History > 2005 > USA > Politics

House of Representatives

An aerial view of the U.S. Capitol Building

is seen in a 2003 file photo.

Legislation aimed at reinforcing the system of traditional pensions

and avoiding a taxpayer bailout of the federal agency

that insures them was passed

on Thursday by the House of Representatives.

Photograph:

REUTERS/Larry Downing

House OKs rewrite of pension funding rules

R        15.12.2005
http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=
2005-12-16T004137Z_01_SIB575352_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-PENSIONS.xml

Capitol's Pariah on Immigration

Is Now a Power

December 24, 2005
The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

DENVER, Dec. 21 - For nearly a decade, Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, has been dismissed by his critics as little more than an angry man with a microphone, a lonely figure who rails against immigration and battles his own president and party.

So radical were his proposals - calling for a fence along the United States border with Canada, for instance - and so fierce were his attacks on fellow Republicans who did not share his views that many of his colleagues tried to avoid him. Mr. Tancredo said Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, had told him not "to darken the doorstep of the White House."

But last week, the man denounced by critics on the left and on the right suddenly emerged as an influential lawmaker. Pressured by conservative constituents angered by the continuing flow of illegal immigrants into the United States, Republicans rallied around Mr. Tancredo to defy the president and produce the toughest immigration legislation in more than a decade.

Mr. Tancredo and his allies fought successfully to strip the measure of any language offering support for Mr. Bush's plan to provide temporary legal status for illegal immigrants working in the United States. And he helped win support for provisions that once seemed unthinkable to many lawmakers, like the construction of five fences across 698 miles of the United States border with Mexico.

Mr. Tancredo did not get everything he wanted. He still wants a moratorium on legal immigration, soldiers on the border, a longer fence (and one along the border with Canada) as well as a law that would deny citizenship to children born to parents who are not citizens or permanent residents. And many Republicans and Democrats say it seems unlikely that the border security bill passed by the House last week will become law in its current form, if it ever becomes law at all.

But as a jubilant Mr. Tancredo returned to his office here this week, there was little doubt that he had become a symbol of the ascendancy of deeply conservative thinkers in the bitter Republican debate over immigration policy. The lonely firebrand had become the man of the moment, and he could not help but marvel at the wonder of it all.

"I would have said to you a month ago or so, 'Yeah, it's definitely the case that I am a pariah,' " Mr. Tancredo, 60, said. "And a lot of people don't want to get near me for fear of being tainted or something."

"But it has changed, and I have had the greatest feeling of respectability lately," he said, laughing. "I joke with people all the time now. I say, 'I've got to find a new issue because I'm way too mainstream.'

"I'm, like, respectable and respected. I mean, it leaves me speechless."

It leaves his critics outraged.

Advocates for immigrants sent press releases after the House passed the border security bill, accusing the Republican Party of threatening vulnerable immigrant communities by catering to the extreme right. Business leaders, who had pushed their traditional allies in the Republican Party to support Mr. Bush's guest worker plan, fumed.

Republicans, like Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona, who lost the battle to include at least a mention of the guest worker plan in the bill, shook their heads in frustration. Asked whether Mr. Tancredo and his allies had more success in the negotiations over border security than did supporters of Mr. Bush's plan, Mr. Flake responded, "You bet."

But Mr. Flake said he believed that many Republicans voted for the bill because they believed it would never become law. Mr. Bush had said that immigration legislation should include his guest worker proposal, which would allow those currently in the United States illegally to work here legally for a few years before being required to return home and, if they chose, apply for re-entry. And the Senate is expected to take up such a measure next year.

With midterm elections looming, Mr. Flake said, many Republicans simply wanted to address voter concerns about securing the border.

"We weren't so much making law as making a statement here," Mr. Flake said. Mr. Tancredo's allies countered that his support from fellow Republicans was more than a matter of political expediency; they said it signaled a shift in the immigration debate.

"Tom was like an Old Testament prophet crying out in the wilderness, and finally people are starting to listen," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigrant Studies, an advocacy group that wants strict limits on immigration.

Mr. Tancredo laughs at the furor. He is genial and ruddy faced, a grandson of Italian immigrants who loves hunting and keeps Oliver L. North's "Mission Compromised" on his bookshelf. And as he settled in a chair this week to ponder his career, his hands sliced and diced the air. ("It's the Italian in me," Mr. Tancredo said, describing his gestures. He says he sees no contradiction in his strong views and his own immigrant ancestry.)

After he was first elected to Congress, in 1998, Mr. Tancredo tried to draw attention to his stance on immigration by giving late-night speeches on a House floor almost entirely devoid of spectators but broadcast by C-Span. He created an immigration caucus, got 16 Republicans to join and became its leader.

Today, Mr. Tancredo has a caucus with about 90 members and a reputation as a go-it-alone politician willing to sacrifice almost anyone - including his colleagues - to his passion for enforcing and tightening the nation's immigration laws.

In 2002, he read a front-page article in The Denver Post about parents who were struggling to send their son to college. They were ineligible for financial aid because they were illegal immigrants. Outraged that the family felt comfortable enough to appear in plain view, Mr. Tancredo called the immigration authorities and asked to have them deported.

He has infuriated members of his own party by attacking President Bush and by siding against Republicans in Congressional races when their opponents share his views on immigration. Mr. Tancredo said he got into a shouting match with Mr. Rove after telling The Washington Times that Mr. Bush would have blood on his hands if he did not toughen the nation's immigration laws. Mr. Tancredo said that was when Mr. Rove told him not to darken the White House's doorstep.

"What kind of guy is this," Mr. Tancredo said of Mr. Bush, "who picks and chooses the laws he enforces?"

The White House declined to characterize the Bush administration's feelings or Mr. Rove's feelings about Mr. Tancredo. When asked about him, Erin Healy, a spokeswoman for the White House, said, "We worked with a number of members in the House on immigration reform."

The border security measure would make it a federal crime to live in the United States illegally, which would turn millions of immigrants into felons, ineligible to win any legal status. The bill would make it a crime for employees of social service agencies and church groups to shield or offer support to illegal immigrants.

The legislation would also require the mandatory detention of some immigrants, would withhold some federal aid from cities that provide immigrants with services without checking their legal status and would decrease the number of legal immigrants admitted annually by eliminating a program that provides 50,000 green cards each year.

"This is a gesture to the xenophobic wing of the party, and that is alarming," said Cecilia Muñoz, a vice president at the National Council of La Raza. "It threatens extraordinary harm to people."

Mr. Tancredo fears that moderate Republicans, allied with the White House, business leaders and immigration advocates, may derail his efforts by sinking the bill. And so he is considering taking extraordinary measures, including running for president in 2008.

"We just took one more island in the chain leading to Tokyo," Mr. Tancredo said, using World War II imagery to describe the battle to pass the House immigration bill. "But there are still a lot of bloody battles to fight."

    Capitol's Pariah on Immigration Is Now a Power, NYT, 24.12.2005,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24immig.html

Postponing Debate,

Congress Extends Terror Law

5 Weeks

December 23, 2005
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 - In a frantic finish before adjourning for the year, Congress extended on Thursday the broad antiterrorism bill known as the USA Patriot Act by five weeks after the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee balked at a longer extension.

The deal, approved by voice vote in sparsely attended sessions in the House and Senate, averts the expiration of the 16 major provisions of the original law on Dec. 31. It was the final twist in a six-day game of brinksmanship between President Bush and Senate Democrats who, joined by a handful of Republicans, had blocked a bill to make permanent the original law.

But the deal fell far short of President Bush's aim of permanently extending the original law, which expanded the government's investigative powers after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The extension also set the stage for a clash over civil liberties and national security when lawmakers return here early next year.

The action was taken after the head of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin, threatened to derail a six-month extension the Senate passed on Wednesday night. White House officials intervened on Thursday to persuade Mr. Sensenbrenner to sign off on the five-week extension.

With most lawmakers having already left Washington for their holiday vacations, just one senator, John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, was on hand for the Senate vote. He presided over a four-minute session wearing two hats, those of senator and presiding officer.

Later, Mr. Bush, who said making the act permanent was essential to protect against another attack, issued a statement promising to "work closely with the House and Senate to make sure that we are not without this crucial law for even a day."

As it wrapped up business for the year, Congress also gave final approval to a $453.3 billion military spending bill that included $50 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, $29 billion in new aid for hurricane victims, $3.8 billion to prepare for a possible outbreak of avian flu and a governmentwide 1 percent spending cut. The Republican leadership stripped out language for $2 billion in extra assistance for low-income people to pay their home heating bills.

But extending the Patriot Act provided the real drama. Under the measure passed on Thursday, the deadline to reauthorize the Patriot Act moved, from Dec. 31 to Feb. 3, timing that could prove a problem for the White House.

It means that a debate on the law would be in full swing at the same time the Senate starts an inquiry into a secret spying program authorized by President Bush and run by the National Security Agency to monitor international phone calls and international e-mail messages of people in the United States.

Lawmakers on both sides of the issue say the measure and the spying program are inextricably intertwined.

"I think there will be a compromise on the Patriot Act," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who voted to block the permanent renewal in part because of the disclosures about the spying program. "I think there will be a consensus bill, but it will have to lean a little bit more to the civil liberties side."

Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, said: "I think there will be a lot of questions that have to be answered with respect to the domestic surveillance. It's all interfaced. So I think perhaps it's appropriate that all these issues will merge."

Debate over the Patriot Act has inflamed passions among civil liberties advocates, who argue that the law permits too much government intrusion in personal privacy. Congress has spent months on measures to renew and update it. Last week, the House passed a measure, with Mr. Sensenbrenner's strong backing, to make 14 of the 16 expiring provisions permanent and to add more safeguards to protect civil liberties.

But that bill, a product of a House-Senate conference, was bottled up in the Senate, prompting the six-month extension that it passed on a voice vote. Mr. Sensenbrenner, furious, promised to derail the Senate action and had the power to do so. Under House rules, the six-month extension had to pass unanimously, without any objections. But by early Thursday afternoon, the White House stepped in, and Mr. Sensenbrenner relented, agreeing to five weeks.

He said he did so only because White House officials had told him that Mr. Bush would convene a special session of Congress next week if he did not. He was asked whether he was seeking retribution.

"It's not retribution," Mr. Sensenbrenner told reporters. "I've spent the better part of this year holding 11 hearings on the Patriot Act."

Its future is unclear. Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin and a leading filibuster backer, said in a statement that the conference measure would have to change.

"That bill is dead," Mr. Feingold said, "and cannot be revived."

