pushes Through Iraq Spending Bill

March 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:29 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Democrats ignored a veto threat and pushed through a bill Thursday requiring President Bush to start withdrawing troops from ''the civil war in Iraq,'' dealing a rare, sharp rebuke to a wartime commander in chief.

In a mostly party line 51-47 vote, the Senate signed off on a bill providing $122 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also orders Bush to begin withdrawing troops within 120 days of passage while setting a nonbinding goal of ending combat operations by March 31, 2008.

The vote came shortly after Bush invited all House Republicans to the White House to appear with him in a sort of pep rally to bolster his position in the continuing war policy fight.

''We stand united in saying loud and clear that when we've got a troop in harm's way, we expect that troop to be fully funded,'' Bush said, surrounded by Republicans on the North Portico, ''and we got commanders making tough decisions on the ground, we expect there to be no strings on our commanders.''

''We expect the Congress to be wise about how they spend the people's money,'' he said.

The Senate vote marked its boldest challenge yet to the administration's handling of a war, now in its fifth year, that has cost the lives of more than 3,200 American troops and more than $350 billion. In a show of support for the president, most Republicans opposed the measure, unwilling to back a troop withdrawal schedule despite the conflict's widespread unpopularity.

''Surely this will embolden the enemy and it will not help our troops in any way,'' said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.

Forty-eight Democrats and independent Bernard Sanders of Vermont were joined by two Republicans, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gordon Smith of Oregon, in voting for the measure. Opposed were 46 Republicans and Connecticut independent Joseph Lieberman.

Sens. Mike Enzi, R-Wy., and Tim Johnson, D-S.D., did not vote.

The House, also run by Democrats, narrowly passed similar legislation last week. Party leaders seem determined that the final bill negotiated between the two chambers will demand some sort of timetable for winding down the war -- setting them on course for a veto showdown with the president.

''We've spoken the words the American people wanted us to speak,'' said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. ''There must be a change of direction in the war in Iraq, the civil war in Iraq.''

''The Senate and the House have held together and done what we've done,'' he told reporters. ''It's now in his corner to do what he wants to do.''

In a letter to Bush, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Reid had said earlier: ''This Congress is taking the responsible course and responding to needs that have been ignored by your administration and the prior Congress.''

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the president respects the role of Congress -- and Congress should respect his.

''I think the founders of our nation had great foresight in realizing that it would be better to have one commander in chief managing a war, rather than 535 generals on Capitol Hill trying to do the same thing,'' she said. ''They're mandating failure here.''

The legislation represents the Senate's first, bold challenge of Bush's war policies since Democrats took control of Congress in January. With Senate rules allowing the minority party to insist on 60 votes to pass any bill and Democrats holding only a narrow majority, Reid previously had been unable to push through resolutions critical of the war.

This latest proposal was able to get through because Republicans said they didn't want to block an appropriations bill needed for the war.

''I think the sooner we can get this bill ... down to the president for veto, we can get serious about passing a bill that will get money to the troops,'' said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Democrats acknowledge they do not have enough support in Congress to override Bush's veto, but say they will continue to ratchet up the pressure until he changes course.

The looming showdown was reminiscent of the GOP-led fight with President Clinton over the 1996 budget, which caused a partial government shutdown that lasted 27 days. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., the House speaker at the time, eventually relented but claimed victory because the bill represented a substantial savings over the previous year's spending.

Bush said the money is needed by mid-April or else the troops will begin to run out of money, but some Democrats say the real deadline is probably closer to June.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Defense Appropriations Committee Thursday that a delay in funding would have a chain reaction that could keep units in Iraq longer than planned.

If the bill is not passed by May 15, he said the Army will have to cut back on reserve training and equipment repairs, possibly delaying the formation of new Army units to relieve those deployed.

Shortly before the final vote, the Senate agreed 98-0 to add $1.5 billion for mine-resistant vehicles for Marines, and 93-0 to aid a program to track down convicted sex offenders.

Members also agreed 96-1 to prohibit funds in the bill to be used for spinach farmers. The vote was orchestrated by Republicans to target some of the extra spending added to the bill by Democrats; while the Senate bill didn't include any funding for spinach growers, the House measure contained $25 million.

    Senate Pushes Through Iraq Spending Bill, NYT, 29.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html

Veto Threat Does Not Dissuade Senate Democrats

March 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:56 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Democrats said Tuesday the White House's latest veto threat would not dissuade them from pushing ahead on legislation calling for combat troops to come home from Iraq within one year.

As the Senate debated the bill Tuesday, the White House issued another stern warning to Congress that the president would reject any legislation setting a timetable on the war.

''That's not surprising from a White House that has stubbornly refused to change course even in the face of dwindling support from American people whose sons and daughters are dying'' said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

The administration contends that setting a timetable on the war assumes failure in Iraq.

''This and other provisions would place freedom and democracy in Iraq at grave risk, embolden our enemies and undercut the administration's plan to develop the Iraqi economy,'' the White House said in a statement.

The $122 billion bill would fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but order Bush to begin bringing some troops home right away, with the goal of ending combat missions by March 31, 2008.

An upcoming vote on whether to uphold the withdrawal language could come down to just one or two votes, testing Democratic unity on a proposal to begin bringing combat troops home.

Democratic Sens. Mark Pryor and Ben Nelson are expected to deliver the critical votes.

The bill is similar to one the House passed last week, but with a tougher deadline. While the Senate identifies March 2008 as a goal -- giving the president leeway to ignore the deadline -- the House voted 218-212 to require all combat troops out as of Aug. 31, 2008.

Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., has proposed striking the withdrawal provision, which GOP members say would broadcast the nation's war plans to the enemy and tie the hands of military commanders.

''It's a bad message all the way around,'' said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.

Whether Republicans have enough votes to beat the narrow Democratic majority depends upon their ability to entice Democratic defections.

Senate Democrats hold a slim 51-49 majority. And with Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent Democrat, supportive of the president's Iraq policy and Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota recuperating from a brain hemorrhage, Democrats this year have been unable to push through legislation critical of the war.

On March 15, the Senate rejected by a 50-48 vote a resolution calling for troops to leave by March 2008. Republican Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon sided with Democrats in support of the measure, but Nelson of Nebraska and Pryor of Arkansas opposed announcing a timetable for withdrawal.

Since then, Reid and others have altered the legislation in hopes of persuading the two Democrats. The changes include a series of suggested goals for the Iraqi government to meet to provide for its own security, enhance democracy and distribute its oil wealth fairly.

Nelson has since swung behind the bill, contending the benchmarks are necessary to measure progress.

But Republicans hope they can still attract his support because their amendment would eliminate the withdrawal date while retaining the benchmarks Nelson wanted.

Also critical to the upcoming vote is Pryor, who says he would only support a timetable in Iraq if it were classified.

''I think if the public timetable remains, Senator Pryor would likely oppose'' the Democratic proposal, said spokesman Michael Teague.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., predicted Monday he had the votes to strike the withdrawal language. But even if he fails to keep it out of a final bill -- after it is negotiated with the House -- McConnell said Republicans won't block final passage because he knows the president will veto it, the sooner the better.

Unable to override Bush's veto, Democrats would have to redraft the bill without a ''surrender deadline,'' McConnell said.

''We're not interested in letting the political posturing get in the way'' of providing resources to the troops, he said.

The legislation also provides about $20 billion in domestic spending and increasingly looks like a magnet for far-flung issues such as a proposed increase in the minimum wage.

Republicans have demanded tax cuts as a condition for their support of a higher minimum wage, and officials said key senators were drafting a provision for debate that would include both those issues. It calls for tax cuts at least as high as the $8.3 billion package the Senate passed earlier, if not larger. House Democrats have labeled that amount excessive.

    Veto Threat Does Not Dissuade Senate Democrats, NYT, 27.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html?hp

Senate Votes to Revoke Power to Replace Prosecutors

March 20, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, March 20 — The Senate voted overwhelmingly today to revoke the authority it granted the Bush administration last year to name federal prosecutors without Senate confirmation.

By a vote of 94 to 2, the Senate voted to restore the previous system for naming federal prosecutors. Under that system, when a vacancy occurred, the attorney general was allowed to name an interim United States attorney to serve for up to 120 days while the administration submitted a nominee for permanent appointment to the Senate. If a nominee is not confirmed within that period, the federal district court could then name a replacement.

The measure the Senate approved today, if it is enacted into law, would undo language in the USA Patriot Act that had allowed the White House to bypass the Senate in naming prosecutors. It must still be approved by the House, but passage seems assured in that chamber, since it has a stronger Democratic majority than the Senate does.

The president can veto the measure, but the lopsided margin in the Senate suggests that a veto could be overridden. And the Justice Department has indicated that it will not oppose the change.

The overwhelming bipartisan vote today reflected the senators’ desire to reassert their cherished advice-and-consent role amid the controversy over Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and the dismissal of eight United States attorneys in what critics have called a political purge. The only senators voting “no” were Christopher Bond of Missouri and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, both Republicans.

Before the vote, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, urged his colleagues in both parties to “send a very strong signal” to the administration.

President Bush reaffirmed his support for Mr. Gonzales before the Senate vote today. “The president spoke to the attorney general around 7:15 a.m. from the Oval Office,” said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. “They had a good conversation about the status of the United States attorney issue. The president also reaffirmed his strong backing and support for the attorney general.”

Mr. Bush’s call to Mr. Gonzales, an old friend from Texas, could dampen speculation that the attorney general’s job is at stake, at least in the immediate future.

The White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said today that the president’s phone call was “a very strong vote of confidence,” and that Mr. Bush does indeed want Mr. Gonzales to stay on. “Does he hope he’ll serve through the next two years?” Mr. Snow said on Air Force One as Mr. Bush was flying to the Midwest. “Of course.”

President Bush has said he has confidence in Mr. Gonzales, but as recently as Monday the White House seemed to offer only tepid support for him.

“Nobody is prophetic enough to know what the next 21 months hold,” Mr. Snow said when asked if Mr. Gonzales would remain until the end of Mr. Bush’s term. Mr. Bush has said Mr. Gonzales needs to repair his relations with Capitol Hill; asked if the attorney general had done so, Mr. Snow said, “I don’t know.”

At the Justice Department, neither Mr. Gonzales nor his staff have engaged in a major effort to reverse the erosion of his support among Republicans in Congress, associates said. Mr. Gonzales read budget briefing books over the weekend and on Monday he phoned one or two lawmakers, said one aide, who declined to identify them.

Mr. Gonzales, who publicly apologized last week for his department’s handling of the dismissals of the eight United States attorneys, also acknowledged mistakes in a conference call with United States attorneys over the weekend.

Despite the attorney general’s apologies, Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, joined a chorus of lawmakers who are calling for Mr. Gonzales to leave the administration.

“I believe we need a new attorney general,” Ms. Pelosi told the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune.

The new chief counsel to President Bush, Fred F. Fielding, spent Monday preparing a response for Democrats who are demanding testimony from Karl Rove and other top aides to Mr. Bush, including the former counsel, Harriet E. Miers.

Mr. Fielding was heading to Capitol Hill today to meet with the chairmen of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees. The Senate committee chairman, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, has said he wants Mr. Rove and the others to testify publicly and under oath, but the White House has said that is unlikely to happen, setting up a possible clash between the two branches.

Republicans close to the White House say they expect Mr. Fielding to offer some sort of compromise rather than rule out testimony entirely.

“I think that he will extend an olive branch, but with some important caveats,” said David B. Rivkin, a lawyer for the Reagan and the first Bush administrations. “And then we shall see what the Democrats will do.”

Mr. Snow would not characterize the kind of offer Mr. Fielding might make, saying only that the counsel intended to have a “constructive conversation” with the lawmakers. But the White House is facing the prospect of subpoenas if Mr. Rove and the others do not talk voluntarily; Mr. Leahy has scheduled a vote for Thursday on whether to grant him the power to issue the subpoenas.

“I know there’s been an expectation of brinksmanship,” Mr. Snow said, adding that it was “important for both sides to behave responsibly.”

On Capitol Hill, members of both parties had expressed support for repealing the Patriot Act provision on installing United States attorneys. Lawmakers said the provision amounted to an end run around senators, who have long had influence in the appointment of home-state prosecutors. Some senators said the provision was used to clear the way for firing prosecutors and replacing them with candidates considered more in line with the administration.

“We can’t trust this administration to use that authority in a fair and constructive manner,” said Senator Mark Pryor, Democrat of Arkansas, who helped begin an inquiry into the dismissals by objecting to the administration’s choice for his state. “They have proven it to us.”

Mr. Pryor and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said that the way the Patriot Act revision, which was written by the Justice Department, was introduced last year with little or no consultation with senators suggested that the administration had intended all along to use it to avoid a showdown with the Senate over new prosecutors.

“Now it is becoming clear why they stuck that provision in there,” Mr. Reid said on the Senate floor. “This was a plan they had had for a long time.”

In a Sept. 13, 2006, e-mail message recently disclosed by the Justice Department, D. Kyle Sampson, chief of staff to Mr. Gonzales, strongly recommended that the administration use the new authority when making appointments. He said it would allow the agency to “give far less deference to home-state senators and thereby get (1) our preferred person appointed and (2) do it far faster and more efficiently, at less political cost to the White House.”

Despite that message, Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said Monday that Mr. Sampson’s plan “does not and did not represent the views or final actions of the Justice Department.”

