History > 2006 > USA > Senate (II)

Clinton Dodges

Political Peril for War Vote

August 5, 2006
The New York Times
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT

There was a time when Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s position on the Iraq war seemed to place her in the same political peril afflicting Senator Joseph I. Lieberman.

The senators, both Democrats, voted to authorize the military invasion and both refused to apologize for their votes as the occupation began to falter and opposition to the war swelled. Both were labeled as hawks within Democratic ranks.

But while Mr. Lieberman, his party’s vice presidential nominee in 2000, has wound up vulnerable to an antiwar challenger in his re-election race in Connecticut, Mrs. Clinton has suffered few, if any, serious consequences in her campaign in New York.

It is not simply because she faces token opposition; unlike Mr. Lieberman, who has long resisted turning against the war or President Bush’s handling of it, Mrs. Clinton has consistently tried to distance herself from her initial vote without repudiating it, becoming increasingly critical of Mr. Bush’s management of the war.

That process crested on Thursday at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, where Mrs. Clinton bluntly and publicly castigated Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over the war, in an exchange that drew a considerable amount of news coverage.

“Yes, we hear a lot of happy talk and rosy scenarios,” Mrs. Clinton said to Mr. Rumsfeld during the hearing, “but because of the administration’s strategic blunders and, frankly, the record of incompetence in executing, you are presiding over a failed policy.”

Even those remarks have not satisfied the most ardent opponents of the war. Her antiwar Democratic primary opponent, Jonathan Tasini, dismissed them as “more bluster” and said Mrs. Clinton was “trying to obscure her record by shifting the focus to Rumsfeld.”

Still, Mrs. Clinton has diverged from Mr. Lieberman at critical junctures, reflecting what her advisers cast as a consistent belief on her part that Mr. Bush mismanaged the war and its aftermath. Her advisers offered a chronology of her criticism dating back to 2003.

Unlike Mr. Lieberman, she joined 38 fellow Democrats last month in backing a resolution, defeated by Republicans, that called for American forces to begin exiting Iraq this year, without setting a withdrawal deadline. Last November, Mrs. Clinton voted for a Democratic amendment calling for a “phased redeployment” of United States troops from Iraq. Mr. Lieberman opposed that measure as well.

Mrs. Clinton has described her initial vote in 2002 as one intended to give Mr. Bush the leverage he needed to get United Nations weapons inspectors back into Iraq, not as a blank check to rush the country into war. Mr. Lieberman, by contrast, continued to defend the president. Still, Mrs. Clinton has not backed away from her initial vote, a stand that has helped her avoid the sort of flip-flopping charges leveled by Republicans at Senator John Kerry during his 2004 presidential campaign, even as it has complicated her effort to distance herself from criticism that she was a war supporter.

“You know, you don’t get do-overs in life or in politics,” she said in an interview in late June. “You have to be a grown-up. I take my lumps.”

Yet while skillful repositioning and adaptation to changing circumstances have enabled her to avoid political damage, they have also exposed her to a line of criticism that has come to dog her in the same way it did her husband during his presidency: that she devises policy positions to shield herself from attacks from the left or right and surrenders principle to political flexibility.

“The notion that ‘I supported the war but unfortunately it wasn’t carried out effectively, and therefore we should go on but I won’t say how to carry it out’ isn’t helpful,” said Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. “It’s not really the exercise of leadership.”

P. J. Crowley, who served as a spokesman for the National Security Council during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and is now affiliated with a progressive policy group, defended her position. “Are her positions on Iraq politically calculated? I don’t know, but I don’t think so,” he said. “It’s much easier in the current polarized environment to be drawn to one side or the other. It’s tougher to draw a middle position and stay there.”

The war has proven divisive for Democrats as they head into midterm elections this fall, as antiwar forces have demanded repentance from members of Congress who supported the October 2002 resolution authorizing Mr. Bush to go to war if Saddam Hussein failed to comply with United Nations’ demands.

But the issue is particularly important for Mrs. Clinton. As a potential presidential candidate, she is under pressure to avoid any implication that her principles might waver when it comes to national security. As a woman, she could be subjected to especially intensive scrutiny of her suitability as commander in chief, making her position on the war central to her 2008 prospects.

Her showdown with Mr. Rumsfeld on Thursday came after she played a role in pressing him to come to the committee hearing, which gave her a chance to send a clear message on the war. Mr. Rumsfeld had initially turned down the committee’s invitation to appear. Mrs. Clinton then wrote a letter, made public by Democrats, urging him to change his mind, which he did. Several hours after her exchange with Mr. Rumsfeld, Mrs. Clinton said it was time for Mr. Bush to demand his resignation.

Mr. Lieberman, in an interview on the campaign trail on Friday, suggested he had been as critical of the administration as Mrs. Clinton in some ways. “I had to laugh at — I don’t mean laugh, but be surprised at all the attention to Senator Clinton calling for Rumsfeld to resign,” Mr. Lieberman said, pointing to comments he had made as far back as 2003 indicating that if he were president, he would ask Mr. Rumsfeld to step aside. But Mr. Lieberman never demanded that Mr. Bush take that step.

While Mrs. Clinton has come under fire for not repudiating her initial vote to authorize the war, she contends that intelligence reports that her husband saw in the White House supported the Bush administration’s contention that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction.

She has said that she believed Mr. Bush when he said he intended to use the Congressional authority to force weapons inspectors back into Iraq rather than immediately heading into war.

Her associates said she had been assured as much by Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, in a phone call. Sean McCormack, a spokesman for Ms. Rice, said she had no specific recollection of the call to Mrs. Clinton, but did not dispute that it took place.

Mrs. Clinton has sought to cast her position on Iraq as part of a broader and consistent approach to foreign policy and the use of military force. She subscribes, in her words, to a doctrine of “sensible internationalism, pragmatic internationalism” — a philosophy that essentially calls for military intervention when it has broad global support and is all but certain to succeed.

“They have a doctrine, as expressed by President Bush in his second inaugural — ‘we’re going to rid the world of tyranny,’ ” Mrs. Clinton said in the June interview, referring to the Republican leadership. “Well, O.K., I agree with that, that’s a good goal,” she said wryly. “Now, how do you operationalize that in a sensible way that minimizes the loss of American life, the lives of other people, and actually moves us forward to get some kind of accomplishment that everyone can point to?”

Some analysts question how that outlook will withstand the rigors of a race for higher office, which usually demands sharper definitions.

“She hasn’t laid out in any clear and sustained way a real worldview,” said Stephen M. Walt, academic dean at the Kennedy School of Government. “What she has done is sort of associate herself with being opposed to lots of bad things like terrorism — she thinks it’s a bad thing — and she’s in favor of things like a strong military and veterans’ benefits and helping our soldiers.”

Jennifer Medina contributed reporting from Connecticut for this article.

Clinton Dodges Political Peril for War Vote, NYT, 5.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/05/washington/05clinton.html

Wage Bill Dies;

Senate Backs Pension Shift

August 4, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 — Senate Democrats on Thursday blocked legislation tying the first minimum wage increase in almost a decade to a decrease in the federal estate tax, denying Republicans a legislative victory as lawmakers head into a crucial month of campaigning before the November elections.

Republican backers of the measure, dubbed the trifecta for its three chief elements, fell 4 votes short of the 60 needed to cut off debate. Democrats had argued that it was a bad bargain to exchange a $2.10 wage increase for struggling workers for a costly tax cut for the country’s wealthiest families.

“This trifecta is a high-stakes gamble with America’s future,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat. “This is the worst special-interest bill I have seen in my time in Congress.”

Scrambling to complete its business and join the House in an August recess, the Senate also approved and sent to the president a major overhaul of pension law as Republicans sought to record some last-minute accomplishments.

But the failure of the bill linking the wage increase and the tax cut was a significant defeat for Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader entering his last months in the post. Mr. Frist had hoped to steer the measure through the Senate, partly with the help of an accompanying series of tax incentives and federal aid to woo lawmakers.

Mr. Frist and his allies in business viewed the wage increase, stretched over three years, as an acceptable trade-off for a permanent reduction in the estate tax and $38 billion in tax breaks and federal aid that constituted the third part of the measure. But they could not overcome intense opposition from Democrats and organized labor.

Republicans said Democrats were choosing partisanship over policy and were stalling the measure to allow them to attack the record of the Republican-led Congress.

“It is an excuse to make it a do-nothing Congress,” Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, said. “And we are turning our back on the middle-class and poor people in this country who depend on the minimum wage and death-tax relief.”

Republicans said the legislation represented the best opportunity to advance an increase in the minimum wage that Democrats have been advocating for years, and some predicted the Democratic opposition could boomerang. Republicans said the proposal balanced the interests of both workers and employers.

“I have never understood the belief of some that you can love employees and hate employers, but that seems to be what’s driving this,” said Senator Gordon H. Smith, Republican of Oregon.

Democrats said voters would see through the Republican tactic and be turned off by the Republican effort to win a major tax break for some of America’s richest families in exchange for raising the minimum wage to $7.25.

“The public has a pretty good nose for tricks and games,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “And they’re smelling it.”

The opposition was aided by a dispute over a provision that would allow employers in a handful of states to begin counting employee tips against minimum wage increases, an approach Democrats said could end up cutting the pay of some workers. Republicans disputed that contention, but the prospect was enough to deter some Democrats Republicans had hoped would vote for the bill.

“Cutting the salaries of Washington tip workers by more than $5 an hour is horrible,” said Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, who called the legislation “a cynical ploy on the part of the Republican leadership in an election year.”

Under the estate tax proposal, the amount of an individual’s estate that would be exempt from taxes would rise to $5 million by 2015, with $10 million exempt for a couple.

After the vote, Mr. Frist noted that the major provisions of the measure — the wage increase, the estate tax reduction and the package of tax breaks — all enjoyed majority Senate support yet could not clear the procedural hurdles.

Mr. Frist again declared that the minimum wage rise could only be considered in tandem with the others. “As I’ve said before, these issues must be addressed as a package all or nothing,” he said.

Despite Mr. Frist’s vow to let the wage increase die, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said Democrats would hold the Senate in session this fall if there were not a second vote. “If he is serious about that threat, I hope he knows he has a fight on his hands,” Mr. Reid said.

Four Democrats joined 52 Republicans in the vote, while 38 Democrats, one independent and three Republicans opposed the bill, including Mr. Frist, who voted with the opponents for procedural reasons.

Democrats voting to move ahead with the measure were Senators Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Bill Nelson of Florida. In addition to Mr. Frist, Republicans who joined Democrats were Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and George V. Voinovich of Ohio.

The estate tax change would cost the government an estimated $268 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. Democrats say the future costs are much larger.

Congressional Republicans have for years refused to consider an increase in the current minimum wage, $5.15 per hour. But the House leadership relented last week in the face of appeals from moderate Republicans who said they needed to act on the minimum wage to defuse intensifying attacks from Democrats and labor organizations.

The measure combining the wage increase, estate tax cut and tax incentives was approved by the House early Saturday morning.

Mr. Schumer and his House counterpart, Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, predicted Thursday that the minimum wage would remain a top issue in the fall campaigns. Republicans were trying to turn the vote to their advantage as well.

The pension legislation, approved on a 93-to-5 vote, is intended to shore up the federal insurance system and better secure the retirement benefits of millions of American workers by requiring some companies to increase their contributions to shaky plans. The complex bill has been years in the making.

“Too many workers have seen their pensions fail in recent years,” said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, an author of the measure.

The bill requires companies with pension funds to close any shortfalls within seven years. It also has tests that companies would have to use to determine whether their pension plans posed a risk to the federal insurance system. Companies with such risky plans would then have to calculate how much it would cost if all qualifying employees were to take early retirement immediately and then put that amount into their pension funds.

The bill also closes loopholes that made it easy for companies to avoid paying their full premiums to the pension insurance system.

The pension and tax votes concluded a complicated legislative chess match that began last week when Republican leaders decided to remove the package of tax breaks from the pension legislation and add them to the bill with the wage increase and estate tax change. That moved rankled some Republicans, who warned that the strategy was a long shot.

“The bottom line is, we bet on the wrong horses,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the Finance Committee.

    Wage Bill Dies; Senate Backs Pension Shift, NYT, 4.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/04/washington/04cong.html?hp&ex=1154750400&en=6b3ccef354f6fd81&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Intelligence

Senator Faults Bid to Classify Report on Iraq

August 4, 2006
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 — The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee lashed out at the White House on Thursday, criticizing attempts by the Bush administration to keep secret parts of a report on the role Iraqi exiles played in building the case for war against Iraq.

The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, said his committee had completed the first two parts of its investigation of prewar intelligence. But he chastised the White House for efforts to classify most of the part that examines intelligence provided to the Bush administration by the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group.

“I have been disappointed by this administration’s unwillingness to declassify material contained in these reports, material which I believe better informs the public, but that does not — I repeat, does not — jeopardize intelligence operations, sources and methods,” Mr. Roberts said in a statement issued Thursday.

One completed section of the Senate report is said to be a harsh critique of how information from the Iraqi exile group made its way into intelligence community reports, said people who have read the report but spoke on condition of anonymity because it is still classified.

The second section compares prewar assessments of Iraq’s unconventional weapons programs and its links to terrorism with what American troops and intelligence operatives have found since the war began in March 2003.

The two parts of the report will not be made public for weeks, and neither is likely to present conclusions very different from past investigations into faulty prewar intelligence. Yet the current dispute is a sign that more than three years into the conflict, emotions remain raw over the role that the Iraqi group and its leader, Ahmad Chalabi — who was close to Pentagon officials and Vice President Dick Cheney — played in the administration’s decision to wage war against Saddam Hussein.

The group’s role in building the case against Mr. Hussein has been the source of fierce ideological arguments in Washington for years. The report also concludes that the group did provide useful information regarding the disposition of Iraq’s military. In the end, four Republicans on the committee and all seven Democratic members approved of the section of the report about the group. Four Republicans voted against it.

Congressional officials said Thursday that they were puzzled by White House efforts to keep large portions of that section classified. Mr. Roberts pledged in his statement to maintain the pressure to declassify all of the Senate’s conclusions.

“This Committee will not settle for anything less,” he said. “Neither will the American people.” A spokesman for the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, whose office is in charge of the declassification, declined to comment.

The committee approved the other section of the report 14 to 1.

    Senator Faults Bid to Classify Report on Iraq, NYT, 4.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/04/world/middleeast/04intel.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Rumsfeld, in reversal, to attend public hearing

Wed Aug 2, 2006 10:47 PM ET
Reuters
By Will Dunham and Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a reversal, the Pentagon on Wednesday said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will testify publicly on the Iraq war to a key Senate committee after Democrats blasted him for planning to bypass it because of a busy schedule.

Earlier in the day, Rumsfeld told reporters he would not attend a morning Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, but would have a closed briefing for all senators along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and two generals later on Thursday.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, a New York Democrat who led the charge against Rumsfeld, called his "11th hour decision to reverse course ... the right one."

She said senators and the American people "should hear directly from the top civilian leader at the Pentagon, the person most responsible for implementing the President's military policy in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Rumsfeld, known for frosty relations with some lawmakers, had denied he was reluctant to face senators in public, and suggested critics were playing politics.

Democrats, trying to regain control of Congress from Republicans in elections in November, have made Rumsfeld a prime target of criticism over the handling of the three-year-old Iraq war.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada fired off a letter to Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee urging him to call on Rumsfeld to appear in the open hearing.

Rumsfeld has not testified publicly to the Armed Services Committee since February. Instead of Rumsfeld, Army Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, and Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, the top U.S. military officer, were set to testify.

Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner, the committee's chairman, and the panel's top Democrat wrote Rumsfeld on July 26 "to confirm your invitation to testify" at the hearing on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Warner said on Wednesday "at no time did he refuse to come up here," adding the Senate Republican leadership preferred having Rumsfeld, Rice, Pace and Abizaid brief in private.

At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld said that "my calendar was such that to do it in the morning ... would have been difficult."

Without mentioning anyone by name, Rumsfeld added, "Let's be honest. Politics enters into these things. And maybe the person raising the question is interested in that." Clinton is a possible 2008 Democratic presidential candidate.

Democrats have used these committee hearings to savage Rumsfeld. At a 2005 hearing, Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts asked Rumsfeld, "Isn't it time for you to resign?"

    Rumsfeld, in reversal, to attend public hearing, R, 2.8.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-08-03T024710Z_01_N02279858_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-RUMSFELD.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-politicsNews-2

Senators Vote to Open Drilling in the Central Gulf of Mexico

August 2, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 — The Senate voted Tuesday to open 8.3 million acres of federal waters in the central Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling, setting up a confrontation with the House, which wants even more drilling in areas now off-limits.

Supporters said the measure would be a major step toward producing more domestic energy and forcing down natural gas prices that have soared in recent years.

The Senate approved the measure by a vote of 71 to 25. It must now be reconciled with the broader drilling legislation passed by the House in June. Negotiations are likely to begin in September.

“This bill will substantially reduce our reliance on foreign oil and gas,” said Senator Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee and majority leader. “It brings more American energy to American consumers.”

Some critics of the legislation said that it would be years before any oil or gas would be taken from the newly available sites and that the legislation fell short of addressing many of the country’s energy problems.

At best, “this will supply a small amount of gas years from now,” said Senator Mark Dayton, Democrat of Minnesota, who faulted the inability to broaden the legislation beyond drilling in the gulf.

Still, the bill attracted bipartisan support as senators prepared to leave for the monthlong summer recess. The House is already gone.

Some lawmakers noted that natural gas prices rose 11 percent this week amid concern about supplies because of the intense heat. The price was at more than $8 a thousand cubic feet on the spot market, compared with under $6 a few weeks ago.

The acres affected by the Senate measure are believed to contain 1.2 billion barrels of oil and nearly six trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to heat six million homes for 15 years.

The bill would create a “zone of protection” for Florida that would stretch 125 to 300 miles from the state’s beaches at various points. It would also funnel tens of millions of dollars to the four other Gulf Coast states as their share of future oil and gas revenues.

    Senators Vote to Open Drilling in the Central Gulf of Mexico, NYT, 2.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/washington/02leases.html

Tax Cheats Called Out of Control

August 1, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

So many superrich Americans evade taxes using offshore accounts that law enforcement cannot control the growing misconduct, according to a Senate report that provides the most detailed look ever at high-level tax schemes.

Among the billionaires cited in the report are the owner of the New York Jets football team, Robert Wood Johnson IV; the producer of the “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” children’s show, Haim Saban; and two Texas businessmen, Charles and Sam Wyly, who the Center for Public Integrity found in 2000 were the ninth-largest contributors to President Bush.

Mr. Johnson and Mr. Saban, who are portrayed as victims in the report, are scheduled to testify today before the Senate Permanent Investigations subcommittee. They are expected to say that professional advisers assured them their deals to avoid taxes were more likely lawful than not. The Wyly brothers told the committee that they would invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and thus were not called to testify. The report characterizes them as active participants in tax schemes.

Cheating now equals about 7 cents out of each dollar paid by honest taxpayers, as much as $70 billion a year, the report estimated.

“The universe of offshore tax cheating has become so large that no one, not even the United States government, could go after all of it,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat whose staff ran the investigation.

Senator Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican who is chairman of the subcommittee, adopted the minority report on Sunday as the product of the full committee.

The report details how the Quellos Group, a tax shelter boutique based in Seattle, “concocted a tax shelter” using $9.6 billion “worth of fake securities transactions that were used to generate billions of dollars of fake capital losses.”

Senator Levin said that when investigators asked for trading records they were first told the trades were private, over-the-counter transactions. He said investigators asked for trading tickets or other evidence of who owned the $9.6 billion worth of stock and were told the stocks were never owned by the parties involved.

“They just wrote down numbers on paper and claimed losses,” he said. “It was just like fantasy baseball, except the taxes not paid were for real.”

Quellos, in a statement, said, “we fundamentally disagree with the report, which presents a one-sided view.” It said the transactions, which the Senate committee describes as fabrications, were real and involved “a significant possibility of economic gain and loss.”

The investigation, which took 18 months, involved 74 subpoenas, 80 interviews and the collection of more than two million documents, and yet Senator Levin said “the six cases we present are just examples, just a pinhole look.”

The 400-page report recommends eight changes, some of them aimed at going after the law and accounting firms, banks and investment advisers that the report says enable tax schemes that rely on complexity, secrecy and compartmentalizing information so that advisers can claim they had no idea that the overall transaction was a fraud.

“We need to significantly strengthen the aiding and abetting statutes to get at the lawyers and accountants and other advisers who enable this cheating,” Senator Levin said, adding that “we need major changes in law to stop the use of tax havens” by tax cheats.

It also recommends new rules that strip away the underlying legal presumptions that make offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands, Nevis, the Isle of Man and Panama attractive places for Americans to hide assets and income from the Internal Revenue Service.

Senator Levin said the law “should assume that any transaction in a tax haven is a sham.”

He said that during the investigation he grew angry as he learned how common cheating had become and how existing government rules aided tax cheats. He said that complex schemes were broken into discrete pieces, allowing professional advisers working on each piece to assert that they had no idea that, taken as a whole, a scheme was improper.

“I get incensed by people who use tax havens to not pay their taxes while the average guy has to pay his taxes because they are taken out of his pay before he gets it,” he said.

Both Mr. Johnson, the football team owner and scion of the Johnson & Johnson health care fortune, and Mr. Saban, the television mogul, are portrayed in the report as victims.

The two men, through representatives, said yesterday that they relied on professional advisers who told them the transactions were lawful, and that they were now settling with the Internal Revenue Service.

Mr. Johnson, known as Woody, told Senate investigators two weeks ago that to buy the Jets in 1999 he had to sell assets, incurring the 20 percent tax on long-term capital gains in effect at the time. He said that a way to defer the tax was proposed by Larry B. Scheinfeld, who had been his accountant at KPMG until he joined Quellos, where he worked closely with Chuck Wilk, a tax lawyer.

The technique involved a complex set of circular transactions using what the Senate report characterized as sham corporations in the Isle of Man with shell corporations given names like Jackstones. Their ownership was kept secret.

“Ain’t capitalism great!” Mr. Wilk wrote to Mr. Scheinfeld in an e-mail message extolling the tax benefits of the Johnson deal. Three weeks later, when the deal was set, Mr. Scheinfeld wrote back: “I just hope Woody doesn’t get cold feet or have the I.R.S. select his return for an audit!”

The report details a scheme created for Mr. Saban to avoid more than $300 million in taxes from sale of his half interest in the Family Channel and related properties.

Mr. Saban told Senate investigators that he never understood the transactions but undertook them after asking two questions of Mr. Wilk and his personal tax lawyer, Matthew Krane.

Mr. Saban said he asked whether the deals were legal and whether a major law firm would certify them as proper. The two lawyers, Mr. Saban said, answered “yes to both,” so he went ahead.

Later, when Mr. Saban learned that he had paid $54 million in fees to Quellos; Cravath Swaine & Moore, a New York law firm; and others for what turned out to be what the report described as fake transactions, he said he felt “misled, lied to and cheated.”

Lewis R. Steinberg, who as a Cravath Swaine partner helped design the deal and wrote an opinion letter attesting that it was more likely than not to work as a tax shelter, told Senate investigators last week that he relied on assurances from Quellos and Mr. Johnson that real transactions took place, not fake trades. Mr. Steinberg, who is now at UBS Securities, another firm named in the report, is a prominent tax lawyer and in 2004 was chairman of the tax section of the American Bar Association.

The report also dissects deals by the Wyly brothers of Texas, showing how they made at least $190 million through stock option exercises offshore but had yet to pay taxes on most of the money. They then borrowed against their offshore accounts to buy jewelry, pay for portraits of family members, buy homes and operate properties named Rosemary’s Circle R Ranch, LL Ranch, Stargate Horse Farm, Cottonwood Galleries and 36 Malibu Colony.

Senator Levin said he might propose limiting or barring the transferring of executive stock options to others, as well as more disclosure when they are exercised.

The report says that Credit Suisse First Boston, Lehman Brothers and Bank of America “all knew that the offshore entities” for which they made trades were associated with the Wylys, but ignored rules requiring disclosure of these transactions and helped them hide the true ownership of the assets. Only when Robert M. Morgenthau, the New York District attorney, issued subpoenas in 2004 did Bank of America close the Wyly accounts.

William Brewer, a Dallas lawyer for the Wylys, said that while the Senate report “intends to present a balanced view, the committee report is reflective of a number of misunderstandings.”

“The Wylys believe they have paid all taxes due,” he added. “And in any event, as the report makes clear, the Wylys were counseled by an armada of lawyers, brokers, financial professionals and offshore service providers to ensure that they were at all times fully meeting their obligations.”

    Tax Cheats Called Out of Control, NYT, 1.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/01/business/01tax.html?hp&ex=1154491200&en=e09ef4772e1f3fdd&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Minimum Wage Fight Heads to the Senate

July 30, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, July 29 — A bitter fight over legislative tactics and the minimum wage shifted to the Senate after the House early on Saturday approved a $2.10 increase in the wage scale but tied it to a reduction in the estate tax and a package of tax breaks.

In an early-morning decision that Republican leaders said they hoped would provide political benefits to lawmakers headed home for five weeks of campaigning, the House voted 230 to 180 to increase the federally required pay rate to $7.25 over three years — the first increase in nearly a decade.

“This bill actually stands a chance of being signed into law,” said Representative Frank A. LoBiondo, Republican of New Jersey. “If we really want to give relief to working men and women who deserve this change, this is the opportunity.”

But Democrats criticized the decision as a cynical charade intended to give Republicans the appearance of supporting an increase in the minimum wage through a bill that would not clear the Senate because of opposition to an estate tax change aimed at extremely affluent Americans.

“In all my years here, this is the height of hypocrisy,” said Representative Sander M. Levin, Democrat of Michigan, who said Republicans considered a raise in the minimum wage only out of fear of losing House seats in November. “If you really cared, you would have acted long ago. This is not an election-year conversion; it is an election-year trick.”

Senate Democrats, who have successfully blocked past Republican efforts to slash the estate tax, suggested they would try to do so again despite the inclusion of the minimum wage increase they had been clamoring for in recent years.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said Saturday that he did not expect the Senate to approve the plan when it reaches the floor next week, which, he said, was just what the House Republican leadership wanted.

“Last night the House Republicans played a cynical game of politics with the lives of millions of hard-working American families,” Mr. Kennedy said. “I am confident the Senate will reject this political blackmail, as the House leadership is banking on.”

But 34 House Democrats joined 196 Republicans in sending the measure to the Senate, while 158 Democrats, 21 Republicans and one independent opposed it.

Under the minimum wage proposal, the rate would increase from the current $5.15 per hour in three increments, reaching $7.25 in June 2009. It would also allow tips to be counted toward minimum wage increases in some states where that is now prohibited, a provision Democrats said would cut wages for thousands of workers in those states.

House Republican leaders said their Senate counterparts had argued that the only way the wage increase would survive in the Senate was if it was coupled with the estate tax reductions. To sweeten the pot even more, Republicans moved $38 billion in a wide array of tax breaks to the estate tax bill from a pension overhaul that was approved Friday.

“What we have done is try to package this to succeed in getting the minimum wage through the other body,” said Representative Bill Thomas, Republican of California and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

But critics said voters would see through the ploy. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, called the legislation “an insult to the intelligence of the American people.”

The tax provisions restored and extended such popular breaks as a maximum $4,000 income tax deduction for higher-education expenses and a variety of benefits for industry and communities.

Under the estate tax provisions, estimated to cost $268 billion in federal revenue over 10 years, $5 million of an individual’s estate would be fully exempt by 2015. Estates up to $25 million would be taxed at the rate for capital gains, now 15 percent. The bill also phases in a reduced tax rate on amounts in excess of $25 million, eventually setting it at 30 percent.

With no changes, the current estate tax exemptions would revert in 2011 to $1 million per person with a maximum estate tax rate of 55 percent.

The minimum wage vote came after House Republican leaders scrambled to respond to appeals from Republicans in the Northeast and the Midwest who said they needed to dilute Democratic attacks and were worried they would be pounded in the August recess by labor groups.

Some Republicans said they would have preferred that the wage increase be tied to legislation other than the estate tax cut, with a health initiative for small businesses one popular alternative.

    Minimum Wage Fight Heads to the Senate, NYT, 30.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/washington/30cong.html

Editorial

The Court Under Siege

July 29, 2006
The New York Times

One big thing we’ve learned from watching President Bush’s assault on the balance of powers is that the federal courts are the only line of defense. Congress not only lacks the spine to stand up to Mr. Bush, but is usually eager to accommodate him.

So it is especially frightening to see the administration use the debates over the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and domestic spying to mount a new offensive against the courts.

Wiretapping: This campaign is most evident in the debate over Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize the interception of Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail.

Mr. Bush and his legal advisers claim the president is free to ignore the 1978 law requiring warrants for such wiretaps, as well as the Constitution, because the eternal war with Al Qaeda gives him commander-in-chief superpowers. But the administration knows the Supreme Court is unlikely to endorse this nonsense. So it has agreed with the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, on a bill that is a mockery of judicial process.

Under the bill, Mr. Bush would have the option, but not the obligation, to ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to decide whether his spying program is constitutional. The surveillance court was created for one purpose — to review applications for surveillance warrants. It is not the place to make a constitutional judgment.

The case would be heard in secret, and only Mr. Bush’s case would be made because no one would be there to argue against him. There is not even a requirement that the final judgment be made public. Worst of all, if Mr. Bush lost in the secret court, he could appeal. But if he won, there would be no appeal and the case would never go to the Supreme Court.

There is a better way of doing this — a bill by Senator Charles Schumer of New York that would allow groups or people to challenge the spying and let the courts work as they have for two centuries.

Prisoners: Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Bush violated the Geneva Conventions and American law by creating military commissions to try prisoners at Guantánamo Bay without any of the accepted safeguards of a judicial process. It rejected Mr. Bush’s notion that he could decide which people deserved civilized treatment and which did not. (Keep in mind that the majority of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay are either low-level Taliban soldiers captured in Afghanistan or innocents turned over to American troops in return for money.)

The court said Congress had to draft a law covering the prisoners that conformed to American standards of justice and to international law. But Congress had barely started hearings before the White House began circulating its own bill, which would simply endorse what Mr. Bush did rather than trying to overcome the court’s objections.

On the Geneva Conventions, for instance, the bill offers a particularly twisted bit of reasoning that says Congress has decided to interpret the conventions in such a way that everything Mr. Bush has done, or will do, conforms with their requirements. But the court firmly endorsed the Geneva Conventions, which include the requirement that a prisoner be present at his trial. The White House bill simply revokes that right.

The White House says it’s showing this draft law to the military lawyers it ignored when it formed its original policies on prisoners. Since the bill essentially mirrors the original policy, we hope those courageous lawyers object once again and that this time, the administration actually listens.

    The Court Under Siege, NYT, 29.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/29/opinion/29sat1.html

Senate Removes Abortion Option for Young Girls

July 26, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, July 25 — The Senate passed legislation Tuesday that would make it a federal crime to help an under-age girl escape parental notification laws by crossing state lines to obtain an abortion.