The Patriot Act debate was hardly the sole partisan scuffle on a day when Congress remained in session even as lawmakers seemed desperate to adjourn for the year. In the House, a $40 billion budget-cutting measure, also passed by the Senate on Wednesday, ran into a roadblock when the Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, rebuffed an entreaty from Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois to consent to its consideration.

The move forces the House to take up the budget when it comes back into session next year.

"Every single House Democrat opposed this immoral bill because of the harmful cuts in student loans, health care, child support enforcement and other assistance for seniors and low- and middle-income families," Ms. Pelosi wrote in a letter to Mr. Hastert. "In fact, many members on your side of the aisle agreed that the draconian cuts were not justified."

In the Senate, Democrats, along with Ms. Snowe and her Maine Republican colleague, Susan Collins, complained about the decision to strip assistance for home heating oil from the military spending bill.

The $2 billion provision was written into a section of the bill permitting Arctic oil exploration. When the Senate cut out the drilling language, the heating oil provision went with it.

"It was the wrong choice for the American people in this cold holiday season," said the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada.

By day's end, Ms. Snowe and Ms. Collins announced that they had reached an accord with the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, for the Senate to vote in January on a bill to provide the additional money. The negotiations were conducted from afar. When the Senate convened at 8 p.m., Mr. Warner sat in the chamber alone, joined just by clerks and 12 or so aides who clapped vigorously when he brought down the gavel for the final time this year.

    Postponing Debate, Congress Extends Terror Law 5 Weeks, NYT, 23.12.2005,  http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/23/politics/23cong.html

News Analysis

Messy Congressional Finale

December 23, 2005
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 - In the end, Republicans largely have themselves to blame for the muddled and haphazard finale of the Congressional session.

At nearly every crucial turn in recent weeks, it was a group of Republicans, painfully aware of President Bush's decline in popularity, who broke from the White House and the party leadership in the House and Senate and forced concessions in major legislation or stalled it until the bitter end.

And leadership upheaval in the House also did not help the Republican cause. Four Republicans sided with Democrats in filibustering the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, and four more clamored for an extension, leaving Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, little choice but to acquiesce.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, backed by Republican colleagues, insisted on a ban on torturing detainees linked to terrorism, tying up military bills.

House moderates balked at using a budget-cutting measure to open the Arctic to oil drilling, leading to the foiled effort to add the drilling to a Pentagon bill.

There were many other instances, as well.

"I think the biggest single challenge of putting votes together for our team, frankly, was the president's numbers," Representative Roy Blunt, the Missouri Republican who is acting majority leader, said in referring to Mr. Bush's dip in the polls. "When you are strong, you are united and your opponents are divided. When you are weak, your opponents are united."

That was precisely the case in recent weeks as traditionally fractious Democrats, looking toward a 2006 environment that they believe will favor them, managed to hang together on a series of issues. That forced Republicans to scramble to find votes within their own relatively thin majorities to approve sensitive measures on trade, energy and spending. Not one Democrat in the House or Senate backed the budget cuts.

"It was just unthought of that we could be this unified and evoke a change of behavior in terms of Republicans' having to deal with their own members," said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the party leader in the House.

The strength of the minirevolts among Republicans was startling, especially in the House, where the leadership had excelled at obtaining what it wanted from the rank and file, even if that took a three-hour roll-call vote. This Congressional leadership has been in such lockstep with Mr. Bush that he has yet to veto a single measure.

That unity has now begun to unravel. Mr. Bush is not running for re-election. But much of Congress is, and lawmakers have heard earfuls at home about the Iraq war and the cost of gasoline, among other problems.

And the administration's bumbling response to Hurricane Katrina shook not only much of the public's confidence in the White House, but also unsettled Republican lawmakers who did not want to be swept away in a wave of dissatisfaction.

Just as they began to recover from the shock of the hurricanes, House Republicans experienced another disruption as Representative Tom DeLay of Texas was indicted in Texas on charges of campaign-related money laundering. Mr. DeLay was forced to step aside from the majority leader post, and the leadership structure was thrown into flux.

The shakeup in the House occurred as Republican conservatives were demanding deep spending reductions to pay for the hurricane recovery, generating resistance from Republican moderates who found new backbone and stood firm against the Arctic drilling and some cuts in social programs, anxious about the difficult election year approaching.

As a result, the budget cutting took weeks to hammer out and fell $10 billion short of the ambitious $50 billion savings goal set by Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois.

It does not appear to grow much easier as Republicans head into 2006. Mr. DeLay's situation remains unresolved, and the prospect of a prolonged legal fight could prompt a new leadership election, roiling the party.

In the Senate, Mr. Frist enters his last year in office, a fact that could further test his leadership ability as he considers a presidential run.

Among the first issues Congress plans to take up are immigration, stem cell research and tax cuts, all subjects that expose deep divisions among Republicans. The Republican failure to arrive at an agreement on tax cutting this year stemmed in large part from the uneasiness among party moderates over extending investment-tax breaks.

And Democrats are energized by what they see as their success in facing off Republicans on issues like the Patriot Act, prewar intelligence and Social Security changes. They were upbeat about their end-of-session ability to defeat the Arctic drilling plan and win a temporary delay in final enactment of the budget cuts after forcing, with the help of five Republicans, a 50 to 50 vote that had to be broken by Vice President Dick Cheney.

A strategy memorandum circulated this week by the Democratic National Committee said the party believed that it could keep Republicans on the defensive.

"Even as President Bush's job approval ratings have seen a slight holiday uptick this December, his credibility remains low, jeopardizing his ability to regain his footing in 2006," the memorandum said.

At the White House on Thursday, a spokesman, Scott McClellan, sought to accentuate the positive, describing the year as one of "solid accomplishment on the legislative front," listing early victories on class-action and bankruptcy measures, the highway and energy bills, the Central American Free Trade Agreement and the slightly delayed budget-cutting pact.

Congressional Republican leaders, while acknowledging the unsightliness of the last few days of all-night debate, floor fights and mop-up sessions, expressed satisfaction with what they accomplished if not how it looked.

"When you have a narrow majority with absolutely no help, absolutely no help, from the other side, it is never very pretty," said Representative Deborah Pryce of Ohio, chairwoman of the House Republican Conference.

Whether Republicans can hold their fragmenting membership together in the difficult months to come could determine whether they have an even narrower majority in 2007. Or a majority at all.

    Messy Congressional Finale, NYT, 23.12.2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/23/politics/23assess.html

Congressional oversight

of intelligence never easy

Posted 12/20/2005 10:49 PM
Updated 12/20/2005 10:55 PM
By John Diamond, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Just after being named House Intelligence Committee chairman, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., was invited to the White House for what he thought would be a get-acquainted meeting.
Vice President Cheney was there, along with top officials from the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA), waiting for him with briefing charts. "They said this is a big deal, and you'd better take this seriously," Hoekstra recalled.

That meeting in September 2004 is when Hoekstra first learned that after 9/11, President Bush had ordered surveillance without warrants on international calls and e-mails of Americans and others in the USA with suspected ties to al-Qaeda. Hoekstra was not allowed to take notes or attend with a staff member. At the end, he was asked if he had any questions.

"It was, 'Speak now or forever hold your peace,' " Hoekstra said.

Now, after the White House has acknowledged the domestic surveillance, members of Congress are debating whether they had genuine opportunities to learn details of the program and raise any objections if they had them. At issue is not only Bush's legal authority to order the spying but also the viability of congressional oversight.

No objections?

Republicans Hoekstra and Pat Roberts of Kansas, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the few lawmakers briefed on the program raised no objections.

Democrats disagree.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the rules concerning his briefing in 2003 made it impossible for him to discuss the program with intelligence experts on his own staff who carry high-level security clearances. Roberts countered that as recently as two weeks ago, Rockefeller had expressed to Cheney his "vocal support" for the surveillance, a claim Rockefeller denied.

Secrecy around the briefings and surveillance made it impossible for lawmakers with objections to make speeches or file bills to stop it, said Lee Hamilton, a co-chairman of the commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks. The commission's report called congressional oversight of intelligence too weak.

"A member of an intelligence committee who hears of some activity he disapproves of has no real way to bring that public because if he does, he's breaking the law," said Hamilton, an Indiana Democrat who chaired the House Intelligence Committee in the mid-1980s.

The system, Hamilton said, relies on trust that the White House will accurately describe its programs and that lawmakers will keep the secrets.

Lawmakers who are briefed, Hamilton said, must listen carefully and ask "every question they can think of," although they are often "snowed by the information."

While in Congress, Hamilton said, he believed intelligence agencies kept the briefings as restricted as possible. When he objected, the CIA and other agencies responded by having fewer briefings marked by "very innocuous language."

Former senator Bob Graham, D-Fla., who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee in the months after the 9/11 attacks, suspects intelligence officials were being evasive in his first briefing. He recalled hearing about an NSA plan to intercept calls between two foreign locations that are sometimes routed through switching centers in the USA. He remembers nothing about surveillance of domestic targets.

1970s reforms

Before the mid-1970s, Congress received rare and spare intelligence briefings. That changed after the disclosure of domestic spying on Vietnam War protesters. Congress created the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1976 and its House counterpart a year later. The law requires that they be "fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities."

The White House has used another legal provision to limit access to information on covert actions and other operations the president deems highly sensitive. In those cases, including the NSA surveillance, officials brief only the "Gang of Eight" top congressional leaders.

The NSA controversy resembles a 1984 dispute between Congress and the Reagan administration over the secret mining of harbors in Nicaragua, said Stephen Knott of the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. "The initial reaction in Congress, pretty much across party lines, was outrage," Knott said. "It later turned out that many members of Congress had been informed of the mining operation" but only "in passing" during closed-door briefings.

"Some intelligence committee members would prefer not to know the gory details," Knott said. "Others, perhaps, did not do their homework."

Members of Congress also may feel more emboldened to challenge Bush now that his approval ratings are significantly lower than right after 9/11, Knott said.

The details may yet come to light in hearings that Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said he will hold. A bipartisan group of senators asked Tuesday that the Senate Intelligence Committee participate.

    Congressional oversight of intelligence never easy, UT, 20.12.2005, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-12-20-intel-oversight_x.htm

House passes torture ban, war funding

Mon Dec 19, 2005 9:31 AM ET
Reuters
By Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Monday passed final legislation to ban the torture of detainees and voted to advance the Pentagon $50 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The House passed two separate defense bills, one for funding and one for policies, that contained identical measures initially opposed by President George W. Bush requiring humane treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.

But, in a concession to the White House, the bills curb the ability of inmates at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to challenge their detention in federal court.

The bills also would let information gleaned by coercion be used against Guantanamo inmates.