Mr. Roehrkasse said the provision changing the appointment practices was introduced because of concerns about federal courts filling openings as well as fears that the vacancies would remain too long, given the time required for confirmation.

He said that Will Moschella, then assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, proposed the idea in 2003.

“At that time, Will Moschella did not have any knowledge of plans to remove U.S. attorneys,” Mr. Roehrkasse said in a statement.

Lawmakers in both parties had expressed dismay over being deprived of their power to confirm United States attorneys. “The president can pick anyone he wants to serve on his White House staff, and he does,” Mr. Leahy said. “But when it comes to the United States Department of Justice and our home states, U.S. senators have a say in ensuring fairness and independence to prevent the federal law enforcement function from untoward political influence.”

Carl Hulse, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Eric Lipton contributed reporting.

    Senate Votes to Revoke Power to Replace Prosecutors, NYT, 20.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/washington/20cnd-attorney.html?hp

Changes Sought in Naming of Prosecutors

March 20, 2007
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, March 19 — The Senate moved Monday to revoke authority it granted the Bush administration last year to name federal prosecutors, with Democrats accusing the administration of abusing the appointment power at the center of an escalating clash over the ouster of eight United States attorneys.

The move to overturn an obscure provision of the USA Patriot Act that allowed the attorney general to appoint federal prosecutors for an indefinite period without Senate confirmation came amid growing speculation that the controversy over the prosecutors would cost Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales his job.

President Bush has said he has confidence in Mr. Gonzales, but the White House seemed to offer only tepid support for him on Monday.

“Nobody is prophetic enough to know what the next 21 months hold,” the White House press secretary, Tony Snow, said when asked if Mr. Gonzales would remain until the end of Mr. Bush’s term. Mr. Bush has said Mr. Gonzales needs to repair his relations with Capitol Hill; asked if the attorney general had done so, Mr. Snow said, “I don’t know.”

At the Justice Department, neither Mr. Gonzales nor his staff have engaged in a major effort to reverse the erosion of his support among Republicans in Congress, associates said. Mr. Gonzales read budget briefing books over the weekend and on Monday he phoned one or two lawmakers, said one aide, who declined to identify them.

Mr. Gonzales, who publicly apologized last week for his department’s handling of the dismissals, also acknowledged mistakes in a conference call with United States attorneys over the weekend.

Despite the attorney general’s apologies, Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, joined a chorus of lawmakers who are calling for Mr. Gonzales to leave the administration.

“I believe we need a new attorney general,” Ms. Pelosi told the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune.

The new chief counsel to President Bush, Fred F. Fielding, spent Monday preparing a response for Democrats who are demanding testimony from Karl Rove and other top aides to Mr. Bush, including the former counsel, Harriet E. Miers.

Mr. Fielding is expected to go to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to meet with the chairmen of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees. The Senate committee chairman, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, has said he wants Mr. Rove and the others to testify publicly and under oath, but the White House has said that is unlikely to happen, setting up a possible clash between the two branches.

Republicans close to the White House say they expect Mr. Fielding to offer some sort of compromise rather than rule out testimony entirely.

“I think that he will extend an olive branch, but with some important caveats,” said David B. Rivkin, a lawyer for the Reagan and the first Bush administrations. “And then we shall see what the Democrats will do.”

Mr. Snow would not characterize the kind of offer Mr. Fielding might make, saying only that the counsel intended to have a “constructive conversation” with the lawmakers. But the White House is facing the prospect of subpoenas if Mr. Rove and the others do not talk voluntarily; Mr. Leahy has scheduled a vote for Thursday on whether to grant him the power to issue the subpoenas.

“I know there’s been an expectation of brinksmanship,” Mr. Snow said, adding that it was “important for both sides to behave responsibly.”

On Capitol Hill, members of both parties expressed support for repealing the Patriot Act provision, expected to be approved Tuesday. Lawmakers said the provision amounted to an end run around senators, who have long had influence in the appointment of home-state prosecutors. Some senators said the provision was used to clear the way for firing prosecutors and replacing them with candidates considered more in line with the administration.

“We can’t trust this administration to use that authority in a fair and constructive manner,” said Senator Mark Pryor, Democrat of Arkansas, who helped begin an inquiry into the dismissals by objecting to the administration’s choice for his state. “They have proven it to us.”

Mr. Pryor and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said that the way the Patriot Act revision, which was written by the Justice Department, was introduced last year with little or no consultation with senators suggested that the administration had intended all along to use it to avoid a showdown with the Senate over new prosecutors.

“Now it is becoming clear why they stuck that provision in there,” Mr. Reid said on the Senate floor. “This was a plan they had had for a long time.”

In a Sept. 13, 2006, e-mail message recently disclosed by the Justice Department, D. Kyle Sampson, chief of staff to Mr. Gonzales, strongly recommended that the administration use the new authority when making appointments. He said it would allow the agency to “give far less deference to home-state senators and thereby get (1) our preferred person appointed and (2) do it far faster and more efficiently, at less political cost to the White House.”

Despite that message, Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said Monday that Mr. Sampson’s plan “does not and did not represent the views or final actions of the Justice Department.”

Mr. Roehrkasse said the provision changing the appointment practices was introduced because of concerns about federal courts filling openings as well as fears that the vacancies would remain too long, given the time required for confirmation.

He said that Will Moschella, then assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, proposed the idea in 2003.

“At that time, Will Moschella did not have any knowledge of plans to remove U.S. attorneys,” Mr. Roehrkasse said in a statement.

The legislation the Senate is considering would restore the previous system for naming federal prosecutors, allowing the attorney general to name an interim attorney for up to 120 days while the administration submits a nomination. If a nominee is not confirmed in that period, the federal district court could then name a replacement.

The Justice Department said that approach had presented problems over the years, including the unusual situation in which one branch of government — the judiciary — appoints a representative of another branch. Mr. Roehrkasse said some courts had refused to appoint prosecutors for that reason while others have appointed unqualified attorneys. In addition, 120 days is a short period to win Senate confirmation.

But as the impact of the change in the handling of vacancies became clearer to senators, lawmakers in both parties expressed dismay since they consider the ability to recommend and confirm candidates for federal prosecutor a senatorial privilege they are eager to retain.

“The president can pick anyone he wants to serve on his White House staff, and he does,” Mr. Leahy said. “But when it comes to the United States Department of Justice and our home states, U.S. senators have a say in ensuring fairness and independence to prevent the federal law enforcement function from untoward political influence.”

Eric Lipton contributed reporting.

    Changes Sought in Naming of Prosecutors, NYT, 20.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/washington/20attorneys.html

Senators say U.S. should examine detainee treatment

Fri Mar 16, 2007 11:32PM EDT
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. senators who observed the military hearing of an Al Qaeda suspect at the U.S. detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said on Friday the man's allegations of mistreatment should be investigated.

"To do otherwise would reflect poorly on our nation," said Sens. Carl Levin and Lindsey Graham in a statement.

The suspect, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, claimed responsibility during the hearing for the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the Pentagon, as well as direct involvement in other attacks and plots.

The tribunal "was presented with a written statement from (Mohammed) alleging mistreatment during his captivity prior to arriving at Guantanamo," said the senators.

"Allegations of prisoner mistreatment must be taken seriously and properly investigated."

A Pakistani national, Mohammed is among 14 prisoners identified by U.S. authorities as "high-value" terrorism suspects and transferred to Guantanamo last year from secret CIA prisons abroad.

Levin and Graham said they watched the proceeding on closed circuit television in a room adjoining the hearing site. The hearing was held on March 10 to determine whether Mohammed meets the U.S. definition of an enemy combatant.

Levin, a Michigan Democrat, is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, is a committee member.

The president of the three-member military panel has said Mohammed's statement would be reported for "any investigation that may be appropriate."

    Senators say U.S. should examine detainee treatment, R, 16.3.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1642544820070317

Senate Rejects Democrats’ Call to Pull Troops

March 16, 2007
The New York Times
By ROBIN TONER and JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON, March 15 — The Senate on Thursday rejected a Democratic resolution to withdraw most American combat troops from Iraq in 2008, but a similar measure advanced in the House, and Democratic leaders vowed to keep challenging President Bush to change course in Iraq.

The vote in the Senate was 50 against and 48 in favor, 12 short of what was needed to pass, with just a few defections in each party. It came just hours after the House Appropriations Committee, in another vote largely on party lines, approved an emergency spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan that includes a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq. The House will vote on that legislation next Thursday, setting the stage for another confrontation.

The action in both houses threw into sharp relief the Democratic strategy of ratcheting up the pressure, vote by vote, to try to force the White House to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq. But it also highlighted Republican unity in opposition; in the Senate, only one Republican, Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, voted with the Democrats.

Republican leaders said they counted the day as a victory. “It is clear now that the majority of the Senate opposes a deadline for the withdrawal of troops,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, countered, “The Republicans are rubber-stamping the president’s failed policy. That’s the message here.”

President Bush, speaking at a Republican fund-raising dinner, applauded the senators who voted against a timetable. “Many of those members know what I know: that if American forces were to step back from Baghdad now, before the capital city is more secure, the scale and scope of attacks would increase and intensify,” he said.

The Democratic resolution in the Senate would have redefined the United States mission in Iraq and set a goal of withdrawing American combat troops by March 31, 2008, except for a “limited number” focused on counterterrorism, training and equipping Iraqi forces, and protecting American and allied personnel. The House measure set a withdrawal deadline of Sept. 1, 2008.

The prospects that either the House or the Senate measure would will win final passage were always considered slim, given that the Senate legislation needed a so-called supermajority of 60 to advance. Even so, the White House issued forceful veto threats, sending a clear signal to Republicans where the president stood. The White House also worked behind the scenes this week to keep Republicans on board.

Both parties consider these measures an important political statement, a measure of how far the debate over Iraq has moved in recent months, and a sign of Americans’ discontent with the war.

But Senator Norm Coleman, a moderate Republican from Minnesota who voted against the Democratic measure, argued that the final vote could still be misleading. “There is frustration and deep concern about the war,” said Mr. Coleman, who is facing a tough re-election fight next year.

As they left the Senate floor, several other moderate Republicans who are facing difficult re-election campaigns next year were quick to register their opposition to the president’s overall Iraq strategy. But they said they were leery of legislating a troop pullout to begin within four months.

“That is such a short time frame for withdrawal,” said Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, who opposed the president’s plan to send more troops to Iraq.

In the end, the Senate resolution did not attract the contingent of seven Republican moderates who joined Democrats in opposing Mr. Bush’s troop buildup plan last month. The only Republican defection was Mr. Smith of Oregon, who said in a statement, “Setting specific dates for withdrawal is unwise, but what is worse is remaining mired in the quicksand of the Sunni-Shia civil war.”

Two Democratic Senators, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, crossed party lines to oppose the withdrawal plan. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent and staunch supporter of Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy, voted as expected with the Republicans. Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican running for president, was campaigning in Iowa at the time of the vote.

Democrats asserted that the only alternative to their plan was endorsing, once again, the status quo in Iraq. In a debate steeped in anger and dismay, Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia declared, “We were wrong to invade, we were wrong to think victory would be quick or easy, and we are wrong to stay on in occupation that earns us only hatred — with no end, no end, no end in sight.”

Republicans declared that the resolution would be devastating to the American war effort, “like sending a memo to our enemy,” or “giving notice to the other side of when we’re going to depart,” in the words of Mr. McConnell.

The Senate also voted overwhelmingly on Thursday in favor of a pair of nonbinding resolutions, one Democratic and one Republican, expressing support for the troops in Iraq and pledging to provide them with all necessary funds. Republicans have asserted that Democratic policies to end the war will eventually lead to a financing cut that will harm the troops. Democrats furiously deny that charge and have seized on the scandal over poor conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center as evidence that Republicans are not true champions of the troops.

Despite the flurry of votes, the Iraq debate in the Senate is far from over. Senate Democrats said they would try to influence the president’s Iraq policy when they begin taking up the administration’s military spending request next week.

Across the Capitol, the House Appropriations Committee advanced its version of that legislation by a vote of 36 to 28. It was considered a major test vote, with Representative Barbara Lee of California the lone Democrat voting against it. “The American people sent a mandate to us to bring home our men and women before the end of the year,” Ms. Lee said. “I don’t think the president deserves another chance.”

As she spoke, two protesters sat in the back of the hearing room, holding a sign handwritten with black ink on pink paper that said: “Wake up. Stop Buying Bush’s War.” Other antiwar activists milled about outside the committee room, occasionally confronting lawmakers as they came and went.

Largely because of the strength of antiwar sentiment in the House Democratic caucus, and complaints that the legislation’s timetable is not fast enough, party leaders still face a fragile majority when they bring this legislation to the full House next week. While the House proposal calls for most American combat troops to be removed from Iraq no later than Aug. 31, 2008, it would require the drawdown to start up to a year earlier if the Iraqi government cannot show progress.

The plan also places conditions on the war financing, including a requirement that troops receive proper training, equipment and a period of rest between deployments. As a gesture to conservatives, the legislation would allow the president to waive those requirements on national security grounds.

“In World War II, troops were in action 30, 40, 50 days and then got relief,” said Representative John P. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat. “Now, we don’t have the troops to relieve them.”

But Representative Harold Rogers, a Kentucky Republican, accused Democrats of loading up the legislation — which now has a price tag of $124 billion — with an array of sweeteners, simply to draw support for a controversial plan to bring closure to the Iraq war.