The bill was approved on a 65-to-34 vote, with 14 Democrats joining 51 Republicans in favor.

A similar measure passed the House last year, and President Bush said he would sign the legislation if the two chambers could work out their differences and send a final bill to him.

In a statement, Mr. Bush said that “transporting minors across state lines to bypass parental consent laws regarding abortion undermines state law and jeopardizes the lives of young women.”

Critics questioned the necessity of the measure, saying it would apply to only a small number of cases and could result in criminal charges against close relatives or clergy members who interceded to help in a time of personal crisis.

Proponents of the bill, acknowledging that it was unknown how often such incidents occurred, said abortion clinics in states without such parental involvement laws had advertised that no consent was needed in an effort to appeal to those interested in avoiding such requirements.

“If they are advertising, then it obviously at least happens,” said Senator John Ensign, the Nevada Republican who wrote the measure. “If it is happening 20 times a year, it is still worth doing to protect those parental rights and to protect those children from being in these kinds of situations.”

The legislation is the latest in a push by anti-abortion forces to seek incremental changes in federal laws rather than press for a broad rollback of abortion rights.

The measure also provided Republicans another opportunity to reassure their social conservative base that its concerns were being addressed in an election year. And it gave them a chance to force Democrats to take a position on an issue some would prefer to avoid out of concern over alienating abortion-rights advocates on one hand or Democratic centrists on the other.

Twenty-nine Democrats, four Republicans and one independent voted against the bill. Polls have shown consistently that notification requirements are popular with parents. Advocates of the bill said most Americans shared the view that parents should be consulted when it comes to such a consequential matter in the life of a teenager.

“What opponents of this bill forget is that no parent wants anyone to take their children across state lines — or even across the street — without their permission,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate.

Opponents said cases would inevitably arise in which a girl had been victimized by a relative, or in which parents were not available or did not have the girl’s best interest in mind. In those cases, they said, the legislation will pose a hardship or worse.

“Life is not always the way we wish it to be,” said Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, who opposed the bill. “Sometimes tragedies happen, and sometimes families are not just negligent but abusive, and sometimes young girls are taken advantage of by members of their family, people in whom they should be able to trust.”

Others were pushing the measure to provide an opportunity for some lawmakers who are against abortion to make political amends after voting last week to support expanding federal research using embryonic stem cells. They said the measure could penalize close relatives trying to come to the aid of a child in trouble, who was the victim of incest or feared a physically violent response to the revelation of a pregnancy.

“I don’t think the American people support throwing Grandma in jail because she embraced her granddaughter and said, ‘Oh my God, I’m worried that your dad may hurt you if you tell the truth,’ ” said Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California.

Under the legislation, known officially as the Child Custody Protection Act, those found guilty of violating it would be subject to a fine and up to a year in jail. Douglas Johnson, the legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, said the provisions would apply to 26 states that have enforceable laws requiring minor girls to notify or receive the consent of their parents or seek approval from a judge before seeking an abortion.

Mr. Johnson said there “is evidence of widespread circumvention of these state notification laws,” though the frequency varies around the nation depending on the proximity of states without such restrictions. He said anecdotal accounts suggested that many cases involved under-age girls and older men.

Those challenging the measure said they believed that the number of those who went out of state specifically to avoid parental notification laws was low. They said Congress should instead focus on sex education and counseling. A proposal to create new pregnancy prevention grants was defeated on a 51-to-48 vote.

“The American public wants teen pregnancy prevented, not punished,” said Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice America. “This bill does nothing to protect young people or promote communication between teens and their parents.”

To stem criticism that the measure protected fathers guilty of incest, Republicans joined Democrats in approving an amendment that says a parent who has committed incest and transports a minor out of state for an abortion will also face a fine and jail time.

The chief difference between the House and Senate bills is that the House measure requires an out-of-state doctor to provide 24 hours’ notice to a girl’s parents or face criminal penalties. Parents can also sue the person performing the abortion.

Despite the strong vote for the measure, the Democratic leadership objected Tuesday night to a Republican call to appoint negotiators to begin reconciling the House and Senate bills, showing that Democrats were not going to make it easy to reach a final deal.

    Senate Removes Abortion Option for Young Girls, NYT, 26.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/26/washington/26abort.html?hp&ex=1153972800&en=8f98475eee481bc4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Senate to Pass Parental Notification Law

July 25, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:44 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A pregnant 14-year-old from Lancaster, Pa., decides to keep and raise her baby. Her boyfriend's parents drive her to a New Jersey abortion clinic to get around her home state's parental notification law. They then refuse to take her home until she ends her pregnancy.

It happened -- and a national parental notification law could have stopped it, the girl's mother, Marcia Carroll, told a House panel last year.

A year after the House passed the measure, a similar version is heading toward Senate approval Tuesday with widespread public support.

Opponents, however, say the legislation would cut off an escape route for pregnant teens with abusive parents and punish confidants who might try to help them.

''We should not criminalize the grandparents or clergy members to whom a teen in trouble might turn for help,'' said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who will introduce an amendment to protect such confidants from prosecution.

No one knows exactly how many girls try to cross state lines to end pregnancies to circumvent parental notification and consent laws back home.

Polls suggest there is widespread public backing for the bill, with almost three-quarters of respondents saying a parent has the right to give consent before a child under 18 has an abortion.

''This is clearly not an issue divided on pro-life or pro-choice lines,'' said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., the bill's original sponsor. ''There is broad and consistent support to preserve the rights of parents.''

Under the bill, anyone who helps a pregnant minor cross state lines to obtain an abortion without the knowledge of her parents could be punished by unspecified fines and up to a year in prison. The girl and her parents would not be vulnerable to criminal penalties. The measure contains an exception for those who help underage girls get such abortions to avoid life-threatening conditions.

Democrats will present several other amendments, including one that would add exceptions for anyone helping girls to end pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.

The states without parental notification or consent laws are: Washington, Oregon, New York, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, plus the District of Columbia.

The bill passed the House 270-157 in April 2005 after lawmakers rejected an amendment similar to Feinstein's.

The bills are S. 403 and H.R. 748.

------

On the Net:

Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov

    Senate to Pass Parental Notification Law, NYT, 25.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Interstate-Abortion.html

Specter prepping bill to sue Bush

Updated 7/24/2006 10:43 PM ET
AP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — A powerful Republican committee chairman who has led the fight against President Bush's signing statements said Monday he would have a bill ready by the end of the week allowing Congress to sue him in federal court.

"We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional," Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said on the Senate floor.

Specter's announcement came the same day that an American Bar Association task force concluded that by attaching conditions to legislation, the president has sidestepped his constitutional duty to either sign a bill, veto it, or take no action.

Bush has issued at least 750 signing statements during his presidency, reserving the right to revise, interpret or disregard laws on national security and constitutional grounds.

"That non-veto hamstrings Congress because Congress cannot respond to a signing statement," said ABA president Michael Greco. The practice, he added "is harming the separation of powers."

Bush has challenged about 750 statutes passed by Congress, according to numbers compiled by Specter's committee. The ABA estimated Bush has issued signing statements on more than 800 statutes, more than all other presidents combined.

Signing statements have been used by presidents, typically for such purposes as instructing agencies how to execute new laws.

But many of Bush's signing statements serve notice that he believes parts of bills he is signing are unconstitutional or might violate national security.

Still, the White House said signing statements are not intended to allow the administration to ignore the law.

"A great many of those signing statements may have little statements about questions about constitutionality," said White House spokesman Tony Snow. "It never says, 'We're not going to enact the law.'"

Specter's announcement intensifies his challenge of the administration's use of executive power on a number of policy matters. Of particular interest to him are two signing statements challenging the provisions of the USA Patriot Act renewal, which he wrote, and legislation banning the use of torture on detainees.

Bush is not without congressional allies on the matter. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a former judge, has said that signing statements are nothing more than expressions of presidential opinion that carry no legal weight because federal courts are unlikely to consider them when deciding cases that challenge the same laws.

    Specter prepping bill to sue Bush, UT, 24.7.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-07-24-lawyers-bush_x.htm

By a Vote of 98-0, Senate Approves 25-Year Extension of Voting Rights Act

July 21, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, July 20 — The Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to extend the landmark Voting Rights Act for another 25 years, as lawmakers of both parties said federal supervision was still required to protect the ability of minorities and the disadvantaged to cast ballots in some regions of the country.

“Despite the progress these states have made in upholding the right to vote, it is clear the problems still exist,” said Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois.

Approval of the measure, on a 98-to-0 vote, came on the day that President Bush made his first presidential visit to a convention of the N.A.A.C.P., where he promised to sign the bill.

The House passed the measure last week after a flurry of rebellion from several Southern lawmakers.

Republicans had made renewal of the law a cornerstone of party efforts to reach out to minority groups, particularly blacks, and leaders of both parties promised its passage in a rare joint event on the steps of the Capitol this year.

But progress was slowed by objections from some Republicans in the House that the law unfairly singled out Southern states for special federal oversight when they have eradicated the rampant discrimination that spurred enactment of the law in 1965.

Some Senate Republicans expressed similar sentiments Thursday but none opposed the measure. “Other states with much less impressive minority progress and less impressive minority participation are not covered, while Georgia still is,” said Senator Saxby Chambliss. “This seems both unfair as well as unwise.”

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill into law after violent attacks on civil rights marchers demanding the right to vote. It instituted a nationwide prohibition against voting discrimination based on race and banned poll taxes and literacy tests.

In regions where discrimination had been especially pronounced, the Justice Department was given the authority to review changes to election procedures, like redistricting, to judge if they would be discriminatory.

The current legislation retained the so-called pre-clearance requirement for nine states, most of them in the South, and for parts of seven others, including Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx in New York.

Another provision opposed by some Republicans requires the printing of bilingual ballots in political jurisdictions that meet a threshold for the percentage of citizens who have difficulty with English.

Most Republicans joined united Democrats in pushing ahead, saying that while the Voting Rights Act had produced historic results, it was still warranted.

“South Carolinians, you have come a long way,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from that state, which is among those covered by the law. “But we, just like every other part of this country, still have a long way to go.”

Civil rights leaders praised the Senate action and called on Mr. Bush to send a strong signal to the Justice Department that the measure must be strongly enforced.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who watched the Senate debate from the gallery, said that the Bush administration had sided with states in voting rights cases and that it had been left to the courts to intervene.

“So far, the Department of Justice has favored states’ rights over federal enforcement,” Mr. Jackson said. “We see a pattern.”

The legislation was named for several civil rights figures: Coretta Scott King, Fannie Lou Hamer and Rosa Parks.

As the Senate voted, Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, who was beaten in the 1965 voting rights march on Montgomery, Ala., came to the floor, and other lawmakers provided their memories of the era as they spoke in support of the legislation.

“I recall watching President Lyndon Baines Johnson sign the 1965 act just off the chamber of the Senate,” said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and one of three current senators serving when the law was originally passed. “We knew that day we had changed the country forever, and indeed we had.”

    By a Vote of 98-0, Senate Approves 25-Year Extension of Voting Rights Act, NYT, 21.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/21/washington/21vote.html

Senate approves child abuse, predator bill

Thu Jul 20, 2006 7:33 PM ET
Reuters
By Joanne Kenen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved by voice vote bipartisan legislation to crack down on sexual predators and child abuse.

The bill would expand registers of offenders and toughen penalties for people who prey on children through crimes such as sex trafficking, abuse and pornography.

The House of Representatives is expected to give the measure final congressional approval next week so President George W. Bush can sign it into law.

"Sex offenders have run rampant in this country," said Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, a lead sponsor of the bill, adding Congress and the public were ready for a crackdown.

"This is about closing the door," said Delaware Democrat Joseph Biden, explaining that closing loopholes would stop "lowlifes from slipping through the cracks."

The bill was named for Adam Walsh, the little boy who was abducted and murdered 25 years ago next week. His father, John Walsh, became an anti-crime advocate and later the host of the popular television show, "America's Most Wanted."

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates that there are more than 560,000 registered sex offenders in the United States. About 100,000 are not registered or do not have up-to-date registrations.

The bill would establish a national sex offender registry, plugging holes and communication gaps in the existing state-by-state system. The register would be available to the public and easily searchable. An offender who does not register would face felony charges.

It would also create a registry for substantiated cases of child abuse or neglect to help law enforcement and child protective services. Arizona Republican Jon Kyl pushed for that provision.

Addressing growing concern about Internet predators and online pornography, the bill establishes grants to educate parents and youth, and expands by 200 the number of federal prosecutors working on such crimes.

    Senate approves child abuse, predator bill, R, 20.7.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-07-20T233300Z_01_N2089887_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-PREDATORS.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-politicsNews-3

First Bush Veto Maintains Limits on Stem Cell Use

July 20, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, July 19 — President Bush on Wednesday rejected legislation to expand federally supported embryonic stem cell research, exercising his first veto while putting himself at odds with many members of his own party and what polls say is a majority of the public.

By defying the Republican-controlled Congress, which had sent him legislation that would have overturned research restrictions he imposed five years ago, Mr. Bush re-inserted himself forcefully into a moral, scientific and political debate in which Republicans are increasingly finding common ground with Democrats.

The president laid out his reasoning in a written message to the House of Representatives, then announced his decision in the East Room of the White House, surrounded by babies born through in vitro fertilization using so-called “adopted embryos.’’

As the infants gurgled and fidgeted in their parents’ arms, Mr. Bush said the bill violated his principles on the sanctity of human life by encouraging the destruction of embryos left over from fertilization procedures. Proponents of the measure have argued that such embryos would be destroyed anyway.

“I felt like crossing this line would be a mistake, and once crossed we would find it almost impossible to turn back,’’ Mr. Bush said. “Crossing the line would needlessly encourage a conflict between science and ethics that can only do damage to both, and to our nation as a whole.’’

Until Wednesday, Mr. Bush was among just seven presidents — all of whom served before 1881 — who had never vetoed a piece of legislation. Four served only partial terms; the other three were John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams.

Within hours of the East Room ceremony, the House hurriedly took up a measure to override the veto, but the vote, 235 to 193, fell 51 short of the two-thirds majority required. Fifty-one Republicans, 183 Democrats and 1 independent voted to override, while 4 Democrats joined 179 Republicans in voting to keep the veto intact.

The vote put an end to the bill’s prospects for the year, but not to the stem cell debate, which has escalated into a major issue on Capitol Hill, with Democrats and Republicans alike predicting electoral repercussions in November.

“This is not some wedge issue; this is the soul of America,’’ said Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, who sponsored the bill Mr. Bush vetoed. “And this is a colossal mistake on the part of the president.’’

But beyond the principles involved, the White House had clearly calculated that it would have been more of a political mistake to sign the bill. Social conservatives, the heart of Mr. Bush’s base, had demanded the president keep his promise to veto any measure that altered the careful compromise he articulated in 2001. With Mr. Bush’s approval ratings hovering at about 40 percent, conservatives are more critical than ever to the president, and he cannot afford to arouse their ire.

“This is a profound moral issue,’’ said Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, after the White House ceremony. “The issue is whether or not it is morally right to use the taxpayer dollars of millions of pro-life Americans who find this research morally objectionable.’’

Yet the ground is shifting in the debate, and even Mr. Pence conceded that opponents of the research were ‘’losing the argument with the American people.’’ Republicans, even those like Mr. Bush who oppose abortion, are wrestling with whether embryos that are no bigger than a typographical period but regarded by some as human beings should be destroyed to save lives.