The funding bill provides $453.3 billion for defense, including $50 billion for the wars until Congress acts on an emergency war supplemental early next year that lawmakers said could be between $80 billion and $100 billion.

The Senate will take up the funding measure this week, with a fight expected over an unrelated measure added to the bill to allow oil drilling in an Alaska wildlife refuge.

The defense policy bill was expected to go to the Senate for final passage later on Monday before being sent to Bush, as Congress rushes to complete its work for the year.

The torture ban represents a congressional rebuke of Bush, who resisted the measure pushed by Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.

It was introduced in response to a scandal over the abuse of detainees by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, reports the CIA has run secret prisons abroad, and harsh interrogations in Guantanamo, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Human rights advocates were elated when Bush accepted McCain's amendment after opposing it for months on the grounds it would hamper intelligence-gathering in the U.S. war on terrorism.

But rights advocates said the McCain amendment was partly undercut by the measure limiting Guantanamo inmates' access to courts and allowing use of information obtained by coercion.

CRUEL, INHUMAN TREATMENT BANNED

McCain's amendment bars cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody, and requires that interrogations adhere to standards set by the Army manual.

The White House had wanted more sweeping protections against prosecutions, and Vice President Dick Cheney had pressed to exclude the CIA from the measure.

In negotiations with the White House, McCain only agreed to extend to CIA interrogators the military defense standard of whether a reasonable person would find they were following a lawful order.

Cheney, in an interview on Sunday with ABC News' "Nightline", said he backed legislation to ban inhumane treatment of prisoners, but criticized what he saw as a diminishing commitment by some to do "what's necessary" to defend the country.

"One of the things I'm concerned about is that as we get farther and farther away from 9/11, and there have been no further attacks against the United States, there seems to be less and less concern about doing what's necessary in order to defend the country," Cheney said.

The defense policy bill also puts Congress on record saying that 2006 should be a time of "significant transition" toward full Iraqi sovereignty, with Iraqi forces taking the lead for security and creating conditions for a phased U.S withdrawal.

The Senate approved that resolution overwhelmingly in November in a move that added pressure on Bush to present a plan to end the war.

    House passes torture ban, war funding, R, 19.12.2005, http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-12-19T143130Z_01_SPI952242_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&related=true

House approves $29 billion Katrina aid plan

Mon Dec 19, 2005 9:31 AM ET
Reuters
By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Monday approved $29 billion in funds for rebuilding hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast states, about $10.4 billion more than requested by the Bush administration.

The fate of the legislation is uncertain in the Senate, however, because of opposition from many senators to unrelated provisions of the bill.

Most of the money would come from previously approved emergency funds and will be spent on rebuilding broken levees, providing seed money for economic development and reconstructing schools and infrastructure following last summer's Hurricane Katrina and two subsequent storms.

Worst hit by the hurricanes were Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

The hurricane funds were attached to an unrelated defense spending bill that has not yet been approved by the Senate. A tough fight for passage is expected in that chamber because of opposition to a provision attached to the defense spending bill that would open an environmentally-protected area in Alaska to oil drilling.

The breadth of the damage in the Gulf Coast was reflected in the variety of federal agencies that would receive rebuilding funds, from $350 million to repair NASA space agency equipment, to $1.6 billion for schools and education programs.

The largest chunk of money, $11.5 billion, would go for community development block grants to encourage economic development in storm-stressed cities and towns.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would get $2.9 billion in additional funds, $1.3 billion more than the Bush administration requested.

The money would be used to start rebuilding broken levees and to study flood protection for the Gulf Coast.

Damaged U.S. military bases would be repaired using part of the $4.4 billion the Defense Department would get in hurricane aid funds.

About $618 million would help farmers and ranchers and also would be used to rebuild rural communities hit by the storms.

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on August 29, Congress approved about $62 billion in emergency funds, most of which went to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

More than half of that money has not yet been spent and much of it will be redistributed to the various federal agencies for rebuilding now that emergency rescue operations are over.

Republicans are also pushing for a round of spending cuts to nearly all federal programs to help pay for some of the Gulf Coast rebuilding.

    House approves $29 billion Katrina aid plan, R, 19.12.2005, http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-12-19T143130Z_01_SPI952186_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&related=true

House approves $3.8 billion for avian flu

Mon Dec 19, 2005 9:31 AM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Monday approved $3.78 billion to begin preparing for a possible avian flu epidemic, including stockpiling potential vaccines, training emergency officials and increasing international surveillance.

The money is about half of what the Bush administration requested earlier this year.

Following hours of late-night negotiations between top Republicans in the Senate and House, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee succeeded in including a provision to protect vaccine, drug and medical device makers against lawsuits in a public health or bioterror emergency.

The avian flu funding was attached to an unrelated defense spending bill passed by the House by a vote of 308-106 that faces an uncertain future in the Senate later this week.

Consumer and health groups opposed the vaccine liability provisions, which were sought by pharmaceuticals, saying it would protect companies from "gross negligence."

Some lawmakers said the measure could make medical personnel and other emergency workers reluctant to get vaccinated if there was a chance they could suffer negative reactions and not get compensated.

The language "gives carte blanche to the vaccine companies, but doesn't provide a mechanism" for people if they are injured by a vaccination, said Rep. Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican.

Avian flu has been sweeping through poultry flocks in Asia and more recently into eastern Europe. The deadly animal disease has killed at least 139 people.

Scientists fear that if the disease becomes more easily transmitted to humans, a pandemic could unfold, killing millions.

Earlier this year, the Senate passed legislation calling for $8 billion in funds to prepare for an avian flu pandemic. But conservative Republicans in Congress opposed the higher spending, citing concerns about the huge U.S. budget deficit.

    House approves $3.8 billion for avian flu, R, 19.12.2005, http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-12-19T143130Z_01_SPI952222_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&related=true

House nears vote on immigration

Thu Dec 15, 2005 9:51 PM ET
Reuters
By Donna Smith

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives scrambled on Thursday to bridge deep divisions within their party over President George W. Bush's proposed guest worker program as lawmakers neared a vote on legislation aimed at stopping illegal immigration.

The House was poised to vote on Friday on the bill that its Republican backers say will strengthen border security and stanch the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States by forcing employers to check the status of employees.

Democrats generally oppose the legislation and Friday's vote could be close. The White House said it supported passage of the House bill but remained committed to comprehensive immigration reform that includes a guest worker program.

The House began debating the legislation on Thursday after Republicans held an emergency closed-door meeting to thrash out their differences and to decide whether an amendment by Arizona Republican Rep. Jeff Flake expressing support for a guest worker program would be allowed.

Late on Thursday, the House voted 260-159 to require construction of security fencing with lights and cameras along parts of the U.S. border with Mexico. The amendment would also require the Homeland Security Department to conduct a study on using barriers along the U.S. border with Canada.

The House is expected to decide on Friday whether to allow a vote on the guest worker language in the face of stiff opposition from conservatives who argue such a program would reward people who entered the country illegally.

Opponents called the bill a charade. They urged a comprehensive approach that includes a guest worker program as proposed by Bush that provides a way for some 11 million undocumented workers to gain legal status.

"The bill before us today does nothing to solve the real problems of immigration," said Rep. Jim Kolbe, an Arizona Republican. "It's worse than nothing because it tries to fool the public. It pulls the wool over their eyes. It pretends we are doing something to secure our border when in fact we are doing nothing except throw words and money at the problem."

House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican who helped write the legislation, said it was a "good bill" and a "necessary first step" to ending the "intolerable" existing system.

The Chamber of Commerce opposes the legislation, saying it would make the current system "even worse."

The bill would make it a felony to be in the country illegally instead of a civil offense, which critics said would be impossible to enforce.

The bill would also end a program of releasing non-Mexican aliens caught entering the country illegally. Mexicans who are caught are returned to Mexico, but others often are released on bond pending a court appearance because the United States lacks the facilities to hold them.

The legislation also increases penalties for alien smuggling and empowers local law enforcement agencies along the U.S.-Mexico border to enforce federal immigration laws.

    House nears vote on immigration, R, 15.12.2005, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2005-12-16T025130Z_01_DIT600489_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-IMMIGRATION.xml

House OKs rewrite of pension funding rules

Thu Dec 15, 2005 7:41 PM ET
Reuters
By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation aimed at reinforcing the creaking system of traditional pensions was passed on Thursday by the U.S. House of Representatives, but the White House warned it wanted a tougher bill or it might cast a veto.

The measure overhauls funding rules for employer-provided pensions, a fading feature of old-economy companies, and raises premiums companies pay to the federal agency that insures them, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC).

Supporters said the bill was needed to fix traditional "defined benefit" pensions, which as a group are $450 billion underfunded and prevent a taxpayer bailout of the PBGC.

The agency's $22.8 billion deficit already has been swelled by bankruptcy filings in the airline and steel industries. Analysts say more pension plans from the struggling auto industry are likely to land in the PBGC's lap.

The bill imposes penalties on companies shedding pension obligations in bankruptcy.

But Democratic critics said they feared the bill did not do enough to protect workers or save the defined benefit system, which provides a stable monthly paycheck at retirement. It will "actually worsen the crisis," said California's George Miller.

Still dozens of Democrats joined majority Republicans in backing the bill after a major union, the United Auto Workers, endorsed it earlier this week. The House vote was 294-132.

The Senate version of the legislation includes special aid for distressed airlines that is not in the House bill. But the House bill sponsor, Ohio Republican John Boehner, said he was committed to dealing with the airline issue during the House- Senate negotiations. Aides said those talks would likely start early next year.

Boehner said the House bill walked a fine line between those who wanted "suffocating pension funding rules" that would drive employers out of the system and others who favored the status quo that had led to massive pension underfunding.

His first goal was to "make sure that companies that offer defined benefit pension plans continue to keep them."

Both the House and Senate bills phase in the new funding requirements and premium rises over time. The White House seeks a stricter regime of pension funding rules starting next year and said the House bill was too weak.

"The legislation must be strengthened with respect to the level of required plan contributions and premiums that are needed to return the PBGC to solvency and avert a taxpayer bailout," a White House statement said.

If the bill sent to Bush for signing is weaker than current law, "the president's senior advisers will recommend a veto."

Some Democrats suspected the bill was part of a Republican strategy to move the country to defined contribution plans, also known as 401(k) plans, that are actually tax-deferred savings vehicles for workers, not pensions.

"There are some transition rules, but they aren't going to basically resolve this issue of whether we are going to maintain and strengthen defined benefit plans," said Rep. Sander Levin, a Michigan Democrat.

The bill encourages companies to automatically sign up employees for 401(k) plans. It also attempts to eliminate the legal limbo around "cash balance " plans, a portable type of defined benefit pension.