“Welcome Kmart shoppers,” Mr. Rogers said. “This is the shopping mart for those who are nervous about supporting the precipitous withdrawal of troops. This is an effort to buy votes.”

    Senate Rejects Democrats’ Call to Pull Troops, NYT, 16.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/washington/16cong.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Senate Passes Bill on Steps Advised by Sept. 11 Panel

March 14, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL LUO

WASHINGTON, March 13 — The Senate passed legislation on Tuesday that would enact more recommendations made by the Sept. 11 commission, but the bill faces the threat of a White House veto because it offers expanded union rights to airport screeners.

Passage of the bill, more than two years after the bipartisan commission issued its findings, came on a vote of 60 to 38, with a smattering of Republicans joining with Democrats to approve it.

The legislation authorizes $3.1 billion in domestic security grants to states over the next three years, tightens security provisions affecting travelers entering the country and establishes requirements to improve the sharing of information between the Department of Homeland Security and state and local governments.

“When this bill becomes law, we will have taken a critical step toward building a safer and more secure America for the generations to come,” Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut who is chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said in a statement.

The Bush administration has made clear it will reject counterterrorism legislation that includes language pushed by Senate Democrats, granting collective bargaining rights to employees of the Transportation Security Administration. Administration officials said the labor requirements would hamper the department’s flexibility in responding to terrorist threats.

Bolstering the veto threat, Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, sent a letter to the White House last month signed by 35 other Republican senators who said they were prepared to sustain a presidential veto.

“If you follow this through, it just doesn’t make sense,” Mr. DeMint said Tuesday in an interview, explaining that he believed that the union provisions would actually endanger Americans by leaving the Department of Homeland Security less nimble. “It’s about security. The bill is about security. It’s not about government workers. It’s not about unions. It’s just about how do we keep this country more secure.”

Collective bargaining rights are also in a House bill approved in January as one of Democrats’ priorities in their first 100 hours of work as the new majority.

Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said it was important for airport screeners to have the right to file grievances through a union.

“I think given the morale of many D.H.S. employees is as low as it can go,” Mr. Thompson said. “People don’t feel like they’re appreciated. People don’t feel like they can go to their supervisor and let them know where vulnerabilities exist without fear of some kind of job action against them.”

Both bills include new requirements that all cargo on passenger planes be inspected in the same manner as checked baggage. The House bill’s language, however, is stricter.

Officials of the transportation security agency have said the requirement would be cumbersome and prohibitively expensive, estimating its cost at $600 million a year. They say that the existing system in which about 30 percent of air cargo is inspected is adequate.

But Carie Lemack, president of Families of Sept. 11 who lost her mother in the terrorist attacks, said the measure was essential.

“The fact that we make passengers go through security — we screen their checked baggage and yet there’s a whole cargo area of the plane that is not screened,” she said. “It’s a large loophole that terrorists can penetrate.”

An important difference between the bills that will have to be worked out in a conference committee involves how domestic security grants are allocated. The Senate bill would distribute the money more evenly among the states, with each receiving a guaranteed minimum. The House bill offers a smaller minimum and would direct more money to more populous states, on the theory that they face a bigger threat, a position supported by big-city mayors and other officials from the larger states.

Another major difference in the House bill is it has language that requires all shipping containers heading for the United States be screened for hazardous materials at the port of origin, a provision that the Bush administration opposes.

Timothy Roemer, a member of the Sept. 11 commission who was a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, said he had been exasperated by how long it has taken for the recommendations to wend their way through the legislative process.

“These recommendations are now two years old, and there are new threats coming at us, new transnational threats coming at us and new Al Qaeda threats coming every day,” Mr. Roemer said. “All these are compelling and immediate needs to plug holes in our national security.”

    Senate Passes Bill on Steps Advised by Sept. 11 Panel, NYT, 14.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/washington/14homeland.html

Inquiry on Intelligence Gaps May Reach to White House

February 10, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Friday that he would ask current and former White House aides to testify about a report by the Pentagon’s inspector general that criticizes the Pentagon for compiling “alternative intelligence” that made the case for invading Iraq.

The chairman, Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said that among those called to testify could be Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, and I. Lewis Libby, a former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney. Both received a briefing from the defense secretary’s policy office in 2002 on possible links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s government.

In its report on Thursday, the acting inspector general, Thomas F. Gimble, found that the work done by the Pentagon team, which was assembled by Douglas J. Feith, a former under secretary of defense for policy, was “not fully supported by the available intelligence.”

It was not clear whether Mr. Hadley and Mr. Libby would testify. The White House normally resists having top aides testify before Congress.

The Senate Intelligence Committee may also seek to question the men. Tara Andringa, a spokeswoman for Mr. Levin, said Mr. Levin planned to consult with Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of that committee. Mr. Levin is on both committees.

The inspector general’s report found that while the Feith team did not violate any laws or knowingly mislead Congress, it made dubious interpretations of intelligence reports and shared them with senior officials without making clear that its findings had already been discounted or discredited by the main intelligence agencies.

“The actions, in our opinion, were inappropriate, given that all the products did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intel community, and in some cases were shown as intel products,” Mr. Gimble told the Armed Services Committee in a hearing on Friday.

That set off a two-hour partisan clash. Democrats argued that the report showed intelligence had been manipulated to justify an invasion of Iraq, and Republicans insisted that Mr. Feith’s office did nothing wrong by reaching conclusions that differed from those of the main intelligence agencies and presenting them to higher-ups, who had asked for the re-examination in the first place.

Senator Levin, who has long been a leading critic of Mr. Feith’s role, called the report “a devastating condemnation of inappropriate activities” by Mr. Feith. But Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, responded, “I don’t think in any way that his report can be interpreted as a devastating condemnation.”

Mr. Gimble said formal intelligence findings did not corroborate some of the Pentagon’s assertions: that Mr. Hussein’s government and Al Qaeda had a “mature symbiotic relationship,” that it involved a “shared interest and pursuit of” unconventional weapons and that there were “some indications” of coordination between Iraq and Al Qaeda on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The briefers from Mr. Feith’s office should have noted their departures from the formal consensus findings of intelligence agencies, Mr. Gimble said.

Representative Ike Skelton, a Democrat from Missouri and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Mr. Feith’s office exercised “extremely poor judgment for which our nation, and our service members in particular, are paying a terrible price.”

Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, noted that Mr. Feith’s superiors at the Pentagon had asked him to re-examine intelligence on links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Therefore, Mr. Sessions said, there was no need for the briefers to point out that their conclusions differed from those of the C.I.A., because the briefing was intended as a “critique” of the agencies’ conclusions.

A similar argument has been made in a formal rebuttal to the inspector general that was prepared by Mr. Feith’s successor at the Pentagon.

    Inquiry on Intelligence Gaps May Reach to White House, NYT, 10.2.2007,http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/washington/10feith.html

News Analysis

Many Voices, No Debate, as Senate Is Stifled on War

February 7, 2007
By CARL HULSE
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 — At a time when even President Bush acknowledges that the war in Iraq is sapping the nation’s spirit, the Senate has tied itself up in procedural knots rather than engage in a debate on Iraq policy.

Given the influence that voter frustration with Iraq had on the November elections, the national unease with the mounting human and financial costs, and the raw passion on all sides, even some lawmakers say they are astounded that the buildup to the Senate fight over Mr. Bush’s proposed troop increase has produced such a letdown.

“It just floors me,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, a freshman Democrat from Minnesota who campaigned against the war, as the two parties pointed fingers on Tuesday. The day before, the Senate proved unable to agree on a plan to even begin debate on a bipartisan resolution opposing the administration strategy. “People in Minnesota, when they see a debate we should be having — whatever side they are on — blocked by partisan politics, they don’t like it,” Ms. Klobuchar said.

The fact that that Democrats could pull together only 49 of the 60 votes needed to break a procedural impasse on the resolution opposing Mr. Bush’s plan was a product of many competing agendas.

There was the Democratic desire to avoid getting tied up on any vote that could be perceived as undercutting United States troops or endorsing Mr. Bush’s plan. At the same time, a surprising number of Republicans showed they were not yet ready to abandon the president even though many blame him for their November election losses and worry he will hurt them again next year. Then there were the presidential ambitions of several senators who are trying to distinguish themselves from others on the issue, and have little incentive to seek common ground.

By the end of the day on Tuesday, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said he saw little prospect that Democrats and Republicans could reach agreement on a plan to bring the resolution to the floor. “The negotiations are over,” said Mr. Reid, who dismissed Republican efforts to force a separate vote on the war money as a ploy intended to distract the public from the matter of whether senators supported or opposed the president’s policy.

Republicans spent the day trying to counter the idea that they had been obstructionists in impeding the debate. It was a label they had successfully hung on Democrats for years, and they did not appreciate the role reversal. They said their main goal had been to ensure that the Senate could guarantee in a separate resolution that Congress would not endanger forces in the field by restricting spending in the future.

“I can’t believe that any parent, any husband, wife, son, daughter of any soldier serving in Iraq doesn’t expect the Congress to take that position,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, who had made some retooled overtures to Democrats to try to break the deadlock.

But the lingering impasse forced the hand of House Democrats, who had become increasingly impatient waiting for the Senate to weigh in on the president’s troop plan. Unwilling to wait any longer, the Democratic leadership said it would set aside three days next week to deliver its own verdict on the administration strategy.

“The reason we’re going ahead is not because we don’t think the Senate will ever act,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, “but we’re not sure when the Senate is going to act.”

Democrats contend that they foisted off most of the blame for the breakdown on Republicans and were more than happy to have the fight end for now, leaving the opposition trying to explain the complex Senate rules and why Republicans had not been willing to go ahead.

“We have the high ground here,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “We have the high ground substantively. We have the high ground politically. We’re not going to give it up.”

But some Republicans suggested that the public might grow frustrated with such political crowing. “I think most Americans view this as political theater, that it is more about us than supporting the troops,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.

The Senate fight also exposed a weakness for the Democrats, one that will become more pronounced as the Senate moves from its inability to take up a nonbinding resolution making a statement about administration policy to more consequential votes on war spending.

Republicans had laid a bit of a trap for Democrats, seeking a 60-vote threshold for competing resolutions on the war. They knew that the bipartisan plan by Senators John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, and Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, did not have 60 votes. But the plan calling for no reductions in spending, written by Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, was likely to get at least 60, meaning the only resolution that would have passed would have been one that essentially backed the president.

Most Democrats are not ready to begin the politically charged discussion of restricting war spending. “There isn’t a Democrat here that wants to take monies away from the troops,” Mr. Reid said.

Democrats said Republicans were simply trying to dodge the chief question at hand and if it was not the financing proposal, they would have found something else to muck up the proceedings. And there is little doubt that some Republicans are determined to save the president an embarrassing loss while others are just as determined to deny the Democrats a symbolic win.

Still, there was some evidence that the debate was moving beyond the bottled-up resolution. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, a prospective Democratic presidential candidate, renewed his call to begin redeploying troops in May with a complete withdrawal of combat brigades by March 2008. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts proposed a plan to set a one-year deadline to redeploy American forces from Iraq. And pressure from outside advocacy groups intensified on Democrats to take concrete steps such as capping troop levels or blocking funds for new troops.

Ultimately, one senator said, lawmakers may discover that the rules of engagement for debating Iraq are not fully within their control.

“The reality in Iraq sets it own time limits, sets its own dimensions,” said Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island. “If it continues to be chaotic, it will accelerate calls for this vote, and calls for even more.”

    Many Voices, No Debate, as Senate Is Stifled on War, NYT, 7.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/07/washington/07cong.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Editorial

It’s the War, Senators

February 7, 2007
The New York Times

It is not an inspiring sight to watch the United States Senate turn the most important issue facing America into a political football, and then fumble it. Yet that is what now seems to have come from a once-promising bipartisan effort to finally have the debate about the Iraq war that Americans have been denied for four years.

The Democrats’ ultimate goal was to express the Senate’s opposition to President Bush’s latest escalation. But the Democrats’ leaders have made that more difficult — allowing the Republicans to maneuver them into the embarrassing position of blocking a vote on a counterproposal that they feared too many Democrats might vote for.

We oppose that resolution, which is essentially a promise never to cut off funds for this or any future military operation Mr. Bush might undertake in Iraq. But the right way for the Senate to debate Iraq is to debate Iraq, not to bar proposals from the floor because they might be passed. The majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, needs to call a timeout and regroup. By changing the issue from Iraq to partisan parliamentary tactics, his leadership team threatens to muddy the message of any anti-escalation resolution the Senate may eventually pass.

As it happens, the blocked Republican alternative, proposed by Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, itself represents an end run around the Senate’s constitutional responsibilities. The rational way to oppose cuts in funds is to vote against them, if and when any ever come before the Senate. Mr. Reid should not be shy about urging fellow Democrats to vote against this hollow gimmick, which tries to make it look as if the senators support Mr. Bush’s failed Iraq policies by playing on their fears of being accused of not supporting the troops.

America went to war without nearly enough public discussion, and it needs more Senate debate about Iraq this time around, not less. The voters who overturned Republican majorities in both houses last November expect, among other things, to see energized Congressional scrutiny of the entire war — not just of the plan for an additional 21,500 troops but also of the future of the 130,000 plus who are already there.

