History > 2006 > USA > Congress (IV-VI)

Pentagon to Request Billions More

in War Money

December 30, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 — The Pentagon is seeking nearly $100 billion for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, a request that, if approved by Congress, would set an annual record for war-related spending.

The $99.7 billion request, detailed in a 17-page internal Defense Department memorandum dated Dec. 7, would be in addition to $70 billion appropriated in September. The request would push the total for the 2007 fiscal year to nearly $170 billion, 45 percent more than Congress provided for 2006.

The request is likely to receive more scrutiny from Congress next year than previous supplemental spending bills, in part because Democrats now control both the House and Senate. Another reason for the scrutiny is that Pentagon officials encouraged the services to ask for “costs related to the longer war against terror,” not just continuing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a memorandum that became public earlier this year.

About $50 billion — most of the money — would go to the Army, which is conducting the bulk of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The request also includes $3.8 billion for the Air Force and $3 billion for the Navy to buy or upgrade aircraft. Both services have argued in recent months that they need to replace planes used in combat operations.

But some experts questioned whether the services were exploiting the must-pass nature of the supplemental bill to seek money for other purposes like the modernization of aircraft rather than just wartime replacements. Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, a policy analysis organization in Virginia, pointed to the Air Force request for $62 million for ballistic missiles, a weapon not being employed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Mr. Thompson said the request, which is not described further in the memorandum, may be part of a continuing Air Force project to arm ballistic missiles with conventional warheads to be able to strike terrorist targets quickly if other weapons cannot be used.

Even so, he added, “there are a number of weapons systems in the supplemental request not normally associated with fighting terrorists but which the services say still should be covered as part of the global effort.”

Altogether, the four military services would receive $26.6 billion for “reconstitution,” a term that the memorandum said covered repair and replacement of equipment damaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. Along with the $50 billion already provided this year, that is more than double what Congress appropriated in 2006.

“There is a real question about how much of this is really related to the war,” said Steve Kosiak, a defense budget expert with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington policy analysis group.

The Pentagon is also seeking $9.7 billion for training Iraqi and Afghan security forces, almost as much as has been spent in total since 2001, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service. In a reflection of the worsening security situation in Afghanistan, more than half of the requested money would go to training the country’s army and police forces.

The request also underscores the continuing strain that deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are putting on ground forces. The request includes $3.7 billion to speed up its outfitting and training of two Army combat brigades and three Marine battalions.

Since 2001, Congress has approved $507 billion for Afghanistan, Iraq and other operations deemed part of combating terrorism. Even with the Democrats in control, there is unlikely to be much appetite for cutting the war-related spending requests, Mr. Kosiak said.

“No one seems to be saying we’re going to make deep cuts in war-related expenditures,” he said. “I don’t see evidence that the Democrats are interested in cutting this.”

But the incoming Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Budget Committees have said they will push the Bush administration to finance war costs in regular appropriations bills, not in supplemental spending measures, to make the costs clearer.

The request also includes $10 billion for protective equipment for troops and $2.5 billion for technology to defeat improvised bombs, the leading cause of American combat casualties in Iraq.

Pentagon to Request Billions More in War Money, NYT, 30.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/washington/30budget.html

Democrats Plan

to Take Control of Iraq Spending

December 14, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 — Frustrated by the Bush administration’s piecemeal financing of the Iraq war, Democrats are planning to assert more control over the billions of dollars a month being spent on the conflict when they take charge of Congress in January.

In interviews, the incoming Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Budget Committees said they would demand a better accounting of the war’s cost and move toward integrating the spending into the regular federal budget, a signal of their intention to use the Congressional power of the purse more assertively to influence the White House’s management of the war.

The lawmakers, Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Representative John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, said the administration’s approach of paying for extended military operations and related activities through a series of emergency requests had inhibited Congressional scrutiny of the spending and obscured the true price of the war.

“They have been playing hide-the-ball,” Mr. Conrad said, “and that does not serve the Congress well nor the country well, and we are not going to continue that practice.”

Mr. Spratt, who along with Mr. Conrad is examining how the Democratic Congress should funnel the war spending requests through the House and Senate, said, “We need to have a better breakout of the costs — period.” He is planning hearings for early next year on the subject even as the White House readies a new request for $120 billion or more to pay for the war through Sept. 30, in addition to the more than $70 billion in emergency appropriations already spent this year.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, spending on the military outside of the regular budget process, primarily for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has totaled more than $400 billion. For the 12 months ended Sept. 30, spending on the Iraq war alone ran at an average rate of $8 billion a month, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service.

Congressional control over the money for the war is one of the most powerful weapons Democrats will have in trying to influence administration policy toward Iraq. They can use both the budget and subsequent spending bills to impose restrictions on how the money is spent and demand more information from the White House.