    House OKs rewrite of pension funding rules, R, 15.12.2005, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-12-16T004137Z_01_SIB575352_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-PENSIONS.xml

Pentagon subpoenaed for Katrina documents

USA Today
Posted 12/15/2005 5:25 AM

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican chairman of a special House investigation panel has subpoenaed the Pentagon, and is considering sending another to the White House, to get documents detailing the government's response to Hurricane Katrina.

The unusual legal action was the latest twist in the congressional inquiry of failures that occurred during the Aug. 29 storm that killed more than 1,300 people in Gulf Coast states. The investigation continues Thursday with a Senate hearing to examine New Orleans levees unable to withstand Katrina's might.

Separately, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it would comply with a judge's ruling that FEMA keep paying for hotel rooms for hurricane evacuees until Feb. 7. The agency also agreed to extend the program for eligible storm victims who have not been helped by that deadline.

The subpoena against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, issued Wednesday evening by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., demands internal records and communications about the Pentagon's response, efforts to send supplies to victims, stabilize public safety and mobilize active duty forces in the Gulf Coast. It requires the Pentagon to deliver the documents, spanning from Aug. 23 to Sept. 15, from Rumsfeld and eight other top military officials by Dec. 30.

Pentagon spokesman Army Maj. Paul Swiergosz said the panel's requests for information have been "very far-reaching and very broad, and we're doing everything we can to answer them as quickly as we can."

"We're going to provide the documents as fast as we can," Swiergosz said. "No one has been dragging their feet on these things."

Davis rejected, for now, legal action against the White House, but left open the possibility of a future subpoena. He asked lawmakers to wait until after a private briefing Thursday at the White House before deciding whether to go ahead with a subpoena.

The committee, which plans to issue its findings Feb. 15, requested hundreds of thousands of documents more than two months ago from the administration and Gulf Coast state and local officials.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said lawmakers would be briefed by a high-level administration official and that he did not immediately anticipate a subpoena against the White House.

"I'm not expecting anything of that nature at this point," McClellan said. "What we have done is work to make sure that they get the information they need to do their job. We've worked in good faith."

The Pentagon subpoena was issued shortly after FEMA pledged to continue paying for hotel rooms for evacuees still unable to find apartments, trailers or other stable housing by Feb. 7, a month beyond the agency's cutoff date.

A federal judge in New Orleans this week set the February deadline in a ruling to give victims more time in hotels as FEMA processes aid applications.

FEMA's acting director, R. David Paulison, did not cite an end-date for the hotel payments, but said "it won't be indefinite." He said FEMA will pay hotel bills for up to two weeks after evacuees receive temporary housing assistance because "sometimes it's tough to find an apartment."

An estimated 40,000 families still are living in hotels, compared with a peak of 85,000 two months ago.

"We are going to be flexible, we will make changes to our plan as we move along," Paulison said. "And we are going to continuously work to make sure nobody falls through the cracks. And if they do fall through the cracks, we are going to find them, locate them and get them back into our system."

    Pentagon subpoenaed for Katrina documents, UT, 15.12.2005, http://usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-12-15-pentagon-subpoena_x.htm

House Defies Bush

and Backs McCain on Detainee Torture

December 15, 2005
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 - In an unusual bipartisan rebuke to the Bush administration, the House on Wednesday overwhelmingly endorsed Senator John McCain's measure to bar cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners in American custody anywhere in the world.

Although the vote was nonbinding, it put the Republican-controlled House on record in support of Mr. McCain's provision for the first time, at the very moment when the senator, a Republican, is at a crucial stage of tense negotiations with the White House, which strongly opposes his measure.

The vote also likely represents the lone opportunity that House members will have to express their sentiments on Mr. McCain's legislation. The Senate approved the measure in October, 90 to 9, as part of a military spending bill. But until Wednesday, the House Republican leadership had sought to avoid a direct vote on the measure to avoid embarrassing the White House.

The vote was on a motion to instruct House negotiators, who had just been appointed to work out differences between the House and Senate spending bills, to accept the Senate position on the McCain amendment.

The House bill, providing $453 billion for military programs, has no provision like Mr. McCain's, but if the negotiators follow these instructions to the letter, the final bill passed by Congress will.

The House vote was 308 to 122, with 107 Republicans lining up along with almost every Democrat behind Representative John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who sponsored Mr. McCain's language and who has become anathema to the administration on any legislative measure related to Iraq since his call last month to withdraw American troops from Iraq in six months.

"Torture does not help us win the hearts and minds of the people it's used against," Mr. Murtha said on the House floor. "Congress is obligated to speak out."

Unlike the tumultuous three-hour debate that Mr. Murtha's Iraq-related measure provoked last month, this measure met with just 10 minutes of statements to a nearly empty House chamber.

Mr. Murtha, a former Marine colonel who is the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said Mr. McCain's legislation was essential to standardizing American interrogation methods and sending a clear signal to the world that the United States condemned the abusive treatment of detainees.

"If we allow torture in any form," Mr. Murtha said, "we abandon our honor."

Representative C. W. Bill Young of Florida, head of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, was one of 121 Republicans who voted against Mr. McCain's language. One Democrat, Jim Marshall of Georgia, voted against it; 200 Democrats and one independent supported it.

Mr. Young was quick to point out that he was in no way endorsing torture as an interrogation technique, but said he opposed the measure because it wrongly bestowed the full protections of the Constitution to terrorists and tied the hands of Congressional negotiators.

Another Republican who voted against the measure, Representative Todd Tiahrt of Kansas, said he opposed it because he said laws already barred torture and abusive treatment.

"It's absolutely unnecessary," said Mr. Tiahrt, who is on the House Intelligence Committee.

It was unclear what effects the vote would have on the negotiations between Mr. McCain and President Bush's national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, and on the Congressional negotiators for the two military bills now in conference committee. A spokeswoman for the Arizona senator, Eileen McMenamin, said Wednesday night that he had no comment on the vote.

"I don't think it will have any effect on the negotiations," Mr. Young said.

Mr. Murtha said the vote bolstered his previous assertions that the military spending bill would include Mr. McCain's provision after the conference committee completed its work.

"It's going to be in there, period," Mr. Murtha said after the vote.

Earlier in the day, Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who is the senior member of the Appropriations Committee, echoed Mr. Murtha's prediction, telling reporters that Mr. McCain "wants it in there, and I think it will stay in there."

The negotiations over provision intensified on Wednesday. Early in the morning, Mr. McCain met in his office with Mr. Hadley. When asked whether the two had narrowed their differences, Mr. McCain told reporters: "We're still talking. We'll get this resolved one way or another. We have the votes."

Mr. McCain also attended the weekly Senate Republican policy lunch on Wednesday, but senators who attended the private gathering said that Mr. McCain did not address his colleagues and that the subject of his amendment did not come up.

After the lunch, however, Mr. McCain was mobbed by reporters seeking comment on his talks with Mr. Hadley. Mr. McCain was uncharacteristically tight lipped, saying he did not want to discuss details of the continuing discussions.

Two Senate Republican colleagues who voted for Mr. McCain's measure in October said Wednesday it was important for Congress to back the language.

"We need to have clear guidance, in law, that makes it very clear that inhumane treatment of detainees in American captivity is absolutely unacceptable," Susan Collins of Maine said. "This problem is hurting us around the world. It's contrary to our values, and we simply must have this as part of the final bill."

Senator John Thune of South Dakota said: "Because it has become such a high-profile issue here of late, not only around the country but around the world, I think it's in our best interests to address it. A strong unequivocal statement that we don't apply or tolerate torture in any form is probably right now a good thing to do."

    House Defies Bush and Backs McCain on Detainee Torture, NYT, 15.12.2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/politics/15detain.html?hp&ex=1134709200&en=31c64da673849ca1&ei=5094&partner=homepage

House Renews Antiterror Law, but Opposition Builds in Senate

December 15, 2005
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 - The House voted Wednesday to renew the broad antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, but opposition was growing in the Senate, where members of a bipartisan coalition predicted they would block the measure by filibuster when it comes up for consideration on Friday.

Faced with the filibuster threat, the White House sent Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to the Republicans' weekly policy luncheon to assuage concerns that the law does not strike the correct balance between safeguarding civil liberties and protecting national security.

Three Republican senators were already on record as opposing the reauthorization in its current form, and by the time Mr. Gonzales arrived in the Capitol, a fourth - Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska - had joined them, saying he had "many concerns" about the bill.

Mr. Hagel signed a letter Wednesday in which opponents say they are concerned about "government fishing expeditions targeting innocent Americans" and demand further restrictions on provisions allowing government searches and access to private and personal information including medical and library records.

The White House has made renewing the antiterrorism law a priority, but time is running short.

The current law, which greatly expanded the government's investigative and surveillance powers in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, is set to expire, and Congress is hoping to adjourn for the year this weekend at the latest.

"The Patriot Act is scheduled to expire at the end of the month, but the terrorist threat will not expire on that schedule," President Bush said Wednesday, in a statement urging the Senate to follow the House's lead. "In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment."

The House passed the bill by a vote of 251 to 174. Forty-four Democrats voted for the bill, and 18 Republicans voted against it. Those Republicans included some of the most conservative members of the House - a sign, critics said, that members of both parties are uneasy about the bill. The critics are calling for a three-month extension of the current law to give both sides time to make changes.

"I think it sends a message that there are people across the political spectrum that think this bill doesn't do what it should, that it doesn't do enough to protect civil liberties," said Senator John E. Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire, referring to the House vote.

Mr. Sununu said he did not believe that the Republican leadership could muster the 60 votes required to break a filibuster. The senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, agreed.

"I don't think they have the votes," Mr. Leahy said in an interview on Wednesday, adding: "The recommendation I made to both Republicans and Democrats is just fix the bill. We can do that this week if the White House would cooperate."

But Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, rejected a short-term extension and called for his colleagues to approve the reauthorization, a conference report that was the product of weeks of House-Senate negotiations.

"Today's overwhelming bipartisan vote in the House for the Patriot Act - with the support of 44 Democrats, including members of the House Democratic leadership - shows that we can all unite to make America safer from terrorism while safeguarding our civil rights and civil liberties," Mr. Frist said. "Senate Democrats should follow the lead of their House counterparts."

In setting the vote for Friday, Mr. Frist may be betting that although critics dislike the extension, they dislike the idea of letting the law expire even more.

The vote is also laden with political implications for Democrats, who suffered at the polls in 2002 after defeating legislation to create a Department of Homeland Security. Republican backers of the bill are taking pains to remind Democrats of that, as did Ken Mehlman, the head of the Republican National Committee.