Another Republican resolution, proposed by Sen. John McCain, gives the appearance of moving in that more promising direction by ticking off a series of policy benchmarks and then urging the Iraqi government to meet them. But listing benchmarks is one thing. It is another to spell out real consequences for not meeting them, like the withdrawal of American military support. Instead of doing that, the McCain resolution hands an unwarranted blank check to Mr. Bush’s new Iraq commander, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus. It breathtakingly declares that he “should receive from Congress the full support necessary” to carry out America’s mission.

Frustrated by the Senate’s fumbles, the House plans to move ahead next week with its own resolution on Mr. Bush’s troop plan. When the Senate is ready to turn its attention back to substance again, it should go further.

Senators need to acknowledge the reality of four years of failed presidential leadership on Iraq and enact a set of binding benchmarks. These should require the hard steps toward national reconciliation that the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki continues to evade and that the White House refuses to insist on.

    It’s the War, Senators, NYT, 7.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/07/opinion/07wed1.html

Senate ups wage to $7.25 over two years

Updated 2/1/2007 8:30 PM ET
AP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate voted overwhelmingly Thursday to boost the federal minimum wage by $2.10 to $7.25 an hour over two years, but packaged the increase with small business tax cuts and limits on corporate pay that could complicate its path to become law.

The increase in the minimum wage, the first in a decade, was approved 94-3, capping a nine-day debate over how to balance the wage hike with the needs of businesses that employ low-wage workers.

A top priority of Democrats, the wage hike has both real and symbolic consequences. It would be one of the first major legislative successes of the new Democratic-controlled Congress.

"Passing this wage hike represents a small but necessary step to help lift America's working poor out of the ditches of poverty and onto the road toward economic prosperity," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

Republicans stressed the importance of the bill's business tax breaks, though it was a significantly smaller tax package than Republicans had sought during previous attempts to raise the minimum wage.

"The Senate's reasonable approach recognizes that small businesses have been the steady engine of our growing economy and that they have been a source of new job creation, a source of job training," said Sen. Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., who helped manage the debate for the GOP.

The bill must now be reconciled with the House version passed Jan. 10 that contained no tax provisions. House Democrats have insisted they want a minimum wage bill with no strings attached, though some have conceded the difficulty of passing the legislation in the Senate without tax breaks.

The measure presents a challenge to Democrats who must navigate between the demands of labor and other interest groups and the realities of the Senate, where Republicans hold 49 of 100 votes. House and Senate Democrats now must try to negotiate a way out of the potential standoff.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has said she supports some tax provisions in the House package, but said she would prefer them in a separate, House-initiated tax bill.

In a statement, President Bush encouraged House Democrats to accept the Senate version of the bill. "The Senate has taken a step toward helping maintain a strong and dynamic labor market and promoting continued economic growth," Bush said.

But AFL-CIO President John Sweeney vowed to "turn up the volume" to pass a bill without tax breaks.

"Minimum wage workers in this country have waited far too long for a raise," Sweeney said in a statement after the vote. "It's shameful that they must now wait even longer because of the Senate's insistence on business tax giveaways."

The three senators voting against the bill were Republicans Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Jon Kyl of Arizona and Jim DeMint of South Carolina. Absent from the vote were Democrats Tim Johnson of South Dakota and Charles Schumer of New York and Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

The legislation would raise the minimum wage in three steps. It would go to $5.85 an hour upon taking effect 60 days after the president signs it into law, then to $6.55 an hour a year later, and to $7.25 an hour a year after that.

An effort by the Senate last week to end debate on the House version of the bill failed when Democrats were unable to get the 60 votes needed. But many Democrats in the House and Senate would like to challenge Republicans to vote against a clean bill with no tax provisions.

"If we go through the process ... and the message comes back: 'You can have the minimum wage stripped down or not at all,' then we'll face another vote," said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., the assistant majority leader. "We need Republicans to pass it. If they continue to oppose it then it will not pass."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Thursday he did not believe the business incentives were necessary. "The minimum wage will be increased," he said. "The question is do we need all these business pieces of sugar or not. We will see."

A spokesman for Reid said the tax breaks are needed to overcome a potential GOP filibuster.

"Of course, Democrats would prefer to pass a clean increase in the minimum wage," said the spokesman, Jim Manley. "The fact is that Republicans have made it very clear that the only way we will pass a modest increase in the minimum wage is with tax breaks for small business."

Besides increasing the minimum wage from the current $5.15 an hour, the bill would extend for five years a tax credit for businesses that hire the disadvantaged and provide expensing and depreciation advantages to small firms. The tax breaks would be paid for by closing loopholes on offshore tax shelters, capping deferred compensation payments to corporate executives and removing the deductibility of punitive damage payments and fines.

Senators also adopted an amendment that would bar companies that hire illegal immigrants from obtaining federal contracts. That measure was designed to encourage companies to participate in an employee identification program that can weed out undocumented workers.

While the tax breaks have won the support of small business groups as well as retailers and restaurant owners, they have drawn opposition from larger businesses that would bear the brunt of the revenue provisions. Several business groups also opposed the immigration measure.

After the House passed its bill on Jan. 10, the White House issued a statement insisting that final legislation include small business tax breaks. It subsequently issued a statement supporting the Senate version, but said the revenue measures were not necessary.

According to the Labor Department, 479,000 workers earned exactly $5.15 an hour in 2005, the most recent estimate available. Most are young and unmarried and more likely to be women, minorities and part-time workers. According to the liberal Economic Policy Institute, the wage increase would affect 5.6 million people who make less than the proposed minimum of $7.25.

More than two dozen states and the District of Columbia have minimum wages higher than the federal level. The issue proved to be potent last November when six states raised their minimums in statewide votes.

    Senate ups wage to $7.25 over two years, UT, 1.2.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2007-02-01-senate-minimum-wage-hike_x.htm

In Senate,

Allies of Bush Work to Halt Iraq Vote

January 31, 2007
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 — The Bush administration’s allies in the Senate began a major effort on Tuesday to prevent a potentially embarrassing rejection of the president’s plan to push 20,000 more troops into Iraq.

With the Senate expected to reach votes on possible resolutions sometime next week, the signs of the new campaign seeped out after a weekly closed-door lunch in which Republican senators engaged in what participants described as a heated debate over how to approach the issue.

The new effort by President Bush’s allies, including Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, is aimed at blocking two nonbinding resolutions directly critical of the White House that had appeared to be gaining broad support among Democrats and even some Republicans.

Republicans skeptical of the troop buildup said some of their colleagues had begun to suggest that opponents of the White House plan ran the risk of undermining Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new military commander in Iraq, as well as Mr. Bush.

“There is a lot of pressure on people who could be with us not to be with us,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, the co-author of one resolution along with Senators John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, and Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska.

As an alternative to that measure and another broadly backed by Democrats, Mr. McCain and Mr. Graham, along with Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the independent Democrat from Connecticut, are trying to enlist support for a resolution that would set benchmarks for the Iraqi government and describe the troop increase as a final chance for the United States to restore security in Baghdad.

The senators have been joined in their effort by the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Senator John Cornyn of Texas and Senator David Vitter of Louisiana.

The debate over Iraq also resounded elsewhere on Capitol Hill, as senators attending the confirmation hearing for Adm. William J. Fallon, nominated to command American forces in the Middle East, heard his blunt assessment of the path ahead. He said “time is running out” for positive action by the government of Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to show it can quell sectarian violence.

At another Senate hearing, the leaders of the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan panel that reported to Mr. Bush and Congress last month, disputed the White House’s contention that most of their recommendations had been incorporated into Mr. Bush’s troop increase plan.

“The diplomatic effort has not been full enough,” said Lee H. Hamilton, co-chairman of the study group with James A. Baker III. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Hamilton described the initiatives begun by the administration in the Middle East as modest and slow, and added, “We don’t have the time to wait.”

On the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrats began laying the constitutional groundwork for an effort to block the president’s plan to send more troops to Iraq and place new limits on the conduct of the war there, perhaps forcing a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq.

In advance of a possible Senate vote on the resolutions, Republican senators now appear widely divided over how to proceed. In trying to head off the resolution supported by Senators Warner and Collins, allies of the White House appear to be trying to muster at least the 41 votes they would need to prevent a vote on the measure under Senate rules. Mr. McCain is sponsoring the competing resolution that would establish benchmarks for the Iraqi government. He said the proposal also could be fashioned to give Congress more oversight.

Republicans were viewing Mr. McCain’s plan as a way to deter Republicans from joining in the resolutions more critical of Mr. Bush, and many Republicans said that would be preferable to one criticizing the troop buildup outright. Senators also said they were beginning to realize that the vote, while nonbinding, would be an important statement on Congressional sentiment regarding the war.

“We all know the world is watching,” said Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia.

The more sharply worded of the two measures critical of the White House is one approved last week by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and backed by the Democratic Senators Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Carl Levin of Michigan, as well as Senator Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska Republican. The second of the two measures is one backed by Senator Warner.

As those debates flared mostly in private, the confirmation hearing for Admiral Fallon as the new head of the military’s Central Command became a proxy debate not only over the president’s new strategy but also for the competing resolutions supported by senators of both parties.

But Admiral Fallon, currently in charge of American forces across Asia and the Pacific, declined to answer directly politically fraught questions about whether certain proposed resolutions would harm the military effort in Iraq or undermine the troops’ morale.

The admiral, who if confirmed as expected would be the first Navy officer to head the Central Command, said that he would always offer unvarnished military advice, but that he would avoid commenting on partisan political issues.

In his testimony, Admiral Fallon told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that the United States might have erred in its assessments of how effectively the new Iraqi government could manage the nation’s affairs.

“Maybe we ought to redefine the goals here a bit and do something that’s more realistic in terms of getting some progress and then maybe take on the other things later,” Admiral Fallon said, adding, “What we’ve been doing is not working and we have got to be doing, it seems to me, something different.”

“Time is running out,” he concluded.

Senator Levin submitted a letter he co-authored with Senator McCain demanding that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice make public the administration’s requirements for actions to be taken by the government in Baghdad to earn continued American support.

Late Tuesday, Senator Levin’s office released a reply from Ms. Rice that stated assurances that the Bush administration supports Mr. Maliki but also listed deadlines already missed by his government. Among them were laws to guarantee an equitable distribution of the country’s oil wealth, to establish provincial elections and to reintegrate disenfranchised Sunnis into Iraqi political life.

In the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who led the panel for the last two years, joined Democrats who asserted that Mr. Bush cannot simply ignore Congressional opposition to his plan to send 21,500 additional troops to Iraq.

“I would respectfully suggest to the president that he is not the sole decider,” Mr. Specter said. “The decider is a joint and shared responsibility.”

Senator Russell Feingold, Democrat who acted as chairman for the hearing, said he would soon introduce a resolution that would go much further. It would end all financing for the deployment of American military forces in Iraq after six months, other than a limited number working on counterterrorism operations or training the Iraqi Army and police force. In effect, it would call for all other American forces to be withdrawn by the six-month deadline.

Jeff Zeleny and David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington, and John O’Neil from New York.

    In Senate, Allies of Bush Work to Halt Iraq Vote, NYT, 31.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/washington/31cong.html?hp&ex=1170306000&en=a82975a08b5261cd&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Senate approves new Iraq commander

Fri Jan 26, 2007 10:32 AM ET
Reuters



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Friday confirmed Army Gen. David Petraeus as the next commander of U.S. forces in Iraq even though he supports a boost in American troops that many senators oppose.

Widely regarded as one the army's brightest commanders, Petraeus, who was confirmed on a vote of 81-0, told senators earlier this week that the situation in Iraq was "dire" but not hopeless.

Petraeus, who has already completed two Iraq tours, will be charged with implementing President George W. Bush's plan to send 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq in an effort to halt spiraling insurgent attacks and sectarian violence.

A key Senate committee has approved a nonbinding resolution opposing Bush's strategy. A full Senate vote on that measure and another proposal criticizing the plan could come as soon as next week.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and critic of Bush's strategy, said Petraeus must keep a promise to report on whether it was working. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican and defender of Bush's plan, said Petraeus represented "our best chance for success" in Iraq.

    Senate approves new Iraq commander, R, 26.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-26T153220Z_01_N25222674_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-GENERAL.xml&src=012607_1126_TOPSTORY_bush_oks_targeting_iranians_in_iraq

Bush Iraq Plan

Is Condemned by Senate Panel

January 25, 2007
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 — One day after President Bush implored Congress to give his Iraq strategy a chance to succeed, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a resolution on Wednesday denouncing the plan to send more troops to Baghdad, setting up the most direct confrontation over the war since it began nearly four years ago.

The full Senate is poised to consider the nonbinding, yet strongly symbolic, repudiation of Mr. Bush as early as Wednesday. Democratic leaders agreed to tone down the language in the resolution, hoping to make it more acceptable to Republicans in an effort to send a strong, bipartisan rebuke to the White House.

“This is not designed to say, ‘Mr. President, ah-ha, you’re wrong,’ ” said Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Delaware Democrat and chairman of the committee. “This is designed to say, ‘Mr. President, please don’t go do this.’ ”

Even as the White House delicately worked to persuade some Republicans to consider the president’s approach, the administration also said Congressional action would not interrupt the plan to send more than 20,000 American troops to Iraq. In a television interview on CNN, Vice President Dick Cheney declared, “It won’t stop us.”

The Foreign Relations Committee approved the resolution by a vote of 12 to 9, with a Republican senator, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, joining 11 Democrats in supporting it. But even Republicans who opposed the resolution, including Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, expressed deep doubt about whether the troop increase could succeed and suggested it was time for a new direction.