The issue reflects the complex nature of the politics of abortion and medical research in the United States today and is in some ways the flip side of the Democrats’ quandary over abortion. Just as medical advances like ultrasound imaging have spurred greater opposition to abortion, leading some Democrats to recalibrate their views, the promise of embryonic stem cell research has pushed some Republicans toward positions in which black-and-white beliefs about the sanctity of life have given way to more nuanced and ethically complex stances.

As baby boomers have aged, demanding the best medical treatments for themselves and their elderly parents, the public clamor for stem cell research has grown more intense. According to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan polling organization that tracks the issue, roughly two-thirds of all Democrats and independents favor embryonic stem cell research, while nearly half of all Republicans do.

That leaves Mr. Bush — who has not used his veto partly because Republicans have controlled both houses of Congress for nearly all of his presidency — at odds with many leaders of his own party. They include staunch abortion opponents like Senators Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, Gordon H. Smith of Oregon and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee. Already, some Republicans who opposed Mr. Bush on the stem cell issue are looking to the presidential elections of 2008.

“When there’s another election, another chapter of democracy opens,’’ Mr. Smith said in an interview. “Most of the candidates who have a shot at winning are in favor of stem cell research. This represents a delay en route, but I know where we’re going, and it’s where the American people want to go.’’

As the White House prepared for the East Room ceremony, advocates for patients who support stem cell research flooded the switchboard with calls urging Mr. Bush not to veto the bill.

“We were really hoping, because so many of the American people supported this research, that the president would take this opportunity to take a really big deep breath and reconsider,” said Kathy Lewis, president of the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, named for the late actor who was an outspoken advocate for the science.

In a sense, the issue has come full circle for Mr. Bush. The president devoted his first prime-time television address to the issue, becoming the first president to open the door to federal financing for the science.

Under the policy, which Mr. Bush announced on Aug. 9, 2001, the federal government pays for studies on stem cell colonies, or lines, created before that date, so that the government does not encourage the destruction of additional embryos. Mr. Bush said Wednesday that his administration had made more than $90 million available for such work.

The bill Mr. Bush vetoed would have allowed taxpayer-financed research on lines derived from embryos slated for destruction by fertility clinics. Mr. Bush also signed a “fetal farming” measure, barring trafficking in embryos and fetuses with the intent of harvesting body parts.

“These boys and girls are not spare parts,” the president said in a speech that was interrupted repeatedly by hoots of applause, and twice by standing ovations. “They remind us of what is lost when embryos are destroyed in the name of research.’’

In one respect, the veto plays to Mr. Bush’s personal strengths, reinforcing the perception that he is someone who makes up his mind and sticks to it, ignoring the polls. But Democrats are determined to make the veto a central theme of their fall election campaigns, hooking it in with another hugely divisive medical issue — the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case — to argue that Republicans are beholden to the religious right.

Within hours of the veto, the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, sent out a fund-raising letter asserting that Mr. Bush had decided that curing diseases “was not as important as catering to his right-wing base.” Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, put it this way: “This will be remembered as a Luddite moment in American history.”

Even Republicans concede the president’s action could hurt their candidates, particularly moderates like Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut, who face tough re-election contests.

“It paints us in a corner as more and more single issue, and more and more unreasonable,” said Ed Rollins, a Republican strategist. “This is the line that the president certainly doesn’t want Republicans to cross, but I think an awful lot of Republicans say this goes across common sense, this research has the potential of saving my father, my mother, or a friend, or curing cancer.”

    First Bush Veto Maintains Limits on Stem Cell Use, NYT, 20.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/20/washington/20bush.html?hp&ex=1153454400&en=5bd39aa1c9072bd1&ei=5094&partner=homepage

News Analysis

Stem Cell Bill Seen as a Qualified Boon for Research

July 19, 2006
The New York Times
By ANDREW POLLACK

A bill approved by the Senate yesterday to spur stem cell research would go a long way toward removing restrictions that have slowed progress, burdened laboratories with red tape, reduced American competitiveness and discouraged young researchers from entering the field, several leading stem cell scientists said.

Still, some of the scientists said, even if the legislation escaped a promised veto by President Bush, it would not remove all restrictions on federal financing of their work. And the legislation by itself would not immediately provide an overall increase in money for the research, just allow researchers to spend the money they have more broadly.

“It would make a major impact, but there wouldn’t likely be a windfall of funding in this area,’’ said Dr. Arnold Kriegstein, director of the Institute for Regeneration Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Some researchers hope the legislation would lead eventually to more financing, though the federal research budget has been tight.

The legislation would end a policy put in place by Mr. Bush that restricts federal financing for human embryonic stem cell research only to cell lines, or colonies, that were derived on or before Aug. 9, 2001, the day the policy was announced.

That would free scientists to use federal money to do experiments with many of the scores of stem cell lines that have been derived since then either in other countries or with private money in the United States. Federal financing would still be restricted to stem cell lines derived from embryos that were slated to be discarded by in vitro fertilization clinics.

Embryonic stem cells have the potential to turn into virtually any type of body cell. Scientists hope one day to produce tissues to repair the damage caused by Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and other diseases.

But creating the stem cells now involves the destruction of human embryos, which some people, including Mr. Bush, say is immoral. Supporters of the new bill do not appear to have enough votes to override a presidential veto, so the existing restrictions are likely to remain.

Scientists say those restrictions have been a big hindrance. There have turned out to be only about 20 cell lines that qualify for federal financing, not more than 60 as the government initially said in 2001.

Those older cell lines, because they were grown using animal cells or serum, might not be suitable for use as medical therapy. And over time some of the cells have accumulated genetic abnormalities that make them more difficult to use even for basic research.

“They are behaving bizarrely,’’ Dr. George Q. Daley, associate professor at Harvard and Children’s Hospital Boston, said of one of the cell lines his laboratory had been nurturing for five years.

Scientists have been able to derive and work with newer cell lines, but only by using private or state money. They have to segregate the work using the new cells from the federally financed work, causing duplication and red tape.

The University of California, San Francisco, for instance, is spending more than $5 million to set up a laboratory on campus, duplicating much of the equipment already available in other laboratories, Dr. Kriegstein said.

Even under the new legislation, scientists said, they could still not use federal money to create new cell lines if it involved the destruction of embryos. Nor could federal money be used for therapeutic cloning, in which stem cells are created from a body cell of a person.

Such therapeutic cloning might be used to create stem cells from people with specific diseases. It might also allow replacement tissues to be made that are genetically matched to a patient, so they would not be rejected when implanted. Both Harvard and California, San Francisco, have announced plans to do therapeutic cloning using private money.

Still, it is difficult to quantify how much the president’s policy has actually retarded research. Private donations worth tens of millions of dollars have filled the gap to some extent, though scientists say the federal government would be a larger and steadier source of money. A few states are also putting money into the field, the biggest by far being California, which is slated to spend $3 billion over 10 years, though the money is now held up by litigation.

“Scientists are tenacious and resourceful, so we figure out ways to get our work done regardless,’’ said Dr. Evan Snyder, professor and director of the stem cell program at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in San Diego.

Dr. Snyder said the field had progressed “exceptionally quickly,’’ though, he added, “We’d be at warp speed if we had federal funding.’’

Most scientists say it will be years before therapies from embryonic stem cells will be widely used, though some clinical trials could start within a few years. Some therapies derived from adult stem cells are already in use.

James Sherley, an associate professor of biological engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who objects to embryonic cell use on moral grounds, said adult stem cells “can do everything we need’’ to provide therapies. But many other scientists say there are problems in isolating and multiplying adult stem cells.

With the field still in an early stage, much can be learned about how stem cells behave using the approved cell lines or by working with animal stem cells or human adult stem cells, which are not subject to spending restrictions.

The National Institutes of Health, while spending only $38 million this fiscal year for human embryonic stem cell research, is spending $571 million on other forms of stem cell research.

“It’s not that this has just been five years of downtime,’’ said Dr. Steven Goldman, a professor of neurology at the University of Rochester. “Things have moved very quickly on parallel fronts.’’

Still, scientists say that as the research now moves closer toward deriving treatments, it will be important to be able to use newer cell lines, like those from people or embryos with specific diseases.

“The presidential lines are generic cell lines and they allow you to ask very generic questions,’’ Dr. Daley said. “The field has moved incredibly rapidly. We want to ask questions of real medical relevance.’’

There is evidence that the existing policies have led to a loss of American competitiveness in the field.

A couple of studies have suggested that the United States accounts for a smaller proportion of the world’s scientific papers on human embryonic stem cells than on other fields of biological research, or a smaller proportion in 2004 than in 2002.

The research has been “a little more robust outside the United States,’’ said Dr. Robert Goldstein, chief scientific officer of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International.

Still, some other factors could also be at work. Some scientists have said that research has been hindered somewhat by fundamental patents on human embryonic stem cells held by a foundation affiliated with the University of Wisconsin, where human embryonic stem cells were first isolated. Those patents are not in effect outside the United States.

Yesterday the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, a watchdog group in California, filed a request to the United States Patent and Trademark Office to invalidate the Wisconsin patents. The group, assisted by the Public Patent Foundation, said earlier work by other scientists had made the work done in Wisconsin obvious and not patentable.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation said it was confident that its patents were valid. It said that the patents did not inhibit research and that it had provided a free license and cells to 324 research groups.

    Stem Cell Bill Seen as a Qualified Boon for Research, NYT, 19.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/science/19cell.html?hp&ex=1153368000&en=4c2c1a2a91890f54&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Senate Approves a Stem-Cell Bill; Veto Is Expected

July 19, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, July 18 — Following two days of often personal debate, the Senate defied a veto threat by President Bush on Tuesday and approved legislation that would expand federal support of medical research using embryonic stem cells.

White House officials said Mr. Bush planned to veto the measure as early as Wednesday, ignoring the substantial support it won from Senate Republicans, including the majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee. It would be the first veto of Mr. Bush’s presidency.

Although the House passed the measure last year, the bill’s supporters do not appear to have the votes to override the veto, meaning the initiative stands almost no chance of making it into law this year.

But the Senate vote was an important moment in the evolving politics of stem cell research, which supporters say could hold the key to breakthroughs in dealing with a variety of medical conditions. Opponents say the bill would encourage the destruction of human embryos and lead the world down a dangerous ethical path. The vote was 63 to 37, with 19 Republicans joining all but one Democrat in support.

Mr. Bush has stood by his decision, announced in 2001, to allow the federal government to pay for research on a limited number of existing embryonic stem cell colonies, or lines.

The measure passed Tuesday could, if it became law, greatly expand the number of lines eligible for federal research financing by eliminating the specific restriction imposed by Mr. Bush five years ago. That restriction limited federal research money to lines created before Aug. 9, 2001. Mr. Bush’s restriction was intended to allow some federally financed research while not encouraging further destruction of embryos.

The issue has deeply divided Republicans, many of whom support expanded research on medical or political grounds or both. Backers of the bill pleaded publicly with Mr. Bush on Tuesday to reconsider his decision and allow the federal government to invest more substantially in research on stem cells derived from human embryos that would otherwise be discarded. They said the potential benefits of the research provided needed hope to Americans suffering from a variety of debilitating conditions.

“I can only say, Mr. President, don’t make the first veto you have ever made the veto which dashes these hopes,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California.

Senator Gordon H. Smith, Republican of Oregon and a member of the politically prominent Udall family, recalled the toll that Parkinson’s disease took on three members of his family, including a cousin, the late Representative Morris K. Udall.

“I appeal to my friend, President Bush, in the name of my Udall ancestry to please do not veto this bill,” Mr. Smith said. “To watch people die of such a malady is to instill in one’s heart a desire to err on the side of health, hope and healing, to find a cure if a cure can be found.”

Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said Tuesday that the president would veto the measure because of his belief that federal money should not be spent on research conducted on stem cells derived from human embryos. Mr. Snow said Mr. Bush considered that murder.

“The president is not going to get on the slippery slope of taking something that is living and making it dead for the purpose of research,” he said.

Mr. Snow said the president did intend to sign two other measures passed unanimously by the Senate on Tuesday — one that promotes efforts to obtain stem cells from sources other than embryos and a second that prohibits soliciting or receiving tissue from pregnancies initiated to provide material for research. But the House later threw a wrinkle into those plans when it failed to pass the measure encouraging the development of research on non-embryonic stem cells, leaving its fate in question for now. Democrats said the two secondary measures were a distraction intended to provide political cover to Republicans opposed to the expanded research on embryonic stem cells.

The bipartisan push for Mr. Bush to reconsider his veto threat was joined Tuesday by other prominent Republicans, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, who wrote to the president and urged him not to make his first veto “one that turns America backwards on the path of scientific progress.” Nancy Reagan, the former first lady, who was instrumental in lobbying for a Senate vote on the issue, issued a statement that did not address Mr. Bush directly but said, “Time is short, and life is precious, and I hope this promising research can now move forward.”

Opponents of the legislation said that medical science was already moving beyond the need to use embryonic stem cells and that they could not accept the idea of destroying a potential human life in exchange for potential medical advances.

“Ethical means that we don’t sacrifice life in order to do research to find out more,” said Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, an author of the measure encouraging an emphasis on alternative sources of stem cells.

Backers of the legislation said the embryos to be used would come from excess donations for in vitro fertilizations and would be destroyed if not made eligible for research purposes. They said federal dollars would not pay for the process of destroying the embryos to obtain the stem cells, but that the money and availability of new research material would stimulate medical advances. Senator Orrin G. Hatch, a Utah Republican who backed the measure, estimated the policy change could result in as many as 4,000 new stem cell lines becoming available for research through the National Institutes of Health.

“The current policy is eroding our national advantage on stem cell research,” said Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts. “We’re tying our scientists’ hands. We’re holding back our doctors.”

Members of both parties predicted the issue would resonate in this year’s Congressional elections because of widespread public support for the added research.

“The American people are watching, and they will not take kindly to seeing their last flicker of hope being extinguished,” said Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat seeking election to a full term after being appointed to office.

Despite nearly 150 veto threats, Mr. Bush has not sent a single piece of legislation back to Capitol Hill, where his Republican allies control both the House and Senate and have shied from such confrontations.

House members were so rusty with how to handle a veto override that Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio and the majority leader, was temporarily stumped Tuesday when pressed by reporters on what the exact procedure would be. The last measure subject to an override was a water projects bill rejected by President Bill Clinton in 2000.

Mr. Boehner was clear, however, that Republicans were eager to quickly dispose of the politically charged issue. “The sooner the House speaks to the issue,” he said, “the better.”

    Senate Approves a Stem-Cell Bill; Veto Is Expected, NYT, 19.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/washington/19stem.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Stem Cell Bill Nears Passage in the Senate

July 18, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, July 17 — The Senate moved Monday toward approval of expanded federal spending on medical research using embryonic stem cells, but the immediate results of the legislation were likely to be more political than scientific.

President Bush on Monday reiterated his intention to use the first veto of his presidency to kill the measure, which is scheduled for a vote on Tuesday afternoon. Though the legislation has broad bipartisan support in the House and the Senate, lawmakers said the House would be unable to override a veto, meaning the bill would not become law this year.

But Democrats, citing public opinion surveys showing that almost three out of four Americans back such research, say the issue is particularly potent with independent and more moderate Republican voters who could decide some of the most contested Congressional races this year. The issue has already emerged in Senate contests in Missouri, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio and is simmering in other Senate and House races.

“This will be one of the major issues of the campaign, and it is going to allow us to win voters we have not won before,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Republicans say the issue also helps motivate their conservative base.

Mr. Bush and other Republican opponents of the proposal say the potential medical advances being promised by its backers will offer false hope to some suffering Americans while encouraging the destruction of embryos that will provide the stem cells.

“The fact is, there is not one cure in this country today from embryonic stem cells,” said Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma and a physician.