"Voters will react the same way in 2006 if Democrats block the reauthorization of the Patriot Act to appease the hard left," Mr. Mehlman said Wednesday in a statement.

Ever since its adoption in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Patriot Act has drawn vigorous complaints from advocates for civil liberties, who contend that provisions like those allowing the government to obtain a person's library and medical records infringe on basic constitutional rights.

The measure passed by the House makes permanent 14 of 16 provisions that were set to expire, while putting in place additional judicial oversight and safeguards against abuse. The House Republican leadership praised the vote, saying the bill is essential to national security.

"We need to stay tough on terrorism," Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois said in a statement. "This bill ensures that our law enforcement keep the tools they already have in place to root out and prosecute terrorists."

But critics, including the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, argue that the safeguards do not go nearly far enough. "The criticism we had about this legislation previously was because of 9/11, we rushed to judgment on a number of provisions in that bill," Mr. Reid told reporters Wednesday. "We certainly shouldn't do that this time."

Democratic aides say a majority of their caucus supports a filibuster. In addition to Mr. Hagel and Mr. Sununu, two other Republicans, Senators Larry Craig of Idaho and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have said they will vote to block the measure. The four signed on to a letter circulated to senators Wednesday by Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin.

"We still have the opportunity to pass a good reauthorization bill this year," the letter says. "But to do that, we must stop this conference report."

    House Renews Antiterror Law, but Opposition Builds in Senate, NYT, 14.12.2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/politics/15patriot.html?hp&ex=1134709200&en=6301975b2e603bc6&ei=5094&partner=homepage

House and Senate Split on Medicaid Changes

December 12, 2005
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 - Members of Congress will soon plunge into battle over the future of Medicaid as House and Senate negotiators try to resolve huge differences in legislation that would allow states to cut benefits and increase charges for millions of low-income people, including many children.

Medicaid is a flash point in a larger budget bill on which Republican leaders say they plan to reach agreement by year's end.

The Bush administration and the National Governors Association support changes approved last month by the House as a way to curb the explosive growth of Medicaid, which is financed jointly by the federal government and the states.

Many federal and state officials have concluded that Medicaid, which insures more than 50 million low-income people, is unsustainable in its current form. The cost shot up 54 percent in the past five years and now exceeds $300 billion a year.

Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, a Democrat, said earlier this year that Medicaid was "on the road to a meltdown" and would "bankrupt all the states" if Congress did not intervene.

But senators of both parties, advocates for poor people and public health groups, including the March of Dimes and the American Academy of Pediatrics, oppose many provisions of the House bill. The changes, they say, would harm children and disabled people of all ages who rely on Medicaid.

The Senate bill would keep benefits intact. It would expand Medicaid, by allowing parents of severely disabled children to buy coverage and by stepping up efforts to enroll people already eligible.

In the past few years, many states have trimmed Medicaid benefits and restricted eligibility for adults. But Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University, said the House bill would be "the first significant retrenchment in federal health benefits and coverage for children."

The House bill makes three major changes:

¶States could charge premiums and higher co-payments for a wide range of Medicaid benefits, including prescription drugs, doctors' services and hospital care.

¶States could scale back benefits, capping or eliminating coverage for services now guaranteed by federal law.

¶States could end Medicaid coverage for people who failed to pay premiums for 60 days or more. Pharmacists could refuse to fill prescriptions, and doctors and hospitals could deny services, for Medicaid recipients who did not make the required co-payments.

Under current Medicaid law, a health care provider cannot deny care or services because of a person's inability to pay.

On Medicaid, as on other issues, the Senate could agree to accept some provisions of the House bill as part of a compromise.

In a detailed analysis of the House bill, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that 70,000 to 110,000 people would lose Medicaid coverage for failure to pay premiums. It estimated that states would establish co-payments for 11 million Medicaid recipients, half of them children, and increase existing co-payments for an additional 6 million people.

"In sum," the budget office said, "we expect that about 17 million people - 27 percent of Medicaid enrollees - would ultimately be affected by the cost-sharing provisions of the bill." Certain groups of beneficiaries and certain services would be exempt from the changes authorized by the House bill.

Under current law, Medicaid officials cannot charge co-payments for children under 18 and cannot charge for specific services like emergency care. For other services and for prescription drugs, the maximum co-payment is generally $3.

Democrats, who are generally opposed to the House and Senate budget bills, are excluded from the current negotiations. The chief negotiators on Medicaid are Representative Joe L. Barton of Texas and Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, both Republicans.

Mr. Barton, the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said that higher co-payments were needed to "encourage personal responsibility" among Medicaid beneficiaries.

"Co-payments have not changed in 20 years, and they're unenforceable, to boot," Mr. Barton said.

But Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, said, "Under the House bill, beneficiaries will see their co-payments increase much faster than their income, and that will reduce their ability to get medically necessary care."

In 2003, when Oregon expanded its Medicaid program, it received federal permission to charge premiums of $6 to $20 a month for certain new beneficiaries. It charged co-payments of $5 for a doctor's office visit, $2 or $3 for most prescription drugs, and $15 for some medicines.

Tina D. Edlund, research manager at the Oregon Office for Health Policy and Research, said: "The co-payments discouraged both appropriate and inappropriate use of services. Of the 90,000 people who were subject to premiums, 40,000 dropped off the rolls, and the poorest of the poor were disproportionately affected."

"We thought the premiums were relatively small," Ms. Edlund said, "but for people with very low incomes, they proved to be significant."

At public hospitals and children's hospitals, doctors worry that some Medicaid recipients, faced with premiums and higher co-payments, will go without drugs and doctors' services, and their conditions will worsen.

"People dropped from Medicaid for failure to pay premiums will become uninsured," said Dr. Patricia A. Gabow, chief executive of the Denver Health system, which runs a public hospital and 20 clinics in Colorado. "They will delay care and end up with costly complications."

About one-sixth of all Medicaid recipients qualify for coverage because of mental or physical disabilities. They see Medicaid as indispensable because it pays for therapy, rehabilitation, personal care services and equipment they need to work and to perform basic activities of daily living.

"The Medicaid package is far better than private insurance," said Martha E. Ford, a lobbyist for the Arc, formerly known as the Association for Retarded Citizens.

Parents of children with severe disabilities - even some who can afford private health insurance - want to be able to buy Medicaid coverage for their children. The budget bill passed by the Senate would allow them to do that.

"It's consistent with the compassionate conservative agenda advanced by the president," said Mr. Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Mr. Grassley's vision of Medicaid is fundamentally different from that in the House bill. He would extend coverage to disabled children in families with low and moderate incomes, while the House would make it easier for states to cut back such coverage.

The House bill appears to protect children in families with incomes below the poverty level (about $16,000 for a family of three). But it would allow states to decide how income should be defined.

The House bill closely follows bipartisan recommendations from the National Governors Association, which said states should have the option to increase co-payments and alter benefits to resemble commercial insurance.

Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, a Republican who is chairman of the association, said: "Governors are not looking for ways to cut people off and to make life more miserable for poor people. We are looking for ways to give at least some benefit to people who have nothing. The only way we can do that is to have a flexible package of benefits."

At the same time, negotiators have to take account of moderate Republican senators like Gordon H. Smith of Oregon. Mr. Smith voted for the Senate version of the budget bill but said he would vote against the final version if it cut Medicaid benefits or coverage.

On this issue, he said, he is "unwilling to compromise."

    House and Senate Split on Medicaid Changes, NYT, 12.12.2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/politics/12medicaid.html

House Completes Vote on Tax Cuts for $95 Billion

December 9, 2005
The New York Times
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 - The House passed the last and biggest part of $95 billion in tax cuts on Thursday, a move that reflected the willingness to place tax cuts above the risk of higher deficits in years to come.

Voting 234 to 197, almost purely along party lines, the House approved $56 billion in tax cuts over five years, one day after it passed other tax cuts totaling $39 billion over five years. The biggest provision would extend President Bush's 2001 tax cut for stock dividends and capital gains for two years at a cost of $20 billion.

That was welcome news for a president whose tax plans looked all but dead a few weeks ago. All the maverick Republican conservatives in House, who had pushed party leaders to pass $51 billion in spending cuts, voted enthusiastically for tax cuts costing nearly twice as much.

"Clearly, tax relief is part of the deficit solution, not part of the problem," said Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas and one of the mavericks. "More economic growth and more jobs means more tax revenue flowing into the federal Treasury. Tax revenues are up close to 15 percent, the highest level in U.S. history, and the budget deficit has shrunk by more than $100 billion."

That view is not shared by all. Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, urged lawmakers last month not to approve more tax cuts unless they cut spending by at least the same amount.

The budget that the House passed just before Thanksgiving, would cut $51 billion over five years from programs like Medicaid, food stamps, farm subsidies and child-support enforcement. The Republican-controlled Senate passed a much more cautious tax package just before Thanksgiving. The Senate bill would cut taxes by $60 billion over five years, and it would not extend the tax cut on stock dividends.

The conflict between the House and Senate bills is unlikely to be resolved before Congress recesses for Christmas.

Lawmakers made progress in another area as House and Senate negotiators reached a compromise to extend the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act. Experts expect a vote on the question early next week, but some Democrats are threatening a filibuster. [Page A20.]

The conflict between the tax bills means that taxpayers will face uncertainty about a long list of popular tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of 2005. The biggest expiring tax cut is one that prevents the Alternative Minimum Tax from applying to millions of additional families with incomes above $100,000 a year.

Democrats accused the Republican majority of expanding the cuts to the very richest families while cutting programs to help the poor.

"The choice is clear, tax relief that goes to people making a million bucks or more and cutting student loans, cutting food support for people who need it and cutting child support," Representative Sander M. Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said.

The Republican majority easily defeated a Democratic alternative that would have trimmed many tax breaks for businesses and allowed the tax cut for stock dividends to expire at the end of 2008.

"If you vote yes for the Democratic substitute, you are increasing taxes over five years by $40 billion," Representative Bill Thomas of California, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said. "That is the single largest tax increase since they were in the majority in 1993."

Three Republicans voted against the bill, all well-known centrists, Representatives Sherwood Boehlert of New York, Jim Leach of Iowa and Fred Upton of Michigan. Mr. Boehlert said that some cuts were warranted, but that the break for dividends and capital gains was ill timed.

"I think the argument is pretty good that it is going to the top 1 percent of wage earners at a time when we are struggling to find money," Mr. Boehlert said on Thursday.

The Bush administration quickly expressed its clear preference for the House bill over the more modest Senate bill. Indeed, Mr. Bush threatened to veto the final bill if it included a provision to hit major oil companies with a windfall profits tax.

"I commend the House of Representatives on passage of this bill, which is critical to sustaining our economic recovery and creating jobs," Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said.