The committee rejected amendments that would have strengthened or softened the resolution, which described Mr. Bush’s plan to increase troops as contrary to the national interest.

Some Republicans expressed reluctance to support the legislation because they feared it could be seen as a political attack on Mr. Bush, but left themselves open to backing a similar plan offered by Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican.

The Foreign Relations Committee tends to carry a more centrist outlook than the Senate as a whole, but Democrats say they believe that at least 8 of the 49 Republicans might join with nearly all Democrats in embracing a resolution — Mr. Biden’s or Mr. Warner’s — critical of the president’s troop increase plan.

Senator George V. Voinovich, an Ohio Republican, said he was disappointed that the administration had failed to extend an olive branch to Congress. He said he told a White House official at the State of the Union address on Tuesday that the stalemate in Iraq was threatening to consume the Bush presidency.

“It’s time to recognize that if you keep going the way you are, you are never going to achieve what you want to achieve,” Mr. Voinovich said. “And, beyond that, it’s going to fall over on your domestic initiatives and make your presidency uneventful and not have meaning.”

Hours after the hearing on Wednesday, the effort led by Mr. Warner was gaining ground, with six Democrats and three other Republicans signing on as co-sponsors of his proposal, which also bluntly opposes sending more troops to Iraq. Mr. Warner was declining offers from Democratic leaders to merge his proposal with theirs, saying he wanted to keep his plan as neutral as possible, so it could attract wide bipartisan support. “It’s not a question of who is the most patriotic or who is trying to set up a confrontation with the president,” Mr. Warner said, speaking from the floor of the Senate. “To have a vote all on one side or all on the other side will not help.”

While details of the two resolutions vary somewhat, their message is the same: many members of Congress do not support the plan to expand the military operation in Iraq.

The White House is shying away from an overt lobbying effort to thwart the Iraq resolutions, as it might do more harm than good. Instead, the administration is leaving it mainly to the Republican leadership, including the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and the Republican whip, Trent Lott of Mississippi, to work toward an alternative.

Still, the White House has sought to head off overwhelming votes against the president in both the Senate and the House. Since Mr. Bush delivered his Iraq speech on Jan. 10, the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, and his deputy, J. D. Crouch, have met with members of both parties. Officials, aware that a majority of senators are likely to vote in favor of the Warner resolution, say those meetings will continue. But the remarks by Mr. Cheney on Wednesday suggested that the White House was not focused on the resolutions. “We are moving forward,” Mr. Cheney said in the CNN interview. “The Congress has control over the purse strings. They have the right, obviously, if they want, to cut off funding. But in terms of this effort, the president has made his decision.”

A preview of next week’s full debate on Iraq unfolded Wednesday in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with senator after senator recounting the stories of troops from their states who had died in Iraq. Under the new Democratic majority, the committee has held nearly daily hearings on Iraq.

Senator James Webb, a Virginia Democrat who fought as a marine in Vietnam, urged his colleagues not to draw a link between the Iraq and Vietnam wars. Such comparisons, he feared, could force people away from backing the Iraq resolutions.

“I think there are parallels and there were many people at this table who opposed the Vietnam War, but some of those parallels are superficial,” Mr. Webb said. “We’re losing the support of a lot of people who supported the Vietnam War and who have problems with this if we try to lump it together.”

Mr. Hagel, who also served in Vietnam, has derided the president’s Iraq strategy as the worst foreign policy since Vietnam. Yet on Wednesday, Mr. Hagel took a different approach as he addressed fellow Republicans — from the administration or the Congress — who have questioned the motives of those who have spoken critically of the war.

“I think all 100 senators ought to be on the line on this. What do you believe? What are you willing to support? What do you think? Why were you elected?” Mr. Hagel said, his voice booming. “If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes.”

Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Kate Zernike contributed reporting.

    Bush Iraq Plan Is Condemned by Senate Panel, NYT, 25.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/washington/25capital.html

Minimum Wage Bill Stalls in the Senate

January 24, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:27 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats' promise of a quick increase in the minimum wage ran aground Wednesday in the Senate, where lawmakers are insisting it include new tax breaks for restaurants and other businesses that rely on low-pay workers.

On a 54-43 vote, liberals lost an effort to advance a House-passed bill that would lift the pay floor from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour without any accompanying tax cut. Opponents of the tax cut needed 60 votes to prevail.

The vote sent a message to House Democrats and liberals in the Senate that only a hybrid tax and minimum wage package could succeed in the Senate. But any tax breaks in the bill would put the Senate on a collision course with the House, which is required by the Constitution to initiate tax measures.

In a separate vote, the Senate also effectively killed a modified line-item veto bill. The Republican-inspired measure would have permitted a president to pluck individual items out of spending bills and submit them to Congress for a vote.

Raising the minimum wage is one of the new Democratic Congress' top priorities. The wage floor has been unchanged for 10 years. The bill would increase it to $7.25 in three steps over 26 months.

The House passed the increase two weeks ago. Since then Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Rep. Charles Rangel, the chairman of the tax writing Ways and Means Committee, have prodded the Senate to keep tax proposals out of the bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., scheduled Wednesday's vote to demonstrate the Democrats' lack of support for a straight minimum wage bill without tax cuts.

Reid is backing an $8.3 billion tax package that would extend for five years a tax credit for employers who hire low-income or disadvantaged workers. It also extends until 2010 tax rules that permit businesses to combine as much as $112,000 in expenses into one annual tax deduction.

The cost of the proposal would be paid with revenue realized from a proposed cap of $1 million on executive compensation that can be tax deferred. The tax package also would end deductions for court settlements or punitive damages paid by companies that have been sued.

Minimum Wage Bill Stalls in the Senate, NYT, 24.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Minimum-Wage.html

The Socialist Senator

January 21, 2007
The New York Times
By MARK LEIBOVICH

When Bernie Sanders visits a high-school class, as he does regularly, students don’t hear a speech, a focus-grouped polemic, a campaign pitch or, heaven forbid, practiced one-liners. Nor, in all likelihood, do they hear Sanders tell stories about his family, childhood or some hardship he has endured. He makes no great effort to “connect” emotionally in the manner that politicians strive for these days, and he probably doesn’t “feel your pain” either, or at least make a point of saying so. It’s not that Sanders is against connecting, or feeling your pain, but the process seems needlessly passive and unproductive, and he prefers a more dynamic level of engagement.

“I urge you all to argue with your teachers, argue with your parents,” Sanders told a group of about 60 students at South Burlington High School — generally liberal, affluent and collegebound — one afternoon in mid-December.

The newly elected senator whipped his head forward with a force that shifted his free-for-all frizz of white hair over his forehead. (Journalistic convention in Vermont mandates that every Sanders story remark on his unruly hair as early on as possible. It also stipulates that every piece of his clothing be described as “rumpled.”)

“C’mon, I’m not seeing enough hands in here,” he said.

A senior named Marissa Meredyth raised hers, and Sanders flicked his index finger at her as if he were shooting a rubber band. She bemoaned recent cuts to college financial-aid programs.

Sanders bemoans these, too, but he’d rather provoke.

“How we going to pay for this financial aid?” Sanders asked. “Who in here wants us to raise taxes on your parents to pay for this?”

Not many, based on the show of hands.

“O.K., so much for financial aid,” Sanders said, shrugging.

Next topic: “How many of you think it was a good idea to give the president the authority to go to war in Iraq?”

No hands.

“C’mon, anyone?”

He paused, paced, hungry for dissent, a morsel before lunch. Sanders says he thinks Iraq was a terrible idea, too, but he seemed to crave a jolt to the anesthetizing hum of consensus in the room.

“Iraq is a huge and very complicated issue,” Sanders said, finally. (“Huge” is Sanders favorite word, which he pronounces “yooge,” befitting a thick Brooklyn accent unsmoothed-over by 38 years in Vermont.) He mentioned that Vermont has had more casualties in Iraq per capita than any other state in the union, including one from South Burlington High School.

“O.K., last call for an Iraq supporter,” he said. Going once, going twice.

By this point, Sanders’s cheeks had turned a shade of dark pink with a strange hint of orange. It’s a notable Sanders trait; his face seems to change color with the tenor of a conversation, like a mood ring. His complexion goes orangey-pink when he’s impatient (often when someone else is speaking), purpley-pink when he’s making a point or a softer shade of pink when at rest, “rest” being a relative term.

Next question from Sanders: “Should people in this country who want to go to college be able to go, regardless of income?”

Wall-to-wall hands, with the exception of one belonging to Andy Gower, a senior in a backward baseball cap who recently moved up from North Carolina. Relatively conservative, Andy is a conspicuous outlier in the class. Bernie knows how he feels, having spent eight terms as the lone Socialist in Congress, and the first to serve in the House since the 1920s.

“Why do you think that?” Sanders asked Andy.

He replied with a question of his own: “Why should people who can afford to go to college pay for people who can’t?” He was sheepish at first but gained momentum. “Why should people who are successful in this society be burdened by people who aren’t? It’s just a fact of life. Some people will succeed, and some people won’t. And it’s just the way it’s going to be and has always been.”

A few classmates smirked, shook their heads. But Sanders was suddenly buoyant. He stomped forward, clapped twice — provocation achieved.

Hands were shooting up everywhere, and Sanders contorted his mouth into a goofy grin.

“At the end of the day, democracy is a tough process,” Sanders said finally, arms restored to their flailing default positions.

“The discussion we’ve had in here is at a higher level than what we often have on the floor of the United States Congress,” Sanders gushed, for as much as he ever gushes, which is not much.

And given some of the things Sanders has said about the United States Congress, maybe this wasn’t such a gush after all.

Sanders has always been an easier fit in Vermont than in Washington. Being a Socialist in the seat of two-party orthodoxy will do that. While he has generally championed liberal Democratic positions over the years — and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee endorsed his Senate campaign — Sanders has strenuously resisted calling himself a Democrat. And he has clung to a mantle — socialism — that brings considerable stigma, in large part for its association with authoritarian communist regimes (which Sanders is quick to disavow).

But he does little to airbrush the red “S” from his political profile. On the wall of his Congressional office hangs a portrait of Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party presidential candidate of the early 20th century. A poster in a conference room marks Burlington’s sister-city relationship with Puerto Cabeza, Nicaragua — one of a few such alliances he forged with cities in Marxist states during his 10-year stint as mayor of Vermont’s biggest city in the 1980s.

Socialism brings Sanders instant novelty in Washington and, in many circles, instant dismissal as a freak. But Sanders’s outcast status in Washington probably owes as much to his jackhammer style as to any stubborn ideology. It is a town filled with student body president types — and Sanders, for his part, finished a distant third when he ran to be president of his class at James Madison High School in Brooklyn.

Few would describe Sanders’s personality as “winning” in the classic politician’s sense. He appears to burn a disproportionate number of calories smiling and making eye contact. “Bernie is not going to win a lot of ‘whom would you rather live on a desert island with’ contests,” says Garrison Nelson, a professor of political science at the University of Vermont. No matter. Sanders’s agitating style in Washington also constitutes a basic facet of anticharm, antipolitician appeal at home.

“I’m not afraid of being called a troublemaker,” Sanders says, something he’s been called many times, in many different ways, many of them unprintable. “But you have to be smart. And being smart means not creating needless enemies for yourself.”

In this regard, Sanders has not always been smart, especially when he was first elected to the House in 1990. He called Congress “impotent” and dismissed the two major parties as indistinguishable tools of the wealthy. He said it wouldn’t bother him if 80 percent of his colleagues lost re-election — not the best way to win friends in a new workplace.

“Bernie alienates his natural allies,” Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat, said at the time. “His holier-than-thou attitude — saying in a very loud voice he is smarter than everyone else and purer than everyone else — really undercuts his effectiveness.” The late Joe Moakley, another Massachusetts Democrat, waxed almost poetic in his derision for Sanders. “He is out there wailing on his own,” Moakley said. “He screams and hollers, but he is all alone.”

Frank says he came to like and work well with Sanders, with whom he served on the House Financial Services Committee. His early objections were over Sanders’s railing against both parties as if they were the same. “I think when he first got here, Bernie underestimated the degree that Republicans had moved to the right,” Frank told me. “I get sick of people saying ‘a curse on both your houses.’ When you point out to them that you agree with them on most things, they’ll say, ‘Yeah, well, I hold my friends up to a higher standard.’ Well, O.K., but remember that we’re your friends.”

Among his House colleagues, “Bernie’s not a bad guy,” is something I heard a lot of. “You appreciate Bernie the more you see him in action,” says Senator Chuck Schumer, the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who served with him for several years in the House. A fellow Brooklynite who is nine years younger, Schumer attended the same elementary school as Sanders (P.S. 197) and the same high school (James Madison, which also graduated a third United States senator, Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota). “Bernie does tend to grow on people, whether it’s in the House or in Vermont,” Schumer says.

But he has clearly grown bigger in Vermont, and more seamlessly. “His bumper stickers just say, ‘Bernie,’ ” says Senator Patrick Leahy, Vermont’s senior Senator and a Democrat. “You have to reach a certain exulted status in politics to be referred to only by your first name.”

Sanders is particularly beloved in Burlington, which elected the recovering fringe candidate as its mayor despite the Reagan landslide of 1980 — thus christening the so-called “People’s Republic of Burlington.” Some supporters called themselves “Sanderistas.”