But Mr. Coburn and other conservatives were clearly in the minority as both Republicans and Democrats said the expansion of research using stem cells could create new treatments for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord injuries.

Supporters said they were confident that they had the necessary 60 votes for approval but were uncertain that they could reach the 67 required to overturn a veto because of an intense lobbying campaign by conservative activists. On the proponents’ side, senators said, Nancy Reagan, the widow of former President Ronald Reagan, was also reaching out to lawmakers.

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and a chief supporter of the legislation, compared resistance to stem cell research to the skepticism that confronted Columbus and Galileo. Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader who brought the measure to the floor, said he believed that the current administration policy was too restrictive.

“We have to work together to allow science to advance,” said Mr. Frist, who is also a physician.

The White House issued a formal statement promising a veto on the ground that the “bill would compel all American taxpayers to pay for research that relies on the intentional destruction of human embryos for the derivation of stem cells, overturning the president’s policy that funds research without promoting such ongoing destruction.”

Under the proposal, the federal government would be allowed to support research on stem cells obtained from embryos donated for in vitro fertilization. Backers of the legislation say that only those embryos that would otherwise be discarded would be used and that the donors would have to provide written consent for the use of the embryos, now numbering about 400,000, that are stored at fertility clinics.

“So the choice is this,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, “throw them away or use them to ease suffering and, hopefully, cure diseases.”

Critics said that the measure would create incentives to destroy human embryos and that other types of research held similar potential without the corresponding ethical questions.

“We do not need to treat humans as raw material,” said Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas.

The Senate is also expected to vote Tuesday on two related measures, one that would encourage the creation of lines of stem cells without the destruction of human embryos and another that would prohibit the use of tissue from fetuses gestated for research, which the legislation described as “fetus farming.”

    Stem Cell Bill Nears Passage in the Senate, NYT, 18.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/washington/18stem.html

Senate takes up stem cell bill; Bush vows veto

Mon Jul 17, 2006 5:11 PM ET
Reuters
By Joanne Kenen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With President George W. Bush threatening his first veto, the Senate opened debate on Monday on a bill to expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell research beyond the narrow limits set by the president in 2001.

Advocates of expanded federally funded research, including Nancy Reagan, the widow of former President Ronald Reagan who had Alzheimer's disease, say the science holds enormous potential for new cures and treatments for a host of diseases, including diabetes, Parkinson's and spinal-cord injury.

Yet the research is politically volatile and ethically sensitive because extracting the cells involves the destruction of a human embryo.

Bush, who is against abortion, has vowed to veto the bill, possibly as soon as on Wednesday, a day after the Senate is expected to pass it. The White House repeated on Monday that Bush opposes using "federal taxpayer dollars to support and encourage the destruction of human life for research."

Advocates say the new legislation would allow the expanded research only on leftover embryos from fertility clinics that would otherwise be destroyed.

"It really is the right to life," California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein said of the scientific promise.

Bush in 2001 allowed federally funded research on 78 stem cell lines already in existence. But only about 20 proved useful for researchers, who complain they need more lines and that those available are unsuitable for use in human beings.

Under an unusual agreement struck by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican who broke with Bush on stem cells, the Senate took up a package of three-linked bills, all of which are expected to get the 60 votes required for passage.

MORALLY CHALLENGING

The embryonic bill passed the House but short of the needed two-thirds vote to override a veto.

Frist, a potential 2008 presidential contender, opposes abortion, but said the White House policy "unduly restricts" the cells available to researchers.

"I believe that embryonic stem cell research and adult stem cell research should be federally funded within a carefully regulated, fully transparent, fully accountable framework, ensuring the highest level of respect for the moral significance of the human embryo," Frist said.

Bush backs the other two bills, which the House plans to take up later this week.

One would ban "fetus farming," prohibiting anyone from implanting an embryo in the womb of a woman or animal for the purpose of extracting cells or tissue.

The other promotes alternative forms of stem cell research that do not entail destroying an embryo. Most senators say they will vote for the bill, but some Democrats say legislation is designed to give political cover for conservative Republicans because that research is already taking place.

Sean Tipton, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, which is pushing for embryonic stem cell research, said backing only the alternative bill "is an indefensible position for stalling progress in treating and curing diseases."

Conservative Republicans who back the alternative research and oppose the House-passed bill say advocates of the embryonic stem cell research are overstating its promise and ignoring the value of other research they say is less morally challenging.

"Embryonic stem cell research, which has not delivered any peer-reviewed treatments or human clinical trials, is immoral and unnecessary because of the much greater promise and track record of adult and cord blood stem cell research," Kansas Republican Sam Brownback said.

Stem cell experts say they want to pursue all avenues of research, and not favor one over the other.

    Senate takes up stem cell bill; Bush vows veto, R, 17.7.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-07-17T211026Z_01_N14455640_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-STEMCELLS.xml

Senate Appears Poised for Stem Cell Showdown

July 16, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, July 15 — Before Sept. 11 changed everything, President Bush wrestled publicly with the issue of embryonic stem cell research, then opened the door to federal financing for the science in the first major decision of his nascent administration.

Now, five years later, the stem cell debate is about to thrust Mr. Bush into a decision that could lead to another first for him: a legislative veto.

On Monday, the Senate will take up a measure approved by the House that would loosen the carefully calibrated research restrictions that Mr. Bush outlined on Aug. 9, 2001, in his first prime-time television address to the nation. If the bill passes, as expected, Mr. Bush says he will veto it, making good on a promise he made five days after that televised speech from his ranch in Crawford, Tex.

“I spent a lot of time on the subject,” Mr. Bush said at the time. “I laid out the policy I think is right for America. And I’m not going to change my mind.”

The president’s mind has not changed; his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, reiterated the veto threat this week. That keeps Mr. Bush in good stead with the religious conservatives who make up an important part of his base, but at odds with other leading Republicans, including Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, who is a heart-lung surgeon and has pushed to bring the measure to a vote.

“I think he has gotten some advice from the beginning from his advisers, and he knows that not to stick with that advice just means a lot of extra criticism,” Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, a leading Republican supporter of embryonic stem cell research, said of the president. “I have high hopes that down the road, we’ll be able to convince him that he’s on the wrong side of this issue.”

The bill would expand Mr. Bush’s policy by allowing the government to pay for studies on stem cell colonies, or lines, derived from embryos that are in cold storage at fertility clinics and scheduled for destruction. The current policy allows financing only on lines created before Aug. 9, 2001, Mr. Bush has said, so as not to encourage further destruction of embryos.

The coming week’s reprisal of a debate that Mr. Bush thought he had put to rest is exposing deep fissures among Republicans as the November elections draw near. Polls show that a majority of Americans support the research, and stem cells already figure prominently in several key races, among them a hard-fought re-election battle by Senator Jim Talent, Republican of Missouri, who opposes a state ballot initiative to protect the research and plans to vote against the Senate bill.

Nancy Reagan became an advocate for the research while caring for her husband, former President Ronald Reagan, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and died in 2004. Mrs. Reagan spent this week calling undecided senators to urge them to vote for the bill. While supporters say they have the 60 votes needed for approval, they are trying to secure 67, the number necessary to override a veto.

Whether they will succeed is unclear. With 55 Republicans, including staunch abortion opponents like Senators John Thune of South Dakota and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the Senate has become more conservative since the 2004 elections. Even so, Republicans across the spectrum, from Senator John W. Warner of Virginia to Senator Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, have signed on to the bill.

With a vote scheduled for Tuesday, the Republican-controlled Congress could soon be in the uncomfortable position of sending Mr. Bush a measure he will not sign.

Some, like Mr. Frist, seem resigned to it. “I have not tried to lobby him,” Mr. Frist said.

Others have, with little success. Mr. Hatch said he had tried indirectly, asking mutual friends to raise the issue with Mr. Bush. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and the lead Senate sponsor of the bill, said he had brought up the issue “when I’ve been alone with him, on the plane or in the car.”

The Republican sponsor of the bill in the House, Representative Michael N. Castle of Delaware, and his Democratic co-sponsor, Representative Diana DeGette of Colorado, asked in June to meet with Mr. Bush. They got a note back this week saying the president did not have time.

“I feel like the Titanic — somebody better throw me a lifeline real fast,” said Mr. Castle, who has pressed the issue for years. “This has become an intractable situation. I’ve been through a lot of political battles, but I don’t know quite how to turn this one around.”

The embryonic stem cell debate has yielded a complex collision of politics, religion and science since 1998, when James A. Thomson, a developmental biologist at the University of Wisconsin, became the first person to isolate the cells from human embryos.

Because the cells have the potential to grow into any tissue or organ in the body, scientists believe that they hold great promise for treatments and cures. But because human embryos are destroyed in extracting the stem cells, the studies draw intense objections from abortion opponents, including leaders of the Roman Catholic Church.

“It’s a very clear issue to the pro-life community,” said Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican and a leading opponent of the research. “Is the youngest human a person or a piece of property?”

Mr. Brownback and other opponents argue that adult stem cell research, in which cells are drawn from blood and bone marrow rather than from embryos, is more ethical and has yielded encouraging results. But scientists say embryonic stem cell research, still in its early stages, holds far greater potential.

In 2001, before the Sept. 11 attacks turned him into a wartime president, Mr. Bush grappled deeply with these issues, inviting scientists and ethicists into the Oval Office to discuss them.

“He was gathering information,” said Douglas A. Melton, director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, who met with Mr. Bush then. “I saw my job as to explain to the president the scientific potential and to make clear that this was an important issue. I’m not sure I succeeded.”

Those meetings stood in stark contrast to one held in March this year. Dr. Russell A. Foulk, a fertility specialist in Reno, Nev., said Mr. Frist invited him to lunch along with experts on other issues, including agriculture and weapons defense, and then arranged for the group to see the president in the Oval Office.

Much of the meeting was spent talking about the war, Dr. Foulk said. “My audience in regards to stem cell issues was very minor,” he said.

In the five years since the president’s decision, states, companies and private philanthropies have poured money into embryonic stem cell research. Scientists, including many outside the United States, have grown new lines that are more robust and easier to analyze.

Dr. Melton said he had developed 30 such lines, all from embryos collected for in vitro fertilization that would have been destroyed. All such embryos will be available to government-financed researchers if the pending Senate bill becomes law.

“Everything we’ve learned suggests that the goal of using stem cells to learn about disease and treat disease is very real and promising,” Dr. Melton said. “We haven’t learned anything that makes us think this won’t work, but it’s going to take time and resources.”

In the coming Senate debate, the bill to expand the president’s 2001 policy will be paired with two others. One would encourage the National Institutes of Health to finance alternatives to develop embryonic stem cell colonies without destroying embryos. The other, a so-called fetal farming bill sponsored by Mr. Brownback, is intended to prevent scientists from trying to grow fetuses outside human wombs for the purpose of harvesting body parts.

Mr. Brownback said he expected all three to pass.

Republicans who do not plan to vote for the bill to expand the 2001 policy say they believe that by voting for the other two, they can make a reasonable argument to voters that they support stem cell science. Among them is Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, who said, “I think it is very defensible, and I don’t think it will hurt anybody.”

Democrats say they intend to exploit the stem cell issue at every turn. “The Republican senators are torn between their evangelical constituency and their moderate constituency,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “Whichever way they vote, they’re in trouble.”

Some supporters of the research, like Mr. Specter, are holding out the slim hope that if the bill passes, Mr. Bush will find a way to sign it into law. Opponents say that notion is too far-fetched to contemplate.

As Mr. Brownback put it, “I can’t imagine that scenario.”

    Senate Appears Poised for Stem Cell Showdown, NYT, 16.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/washington/16stem.html

G.O.P. Senator Resisting Bush Over Detainees

July 18, 2006
The New York Times
By KATE ZERNIKE

WASHINGTON, July 17 — Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina often plays the contrarian, the conservative Republican willing to poke a stick in the eye of the White House.

Now Mr. Graham is playing an even higher-profile variant of that role, as the Senate’s foremost expert on military law in the midst of the emotional debate over what rights to provide to terror suspects.

A former military lawyer who is also a reserve judge on the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals, his influence is shaping up to be pivotal in forming the Congressional response to the Supreme Court ruling striking down the White House’s plan for bringing terror detainees to trial.

Mr. Graham advocates using the existing court-martial system as the basis for trying suspects, a position that has drawn fire from many other Republicans. They say it could cripple the government’s ability to protect the nation by giving detainees too many rights and making it harder to use highly classified intelligence against them.

But drawing on his own experience and a deep personal loyalty to the military justice system, Mr. Graham is working across party lines to try to assemble a consensus for his approach, saying it is sound legally and in terms of national security.

His views are shaped not only by his understanding of the law, but also by his respect for an institution he credits with changing his life, by shaping his career and allowing him to support his 13-year-old sister after his parents died when he was in college. His belief in the integrity of the military code has repeatedly led him to resist the White House when it comes to defining the treatment of people accused of being terrorists.

Last year, against the wishes of the Bush administration, he was one of the key forces in helping pass a ban on torture. Last week, he raised questions about the judicial nomination of William J. Haynes II, the Pentagon general counsel who helped write a memorandum that narrowly defined torture only as treatment that causes pain similar to death or major organ failure.

While some other Republicans argue that terrorists do not deserve legal or human rights, Mr. Graham has insisted that only a system grounded in the fundamental rights of the military code and the Geneva conventions will affirm the reputation of the United States abroad and protect American troops when they are captured by enemies.

“What I’m trying to do with my time in the Senate during this whole debate we’re having is to remind the Senate that the rules we set up speak more about us than it does the enemy,” Mr. Graham said in an interview. “The enemy has no rules. They don’t give people trials, they summarily execute them and they’re brutal, inhuman creatures. But when we capture one of them, what we do is about us, not about them.

“Do they deserve, the bad ones, all the rights that are afforded? No. But are we required to do it because of what we believe? Yes.”

Administration lawyers have argued for Congress simply to ratify the tribunals that the Supreme Court ruled that the president could not set up on his own.

Mr. Graham has fought back in his hyperkinetic, folksy way. Challenging the lawyers this week, he bounced in his chair, rolled his eyes, shook his head and raised his voice, warning at one point that if they pushed the president’s approach, “It’s going to be a long hot summer.”

“I’m a big fan of the Geneva Conventions,” he declared.

At a hearing last week, Mr. Graham backed up Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, as she prodded military lawyers to refute the claim of some Republicans that providing legal rights to terror suspects was tantamount to setting them free.

“Isn’t it correct,” Mr. Graham asked the panel, after making a polite interruption, “that you could be acquitted in a military commission and still be held as an enemy combatant — even if you’re acquitted?”

Nodding at Mrs. Clinton, he explained: “It goes to your point. You’re absolutely right.”

In an interview later, Mrs. Clinton called Mr. Graham’s position “a perfect example of when someone’s experience can be used to inform an issue.”

“He comes to it from his own experience and deeply held convictions about the importance of our military code of justice,” she said, “and an understanding as to the damage that has been done to our standing in general and the potential dangers in particular to our men and women in uniform.”

Mrs. Clinton said, “There isn’t anyone else in the Congress who can speak with such experience and authority.”

Mr. Graham, who turned 51 last week, grew up in the rooms behind the bar and liquor store his parents owned in Central, S.C., a textile town . The first in his family to go to college, he joined R.O.T.C. and wanted to fly but was disqualified by what he calls “lack of math ability and bad hearing.”

When his mother died when he was 21, the Air Force allowed him to continue his education instead of going into the service, so he could stay home. When his father died 15 months later, the service said he could attend law school in South Carolina so he could stay with his sister, and when he finished, the service posted him as a defense counsel to South Carolina so he could adopt her. After she went to college, he went to Europe as a military prosecutor.