Mr. Bush has made a top priority of extending the tax cut for stock dividends this year, even though it is not set to expire for three more years. Administration officials want to make the cut permanent, saying it eliminates the "double-taxation" of dividends at the corporate and individual levels. They also say the cut benefits middle-class families, as well as the wealthy, because half of all families own stocks.

Tax analysts agree that the overwhelming bulk of dividends goes to the top 5 percent of income earners. The big challenge for Republican leaders in Congress will be hammering out a House-Senate accord. Both chambers would extend a long list of expiring tax breaks that include deductions for payments of college tuition, a "savers credit" for low-income taxpayers, corporate tax credits for research and development and tax write offs for small businesses to buy equipment.

The House and Senate have also approved $7 billion in temporary breaks for Gulf Coast areas damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The main substantive difference is that the Senate cut is one-third smaller.

The Senate bill also has two provisions that Mr. Bush and House Republicans staunchly oppose, a one-year $5 billion tax on major oil companies and a $5 billion provision that would make it easier to demand higher penalties from people who employ abusive tax shelters.

The biggest difference on tactical approaches over the total of cuts. Part of a Senate budget "reconciliation" bill authorizes a maximum of $70 billion in tax cuts over five years. Tax cuts of $70 billion or less can pass the Senate by a simple majority of 51 votes, rather than the 60 votes normally needed to block a filibuster.

The House included $56 billion in cuts as part of the reconciliation process. The other cuts, including those related to the hurricane and the Alternative Minimum Tax, are separate and would need 60 votes to clear the Senate.

House Republicans are betting that that Democrats want those other cuts badly enough that they would not dare block them through a filibuster. If that proves correct, Senate Republicans would be able to put the cut for stock dividends in the final "reconciliation" bill and pass it with 51 votes.

"We don't need a reconciliation bill in the House," Mr. Thomas said Wednesday on the floor. "We are just doing this to help the Senate."

    House Completes Vote on Tax Cuts for $95 Billion, NYT, 9.12.2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/politics/09cong.html

House Votes to Block Alternative-Tax Rise

December 8, 2005
The New York Times
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 - Under pressure to prevent a big tax increase next year for millions of middle-income families, the Republican-controlled House passed a bill on Wednesday that would block an increase in the alternative minimum tax for one year at a cost of $30 billion.

The measure, approved 414 to 4, would prevent a tax increase for 2006 that would have affected 2 million families in New York and about 15 million nationwide.

"It's been called the stealth tax, a ticking time bomb for the middle class, and even the Darth Vader of the tax code," said Representative Thomas M. Reynolds, Republican of New York, who sponsored the bill.

But while the vote was almost unanimous, the bill's prospects remained entangled in a broader battle in Congress over extending President Bush's tax cuts. If House Republicans push through their entire agenda, those cuts could total more than $90 billion over five years.

In addition to voting on the alternative minimum tax, the House approved $7.1 billion in tax cuts for Gulf Coast areas damaged by Hurricane Katrina. But in a split with the Senate, the House bill would prohibit any of those tax cuts from going to casinos, racetracks and country clubs.

On Thursday, House leaders hope to win approval for their top priority this week: a $56 billion tax cut that would extend President Bush's tax cuts for stock dividends.

House and Senate Republican leaders also edged closer on Wednesday toward an agreement to cut as much as $45 billion over the next five years from domestic programs like Medicaid, food stamps, student loans and child-support enforcement. In a rush to finish as much work as possible before Christmas, the House also passed a bill, ardently sought by lawmakers from New York and other major cities, that would extend federal subsidies for terrorism-risk insurance.

But the Bush administration warned that it "strongly opposed" the terrorism insurance bill, saying it would expand rather than reduce the federal government's role as insurer of last resort.

The main focus on Wednesday was tax cuts, and in particular another one-year cut in the alternative minimum tax.

The tax was originally created to stop the nation's wealthiest people from taking too much advantage of special tax breaks. But in part because it is not adjusted for inflation, the tax is set to engulf millions of families with incomes below $100,000 and the majority of families with incomes from $100,000 to $200,000.

The battle in Congress is not over the alternative minimum tax itself, but over whether it should be included in a $70 billion package that would include an extension of Mr. Bush's 2001 tax cut for stock dividends and capital gains.

The White House and House Republican leaders are pushing to extend that tax cut, which expires at the end of 2008, at a cost of $20 billion.

Under the "reconciliation" procedures adopted this year, any tax cuts that are included in the $70-billion reconciliation tax bill can pass the Senate by a simple majority. But any more than $70 billion in tax cuts would need 60 votes - a tougher hurdle for Republicans.

The Senate's reconciliation bill includes $27 billion for a one-year reprieve from the alternative minimum tax, but it would not extend Mr. Bush's tax cut for stock dividends.

House Republicans are betting that Senate Democrats will go along with a stand-alone bill on the alternative minimum tax, even if that makes it easier to extend Mr. Bush's tax cut for stock dividends as part of the reconciliation bill.

The calculation may well prove correct. Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, welcomed the House bill as a "good first step to protect middle-income families."

Democratic-leaning states on the East and West Coasts would be hit the hardest by the alternative tax, mainly because they have the highest concentration of wealthy households.

New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and California have the highest percentages of families that would face the tax next year.

    House Votes to Block Alternative-Tax Rise, NYT, 8.12.2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/08/politics/08cong.html

U.S. House and Senate seek deal on torture amendment

Wed Dec 7, 2005 9:48 PM ET
Reuters
By Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House of Representatives negotiators have largely accepted Sen. John McCain's amendment banning the torture and inhumane treatment of detainees, but talks on other provisions could undermine the measure, congressional aides said on Wednesday.

House and Senate negotiators hoped to reach agreement this week on a final defense authorization bill where the detainee issue was being thrashed out.

"It appears the House is willing to accept the McCain amendment with no changes," a congressional aide said of the measure pushed by the Arizona Republican that cleared the Senate on a 90-9 vote despite a White House veto threat.

But aides said other language included in House-Senate talks with the White House dealing with detainees was still being discussed and an agreement had not been reached.

McCain has said he would not accept any weakening or exemptions from his amendment that came in the wake of abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and questions over the interrogation methods of terrorism suspects at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who staunchly supports the Bush administration, has said the United States does not engage in torture and the McCain language was not necessary.

But Hunter told reporters on Tuesday he expected the McCain amendment "will be strongly manifested" in the final bill.

The McCain measure also has majority support in the House, with backing from Democrats and a number of Republicans.

Vice President Dick Cheney had led an unsuccessful White House bid to exempt the CIA from the torture ban, arguing it would hamper the U.S. war on terrorism.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Kiev, Ukraine, on Wednesday the United States had explicitly banned its interrogators around the world from treating detainees inhumanely.

Rice has faced questions on her European trip over the U.S. treatment of detainees and reports that the CIA has run secret prisons in Eastern Europe for its war on terror.

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Rice's statement showed backing for McCain's amendment. "This is the heart of the debate over Senator McCain's amendment, and I am glad the administration finally realizes that Senator McCain is right," Levin said.

    U.S. House and Senate seek deal on torture amendment, R, 7.12.2005, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-12-08T024831Z_01_KNE803336_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-TORTURE-CONGRESS.xml

 

Powerful Republican proposes tough immigrant bill

Tue Dec 6, 2005 6:37 PM ET
Reuters
By Alan Elsner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The powerful chairman of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee put forward a tough bill on Tuesday designed to curb illegal immigration, punish those who employ illegal aliens and give the government more powers to detain and deport them.

Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner's bill was the latest to tackle the issue of the estimated 10-12 million illegal foreigners in the United States. Unlike the others, his contained no provisions for a guest worker program or measures that might help these people legalize their status.

"It's my hope this legislative effort will not only help regain control of our borders and prevent illegal immigration, but will also help strengthen and promote our compassionate and welcoming legal immigration system," Sensenbrenner said in a statement.

"Everyone recognizes our current immigration system is broken, plagued by insufficient immigration enforcement and border security resources, and a wholesale disregard for our immigration laws."

President George W. Bush has identified immigration reform as one of his major goals for next year. He spent part of last week visiting towns along the Mexican border pushing his plan for tougher enforcement combined with a guest worker program to match legal immigrants with employers.

"The American people should not have to choose between a welcoming society and a lawful society," Bush said in Tucson, Arizona. "We can have both at the same time."

Nobody knows exactly how many people are in the United States illegally. The 2000 Census estimated the number at 8.7 million and said it was growing by half a million a year. Others put the number much higher. But the fact that hundreds of thousands of people continue to cross the Mexican border each year is fast becoming a major political and security issue.

Sensenbrenner's bill would vastly expand an employer verification system designed to weed illegal immigrants out of the workforce. It would also increase civil and criminal penalties for knowingly hiring or employing an illegal worker.

Another provision would declare street gang members from foreign countries inadmissible and subject to deportation. It would authorize the attorney general to designate groups or associations as criminal gangs if they met certain criteria.

Other clauses would enhance the Department of Homeland Security's powers to detain aliens considered dangerous indefinitely, with review of their detention to take place every six months, and even make drunken driving by illegal immigrants grounds for deportation after the third offense.

"This is a half-hearted and half-baked solution to the problem of illegal immigration," said Angela Kelley of the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigrant group.

"All of the Senate bills have advocated sound reform but this is just a Christmas package of all the tough measures that have been kicking around in the past," she said.

    Powerful Republican proposes tough immigrant bill, R, 6.12.2005, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2005-12-06T233718Z_01_KNE684588_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-IMMIGRATION.xml

Lawmaker Quits After He Pleads Guilty to Bribes

November 29, 2005
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 28 - Representative Randy Cunningham, a Republican from San Diego, resigned from Congress on Monday, hours after pleading guilty to taking at least $2.4 million in bribes to help friends and campaign contributors win military contracts.

Mr. Cunningham, a highly decorated Navy fighter pilot in Vietnam, tearfully acknowledged his guilt in a statement read outside the federal courthouse in San Diego.

"The truth is, I broke the law, concealed my conduct and disgraced my office," he said. "I know that I will forfeit my freedom, my reputation, my worldly possessions and, most importantly, the trust of my friends and family."

Mr. Cunningham, 63, pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion and one count of conspiracy to commit bribery, tax evasion, wire fraud and mail fraud. He faces up to 10 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and forfeitures.

Prosecutors said he received cash, cars, rugs, antiques, furniture, yacht club fees, moving expenses and vacations from four unnamed co-conspirators in exchange for aid in winning military contracts. None of this income was reported to the Internal Revenue Service or on the congressman's financial disclosure forms, the government said.