His election to the Senate in November came at the expense of a too-perfect Bernie foil — Richard Tarrant, a well-barbered, Bentley-driving Republican businessman who spent $7 million of his own money so he could lose by 33 percentage points.

“Congratulations, Bernie,” a fan yells to Sanders outside his district office in Burlington. Sanders was out for a quick bagel on a balmy December morning, temperatures in the 60s — another day of Al Gore weather in the once-frozen north. He walked head down but kept getting stopped. “Now you gotta run for president, please,” the congratulator added, something Sanders gets a lot of too.

It is a reception that any natural, eager-to-please politician would relish — and accordingly, Sanders dispatches these glad-handing chores with the visible joy of someone cleaning a litter box, coughing out his obligatory thank yous and continuing on his way.

Sanders’s popularity in Vermont brings up the obvious questions: to what degree is he a quaint totem of the state, like the hermit thrush (the state bird), and could a Socialist be elected to the Senate anywhere else?

In recent years, Vermont has joined — perhaps surpassed — states like Massachusetts and New York in the top tier of liberal outposts. Several distinctions nurture the state’s credentials: It was the first place to legalize civil unions for same-sex partners; it is the home of Phish, the countercultural rock-folk band and contemporary analog to the Grateful Dead and of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream (and its peacenik-themed flavors); and it is host to cultural quirks and ordinances like not allowing billboards, being the last state to get a Wal-Mart.

The state has also incubated several politicians who have achieved national boogie-man status among Republicans. They include Leahy, the Grateful Dead fan and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee; former Senator James Jeffords, the liberal Republican who became an Independent in 2001, giving Democrats a temporary majority; and Howard Dean, the former governor whose presidential campaign boom (and perhaps fizzle) was tied heavily to his association with Vermont’s progressive politics.

Sanders fits snugly into this maverick’s pantheon. But Leahy says his fellow senator appeals to an antiestablishment strain in Vermont that is not necessary liberal. Leahy notes that he himself is the only Democrat the state’s voters have ever elected to the Senate. Before 1992, only one Democratic presidential candidate carried Vermont — Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

“A lot of the lower-income parts of our state are Republican,” Leahy says, adding that many of them are populated by rural libertarians who are greatly suspicious of government intrusion into individual rights. “I saw Bernie signs all over those parts of the state.”

Sanders opposes some federal gun-control laws, which has helped him in a state where “you grow up believing it is legal to shoot deer on the statehouse lawn in Montpelier,” says Luke Albee, a South Burlington native who was Leahy’s House chief of staff.

But again: Could Sanders be elected to the Senate anywhere else?

No, not as a Socialist, Schumer says. “Even in New York State it would be hard.”

Massachusetts? “Maybe this year he could,” Frank says, meaning 2006. “But if he were running in any other state, he probably would have to comb his hair.”

Leahy says that just any Socialist probably couldn’t get elected in Vermont, either. But Sanders has made himself known in a state small enough — physically and in terms of population — for someone, particularly a tireless someone, to insinuate himself into neighborly dialogues and build a following that skirts ideological pigeonholes. Indeed, there are no shortages of war veterans or struggling farmers in Vermont who would seemingly have no use for a humorless aging hippie peacenik Socialist from Brooklyn, except that Sanders has dealt with many of them personally, and it’s a good bet his office has helped them procure some government benefit.

“People have gotten to know him as Bernie,” Leahy says. “Not as the Socialist.”

Sanders calls himself as a “democratic Socialist.” When I asked him what this meant, as a practical matter, in capitalist America circa 2007, he did what he often does: he donned his rhetorical Viking’s helmet and waxed lovingly about the Socialist governments of Scandinavia. He mentioned that Scandinavian countries have nearly wiped out poverty in children — as opposed to the United States, where 18 to 20 percent of kids live in poverty. The Finnish government provides free day care to all children; Norwegian workers get 42 weeks of maternity leave at full pay.

But would Americans ever accept the kinds of taxes that finance the Scandinavian welfare state? And would Sanders himself trade in the United States government for the Finnish one? He is curiously, frustratingly non-responsive to questions like this. “I think there is a great deal we can learn from Scandinavia,” he said after a long pause. And then he returns to railing about economic justice and the rising gap between rich and poor, things he speaks of with a sense of outrage that always seems freshly summoned.

Sanders crinkles his face whenever a conversation veers too long from this kind of “important stuff” and into the “silly stuff,” like clothes and style. “I do not like personality profiles,” Sanders told me during our first conversation. He trumpets a familiar rant against the media, its emphasis on gaffes, polls and trivial details.

“If I walked up on a stage and fell down, that would be the top story,” Sanders says. “You wouldn’t hear anything about the growing gap between rich and poor.”

When I first met Sanders in person on Church Street, there were big streaks of dried mud on his shoes and dried blood on his neck from what looked to be a shaving mishap. His hair flew every which way in a gust of wind. At six feet tall, he is wiry, but he walks with shoulders hunched and elbows out, like a big, skulking bird. From a distance, he looked as if he could be homeless.

Closer in, the overwhelming impression made by Sanders is that of an acute worrier. He evinces the wearied default manner of a longtime insomniac, eyes weather-beaten with big lines and a perpetual slight cringe. His brow appears close to collapse beneath the weight of an invisible sandbag.

Richard Sugarman, a professor of religion at the University of Vermont and a longtime friend, recalls that during Sanders’s days as mayor, constituents would sometimes call him at his listed home phone number in the middle of the night. “Someone would call at 3 a.m. and say, ‘Hey Bernie, someone just threw a brick through my window, what should I do?’ He was as hands on as anyone. ... Does he have an off-mode? Not really.”

Luke Albee, Leahy’s former chief of staff, says: “He has no hobbies. He works. He doesn’t take time off. Bernie doesn’t even eat lunch. The idea of building a fire and reading a book and going on vacation, that’s not something he does.”

As much as anything, this distills why Sanders has been an awkward fit in the chummy realm of Capitol Hill. He is no pleaser or jokester by anyone’s prototype. I don’t recall Sanders laughing more than two or three times in the 48 hours I spent with him in Vermont. His one memorably funny aside came when I asked if his Congressional office had a dress code.

“Yes,” he said. “You can’t come in if you’re totally nude,” he said. He instituted the rule, he said, when his outreach director, Phil Fiermonte, who is now sitting next to him, came to work naked.

“Totally nude,” Sanders said. “On three occasions.”

He was kidding, presumably.

Riding in the passenger seat of Fiermonte’s car, Sanders was shouting into a brick-size cellphone, the likes of which were all the rage in the 1990s. He was talking to a staff person who was about to meet with someone from the office of Senator Edward Kennedy, chairman of Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, one of five committees that Sanders will sit on. Sanders voice filled the car.

“Dental care is yooge,” Sanders boomed into the phone. This has been a leitmotif of my visit — Sanders’s crusade to improve dental health among Vermont’s rural poor. He views this as an employment and economic issue. “How many employers are going to hire someone who doesn’t have teeth?” he asks. “You go around this state, and you will find a lot of people with no teeth. It is their badge of poverty.”

Improving dental care for the poor is a classic Sanders issue: unsexy and given to practical solutions and his obsessive attention. Sanders sees bad dental care among the poor as a “pothole issue” in Vermont, meaning it is pervasive and something that government should be active in fixing (like potholes). Teeth are tangible, especially when they hurt.

Sanders’s car pulled into the parking lot of H.O. Wheeler Elementary School in North Burlington, where he was visiting a drop-by dental clinic. The notion of “school-based dental care” excites Sanders immensely, and his gait speeds as he enters the school, past the main office, a classroom and several school officials he has come to know over multiple visits.

“If you’re a kid, and you’re having dental pain, you’re not going to be learning a lot,” said Joseph Arioli, of Burlington’s Community Health Center and one of a half-dozen program administrators — including a dentist in scrubs — convened around a dentist chair.

The clinic provides free access to dental care for kids at high risk of neglecting their teeth. Students are typically seen during the school day, which means they miss minimal class time and their parents don’t have to leave work to take them. Betsy Liley, a grant writer for the city, says that many households in Vermont own just one toothbrush.

“Lemme guess, a lot of the dietary habits you see here are not great,” Sanders said. Nods all around. He said he’d do his best to secure more financing and vowed to return. And he told Liley that he might bring her to Washington to testify before a Senate committee.

Walking out, Sanders didn’t bother with goodbye — just as he didn’t with hello — only a thank you and a “what you’re doing here is yooge” over his shoulder.

“Great program,” Sanders said in the car. He likes to check in whenever possible. That’s essentially what I did with Sanders in Vermont: check in, with programs that he’s been involved with or wants to learn more about. He likes to hit lots of meetings, quick, businesslike transactions.

Only once in six discussions I sat in on did Sanders indulge in a personal anecdote. He was in his office talking to Sharon Moffat, Vermont’s acting commissioner of health, and the topic turned to dental care.

“I have a personal story to tell you,” Sanders said, and my ears perked up as I fantasized of learning the “Rosebud” episode that might explain Bernie’s interest in teeth.

“I was in the House cloakroom about five years ago,” Sanders said. “And I was thirsty. I took a drink of grape juice. Blawww.”

He scrunched up his face.

“It was awful, awful. Then I looked at the label. The amount of junk they put in there is unbelievable.”

Moffat nodded.

“Anyway, I no longer drink that stuff,” Sanders said.

Sanders’s parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland. His father, Eli, a struggling paint salesman who saw his family wiped out in the Holocaust, worried constantly about supporting his wife and two sons. His mother, Dorothy, dreamed of living in a “private home,” but they never made it beyond their three-and-a-half-room apartment on East 26th and Kings Highway. She died at age 46, when Bernie was 19. “Sensitivity to class was imbedded in me then quite deeply,” Sanders told me.

Sanders spent a year at Brooklyn College before transferring to the University of Chicago, where he studied psychology and helped lead protests against racially segregated housing on campus. He spent time on a kibbutz in Israel after graduation and then moved to Vermont with his first wife. “I had always been captivated by rural life,” he says. As a child, Sanders attended Boy Scout camp upstate and used to cry on the bus as it returned him to New York at the end of the summer.

In Vermont, Sanders worked many jobs for meager sums — as a freelance writer, filmmaker, carpenter and researcher, among other things. (Sanders has one son, Levi, and three stepchildren from his marriage to his second wife, Jane O’Meara Driscoll, the president of a small college in Burlington whom he met at a party on the night of his first mayoral victory.)

Politics came to dominate Sanders’s life. He was an early member of Vermont’s Liberty Union party, an offshoot of the antiwar movement in Vermont. He ran as the party’s nominee for the Senate in a special election in 1971 and finished with 2 percent of the vote. The following year, he ran for governor and received 1 percent. He would run two more times for statewide office that decade as a third-party candidate and never come close.

That changed when he ran for mayor of Burlington in 1980, at Sugarman’s urging. Sugarman studied the race and believed Sanders could win, if few others did. Sanders knocked on doors all over the city, campaigned day and night and beat a six-term Democratic incumbent by 12 votes.

“People generally assumed this was a fluke and that he would be gone in two years,” said Peter Clavelle, a friend who succeeded Sanders as mayor.

Sanders spoke out against poverty in the third world and made good-will visits to the Soviet Union and Cuba, among other places that U.S. mayors generally didn’t travel to during that time. But a funny thing happened on the way to what many had dismissed as a short-running circus. Sanders undertook ambitious downtown revitalization projects and courted evil capitalist entities known as “businesses.” He balanced budgets. His administration sued the local cable franchise and won reduced rates for customers. He drew a minor-league baseball team to town, the Vermont Reds (named for the Cincinnatis, not the Commies).

Sanders’s appeal in Vermont’s biggest city blended the “think globally” sensibility of a liberal college town with the “act locally” practicality of a hands-on mayor. He offered sister-city relations with the Sandinistas and efficient snowplowing for the People’s Republic of Burlington. Before Sanders’s mayoral victory, Leahy says, it was easy not to take him seriously. “Then he got over that barrier, and got elected. He fixed the streets, filled the potholes, worked with the business community. He did what serious leaders do.” He was re-elected three times.

In a sense, Sanders’s stint as mayor become a template for his subsequent successes — and limitations — as a national officeholder. In the House, he gained great publicity and favor as an audacious critic with a geopolitical purview, but ultimately left his biggest mark with small-bore diligence to the local realpolitik.

I was reminded of this when I asked Sanders in early January what his immediate legislative goals would be in the Senate. He listed these broad-brush priorities: 1) ending the Iraq war; 2) reversing the “rapid decline of the middle class” (a corollary to “addressing the gap between rich and poor”); 3) reordering priorities in the federal budget; and 4) enacting environmental laws to thwart global warming. When I asked how he would translate any of his priorities into concrete legislation, he nodded sheepishly and said, “I’m in the process of trying to figure that out now.” It is an unsatisfying response somewhat reminiscent of Sanders’s all-purpose invocations of Scandinavia whenever he’s pressed on how his socialist philosophy can be applied to the two-party system he exists in.

As a general rule, Sanders is much more convincing at proffering outrage than solutions. He can do this in Vermont, in part, because he is an entrenched political brand — “Bernie” — and voters will forgive a little blowhardedness (if not demagoguery) from someone they basically agree with and who has grown utterly familiar to their landscape, like cows. Sanders can also pull this off because, as he did in the mayor’s office, he has buttressed his bomb-throwing with rock-solid attention to the pothole matters of dental clinics, veterans’ benefits, farm subsidies, the kind of things an attentive politician operating in a tiny state (with a population of just 620,000) can fashion a formidable political base from.