“It changed my life,” he said of the military legal corps. “It exposed me to things. I got to spend four years in Europe. I was thrown into court as a young defense attorney doing things, with responsibilities you’d never have in the civilian world as a lawyer.”

Mr. Graham was elected to the House in 1994, where he became widely known for his role as a manager of the impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton. He was elected to the Senate in 2002.

Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Armed services Committee, has, along with Senator John McCain of Arizona, been one of Mr. Graham’s Republican allies in bucking the White House on the torture issue. “In an extraordinary way,” Mr. Warner said, “he overcame many obstacles and misfortunes that others never could imagine. His goals posts in life are to do what’s best for the country, what’s best for the military.”

From his time on the defense, Mr. Graham says, he learned that the system provides fairness; from his time as a prosecutor, he came to see the importance of military discipline.

For that reason, he said, it is important that soldiers continue to be trained using the Geneva Conventions, even in a war against a new kind of enemy.

“If a marine caught Osama bin Laden tomorrow, they’re all trained to treat everyone as a prisoner of war under Geneva,” he said. “You don’t want to change that, because you don’t want to confuse your troops out there.”

It becomes trickier, Mr. Graham said, when coming up with the rules for interrogation. He argues that Congress must define what the conventions mean by “humiliating” or “degrading” treatment.

Still, he disputes the assertion of some Republicans that using the court-martial system will result in soldiers’ having to stop in the middle of capturing a terrorist to read him his Miranda rights.

“That’s an offense to the military legal community, who’s telling us there’s a better way, to suggest that that better way would hamper us,” he said. “It’s political rhetoric that’s got to stop.”

His position has met resistance from many of his fellow Republicans. To them, using the military justice system means giving terrorists the same rights as the troops who fight them. Senator John Thune of South Dakota is among the Republicans who have expressed qualms.

“I think that people across the country, as they listen to this debate, are going to apply what is, I think, a very common-sense standard to this,” Mr. Thune said.

He said he preferred the administration’s original plan to establish tribunals that did not rest on the Geneva Conventions.

But Mr. Graham believes Republicans in Congress and the administration will ultimately work to come up with a system that starts with the military code. Mr. . Graham says he is hearing three or four appeals as a military judge. But his own status is pending; a defense lawyer has challenged whether he can be a military judge and serve in the Senate. He laughs as he says he expects the case to be resolved by the military court system soon.

“I disagree, but I may have been wrong,” he said. “Here I am on the receiving end, and I have nothing but respect for it.”

    G.O.P. Senator Resisting Bush Over Detainees, NYT, 18.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/washington/18graham.html?hp&ex=1153281600&en=f92c168f97d4a1de&ei=5094&partner=homepage

White House Agrees to Eavesdropping Review, Specter Says

July 13, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:29 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House has conditionally agreed to a court review of its controversial eavesdropping program, Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter said Thursday.

Specter said President Bush has agreed to sign legislation that would authorize the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to review the constitutionality of the National Security Agency's most high-profile monitoring operations.

''You have here a recognition by the president that he does not have a blank check,'' the Pennsylvania Republican told his committee

Since shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, the NSA has been eavesdropping on the international calls and e-mails of people inside the United States when terrorism is suspected. Breaking with historic norms, the president authorized the actions without a court warrant.

The disclosure of the program in December sparked outrage among Democrats and civil liberties advocates who said Bush overstepped his authority as president.

Specter said the legislation, which has not yet been made public, was the result of ''tortuous'' negotiations with the White House since June.

''If the bill is not changed, the president will submit the Terrorist Surveillance Program to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,'' Specter said. ''That is the president's commitment.''

It wasn't immediately clear how strong or enduring the judicial oversight would be.

An administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the bill's language gives the president the option of submitting the program to the intelligence court, rather than making the review a requirement.

The official said that Bush will submit to the court review as long the bill is not changed, adding that the legislation preserves the right of future presidents to skip the court review.

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee's senior Democrat, said Bush could submit the program to the court right now, if he wished. He called the potential legislation ''an interesting bargain.''

''He's saying, if you do every single thing I tell you to do, I'll do what I should have done anyway,'' Leahy said.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the administration still does not believe changes in law are necessary, but added that it remains willing to work with Congress.

''The key point in the bill is that it recognizes the president's constitutional authority,'' she said. ''It modernizes (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) to meet the threat we face from an enemy who kills with abandon.''

Specter told the committee that the bill, among other things, would:

-- Require the attorney general to give the intelligence court information on the program's constitutionality, the government's efforts to protect Americans' identities and the basis used to determine that the intercepted communications involve terrorism.

--Expand the time for emergency warrants secured under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act from three to seven days.

--Create a new offense if government officials misuse information.

--At the NSA's request, clarify that international calls that merely pass through terminals in the United States are not subject to the judicial process established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The administration official, who asked not to be identified because discussions are still ongoing, said the bill also would give the attorney general power to consolidate the 100 lawsuits filed against the surveillance operations into one case before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Specter did not explain to his committee that detail, which is likely to raise the ire of civil liberties groups.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in an interview that Specter's agreement with the White House raises the ''thorny question'' about whether the content of conversations should be subject to individual courts warrants.

''I really need to see the bill,'' said Feinstein, one of a select group of lawmakers who has been fully briefed on the monitoring operations.

    White House Agrees to Eavesdropping Review, Specter Says, NYT, 13.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Eavesdropping.html?hp&ex=1152849600&en=2441c18a3f8da880&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Senate Votes to Replace FEMA With a New Federal Agency

July 12, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, July 11 — The Senate voted 87 to 11 Tuesday night to create a new federal entity to replace the much-criticized Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The Senate’s action came in the form of an amendment to the domestic security budget bill. The new agency, called the Emergency Management Authority, would remain in the Homeland Security Department into which FEMA, which once had cabinet status, was merged in 2003. But in times of major disasters, the new agency would report directly to the president.

The Senate also voted on Tuesday to amend the proposed $32.8 billion domestic security spending bill by adding another $648 million for port security to pay for more equipment and personnel to inspect ship containers, and an extra $350 million for border security to buy aircraft and vehicles to help border patrol agents and to enhance border fences.

Final passage of the bill by Congress is far from assured. The House is still considering legislation proposed by Representative Don Young, Republican of Alaska, that would keep FEMA but move it outside the Homeland Security Department, returning it to the more prominent, stand-alone status it had during the Clinton administration.

Senators Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, who co-sponsored the legislation to change the agency, said the agency’s performance after Hurricane Katrina last year was such a national embarrassment that the federal government had no option but to abolish it and replace it with an agency that had new powers and a new name.

The Senate bill would also reunite agencies assigned to help prepare for disasters or terrorist attacks with those that respond and help cities or states recover from them, functions now split in different parts of the Homeland Security Department. And it would require creation of larger, better-staffed regional emergency management offices for the new Emergency Management Agency.

“It is not business as usual, but rather a dramatic reform of FEMA,” Ms. Collins said after the vote.

The Department of Homeland Security, which has opposed totally removing the functions handled by FEMA from its control, as one House bill proposes, ended up supporting the Senate legislation, saying it “wisely reinforces D.H.S.’s ability to operate as a comprehensive, all-hazards agency by keeping FEMA’s capabilities within D.H.S.”

    Senate Votes to Replace FEMA With a New Federal Agency, NYT, 12.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/washington/12fema.html

Once an Enemy, Health Industry Warms to Clinton

July 12, 2006
The New York Times
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ and ROBERT PEAR

When she tried to overhaul the nation’s health care system as first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton alienated some people and institutions in the health care industry by championing a huge expansion of the federal role. She provoked a fierce reaction from the industry, which mocked her proposal in television advertisements and dispatched lobbyists who ultimately helped kill the plan.

But times change. As she runs for re-election to the Senate from New York this year and lays the groundwork for a possible presidential bid in 2008, Mrs. Clinton is receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from doctors, hospitals, drug manufacturers and insurers. Nationwide, she is the No. 2 recipient of donations from the industry, trailing only Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a member of the Republican leadership.

Some of the same interests that tried to derail Mrs. Clinton’s health care overhaul are providing support for her Senate re-election bid. The Health Insurance Association of America ran the famous “Harry and Louise” commercials mocking the Clinton health care plan as impenetrably complex. Some companies that were members of that group are now donating to Mrs. Clinton.

Charles N. Kahn III, a Republican who was executive vice president of the Health Insurance Association in 1993 and 1994, now works with the senator on some issues as president of the Federation of American Hospitals, a lobby for hospital companies like HCA and Tenet. He describes his battles with the first lady as “ancient history,” and he said health care executives were contributing to her now because “she is extremely knowledgeable about health care and has become a Congressional leader on the issue.”

Senator Clinton has received $150,600 in contributions from insurance and pharmaceutical companies, which she accused in 1993 of “price gouging” and “unconscionable profiteering.”

The financial support is an intriguing turn of events for a political figure who became a pariah for many in the health care industry after President Bill Clinton appointed her to head the Task Force on National Health Care Reform. The recommendations spawned by that panel — calling for universal health care, minimum coverage requirements and potential limits on health care spending increases — were derided as “Hillarycare” by opponents and arguably cost Democrats control of the House of Representatives in the 1994 midterm elections.

The rapprochement partly reflects how Mrs. Clinton has moderated her positions from more than a decade ago, proposing legislation to increase Medicare payments or stave off cuts in payments to doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, managed care companies and home health agencies.

She has introduced a bill to lower the cost of malpractice insurance for doctors who disclose medical errors to patients. With strong support from the industry, she has pushed legislation to promote the adoption of health information technology. Providers and consumers praise her efforts to expand insurance coverage for mental health care and to finance long-term care for older Americans living at home.

Mrs. Clinton often disarms health care groups by saying she learned from her past wars. “We tried to do too much too fast 12 years ago, and I still have the scars to show for it,” she said in an address in March before the annual conference of the Federation of American Hospitals.

While some people in the health care industry are still wary of Senator Clinton, many say they see her as the likely next Democratic presidential nominee and are moving to influence her agenda on an issue that polls indicate is of growing concern to voters.

Frederick H. Graefe, a health care lawyer and lobbyist in Washington for more than 20 years, said, “People in many industries, including health care, are contributing to Senator Clinton today because they fully expect she will be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2008.”

“If the usual rules apply,” Mr. Graefe said, early donors will “get a seat at the table when health care and other issues are discussed.”

Tellingly, one of her fund-raisers in the industry is a Republican, William R. Abrams, executive vice president of the Medical Society of the State of New York.

Some Republicans accuse Senator Clinton of political opportunism in courting old foes. Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, questioned the sincerity of Senator Clinton’s new, more pragmatic approach on health care.

“This reveals that Hillary Clinton is a politician more concerned with campaign contributions than policies she claims to support,” Ms. Schmitt said of the senator’s efforts to court the health care industry. In fact, during her 2000 Senate campaign, she sharply criticized her opponent, Rick A. Lazio, as being beholden to the pharmaceutical industry for taking donations from drugmakers.

Kenneth E. Raske, the president of the Greater New York Hospital Association and a Clinton fund-raiser, said the relationship between Mrs. Clinton and some industry leaders got off to a “rocky start” in the early 1990’s. But, he said, many now believe that she was right in what she said about problems plaguing the industry, and think she is in a strong position to take a lead on the issue once again.

“I think right now the issue of health insurance and the worries of the American public about losing insurance are a political gold vein waiting to be tapped,” Mr. Raske said. “You have to think health care is going to be a major issue in ’08.”

Separate analyses by the Center for Responsive Politics, an independent group that tracks campaign finance, and by The New York Times show that Senator Clinton has received $854,462 from the health care industry in 2005-6, a larger amount than any candidate except Senator Santorum, with $977,354. Other industries have opened their wallets to Senator Clinton, a formidable fund-raiser. But none warred with her as the health care industry did.

Contributions to Senator Clinton over the last 18 months include more than $431,000 from doctors and other health care professionals and more than $142,000 from hospitals and nursing homes.

For example, she has received $1,000 from America’s Health Insurance Plans, the main lobby for insurers; $1,000 from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association; $7,770 from Pfizer and its employees; $10,500 from Roche Group and its workers; and a total of $16,000 from three big companies that manage prescription drug benefits under Medicare and private health plans: Caremark Rx, Express Scripts and Medco Health Solutions.

While the health care industry was among her top supporters in her 2000 Senate race, the trend has accelerated in 2006 as her political prominence has grown and as she has become an important legislative player on health care issues. With about four months left before Election Day, Senator Clinton has already raised more money in this campaign from the health care industry than she did in her 2000 run.

Senator Clinton has received more money from health care providers than from insurers, in part because she has been more outspoken in support of the providers, while criticizing insurers from time to time. But the fact that she has received tens of thousands of dollars from insurance companies and their employees underscores the shift in their view of her. Beyond that, Mrs. Clinton, a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, has been helpful to insurers in New York, responding to their concern that they were not being adequately paid for their participation in Medicare.

State Senator Kemp Hannon, a Long Island Republican who is chairman of the Health Committee in Albany, expressed surprise at the amount of money that the industry, particularly insurers, had pumped into Senator Clinton’s campaign coffers.

But upon reflection, he said, it makes sense, given that many in the industry regard her as an authority on health care who can help advance the industry’s agenda. “She’s already paid the intellectual dues of struggling to learn the system,” he said.

Some health care providers are giving more money to Republican candidates over all, but they are hedging their bets by donating to Senator Clinton as well.

“Regardless of any future office she may seek, she will be a player on the national scene for as long as she wants to be,” said Mr. Abrams, the executive at the New York medical society.

Last year Mr. Abrams and Mr. Raske, the head of the hospital association in New York, held an event in New York City that raised tens of thousands of dollars for Senator Clinton from dozens of prominent doctors and hospital executives.

Mrs. Clinton has changed her style and toned down criticism of the industry in speeches about health care. But her audiences still see flashes of the old populism.

Speaking to a conference of the American Medical Association in Washington this year, she said, “Money is leaking or even escaping out of the health care system in record profits for pharmaceutical and insurance companies.”

Also, hospital executives now say they welcome Senator Clinton’s attention to the plight of the uninsured — a problem that has severely strained the finances of many hospitals.

Carol A. McDaid, a health care lobbyist in Washington, said she recommended that clients consider making contributions to Mrs. Clinton because the senator had been a champion for health care providers and the people they served.

In the early 1990’s, many health care executives said her proposals would strangle them with red tape and endanger the quality of care.

Mr. Abrams said that Senator Clinton now “understands that change is incremental,” compared with her stance in the 1990’s, when she proposed immediate and sweeping changes.

Of Senator Clinton’s image within the health care industry, Mr. Abrams said, “To the degree skeptics were there, I think she has dispelled any of the skepticism.”

Aron Pilhofer contributed reporting for this article.

    Once an Enemy, Health Industry Warms to Clinton, NYT, 12.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/nyregion/12donate.html?hp&ex=1152763200&en=a1c69cd5337a6535&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush's Use of Authority Riles Senator

June 28, 2006
The New York Times
By KATE ZERNIKE

WASHINGTON, June 27 — Senators on the Judiciary Committee accused President Bush of an "unprecedented" and "astonishing" power grab on Tuesday for making use of a device that gave him the authority to revise or ignore more than 750 laws enacted since he became president.

By using what are known as signing statements, memorandums issued with legislation as he signs it, the president has reserved the right to not enforce any laws he thinks violate the Constitution or national security, or that impair foreign relations.

A lawyer for the White House said that Mr. Bush was only doing his duty to uphold the Constitution. But Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, characterized the president's actions as a declaration that he "will do as he pleases," without regard to the laws passed by Congress.