Mr. Cunningham, who is known as Duke, lived while in Washington on a 42-foot yacht, named the Duke-Stir, owned by one of the military contractors that received tens of millions of dollars in federal contracts that prosecutors said Mr. Cunningham helped steer its way.

Mr. Cunningham, who is known for his combative conservatism and his emotional outbursts, served on the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee and as chairman of the House Intelligence subcommittee on terrorism and human intelligence.

"He did the worst thing an elected official can do," Carol C. Lam, the United States attorney, said in a statement. "He enriched himself through his position and violated the trust of those who put him there."

Mr. Cunningham's plea adds to the ethics cloud over the Republican-controlled Congress and the Bush White House.

In the Senate, Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee and the majority leader, is under scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission for the timing of his trades in the stock of his family's health care company. In the House, Representative Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, was forced to step down as majority leader after he was indicted on conspiracy and money laundering charges.

In a separate Justice Department investigation, Michael Scanlon, a former spokesman for Mr. DeLay, pleaded guilty last week to bribery. Prosecutors said Mr. Scanlon was part of a conspiracy to defraud Indian tribes and win legislative favors from lawmakers in return for campaign donations, meals, entertainment and other benefits. A former White House aide has also been indicted in that investigation, which is centered on Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist and an ally of Mr. DeLay who worked with Mr. Scanlon. As part of his plea, Mr. Scanlon agreed to cooperate in the investigation.

In addition, I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted last month on charges of perjury and false statements in the investigation of the leaking of the name of a C.I.A. operative. Other White House officials, including the senior political adviser Karl Rove, remain under investigation in that case.

Democrats in Congress hope that the legal and ethical woes afflicting Republicans will weaken the party in policy debates and at the polls next November. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, called Mr. Cunningham's acceptance of bribes an "egregious act" that was symptomatic of Republican values.

"This offense is just the latest example of the culture of corruption that pervades the Republican-controlled Congress, which ignores the needs of the American people to serve wealthy special interests and their cronies," Ms. Pelosi said in a statement.

The charging document said that in addition to the other gifts and services, Mr. Cunningham received from several unnamed co-conspirators a Rolls Royce, a graduation party for his daughter, a $200,000 down payment on a condominium and the payment of capital gains taxes.

Federal authorities said that Mr. Cunningham was cooperating with the continuing investigation and that further charges involving the bribery conspiracy were likely.

Mr. Cunningham entered his plea before Judge Larry A. Burns of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California. He was fingerprinted and photographed and released on his own recognizance.

Judge Burns set sentencing for Feb. 27. Mr. Cunningham, in his statement, said he expected to do time in prison. "In my life, I have known great joy and great sorrow. And now I know great shame," he said. "I cannot undo what I have done. But I can atone."

Under California law, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has 14 days to call a special election to fill Mr. Cunningham's seat. The election must occur within 120 days.

Mr. Cunningham's troubles began last summer when the Copley News Service and The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Mitchell J. Wade, the founder of MZM Inc., a military contracting firm, bought Mr. Cunningham's home in Del Mar for $1,675,000 in 2003 and sold it nine months later for $975,000, a $700,000 loss.

Mr. Cunningham denied any wrongdoing in the house sale, but announced a few weeks after the reports appeared that he would not seek a ninth term in Congress in November 2006.

Mr. Cunningham used the profits from the sale to buy a luxury home in Rancho Santa Fe for $2.55 million, which he and his wife, Nancy, have since put up for sale. Under the plea agreement announced on Monday, he will forfeit the Rancho Santa Fe house and nearly $2 million in cash and home furnishings.

Carl Hulse contributed reporting from Washington for this article.

    Lawmaker Quits After He Pleads Guilty to Bribes, NYT, 29.11.2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/national/29indict.html?hp&ex=1133240400&en=a39f55b917053bc9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

The Fine Print

Bill Authorizes Private Purchase of Federal Land

November 20, 2005
The New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON and FELICITY BARRINGER

DENVER, Nov. 19 - Private companies and individuals would be able to buy large tracts of federal land, from sagebrush basins to high-peak hiking trails around the West, under the terms of the spending bill passed Friday by a two-vote margin in the House of Representatives.

On the surface, the bill reads like the mundane nip and tuck of federal mining law its authors say it is. But lawyers who have parsed its language say the real beneficiaries could be real estate developers, whose business has become a more potent economic engine in the West than mining.

Under the existing law, a mining claim is the vehicle that allows for the extraction of so-called hard-rock metals like gold or silver.

Under the House bill passed Friday, for the first time in the history of the 133-year-old mining law individuals or companies can file and expand claims even if the land at the heart of a claim has already been stripped of its minerals or could never support a profitable mine. The measure would also lift an 11-year moratorium on the passing of claims into full ownership.

The provisions have struck fear through the West, from the resort areas of the Rockies like Aspen and Vail here in Colorado, to Park City in Utah, which are all laced with old mining claims. Critics say it could open the door for developers to use the claims to assemble large land parcels for projects like houses, hotels, ski resorts, spas or retirement communities.

And some experts on public land use say it is possible that energy companies could use the provision to buy land in the energy-rich fields of Wyoming and Montana on the pretext of mining, but then drill for oil and gas.

"They are called mining claims, but you can locate them where there are no minerals," said John D. Leshy, who was the Interior Department's senior lawyer during the Clinton administration. Mr. Leshy said the legislation "doesn't have much to do with mining at all."

"It has to do with real-estate transfer for economic development," he said.

But supporters of the bill, including Representative Jim Gibbons, Republican of Nevada, argue that critics like Mr. Leshy are missing the point of the legislation, and that allowing more mine-claim lands to be purchased would be an economic boon to rural communities that often struggle in the boom and bust cycle of mining. "Not only is this rhetoric false, it is an affront to the rural American families whose livelihoods depend on sustained economic development," Mr. Gibbons said in a written statement.

Debate over the bill, with its echoes of the West's old and thorny relationship with mining, has created some strange bedfellows. In Montana, hunting and fishing groups have rallied to fight the measure, fearing that it could reduce public access to treasured trout streams. The Jewelers of America, a trade group for retailers, has denounced it as well, fearing a backlash by consumers.

In Colorado, one question centers on the "fourteeners," as the state's string of 14,000-foot peaks are known. Public access to three of the peaks about two hours from Denver was closed this summer by owners of mining claims who - unbeknownst to most hikers - control sections of popular trails to the summits. Hiking groups are concerned that if those sections can be expanded by the owners, many more mountains could be closed.

Many major environmental groups, meanwhile, seemed distracted during the buildup to Friday's vote, though some, like the Wilderness Society and Earthworks, lobbied heavily against the changes in the mining law.

But with limited political capital to spend, many of the groups concentrated this fall on getting Republican support for eliminating from the House version of the spending bill those provisions that would have opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, known as ANWR, to energy exploration.

The Sierra Club and other lobbying groups were successful in that battle and on another provision that would have allowed new offshore drilling. But their credit was apparently used up when the mining provisions arose.

"You got 22 Republicans to fall on their swords on ANWR," said Richard Hoppe, the communications director of the Izaak Walton League of America, a fisherman's group. "Those 22 are unlikely to fall on their swords for mining."

Gauging the impact of the bill, however - and the volume of transfers that may occur - is a complete guess, most land experts say. In some cases, lawyers say the current language in the bill, which is likely to be altered somewhat by a House-Senate conference committee, is vague and would almost certainly lead to court challenges.

Environmental groups, looking to the database of mining claims created by their colleagues at the Environmental Working Group, say private owners could gain title to 5.7 million acres of federal forests, rocky promontories and grasslands.

The bill's supporters put the number at a minimum of 360,000 acres, but do not include in that figure claims that expand the boundaries of current private holdings.

But none of that diminishes the anxiety in places like Pitkin County, Colo., where some of the nation's wealthiest people live on the steep mountain slopes of Aspen, and where a vacant lot can easily sell for $2 million. There the House bill is perceived as a direct threat to the green and cosseted open-space lifestyle that is the community's pride.

"Aspen is surrounded by mining claims," said Dorothea Farris, a member of the county commission, which sent a letter to Colorado's Congressional delegation earlier this week denouncing the bill as a "devastating" threat. "You come down the ski slope, and the face of the mountain you see, Smuggler Mountain, is all old mine claims. We have tried to protect wildlife and open space, and this will fragment it."

Mining claims are strange legal beasts, rooted in the frontier era of homesteading and largely unchanged by the passing of the years. In most other countries, a miner petitions the government for permission to mine on public lands.

But under the General Mining Law of 1872, which underpins the House bill, people or companies can essentially raise a hand and declare that the silver or gold or copper under the earth is theirs. The claim is then considered a legally defensible right, though since 1994 Congress has barred claims from passing to full legal ownership, a process called patenting. The House bill would end that moratorium.

Mr. Leshy, the former Interior Department lawyer, and other experts say that perhaps 300 million acres of public land - almost all of it in the West - remains open to the filing of mining claims. And while the House bill appears to exempt specifically any new mining in national parks and wilderness areas from conversion of claims into ownership, other land experts say the issue is less certain because of language elsewhere in the bill that says claimants with "valid existing rights" may now be able to exercise those rights to patent their claims.

"What does 'subject to valid existing rights' mean?" asked Mat Millenbach, who oversaw public lands in Montana as the director of the Federal Bureau of Land Management until his retirement in 2002. "To me it means if you have a valid claim, say in Death Valley National Park, I would claim it's a valid existing right, and I would take it to patent."

An executive branch lawyer and geologist advising Republicans on the House Resources Committee said anxiety about the bill was overstated because the hurdles for proving a mine claim and moving on to full ownership remained high.

People or companies filing for or buying mining claims would have to prove that the land contained mineral deposits, though they would no longer have to show that these could be mined at a profit, said the lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.

Since mineral deposits are relatively scarce, he added, the amount of land involved would also be modest - certainly, he insisted, not the millions of acres the bill's opponents claim.

Mining industry officials said that if the new owners were then to use a mine claim for other purposes, say for building condominiums, the Interior Department could file a lawsuit to revoke the transaction as a deal done under false pretenses.

"They'd have to be willing to defraud the U.S. government," said Carol Raulston, a spokeswoman for the mining industry's trade group, the National Mining Association.

How often such challenges by the federal government arise is another question. The executive branch lawyer acknowledged that such suits by the Interior Department or Forest Service were relatively rare, but he said that if a mining claim was bought "and in a year you turn around and have a ski area, you're going to have someone's undivided attention over in the inspector general's office."

The bill has still left some Western congressmen, like Dennis R. Rehberg, Republican of Montana, in the hot seat. After a coalition of sporting and fishing groups in his state condemned the bill earlier this week, Mr. Rehberg agreed that he did not like the mining provisions either but might have to vote for the larger budget bill anyway.