After three terms as mayor, Sanders ran for Vermont’s at-large House seat in 1988 as an Independent and lost by a small margin to Peter Smith, the Republican former lieutenant governor. He won a rematch in 1990.

“When I came into the House, no one knew what to do with me,” Sanders says. “I was the only representative from Vermont, so I had no one to help me. And I was the only Independent, so no one knew where to put me in terms of committee.”

Sanders was known as something of a pragmatic gadfly in the House. His grillings of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan became a running burlesque, much awaited by many Hill and Federal Reserve watchers whenever Greenspan appeared before the House Financial Services Committee. (“Do you give one whit of concern for the middle class and working families of this country?” Sanders asked Greenspan in one representative exchange.)

Sanders was not without his legislative triumphs. He was adept at working with people with whom he otherwise disagreed sharply — forging alliances with conservatives like Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Texas and a well-known libertarian, with whom he shared a common hostility to the U.S.A. Patriot Act. In what might have been Sanders’s signature triumph of recent years, he was instrumental in striking a provision from the Patriot Act that would have required librarians to release data on what their patrons were reading.

But in keeping with his pragmatic gadfly’s approach, Sanders was far more accomplished at filing amendments to House bills than actually writing and producing legislation of his own. He was also gifted at drawing attention to his issues and (just as important) to himself. He was the first congressman to lead a bus trip to Canada to help seniors buy cheaper prescription drugs.

As he makes the transition to his new job, Sanders says his former House colleagues have teased him about not becoming “like the rest of them” in the Senate. Sanders jokes about this, as much as he jokes about anything. He says he will be required to enter a machine that zaps his brain and transforms him “into a member in good standing in the House of Lords.”

“We’re talking about a completely different animal here,” Sanders says. The House fosters a more hospitable habitat for the audacious and eccentric; their ranks tend to be camouflaged by its larger numbers, curtailed by strict time limits on floor speeches and reined in by the outsize power of the House leadership. Senators can speak for as long as they want and single-handedly buck the wishes of 99 other senators by placing “holds” on bills and nominations. Tradition dictates that senators exercise such privileges sparingly.

“There will be times when he causes the Democratic leadership some agita,” Schumer predicts. “But knowing him, I think he’s smart enough not to make any gratuitous enemies. He might make enemies, but they won’t be gratuitous enemies.”

Sanders told me, “You have to ask yourself, Did the people send me here to give long speeches, or did they send me here to get things done?”

By “you” Sanders means himself, as his sleepless Socialist adventure proceeds into the House of Lords.

On a quiet morning in mid-December, Sanders was sitting in his new office in the basement of a Senate office building — it is a temporary office he will inhabit before he moves to another temporary office that he will occupy until a permanent space opens up, probably around March. It’s all very exasperating, he said, this office-space situation. But he asked that I keep the specifics of his exasperation out of the article. He is trying to meet a stepped-up standard of tact and decorum in his new home.

“Why can’t we get these phone calls forwarded from the House office?” Sanders asked a staff person who is working temporarily at a temporary reception desk in the temporary-temporary office. Everything seems temporary, but not as temporary as before. Sanders has a six-year term now instead of a two-year one. Friends have advised him to pace himself, curb his impatience. He would seem ill wired for this, but he is trying. He even took a four-day vacation last month — and to Palm Springs.

But now he has work to do, beginning with getting to know his colleagues. “Personal relationships are very important in the Senate,” he told me. He likes the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, a lot, appreciates that he gave him the committee assignments that he wanted — Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; the Environment and Public Works; Veterans’ Affairs; Energy and Natural Resources; and the Budget. And wouldn’t you know, Reid has an interest in dental care, too. He grew up dirt poor in Nevada, and his mother had no teeth. The first thing Reid did when he got his first job — at a gas station — was buy her a new set. So the Senate’s leading Democrat gets the importance of dental care, which could help save teeth in Vermont.

“Let’s go somewhere else to talk,” Sanders said, as we headed out the door of his temporary-temporary office. “We can get some coffee.”

We traversed a maze of hallways that lead into a Senate dining room. “Can we sit down in here?” he asked a busperson. Yes, but then Sanders looked at a bunch of tables covered in white linen table clothes, not what he had in mind.

We walked upstairs, in search of a quiet place in the new neighborhood, on the Senate side. He kept navigating short hallways and turning back. An elevator opened in front of Sanders. It said “Senators Only.” The attendant invited him on, but he hesitated, turned away and began looking for another route to wherever he was going.

Sanders zigzags the Capitol this way barely recognized, or acknowledged (or congratulated, or urged to run for president). A few people stare at the new senator as he walks by — maybe because he looks lost, or famous, or maybe just because he looks like a strange bird out of Vermont.

Mark Leibovich is a reporter in the Washington bureau of The Times. This is his first article for the magazine.

    The Socialist Senator, NYT, 21.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/magazine/21Sanders.t.html

Former Florida Sen. George Smathers

dies at 93

Updated 1/20/2007 4:18 PM ET
AP
USA Today

MIAMI (AP) — Former Sen. George A. Smathers, a polished, dashing politician who forged friendships with presidents, waged war against communism, voted against civil rights bills and was an early voice cautioning of Fidel Castro's rise to power, died Saturday. He was 93.

The Democrat, who served two terms in the U.S. House and three in the Senate, suffered a stroke Monday, said his son, Bruce. He lived in Indian Creek Village, an exclusive island community outside Miami.

Smathers was among a new breed of congressmen — along with John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon — who arrived on Capitol Hill in the late 1940s with a worldliness that few before them had brought. Shaped by World War II duty in the Marines, Smathers used his more than two decades in Washington to focus on international issues and fight the spread of communism.

The senator was a political force who managed to unseat familiar faces, garner the ears of the powerful and stake a place as a moderate able to straddle both sides of the aisle. But by the time Smathers left office in 1969 — at his own choosing — some dismissed his legislative achievements as far less impressive than his Rolodex.

Charming and 6-foot-2, so handsome in his tailored suits his opponents took to calling him "Gorgeous George," Smathers seemed to win friends wherever he went.

At Kennedy's wedding rehearsal dinner, Smathers spoke on behalf of the groom. When Lyndon Johnson suffered his first heart attack, Smathers was at his side. And when Nixon sought a refuge from the White House, it was Smathers who sold him his Key Biscayne home.

Smathers' links to the powerful meant he was frequently turned to for counsel, but his advice was often ignored and his stances didn't always fall in line with his party's leadership.

Like other Southern Democrats, Smathers coddled segregationist white voters. He supported voting rights for blacks but sought to weaken other equal rights measures or simply vote against them, as he did with the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. He said such matters were better left in the hands of the people.

"I don't like bigotry and intolerance," he said, according to Brian Lewis Crispell's 1999 biography Testing the Limits: George Armistead Smathers and Cold War America. "But they do exist and I don't think you're going to get them out by passing laws."

He opposed Thurgood Marshall's nomination to the Supreme Court. He called the Brown v. Board of Education decision a "clear abuse of judicial power." And when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed in St. Augustine, Smathers offered to pay the minister's bail, but only if he left the state.

While such positions led some to label Smathers a racist — those who knew him insist he was simply trying to keep his job — his expertise on Latin America made him an early advocate for the people of that region, if for nothing more than to quash communism's expansion.

    Former Florida Sen. George Smathers dies at 93, UT, 20.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-20-smathers-obit_x.htm

Leading Senator

Assails Bush Over Iran Stance

January 20, 2007
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 — The new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday sharply criticized the Bush administration’s increasingly combative stance toward Iran, saying that White House efforts to portray it as a growing threat are uncomfortably reminiscent of rhetoric about Iraq before the American invasion of 2003.

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who took control of the committee this month, said that the administration was building a case against Tehran even as American intelligence agencies still know little about either Iran’s internal dynamics or its intentions in the Middle East.

“To be quite honest, I’m a little concerned that it’s Iraq again,” Senator Rockefeller said during an interview in his office. “This whole concept of moving against Iran is bizarre.”

Mr. Rockefeller did not say which aspects of the Bush administration’s case against Iran he thought were not supported by solid intelligence. He did say he agreed with the White House that Iranian operatives inside Iraq were supporting Shiite militias and working against American troops.

Mr. Rockefeller said he believed President Bush was getting poor advice from advisers who argue that an uncompromising stance toward the government in Tehran will serve American interests.

“I don’t think that policy makers in this administration particularly understand Iran,” he said.

The comments of Mr. Rockefeller reflect the mounting concerns being voiced by other influential Democrats, including the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, about the Bush administration’s approach to Iran. The Democrats have warned that the administration is moving toward a confrontation with Iran when the United States has neither the military resources nor the support among American allies and members of Congress to carry out such a move.

Because Mr. Rockefeller is one of a handful of lawmakers with access to the most classified intelligence about the threat from Iran, his views carry particular weight. He has also historically been more tempered in his criticism of the White House on national security issues than some of his Democratic colleagues.

Mr. Rockefeller was biting in his criticism of how President Bush has dealt with the threat of Islamic radicalism since the Sept. 11 attacks, saying he believed that the campaign against international terrorism was “still a mystery” to the president.

“I don’t think he understands the world,” Mr. Rockefeller said. “I don’t think he’s particularly curious about the world. I don’t think he reads like he says he does.”

He added, “Every time he’s read something he tells you about it, I think.”

Last week, the Intelligence Committee heard testimony from John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, that an emboldened Iran was casting a shadow across the Middle East and could decide to send Hezbollah operatives on missions to hit American targets.

Mr. Negroponte testified the morning after President Bush had, in a televised address to the nation, said he was determined to confront what he called worrying activities by Iranian operatives in Iraq, and announced that the Pentagon was building up the American naval presence in the Persian Gulf and sending a battery of Patriot missiles to deter Iranian aggression.

Some Democrats have suggested that Mr. Bush’s speech was the beginning of a meticulously choreographed campaign to demonize Iran, much the way the administration built its public case against Iraq.

In a speech on Friday, Mr. Reid warned the White House not to take military action against Iran without seeking approval from Congress.

Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said in response to Senator Rockefeller’s comments that Iran was taking provocative actions both inside Iraq and elsewhere, and that American allies were united in efforts to end what intelligence officials believe is a covert nuclear weapons program inside the country.

“It has been clear for some time that Iran has been meddling in Iraq, and the Iraqis have made the concerns known to the Iranians,” Mr. Johndroe said. He noted that the administration has said it would be willing to begin direct talks with Iran — which have not occurred since 1979 — if Iran agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities.

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told lawmakers on Thursday that over the past year and a half he had come to a “much darker interpretation” of Iran’s activities inside Iraq.

“I think there’s a clear line of evidence that points out the Iranians want to punish the United States, hurt the United States in Iraq, tie down the United States in Iraq, so that our other options in the region, against other activities the Iranians might have, would be limited,” he said.

Mr. Rockefeller’s committee is working to complete a long-delayed investigation into the misuse of intelligence about Iraq in the months before the American-led invasion.

He said that the committee was nearing completion on one part of that investigation, concerning whether the White House ignored prewar C.I.A. assessments that Iraq could disintegrate into chaos.

That report, Mr. Rockefeller said, could be released within months and was “not going to make for pleasant reading at the White House.”

Mr. Rockefeller said that with Democrats now in charge of the Intelligence Committee, he expected the panel to be much more aggressive, both in investigating the use of intelligence to fashion White House policy and in subjecting secret intelligence programs to new scrutiny. He mentioned the C.I.A’s network of secret prisons and the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program as likely subjects of investigations.

“We weren’t able to drill down on a lot of stuff” during the years in which the Intelligence Committee was under Republican control, Mr. Rockefeller said. “Now, there’s a very different attitude.”

    Leading Senator Assails Bush Over Iran Stance, NYT, 20.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/washington/20intel.html

Senate Passes

Vast Overhaul in Ethics Rules

January 19, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 — The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly passed sweeping changes to ethics and lobbying rules, overcoming bipartisan reluctance to ban many of the favors that lobbyists do for lawmakers and to illuminate the shadowy legislative practice of earmarking money for special projects.

The Senate’s action makes the start of the 110th Congress a watershed moment in the history of K Street and Capitol Hill. Interpreting the results of the Nov. 7 election as a reaction to corruption scandals when Congress was under Republican control, the Senate has joined the House in adopting broad new rules that go beyond the proposals Republicans introduced last year, the ones that Democrats campaigned on, or the extensive changes House Democrats recently passed.

The measure passed around 9 p.m. by a vote of 96 to 2. Senators Orrin Hatch of Utah and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, both Republicans, were the only members to vote against the bill.

On Wednesday, Senate Republicans nearly derailed the bill in a dispute over when the Democrats would agree to vote on a Republican proposal, a version of the line-item veto. At a news conference Thursday, a half-dozen Democratic senators competed to belittle the Republicans’ line-item veto as “an excuse,” “a ploy,” “a subterfuge,” a “rabbit out of a hat” and “a grand act of ethics hypocrisy.”

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the leader of the new Democratic majority, threatened to postpone any action on ethics until the next election and publicly blame the Republicans if they did not allow a vote Thursday.

But by Thursday evening, Mr. Reid and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, had resolved the impasse. They agreed to hold a vote on the line-item veto as part of a minimum-wage debate next week.