"There's a real issue here as to whether the president may, in effect, cherry-pick the provisions he likes and exclude the ones he doesn't like," Mr. Specter said at a hearing.

"Wouldn't it be better, as a matter of comity," he said, "for the president to have come to the Congress and said, 'I'd like to have this in the bill; I'd like to have these exceptions in the bill,' so that we could have considered that?"

Mr. Specter and others are particularly upset that Mr. Bush reserved the right to interpret the torture ban passed overwhelmingly by Congress, as well as Congressional oversight powers in the renewal of the Patriot Act.

Michelle Boardman, a deputy assistant attorney general, said the statements were "not an abuse of power."

Rather, Ms. Boardman said, the president has the responsibility to make sure the Constitution is upheld. He uses signing statements, she argued, to "save" statutes from being found unconstitutional. And he reserves the right, she said, only to raise questions about a law "that could in some unknown future application" be declared unconstitutional.

"It is often not at all the situation that the president doesn't intend to enact the bill," Ms. Boardman said.

The fight over signing statements is part of a continuing battle between Congress and the White House. Mr. Specter and many Democrats have raised objections to the administration's wiretapping of phones without warrants from the court set up to oversee surveillance.

Last month, Mr. Specter accused Vice President Dick Cheney of going behind his back to avoid the Judiciary Committee's oversight of surveillance programs.

"Where will it end?" asked Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. "Where does it stop?"

The bills Mr. Bush has reserved the right to revise or ignore include provisions that govern affirmative action programs, protect corporate whistle-blowers, require executive agencies to collect certain statistics, and establish qualifications for executive appointees.

Senators and two law professors before the panel said that if the president objected to a bill, he should use his power to veto it — something he has not done in his six years in office.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said the expansion of executive power would be the "lasting legacy" of the Bush administration. "This new use of signing statements is a means to undermine and weaken the law," she said.

What the president is saying, she added, is "Congress, what you do isn't really important; I'm going to do what I want to do."

Ms. Boardman said the president had inserted 110 statements, which senators said applied to 750 statutes, compared with 30 by President Jimmy Carter. The number has increased, she said, but only marginally, and only because national security concerns have increased since the attacks of Sept. 11 and more laws have been passed. She acknowledged that the increase might be construed as "a lack of good communication" with Congress.

But Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said the committee was making too much of the statements. "It is precedented," he said, "and it's not new."

Senators said they had been expecting a higher-ranking official from the office of legal policy, and Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the committee, chastised the White House for not sending "anybody who would have authority to speak on this."

"But then, considering the fact that they're using basically an extra-constitutional, extra-judicial step to enhance the power of the president, it's not unusual," he said.

    Bush's Use of Authority Riles Senator, NYT, 28.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/28/washington/28sign.html

Flag Amendment Narrowly Fails in Senate Vote

June 28, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, June 27 — A proposed Constitutional amendment to allow Congress to prohibit desecration of the flag fell a single vote short of approval by the Senate on Tuesday, an excruciatingly close vote that left unresolved a long-running debate over whether the flag is a unique national symbol deserving of special legal standing.

The 66-to-34 vote on the amendment was one vote short of the 67 required to send the amendment to the states for potential ratification as the 28th Amendment. It was the closest proponents of the initiative have come in four Senate votes since the Supreme Court first ruled in 1989 that flag burning was a protected form of free speech.

The opponents — 30 Democrats, 3 Republicans and an independent — asserted that the amendment would amount to tampering with the Bill of Rights in an effort to eliminate relatively rare incidents of burning the flag. They said it violated the very freedoms guaranteed by the symbolism of the flag.

"This objectionable expression is obscene, it is painful, it is unpatriotic," said Senator Daniel Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat who won the Medal of Honor for his service in World War II. "But I believe Americans gave their lives in many wars to make certain all Americans have a right to express themselves, even those who harbor hateful thoughts."

Proponents of the amendment, which was backed by 52 Republicans and 14 Democrats, disputed the assertion that burning the flag was a form of speech. They said the amendment was simply an effort to reassert Congressional authority after a misguided court ruling. They said it was particularly appropriate to act now when American troops are at risk.

"Old Glory lost today," said Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, who scheduled the debate and vote in the week before Congress broke for its Fourth of July recess.

The full text of the proposed amendment is, "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States."

The vote is likely to be an issue in the Congressional elections in November, and Senator Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican who was the chief sponsor of the amendment, predicted the minority who opposed it would be held accountable by the voters.

"I think this is getting to where they are not going to be able to escape the wrath of the voters," Mr. Hatch said.

Eleven senators facing re-election this year opposed the amendment and several are facing potentially difficult races, including Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, a Republican, and the Democrats Daniel K. Akaka of Hawaii, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Maria Cantwell of Washington and Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut.

The leader of the Citizens Flag Alliance, which had been running newspaper advertisements on the issue in selected states, said it would continue to press the issue and make sure voters know where their senators stand on the amendment.

"I think this is the right thing to do, and I am going to keep at it until we run out of money or they tell me to stop," said Daniel S. Wheeler, an American Legion official who leads the advocacy group.

Prior to the vote on the amendment itself, the Senate voted 64 to 36 against a proposed bill that would have criminalized flag desecration. Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second ranking Senate Democrat, said his plan had been written to avoid Supreme Court objections, but backers of the constitutional approach dismissed that idea.

President Bush, whose father was president when the flag fight initially erupted in the aftermath of two high court rulings, said he was disappointed in the outcome. "I commend the senators from both parties who voted to allow the amendment ratification process to protect our flag to go forward, and continue to believe that the American people deserve the opportunity to express their views on this important issue."

The House has routinely approved the flag amendment on bipartisan votes and did so last year. Had the Senate passed the amendment, it would have been likely to win ratification from the required 38 states since, supporters say, all states have endorsed the amendment in some form.

While the amendment gained three votes since it was last considered in 2000, its future prospects are uncertain. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, is in line to become the Republican leader in the next Congress, and he opposes the initiative on free speech grounds. In addition, most analysts expect Republicans to lose Senate seats in the November election.

"This would have been the easiest time to get it through," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who opposed it.

The vote, which came after the Senate earlier this month defeated a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, will not be the last ideologically charged vote in the run-up to the midterm elections. The House Republican leadership announced Tuesday that it plans votes this summer on social issues, including a same-sex marriage amendment, abortion rights, Internet gambling, property rights and the Pledge of Allegiance.

"The American Values Agenda will defend America's founding principles," Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said. "Through this agenda, we will work to protect the faith of our people, the sanctity of life and freedoms outlined by our founding fathers."

And the House on Tuesday approved on a voice vote a proposal that would prohibit condominium associations and other homeowner groups from preventing residents from displaying the flag.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has been deeply involved in opposing the amendment for years, credited the senators who took a potentially politically tough vote to block it.

"The Senate came close to torching our Constitution, but luckily it came through unscathed," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the organization's Washington legislative office. "We applaud those brave senators who stood up for the First Amendment and rejected this damaging and needless amendment."

Besides senators up for re-election, the issue also divided lawmakers considered possible presidential candidates in 2008. Those voting yes included Mr. Frist, George Allen of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona, Sam Brownback of Kansas and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, all Republicans, and Evan Bayh of Indiana, a Democrat. Voting no on the Democratic side were Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin and John Kerry of Massachusetts.

    Flag Amendment Narrowly Fails in Senate Vote, NYT, 28.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/28/washington/28flag.html?hp&ex=1151553600&en=f83a4d98b77907b4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Senator Clinton and Liberals Split Over Flag Desecration

June 28, 2006
The New York Times
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT

WASHINGTON, June 27 — Perhaps even more than her stance on the war in Iraq, it is Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's position on flag desecration that has drawn the scorn of the liberal Democratic base.

When Mrs. Clinton took a stand on the matter last year — co-sponsoring legislation that would have criminalized the desecration of the American flag even as she opposed a constitutional amendment that sought to achieve the same end — she was pilloried from the left. Editorial boards criticized her for political maneuvering, the political commentator Arianna Huffington attacked her for "stars, stripes and triangulation" and even some of her supporters quietly wondered why she had gone out on a limb on such a controversial issue.

On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton played a leading role in the flag-burning debate once again, co-sponsoring a measure similar to her previous one as an alternative to the constitutional amendment that was about to come up for a vote in the Senate.

"Fortunately, we have an opportunity to protect our flag in a bipartisan and constitutional way," Mrs. Clinton said in her floor speech.

The measure, brought to the floor by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, failed, 64 to 36, minutes before the proposed amendment fell short of the 67 votes it needed.

With more than half of Democrats supporting the measure, the outcome suggested that Mrs. Clinton's approach had plenty of adherents within her party, and that while she might have tried the patience of her core liberal supporters, she remained within the Democratic fold as she prepared for a possible presidential race.

The divergent views of her position reflect a broader rift in the Democratic Party over whether the key to electoral success rests in winning over centrists or by drawing clear distinctions with Republicans by staking out unapologetically liberal positions.

"What's politically pragmatic isn't always what's pleasing to the left," said Steve McMahon, a Democratic consultant. "But pragmatism is what wins elections for Democrats."

Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, gave Mrs. Clinton credit for trying to give Democrats a viable alternative to amending the Constitution to ban flag desecration.

"This is an effort to try to take into account the people on the left by narrowing" the proposal, Mr. Frank said. "I still disagree with it. But it's clearly a move away from the constitutional amendment, rather than toward it."

Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts and a former presidential nominee, voted for the measure, which closely resembled past efforts to pre-empt an amendment to the Constitution. Democrats who voted for the measure in effect bought themselves the right to claim that they had voted against flag desecration, potentially inoculating themselves against possible charges of lacking patriotism in a general election campaign. The broader measure to amend the Constitution failed by a single vote, 66 to 34.

Ms. Huffington was not mollified.

"It seems in line with her stance on so many issues — trying to strike right in the middle and triangulate, by not supporting the amendment because that would upset the base too much and at the same time supporting a legislative proposal that will appeal to the center," she said of Mrs. Clinton. "It's a truly tragic way of leading."

    Senator Clinton and Liberals Split Over Flag Desecration, NYT, 28.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/28/washington/28hillary.html

Senate Rejects Calls to Begin Iraq Pullback

June 23, 2006
The New York Times
By KATE ZERNIKE

WASHINGTON, June 22 — The Senate on Thursday roundly rejected two Democratic proposals to begin pulling troops out of Iraq, as Republicans and Democrats staked out starkly different positions heading into Congressional elections this fall.

The more far-reaching measure, calling for all United States combat troops to be withdrawn within a year, failed 86 to 13, with no Republican supporters.

An alternative, backed by the Democratic leadership and calling for troop withdrawals to begin by the end of the year without setting a deadline for complete withdrawal, was also defeated, 60 to 39, with one Republican voting with the Democrats and six Democrats joining the Republican majority.

With a Republican-controlled Senate, Democrats had expected the loss, but even in defeat, they declared themselves on the same side as the majority of Americans.

"The Republicans stand alone that there should be no plan and no end in Iraq," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. "They want an open-ended commitment, and the American people and the Senate Democrats cannot agree to an open-ended commitment."

Republicans lined up squarely behind President Bush, whom Senator John W. Warner of Virginia lauded during the debate as the most "resolute" he has known. Mr. Warner said supporting the president would be "one of the most of the important votes" senators would cast.

"Future generations of Americans will look back upon this very moment to determine how two branches of our government, the legislative and the executive, today stand side by side, honoring those who've given their lives," said Mr. Warner, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The debate in the Senate, like one in the House last week, was highly emotional. Republicans taunted Democrats for "cutting and running." The Democrats themselves struggled, and failed, to come to a consensus about how fast to pull out troops. Several senators began the debate by calling for an end to partisan rancor. But more ignored that call.

Democrats, believing that polls show a majority of Americans want troops to begin coming home, mocked Republicans after the vote as being a "rubber stamp" for Mr. Bush.

"Whatever the White House wants, all the Republicans but one are in lockstep behind," said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee and a sponsor of the amendment without a fixed date for withdrawal.

In nearly 12 hours of debate, Democrats argued that three years of war had cost too many lives and too much money, and that Iraqis would take charge of their country only if the United States withdrew what Democrats characterized as a "security blanket."

Republicans portrayed Iraq as the center of the war on terrorism, and said pulling out any troops would leave a void that would be filled by insurgents and terrorists. The Republican leader, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, called any troop withdrawal "dangerous, reckless and shameless."

"Withdrawal is not an option," Mr. Frist said. "Surrender is not a solution."

The Bush administration, recognizing that the war will be a major issue in the elections in November, worked hard to make sure that Republicans in Congress stood up for the war.

White House officials met with Congressional leaders to persuade them to speak forcefully in its favor, and the Pentagon sent a 74-page "prep book" to Congressional Republicans outlining "rapid response" talking points to help them counter arguments that the war had been based on flawed intelligence or had been badly executed.

Senate Democrats stood after the vote in front of a giant poster with the headline "The Bush Plan on Iraq" over a big, blank space. And they dismissed Republican accusations that the Democrats were divided.

"We may disagree or agree but we've got a plan," said Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware. "Republicans are totally united in a failed policy."

Democrats repeatedly cited an opinion article published this week by the Iraqi national security adviser, saying that the removal of American troops would help Iraq, legitimizing the Iraqi government in the eyes of its people.

They argued that committing so many troops to Iraq was weakening the military's ability to fight in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

But Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said Afghanistan should offer a lesson, because the Taliban — and later Al Qaeda — took root there after United States forces withdrew in the 1980's.

The Democrats' first amendment, sponsored by Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, would have required all combat troops be pulled out by July 2007. The senators argued that only a firm timetable would prod the Iraqis to take control of their own country.

"All of us support the troops," said Mr. Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004. "The best way to support the troops is to get this policy right."

The Democratic leadership preferred the bill sponsored by Mr. Levin and Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, which was a nonbinding "sense of the Senate" resolution calling for troops to begin leaving Iraq this year, and for Mr. Bush to present Congress with a plan for a complete withdrawal of combat troops.

Last year, Senate Democrats and Republicans joined to overwhelmingly pass a resolution declaring that 2006 would be a "year of significant transition" toward making Iraq sovereign. Democrats said their amendments voted on Thursday were merely refining and carrying out that promise.

But the Republicans said they could not cooperate this time, and none of them crossed lines to vote with the Kerry-Feingold proposal. One Republican, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, voted for the Levin-Reed amendment; Mr. Chafee is in a tough re-election fight in an area where antiwar sentiment runs high. (Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia did not vote because he was absent following surgery.) Six Democrats voted against the Levin-Reed amendment, including Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut.

    Senate Rejects Calls to Begin Iraq Pullback, NYT, 23.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/washington/23cong.html

Senators Begin Debate on Iraq, Visions in Sharp Contrast

June 22, 2006
The New York Times
By KATE ZERNIKE

WASHINGTON, June 21 — More than three years after it cast the votes setting the nation on the course to the war in Iraq, the Senate on Wednesday began the first extended debate on whether the time had come to end that war.

With polls showing that Americans believe the war is going badly but are ambivalent about how to respond, both Democrats and Republicans worry about how it will affect elections in November. They staked out starkly different visions in the debate. Democrats insisted that the war had cost too much and that the United States must begin pulling troops out, while Republicans equated any withdrawal with retreat.

"The majority of Americans would like to see a deadline for withdrawal," said Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and a sponsor of a proposal to begin moving some troops out of Iraq this year. "They're not unpatriotic, they're not without grit and determination. They're terribly concerned, and they're looking for leadership."

But Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, called any withdrawal of troops "a significant step on the road to disaster."

"The options on the table have been there from the beginning," he said. "Withdraw and fail, or commit and succeed."