Mr. Rehberg's office then issued a letter from the sponsor of the provisions, Representative Richard W. Pombo, Republican of California, the chairman of the House Resources Committee. Mr. Pombo promised in writing that he would work in the conference committee to make sure that language protecting recreational access was added.

Sporting groups, nonetheless, remained unsatisfied.

"How are you going to protect hunting and fishing access opportunities and the diverse wildlife that exists on our public lands if it is no longer in public hands?" asked Craig Sharpe, the executive director of the Montana Wildlife Federation, a hunting and fishing group.

    Bill Authorizes Private Purchase of Federal Land, NYT, 20.11.2005,http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/politics/20land.html?hp&ex=1132549200&en=09d9305542db647f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

House rejects Iraq pullout

Sat Nov 19, 2005 12:15 AM ET
Reuters
By Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a maneuver to strike at Iraq war critics, the Republican-led House of Representatives engineered a vote on Friday on a resolution to pull U.S. troops immediately from Iraq, which was defeated nearly unanimously.

Republicans, who introduced the surprise resolution hours before lawmakers were to start a Thanksgiving holiday recess, said the vote was intended to show support for U.S. forces.

Democrats denounced it as a political stunt and an attack on Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a leading Democratic military hawk who stunned his colleagues on Thursday by calling for troops to be withdrawn from Iraq as quickly as possible.

The action by House Republicans was the latest volley in an offensive launched by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney last week to attack war critics as unpatriotic and hypocritical.

"The best strategy to keep America safe is to continue taking the fight to the terrorists, not to retreat in the face of the despicable attacks of a determined enemy," the White House said in a statement.

Unlike Murtha's proposal calling for troops to be withdrawn "as soon as practicable," which he expected would be about six months, the Republican resolution said deployment of the U.S. forces should be "terminated immediately."

Democrats said no one advocated an immediate pull-out without ensuring the safety of troops, and that it was a meaningless resolution that ducked serious debate on the situation in Iraq. It was defeated 403-3.

"To take this proposal and trash it, trivialize it, is outrageous," said Rep. John Spratt, a South Carolina Democrat.

Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said Republicans had "stooped to a new low even for them."

Many Democrats have called on Bush to present a plan to end the war and an estimate of when U.S. forces can start to be withdrawn based on conditions on the ground. Only a few have called for a set timetable for withdrawal.

During the emotional, raucous debate, Ohio Republican Rep. Jean Schmidt read a letter from an Ohio state representative who she said asked her to send Congress and Murtha "a message that cowards cut and run, Marines never do."

Democrats erupted, halting floor debate, and Schmidt withdrew the remark.

Lawmakers from both parties then applauded Murtha, a decorated Vietnam war veteran and retired Marine colonel, with several ovations.

Murtha said he had received "an outpouring from this country" since his call to withdraw troops from "people thirsting for an answer to this problem" in Iraq."

Iraqis "must be put on notice the United States will immediately redeploy," he said. "All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free, free from the United States occupation."

Republicans countered with another war hero, Rep. Sam Johnson of Texas who was a war prisoner in Vietnam for seven years.

"When I was a p.o.w. I was scared to death when our Congress talked about pulling the plug that I would be left there forever," Johnson said. Soldiers "need to have full faith that a few naysayers in Washington won't cut and run and leave them high and dry."

Americans have become increasingly disenchanted with the Iraq war, which claimed its 2,000th U.S. military death last month. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have also died.

Bush, in South Korea for a summit of Asian leaders, rejected calls for a timetable to withdraw, and vowed "we will stay in the fight" until victory.

Despite several such speeches, the Republican-led Senate voted on Tuesday to require progress reports on the war from Bush and said Iraqis should start taking the lead in their own security next year to allow a withdrawal of U.S. troops.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan charged Murtha with endorsing a "surrender" policy advocated by "extreme" liberals such as filmmaker Michael Moore.

That provoked a swift response from Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, last year's defeated Democratic presidential candidate.

"It disgusts me that a bunch of guys who have never put on the uniform of their country venomously turn their guns on a Marine who came home from Vietnam with a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts," he said.

Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam period and never saw combat. Cheney received draft deferments that kept him out of the military during Vietnam.

(Additional reporting by Alan Elsner)

    House rejects Iraq pullout, R, 19.11.2005, http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-11-19T051508Z_01_SCH876005_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA.xml

Uproar in House as Parties Clash on Iraq Pullout

November 19, 2005
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 - Republicans and Democrats shouted, howled and slung insults on the House floor on Friday as a debate over whether to withdraw American troops from Iraq descended into a fury over President Bush's handling of the war and a leading Democrat's call to bring the troops home.

The battle boiled over when Representative Jean Schmidt, an Ohio Republican who is the most junior member of the House, told of a phone call she had just received from a Marine colonel back home.

"He asked me to send Congress a message: stay the course," Ms. Schmidt said. "He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message: that cowards cut and run, Marines never do."

Democrats booed in protest and shouted Ms. Schmidt down in her attack on Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, a Vietnam combat veteran and one of the House's most respected members on military matters. They caused the House to come to an abrupt standstill, and moments later, Representative Harold Ford, Democrat of Tennessee, charged across the chamber's center aisle to the Republican side screaming that Ms. Schmidt's attack had been unwarranted.

"You guys are pathetic!" yelled Representative Martin Meehan, Democrat of Massachusetts. "Pathetic."

The measure failed in a vote late Friday night.

The rancorous debate drew an extraordinary scolding from Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee.

"Today's debate in the House of Representatives shows the need for bipartisanship on the war in Iraq, instead of more political posturing," Mr. Warner said in a statement.

But as the third hour of debate opened, with the House chamber mostly full on the eve of the Thanksgiving recess, even two senior Republicans, Henry Hyde of Illinois and Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, tried to temper the personal nature of the confrontation by offering tributes to Mr. Murtha. "I give him an A-plus as a truly great American," Mr. Hyde said.

Then Mr. Murtha, who normally shuns publicity, gave an impassioned 15-minute plea for his plan to withdraw American troops whom he said he had become "a catalyst for violence" in Iraq. The American people, Mr. Murtha thundered, are "thirsty for some direction; they're thirsty for a solution to this problem."

The uproar followed days of mounting tension between Republicans and Democrats in which the political debate over the war has sharply intensified. With President Bush's popularity dropping in the polls, Democrats have sought anew to portray him as having exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq before the American invasion in 2003. Republicans have countered that Democrats were equally at fault.

The battle came as Democrats accused Republicans of pulling a political stunt by moving toward a vote on a symbolic alternative to the resolution that Mr. Murtha offered on Thursday, calling for the swift withdrawal of American troops. Democrats said the ploy distorted the meaning of Mr. Murtha's measure and left little time for meaningful debate.

Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois, denied there were any political tricks involved and said pulling forces out of Iraq so rashly would hurt troop morale overseas. "We want to make sure that we support our troops that are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan," he said.

The measure was defeated, 403 to 3. But its fate had been sealed - and the vote count's significance minimized - when the Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, criticized the Republican tactics and instructed Democrats to join Republicans in voting against an immediate withdrawal.

"Just when you thought you'd seen it all, the Republicans have stooped to new lows, even for them," said Ms. Pelosi, who assailed Republicans as impugning Mr. Murtha's patriotism.

The parliamentary maneuvering came amid more than three hours of often nasty floor debate and boisterous political theater, with Democrats accusing Republicans of resorting to desperate tactics to back a failed war and Republicans warning that Mr. Murtha's measure would play into the hands of terrorists.

In South Korea, where President Bush was in the final day of the Asian economic summit, the White House released the text of a speech that Mr. Bush is scheduled to make later on Saturday to American forces at Osan Air Base.

"In Washington there are some who say that the sacrifice is too great, and they urge us to set a date for withdrawal before we have completed our mission," Mr. Bush planned to say, keeping up the daily drumbeat of White House response from 7,000 miles away. "Those who are in the fight know better. One of our top commanders in Iraq, Maj. Gen. William Webster, says that setting a deadline for our withdrawal from Iraq would be, quote, 'a recipe for disaster.' "

"General Webster is right," Mr. Bush's text said. "And so long as I am commander in chief, our strategy in Iraq will be driven by the sober judgment of our military commanders on the ground."

On Thursday, Mr. Murtha called for pulling out the 153,000 American troops within six months, saying they had become a catalyst for the continuing violence in Iraq. His plan also called for a quick-reaction force in the region, perhaps based in Kuwait, and for pursuing stability in Iraq through diplomacy.

But House Republicans planned to put to a vote - and reject - their own nonbinding alternative resolution that simply said: "It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately."

Democrats denounced the Republican measure as a fraud. But Democrats privately acknowledged they were seeking to escape a political trap set by the Republicans to box them into an unappealing choice: side with Mr. Murtha and face criticism for backing a plan that American commanders say would cripple the mission in Iraq or oppose their respected colleague and blunt momentum for an overhaul of the administration's Iraq policy.

House Democrats greeted Mr. Murtha with a standing ovation on Friday as he entered the chamber.

"This is a personal attack on one of the best members, one of the most respected members of this House, and it is outrageous," said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts.

While some 70 liberal Democrats who support ending American military involvement in Iraq have praised Mr. Murtha's plan, many of his other party colleagues appeared to be conflicted. To a member, Democrats said they respected the counsel of Mr. Murtha, a retired Marine colonel who has earned bipartisan respect in his three decades in Congress as a champion of American service members.

But many senior House Democrats, including Ms. Pelosi, have distanced themselves from Mr. Murtha's resolution, saying a phased withdrawal is a more prudent course. The House debate is likely to stoke an intensifying partisan debate on Capitol Hill over the administration's handling of the war, including how it used prewar intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. Democrats, including Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, as well as Representative Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, defended Mr. Murtha and cited examples of what they said were faulty intelligence.

The House action comes just days after the Republican-controlled Senate defeated a Democratic push to have Mr. Bush describe a timetable for withdrawal. Underscoring unease by both parties about the war, though, the Senate then approved a Republican statement that 2006 should be a year in which conditions were created for the Iraqi government to take over more security duties in the country and allow the United States to begin withdrawing.

Even as Republicans sought to make political hay from Mr. Murtha's plan, Democrats defended him as a patriot.

"I won't stand for the Swift-boating of Jack Murtha," Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, said. Mr. Kerry, who is also a Vietnam veteran, was dogged during the campaign by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that challenged his war record.
 

David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Korea for this article.

    Uproar in House as Parties Clash on Iraq Pullout, NYT, 19.11.2005,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/19/national/19military.html