“This legislation has been extremely difficult to deal with,” Mr. Reid said Thursday night. “It is difficult because it deals with our lives.”

“In the short-term, the reforms in this bill may take some getting used to,” he added, “but in the long term, we’ll be thankful we took these steps.”

Like the new House rules, the Senate bill bars members from accepting gifts, meals or trips from lobbyists or the organizations that employ them. It ends the use by senators of borrowed corporate jets at discount rates.

Also like the House rules, the Senate measure requires disclosure of the sponsors, the purpose and the cost of the pet projects, or earmarks, that lawmakers have been able to tuck anonymously into complicated spending bills.

Unlike the House, the bill would also explicitly prohibit earmarks that would benefit the immediate family of the senator who sponsored it. Many of those changes revise internal Senate rules and do not require House or presidential approval.

Senate Democrats also incorporated into the bill a provision that, if signed into law, would require for the first time that lobbyists disclose the most valuable favors they do for lawmakers: holding campaign fund-raisers, soliciting campaign contributions and bundling checks from clients and friends.

Of all the bill’s provisions, it was the disclosure requirements for bundled checks that met the stiffest resistance behind the scenes in the Democratic caucus because of the potential to make it harder for incumbent lawmakers to tap K Street lobbyists as surrogate fund-raisers, aides involved in negotiations over the bill said, speaking anonymously because the talks were confidential.

Addressing another loophole in campaign finance laws, the Senate bill would also bar lobbyists or their employers from giving parties to honor lawmakers at party conventions. House Democrats say they plan to take up the subject of lobbying rules on their side of the Capitol in the next several weeks.

The party leaders began by teaming up to introduce a much weaker bipartisan bill, and lawmakers in both parties acknowledged behind-the-scenes resistance to strengthening it. But many found amendments to strengthen the bill — a number of them offered by Senators Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin and Barack Obama of Illinois, both Democrats — politically difficult to oppose.

Fred Wertheimer, president of the ethics group Democracy 21, said, “These are always difficult battles, but when you get them on the floor you get votes of 96 to 2.”

The bill became a pivotal test for Mr. Reid in his new role trying to manage the Senate. He is a frequent target of Republican accusations of fraternizing with influence-peddlers. Several members of his immediate family have worked as lobbyists, although he says that none have lobbied his office, and he is among the biggest recipients of the discounted use of corporate jets for travel.

Mr. Reid promised vigorous reform as his first act as majority leader. He offered an amendment to bar lawmakers from accepting the discounted use of corporate jets.

But when a Republican senator offered an amendment to match the House’s earmark disclosure rules, Mr. Reid miscounted the votes he had on his side when he tried and failed to table the measure. Mr. Reid first argued against moving too fast to match the House Democrats’ new rules and then embraced the same idea with token modifications.

Mr. Coburn, one of the two “no” votes, said he had been troubled by a lack of openness in the negotiations over the contents of the bill. Senators Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat who is recovering from health problems, and Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, were absent and did not vote.

    Senate Passes Vast Overhaul in Ethics Rules, NYT, 19.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/19/washington/19ethics.html

Measure in Senate

Urges No Troop Rise in Iraq

January 18, 2007
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 — The Senate set the stage on Wednesday for a direct clash with President Bush over the war, with two senior Democrats and a prominent Republican introducing a symbolic measure to declare that the administration’s plan to send additional troops to Iraq runs counter to the national interest.

The resolution, proposed by Senators Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Carl Levin of Michigan, both Democrats, and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a Republican, would not be binding, and the White House said it would have no effect on Mr. Bush’s plan to send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq.

But sponsors of the measure said Congressional passage would send a powerful message that the president could not ignore, and its adoption could be a precursor to further efforts by opponents of the war to place limits on his use of the military in Iraq or to limit financing for the war.

The measure says that the United States cannot sustain an open-ended commitment to Iraq, that the chief responsibility for quelling unrest there rests with Iraqi security forces and that the United States should seek a political solution. [Resolution text: nytimes.com/washington.]

“This resolution will demonstrate — and it will demonstrate it right away — that support is not there for the president’s policy in Iraq,” said Mr. Biden, the Foreign Relations Committee chairman. “The sooner he recognizes that reality and acts on it, the better off all of us will be.”

Mr. Biden’s committee expects to take up the resolution next Wednesday, pushing any votes on the measure past Mr. Bush’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night. Senate Democratic leaders have said they will bring it to the floor relatively quickly. House Democrats have made it clear that they will not take up any similar proposal until after the Senate has voted on one.

Republican leaders promised to offer an alternative that would call for time to allow Mr. Bush’s new policy to work — an attempt to provide Republicans unhappy with the war an avenue to express their view without backing the more critical proposal.

Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, a longtime Democrat who was re-elected last year as an independent, was the only non-Republican to pledge support so far. But Mr. Kyl said he believed that many of his Republican colleagues would ultimately find it difficult to vote against the White House.

“You cannot micromanage a war from the United States Senate,” Mr. Kyl said. “At least, you can’t effectively or constitutionally do that. If you vote to fund the military, then you need to leave the tactical decisions to the commanders on the ground and the commander in chief.”

But another Republican senator, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, quickly got behind the new resolution, and Mr. Hagel predicted that others would as well. “Now is the time for the Congress to make its voice heard on a policy that has such significant implications for the nation, the Middle East and the world,” Ms. Snowe said in a statement.

Other Republicans who have expressed unease about the troop buildup, including Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Norm Coleman of Minnesota, took no immediate stance on the resolution. They expressed some reservations about the tone and scope of the proposal, which refers to escalating the war, which some Republicans believe has become a loaded partisan description.

In an effort to limit defections, wavering Republicans were invited to the White House for briefings on Wednesday. Tony Snow, Mr. Bush’s press secretary, reiterated the administration’s contention that a vote in opposition to Mr. Bush’s policy would send a mixed message about American intentions.

“What signal does it send to the Iraqis in terms of steadfastness ?” he asked. “What does it say — does it make the troops feel better about their support from the United States?”

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, accused the resolution’s three sponsors of political gamesmanship in advocating a nonbinding vote rather than taking on the more difficult issue of limiting funding for American forces. “Rather than have a serious debate we see this kind of posturing,” Mr. Cornyn said.

Mr. Hagel bristled at that comment. “This is a serious resolution put forward by serious people who care about our country,” he said. “There is no moral high ground that one group of senators has over the other.”

Democratic leaders in the House and Senate say they believe that they can reach an early consensus on symbolic votes opposing the president and then later consider putting restrictions on spending for the war after gauging the depth of resistance. The House Defense Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday began a series of closed hearings on potential limits on military spending.

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, gained Democratic support for requiring the president to seek new authority from Congress before raising troop levels.

House Republicans introduced a measure that would prohibit Congress from cutting off or restricting “funding for units and members of the armed forces in harm’s way.”

    Measure in Senate Urges No Troop Rise in Iraq, NYT, 18.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/washington/18cong.html?hp&ex=1169182800&en=99772e13dda6155d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Editorial

The Senate’s Task on Warming

January 6, 2007
the New York Times

Here are a few bulletins from planet Earth:

Dec. 12 — Exhaustive computer simulations carried out at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., suggest that the Arctic Ocean will be mostly open water in the summer of 2040 — several decades earlier than expected. Scientists attribute the loss of summer ice largely to the buildup of carbon dioxide and other man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Dec. 14 — Experts at NASA’s Goddard Institute predict that 2006 will be the fifth-warmest year since modern record-keeping began, continuing a decades-long global warming trend caused, again, by the buildup of man-made carbon dioxide.

Dec. 27 — The Interior Department proposes adding polar bears to the list of threatened species because of the accelerating loss of the Arctic ice that is the bears’ habitat. The department does not take a position on why the ice is melting, but studies supporting the proposed listing identify greenhouse gases as the main culprit, adding that if left unchecked these gases will create ice-free Arctic summers in three decades.

But we knew that.

One can only assume that the Senate’s new Democratic leadership is paying attention. California’s Barbara Boxer is the new chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, replacing James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who regards global warming as an elaborate hoax drummed up by environmentalists and scientists in search of money. Ms. Boxer has already scheduled hearings, and there will be no shortage of legislative remedies to consider. All share one objective, which is to attach a cost to carbon dioxide through a cap on emissions.

The underlying logic is that if people and industries are made to pay for the privilege of pumping these gases into the atmosphere, they will inevitably be driven to developer cleaner fuels, cleaner cars and cleaner factories.

This is the path most developed countries have chosen. Europe has imposed caps on industrial emissions, and European companies have begun investing in new technologies and cleaner factories in places like China, partly as a way to meet their own obligations to cut emissions and partly as a way to lead China to a greener future.

These hearings need to be conducted in a thoughtful manner. There has been enough noise, from the Inhofe right and from the doomsayers who see each hurricane as a sign the apocalypse is upon us. But it is also important that Ms. Boxer and her colleagues not lose sight of a fundamental reality: Saturating the atmosphere with greenhouse gases is loading the dice in a dangerous game.

    The Senate’s Task on Warming, NYT, 6.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/opinion/06sat1.html

Senate Feels Heat

as House Cranks Up Ethics Overhaul

January 5, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 — Unexpectedly broad ethics rule changes that the House passed Thursday are putting new pressure on the Senate.

The House rules leave what lobbyists say are ample loopholes for those seeking to buy access to lawmakers, mainly through campaign fund-raising. But leaders of the new Democratic majority in the Senate said Thursday that they were reintroducing a much less extensive package of changes passed last year as the starting place for an intraparty debate next week over how much further the Senate should go.

Saying they were responding to voter backlash against Congressional corruption that helped them take control, House Democrats went beyond some of the ethics proposals on which they had campaigned.

The new House rules bar members from taking gifts, meals or trips paid for by lobbyists, or the organizations that employ them. The rules also ban lawmakers from using corporate jets and reimbursing the owners. A further proposal would also eliminate major loopholes from earlier drafts, in requirements for lawmakers to disclose sponsorship of pet spending projects, or earmarks, and tax breaks they hide in complex legislation.

The House Democrats said that in March they would take up the creation of an independent ethics watchdog to police their own conduct, something lawmakers in both chambers had steadfastly resisted.

In contrast, the initial Senate ethics bill would ban only gifts or meals and not trips paid for by lobbyists or their employers. It would not restrict the use of corporate jets. It would require disclosure of the sponsors of only a small fraction of spending earmarks, excluding those added to supplementary material, called Congressional reports, that explain legislative intent or that are directed through federal agencies like the Defense Department. Nor does the Senate bill propose any independent enforcement.

Some senior Democratic aides said the House rules had upped the ante for the Senate.

“They will be embarrassed” if they do not do more, said James A. Thurber, a professor of government at American University in Washington and an expert on Congressional ethics rules who has acted as a consultant to several lawmakers. “When we look at the election, it is a hot issue, so there will be a lot of focus on it in people’s minds, and the heat will be on in the Senate.”

Announcing his intention to reintroduce the Senate bill that passed last year, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, promissed to “improve that legislation and make additional reforms.”

Senior aides in both parties said Mr. Reid was negotiating with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, to try to work out a bipartisan package of changes. Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid, said the House actions had no bearing on what the Senate would do.

An overhaul is likely to face strong opposition from veteran senators who resent ethics rules as unnecessary, and helped bring back other changes. But aides to the Senate Rules Committee said they were preparing to match the House ban on meals, gifts and trips paid for by lobbyists or any organization that employs them.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Rules Committee, has said she intends to close some of the loopholes in the current bill’s earmark disclosure requirements. And despite personal doubts, she has also agreed to hold hearings on creating an independent enforcement watchdog.

Other Democrats, including Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, planned to push for a far more drastic overhaul.

The Feingold-Obama plan would make lawmakers reimburse corporations for use of their jets at the cost of a charter flight instead of the price of a first-class ticket — a step that stops short of the House rules. The bill would also create an independent watchdog as the House Democrats have discussed. And it would prohibit lobbyists or the organizations that employ them from holding lavish events for lawmakers at party conventions.

The Feingold-Obama bill would also require lobbyists to disclose any earmarks they are seeking for their clients, and require lobbyists to disclose any collecting and passing on of campaign contributions — a practice known as “bundling” that currently makes K Street the heart of campaign fund-raising for most lawmakers. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, said she and many other newly elected Democrats were working with Mr. Obama, Mr. Feingold and Mr. Reid to pushing for stronger changes, in part because they felt the resonance of the issue on the campaign trail.

“The House bill raises the bar,” Ms. Klobuchar said, “but a number of senators have already been talking about their own efforts to strengthen the Senate bill.”

Lobbyists, meanwhile, groused that the rules passed in the House would have the unintended consequence of encouraging them to do more fund-raising for House members. The new rules bar lobbyists from treating lawmakers to meals or trips. But the lobbyists can still raise money for lawmakers’ campaigns and also join lawmakers at fund-raising events or on overnight trips paid for with those campaign funds. Lobbyists said people seeking access to lawmakers may now have even more incentive to attend fund-raisers because they can no longer simply buy dinner or lunch.

Lawrence W. Noble, a Washington lawyer specializing in political rules, said lobbyists could well feel obliged to attend more fund-raisers. “We still have a system of private financing of campaigns,” Mr. Noble said.

Senate Feels Heat as House Cranks Up Ethics Overhaul, NYT, 5.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/washington/05ethics.html