Democrats have found themselves trying to fend off accusations from the White House and other Republicans that they are "cutting and running," and many lawmakers demonstrated flashes of exasperation and anger about the level of partisanship.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, called it a "disgrace" that some Republicans had challenged the patriotism of those advocating pulling out some troops. "They have broken faith with those who serve and those who support our troops and who work for the success of this mission," Mrs. Clinton said.

The debate was shadowed by the deaths of two soldiers captured south of Baghdad last week. Democrats said that what Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, called "the insane and hideous loss of life" was a signal that the war's toll was too high.

Republicans said the deaths of more than 2,500 troops would be in vain if the United States backed down from an open-ended commitment to the war.

"The only thing that can defeat the United States when it comes to the global war on terror is America itself, if we lose the courage of our convictions, if we simply give up," said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.

But Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said the best way to honor those lost lives was to change the course of the war. "If the policy is wrong, if we made a mistake, we owe it to their families, we owe it to those who are injured, to those who are still there and those who will go and that will die in the future, to correct that mistake," he said.

On both sides, many pleaded for an end to partisan sloganeering.

"My soul cries out for something more dignified," said Senator Gordon H. Smith, Republican of Oregon.

The floor debate stretched more than eight hours on Wednesday, with a vote expected Thursday.

Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, who heads the Armed Services Committee, said the debate came at a time "when the nation, the world, the men and women of the armed forces would like to see the Senate and the Congress stand behind them with strong bipartisanship."

"But I fear it is going to be lost," he added.

Mr. Warner worked with Democrats last year to get the Senate to agree on a resolution saying 2006 should be a year of "significant transition" toward Iraqis' taking control of their country. But he made it clear there would be no working together this time.

Setting a timetable for pulling out troops would be "a historic mistake," he said, one that would destabilize the Iraqi government too soon after it had taken shape. He said the war had had progress in the last several weeks, with the killing of the insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"We have the momentum," Mr. Warner said. "We must take advantage of this momentum and this opportunity to move forward."

Democrats had worked for a week to bridge a divide among themselves, but instead presented two alternatives. Mr. Reed and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan offered a nonbinding resolution that would call for troops to begin pulling out of Iraq by the end of this year and ask the president to submit to Congress a plan for a complete withdrawal, without setting a firm date.

Mr. Feingold and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts offered a binding amendment that set a firm deadline to withdraw all American combat troops: July 2007. Mr. Kerry said his colleagues were not going far enough with their nonbinding "sense of the Senate" resolution.

"Our troops and our country deserve more than a sense of the Senate, they deserve a policy," he said.

Mr. Levin and Mr. Reed outlined conditions that Iraq must meet: amending the Iraqi Constitution to ensure that political power and resources are shared, purging the security forces of disloyal members and getting rid of the militias.

Mr. Levin said the presence of American troops gave Iraqis a "security blanket" that would stall their taking charge of their country.

Democrats repeatedly cited an opinion article published this week in The Washington Post in which the Iraqi national security adviser said the removal of foreign troops would help the country, by removing a force many Iraqis see as occupiers and legitimizing the Iraqi government "in the eyes of its people."

"Are we going to listen to him or assume that we know better?" said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, standing in front of an enlarged poster of the article.

But Republicans said removing the troops would leave a void that would be filled by insurgents and terrorists who would use Iraq as a base to attack Americans around the world.

Some Democrats agreed. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, who is facing a primary challenge in Connecticut from an antiwar candidate, said he would vote against his party's amendments.

"The war to remove Saddam Hussein may have been a war of choice, but it is now a war of necessity," he said. "We must win it."

    Senators Begin Debate on Iraq, Visions in Sharp Contrast, NYT, 22.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/washington/22cong.html

Senators Debating Iraq Measure

June 20, 2006
The New York Times
By KATE ZERNIKE and CARL HULSE
 

WASHINGTON, June 20 — Republicans defeated a Democratic measure calling for an investigation into waste and fraud in military contracts today as the Senate engaged in an emotional debate over the Iraq war.

By a 52-to-44 vote, the Senate rejected the proposal by Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, calling for a panel like that headed by then-Senator Harry Truman that uncovered many abuses in military spending during World War II.

Mr. Dorgan said military spending is the worst it has ever been "right now — right now! I think the American taxpayers are being fleeced."

Mr. Dorgan offered several anecdotes, including one about 25 tons of nails that he said had been buried in the sand simply because "someone ordered the wrong-sized nails. It doesn't matter — the American taxpayer is going to pay the bill."

The senator focused on Halliburton, the huge company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney that has become a favorite target of Democrats alleging favoritism and waste in the awarding of Pentagon contracts in Iraq. But Mr. Dorgan said there was plenty of blame on both sides of the aisle. Supervision of military spending, he said, is "the one area where all of us have failed."

In urging defeat of the Dorgan amendment to a military-spending bill, Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, said supposed abuses like those cited by the Democrat could be investigated by the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, various inspectors general or the Government Accountability Office, without setting up a Truman-style panel.

Before the vote, Republicans tried to deflate Democratic attempts to turn a harsh spotlight on the entire war, with Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona declaring, "The strategy there needs to be to win, not withdraw. Withdrawal follows victory."

Setting up the Senate debate over the war, leading Democrats fashioned a non-binding proposal calling for American troops to begin pulling out of Iraq this year. They avoided setting a firm timetable for withdrawal but argued that the Bush administration's open-ended commitment to the war would only prevent Iraqis from moving forward on their own.

Coming the week after partisan and often angry House debate over the war, the Senate proposal was carefully worded to deflect any accusations that the Democrats were "cutting and running," as their position has been depicted by Republicans. The Democrats behind the measure did not even use the term "withdrawal," and talked about how to guarantee "success" for Iraq, not about any failures of the war.

"The administration's policy to date — that we'll be there for as long as Iraq needs us — will result in Iraq's depending upon us longer," Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, who has been designated by the Democratic leadership to present the party's strategy on Iraq, said on Monday. "Three and a half years into the conflict, we should tell the Iraqis that the American security blanket is not permanent."

The resolution was cobbled together by moderate Democrats trying to smooth over differences within the party. The minority leadership has tried to distance itself from a proposal by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts setting a mandatory deadline for American combat troops to be out of Iraq by the end of this year, a limit that Mr. Kerry modified only marginally on Monday. Some Republican lawmakers and the White House pointed to that proposal last week in attacking Democrats as inconsistent and weak on national security.

Mr. Levin's resolution did nothing to stop the Republicans' ridicule, with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky dismissing it in a Fox News interview as "cut and jog."

"The last thing you want to do when you have the terrorists on the run is give them notice that you're going to leave," said Mr. McConnell, the Senate's No. 2 Republican.

President Bush spoke similarly at a Republican fund-raiser here Monday night, asserting: "An early withdrawal would embolden the terrorists. An early withdrawal would embolden Al Qaeda and bin Laden. There will be no early withdrawal so long as we run the Congress and occupy the White House."

The Democrats said their measure, which will be debated this week as an amendment to a military policy bill, built on a resolution that passed the Senate last year with wide support from Republicans. Democrats said they hoped this earlier resolution, which pledged that 2006 would be a year of "significant transition" toward an independent Iraq, would be followed by some Republican backing for the latest one.

But Senator Warner, who as chairman of the Armed Services Committee was crucial to the adoption of last year's resolution, did not stand with the new proposal Monday.

"In this form, I could not support it," said Mr. Warner.

Republicans said they were still exploring how to respond to the Democrats' latest approach. They are sensitive to the needs of senators in tough races, and therefore may bring an amendment of their own to express support for the troops in Iraq, giving those senators a chance to cast a vote backing a resolution instead of simply fighting one.

Such an amendment was the essence of the measure that House Republicans proposed last week, on which they prevailed.

But Senate Republicans also said they were inclined to debate the Democratic resolution head on. So, in contrast to the more predictable House debate, the Senate showdown could bring a more serious exchange of views on how best to deal with the war.

In any event, the resolution failed to satisfy Mr. Kerry. Late last week he said he was withholding his amendment in hopes that Democrats could find a "broad consensus." But on Monday he altered his proposal only slightly, to set the deadline for July 2007 instead of Dec. 31, 2006.

The Levin amendment would leave some American troops, focused on counterterrorism and training Iraqi security forces, in place. But it calls for troops to begin moving out of Iraq by the end of this year, and for the president to submit a plan to Congress by then outlining preparations for further redeployment. Mindful of accusations that they are trying to micromanage a war from half a world away, the Democrats said they wanted to leave the "speed and pace" of the withdrawal to military commanders.

"This amendment is not cut and run," said Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, who joined Mr. Levin in proposing it. "This is not about a date certain. This is about getting the president to do the job correctly, something he has failed to do for the last three years and three months."

The resolution calls for an international conference to determine ways to secure Iraq and the region, and offers steps the Democrats said the Iraqis needed to make to take charge of their own country: sharing political power and economic resources among different groups, disarming the militias and rooting out disloyal members of security forces.

"As long as we're there to do this heavy lifting," Mr. Reed said, "even though they want to do it themselves, they won't do it."

    Senators Debating Iraq Measure, NYT, 20.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/washington/20cnd-cong.html?hp&ex=1150862400&en=d766b89996c321b9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Senate Rejects Effort to Cut Estate Tax

June 8, 2006
The New York Times
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, June 8 — The Senate rejected a major Republican effort on Thursday to eliminate the estate tax on inherited wealth. The vote was a big defeat both for President Bush and for Senate Republican leaders, who had framed their opposition to what they called the "death tax" as a popular and even populist crusade.

Sixty votes were required to end debate on the bill and prevent a filibuster, but the measure got only 57, with 41 Senators voting against and 2 not voting. Only a few lawmakers crossed party lines.

Though a handful of lawmakers continued to search for a compromise that could pass, negotiators appeared unable to reach a deal before the end of this week — if ever.

"We were foreseeing ourselves putting this over the line," said Dick Patten, executive director of the American Family Business Institute, a group that has led much of the political campaign against the estate tax. Though insisting that he was still trying to line up another two votes, Mr. Patten had already begun to talk about making the issue a central one in the 2008 elections.

The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, put his own reputation on the line by pushing ahead with the measure, even though he knew that Democrats and a few moderate lawmakers in his own party had a good chance of blocking its passage.

"This death tax is unfair," Mr. Frist said on the Senate floor.

Mr. Frist, who had resisted efforts to hammer out a deal with conservative Democrats that would reduce the tax but not abolish it entirely, threw his support behind Republican negotiators on Wednesday, and quietly promised that he would allow a floor vote on a compromise bill if he could not pass a full repeal.

Few tax measures have generated as much passion among ordinary voters. The estate tax now affects less than one percent of families, and it is arguably the most progressive tax in the country, because it falls almost exclusively on the nation's very richest families.

But opponents have campaigned for its repeal for years, arguing that it endangers family-owned businesses and family farms, that it discourages saving and investment, and that it forces people to spend billions of dollars a year on estate-planning efforts to miminize their tax liability.

"It makes no sense that the United States, which should be a bastion of promotion for entrepreneurship, and certainly a bastion that supports the family farm, the family restaurant, the family gas station, the family entrepreneur, is taxing those families at a rate which is higher than the French," said Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire.

Democrats argued with equal vehemence that repealing the estate tax would provide a windfall to the nation's richest families and widen the federal budget deficit at precisely the time when the baby-boom generation reaches retirement age and starts running up the cost of old-age programs like Social Security and Medicare.

"Very few small businesses and family farms pay any estate tax, and an even smaller fraction suffer any liquidity problems as a result of the tax," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, Democrat of Nevada and the Senate minority leader. A repeal, he said, would benefit a wealthy few "at the expense of every other American born and yet to be born for decades to come."

Mr. Reid called the fight over the estate tax a distraction and likened it to Republican efforts at passing a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriages. "We are wasting precious days on these divisive issues when there are so many other matters that deserve and demand our attention," he said.

Under current law, which was part of President Bush's tax-cut package of 2001, the estate tax is set to decline and eventually disappear entirely in 2010 — but then resume in its entirety in 2011. At the moment, the government imposes a tax of about 46 percent on estates worth more than $2 million, or more than $4 million in the case of couples.

A repeal of the estate would cost more than $700 billion in the first ten years after it became effective in 2011, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. Supporters of repeal say the cost would be far less, in part because it would spur new investment and in part because it would eliminate a major incentive for tax avoidance. But opponents of repeal contend that the cost could top $1 trillon, counting the higher interest expense of bigger budget deficits.

    Senate Rejects Effort to Cut Estate Tax, NYT, 8.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/08/washington/08cnd-tax.html?hp&ex=1149825600&en=08d9d8f3e32bb180&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Senate Rebuffs Same-Sex Marriage Ban

June 8, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, June 7 — As expected, the Senate on Wednesday rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, rebuffing both President Bush and the social conservative movement.

After two days of sometimes emotional argument, the Senate voted 49 to 48 to shut off debate on a call to bring the amendment to the floor. The total fell well short of the 60 votes needed to actually end debate, let alone the 67 votes required to approve a constitutional amendment.

The decision effectively killed the issue for the year in the Senate, though the House is expected to consider its own version this summer.

Democratic critics of the proposal said its Republican authors had advanced it to rally conservative voters, even though lawmakers knew it would be defeated. They said the proposal was tantamount to writing discrimination into the Constitution.

Opponents also said marriage should remain regulated by the states, dismissing assertions that federal intervention was needed to protect marriage as a traditional union between a man and a woman.

"All over the country, married heterosexual couples are shaking their heads and wondering how exactly the prospect of gay marriage threatens the health of their marriages," said Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin.

Supporters of the ban gained one vote from the last time the Senate considered the issue, before the 2004 election. But they were still unable to break the symbolic 50-vote threshold despite an increase in the Republican majority, the lobbying pressure by religious conservatives and President Bush's repeated calls for approval of the amendment.

In a statement after the Senate action, Mr. Bush expressed disappointment but said the vote "marks the start of a new chapter in this important national debate."

"Our nation's founders set a high bar for amending our Constitution — and history has shown us that it can take several tries before an amendment builds the two-thirds support it needs in both houses of Congress," he said.

Two Republicans who sided with the amendment's advocates in 2004, Senators Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, switched positions. Over all, seven Republicans opposed the amendment, and two Democrats supported it.

"The courts have basically upheld the right of states to legislate and protect themselves, and that was not the case last time," Mr. Gregg said. "I don't think we have to put it in the Constitution until there is some sort of court decision that would put the states at risk."

Senate champions of the amendment said they were not deterred by the outcome and promised to continue to press the issue. They said they were gaining ground at the state level, where voters and state legislatures continue to approve initiatives banning same-sex marriage.

"We have 45 states that have defined marriage as a union of a man and a woman," said Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas. "Since the last time we voted in the Senate, we've seen a total of 14 states take this issue up on the ballot."

Though some Republicans have suggested that the Senate would be better served politically by focusing on issues that voters see as more pressing, the author of the amendment said he did not see it that way.

"If it's up to me," that senator, Wayne Allard of Colorado, said, "we'll have a vote on this issue every year. I think it's important to the American people."

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and a leading opponent of the ban, said the Senate should now return to the "real threats facing American families today," like gasoline prices and the cost of health care.

Leaders of social conservative groups had pressed Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader and a possible Republican presidential candidate, to force a vote on the amendment, arguing that they had earned the opportunity after getting behind Mr. Bush in his re-election effort. The vote was also sought by Senate conservatives like Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who is in a tough fight for re-election.

Other Republicans argued that the political benefits of the fight against same-sex marriage were uncertain and that some Republicans running in more moderate states in the Northeast and elsewhere could be hurt by it.

    Senate Rebuffs Same-Sex Marriage Ban, NYT, 8.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/08/washington/08cong.html