While the leadership has repeatedly said it will not cut off money for military operations, senior Democratic officials said lawmakers were considering whether to add conditions to spending bills to force the administration to meet certain standards for progress or change in Iraq. Democrats have also said they intend to investigate spending and suspicions of corruption, waste and abuse in Iraq contracting.

Since the beginning of the war, the White House has said that costs should be considered outside the routine federal budget because they are unpredictable and military demands can change quickly. Republicans have also said that wars have traditionally been treated as emergency spending, but the costs of the extended Vietnam War, for instance, were eventually absorbed into the normal budget.

But Mr. Bush has decided not to include the costs of the war in the budget request he sends to Congress each February. The Republican Congress has acceded to his request that money be appropriated for the conflict on an expedited, as-needed basis that sidesteps much of the process by which the House and Senate normally debate spending priorities.

But the newly completed report of the Iraq Study Group stated that the “costs for the war in Iraq should be included in the president’s annual budget request,” beginning with the budget to be submitted early next year.

In addition, a little noticed provision added to a defense policy measure signed into law by Mr. Bush in October directed him to include in his budget a request for appropriations for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, an estimate of all money expected to be required for the year, and a detailed justification of the request.

“The law requires that it be done,” Mr. Conrad said, adding that he had told the incoming defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, that the administration must change its budgeting strategy.

But Sean Kevelighan, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, said the administration’s view was that Congress could not “bind how the president wants to put together the budget,” though he said the administration was trying to provide more information for Congress and moving toward a more regular budget plan.

“It is obviously difficult to predict the cost of the war 12 to 18 months out,” Mr. Kevelighan said. “But our goal is to provide more information to the American people as to how much, for what and when.”

Both Republicans and Democrats have objected to the administration’s refusal to add the war costs to the budget, particularly when the conflict has lasted almost four years. “It is hard to comprehend with an ongoing event like the war that there wouldn’t be something on it in the budget,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader.

In June, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a proposal by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, to require the president to spell out the expected war costs in his annual spending plan. At the time, some lawmakers expected that the provision would be eliminated from the final measure, but it survived and could be held up by Democrats as evidence that the administration was ignoring the law if it failed to comply.

Lawmakers have several objections to treating the war spending as a continuous emergency, which typically sends the request straight to the Appropriations Committee and bypasses the more policy-oriented Armed Services Committees. Mr. Spratt said he believed that the policy panels tended to give such requests a “closer scrub” than the appropriations panels.

Others say the emergency measures, known as supplemental appropriation requests, can become vehicles for lawmakers to win speedy approval of their own, unrelated pet projects. Members of Congress say the Pentagon has also increasingly seen the war measures as a route to winning financing for projects that should be subject to normal review. And there are complaints that the administration’s approach masks the true cost of the war by not providing a clear bottom line number and by not calculating such related expenses as increased veterans care and military equipment.

“We are now going on four years into this war and they are still funding it with these patchwork supplementals without oversight and without accountability,” Mr. Conrad said, “and that just has to stop.”

But adding the war costs to the annual budget could carry risks for Democrats who want to write a spending plan that meets their priorities but eliminates the deficit in five years or so. Adding the war spending at the same time Democrats want to enforce “pay as you go” budget rules would require some of that spending to be made up by reductions elsewhere.

And if Mr. Bush’s budget does not contain the spending and the Congressional plan does, the president’s blueprint could look better by comparison when it comes to deficit reduction. In addition, budget writers do not want Pentagon spending inflated by the war to become a permanent new floor for the military budget.

    Democrats Plan to Take Control of Iraq Spending, NYT, 14.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/washington/14budget.html?hp&ex=1166158800&en=34d5ab863b03423c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Editorial

Desperately Seeking Ethics

December 9, 2006
The New York Times

Watching our elected leaders in action, it’s not surprising that Americans wonder if there is any limit to the crass misbehavior that members of Congress are willing to tolerate from their colleagues to protect their privileges and hold on to their own jobs. The House ethics committee answered that question yesterday with a resounding “No.”

Sixty-four days after it promised to find out who knew about Representative Mark Foley’s wildly inappropriate, sexually predatory behavior with teenage House pages, and why they failed to stop it, the bipartisan committee produced a report yesterday that was a 91-page exercise in cowardice.

The report’s authors were clearly more concerned about protecting the members of the House than the young men and women under their charge in the page program. And they made absolutely no effort to define the high standard of behavior that should be required of all members of Congress and their staffs.

The report concludes that evidence of Mr. Foley’s “creepy” interest in young male pages dated back to 1999. One woman who worked with the pages took to shadowing Mr. Foley when he was around them. The report makes clear that Mr. Foley’s misconduct became known to an ever-widening circle of his colleagues and their aides, including Speaker Dennis Hastert. But no one made any serious attempt to stop Mr. Foley or reveal his misdeeds. A few urged him to cut it out, for political reasons, but did not follow up.

The committee concluded that other people preferred to remain willfully ignorant — to protect Mr. Foley’s secret homosexuality, to avoid partisan embarrassment or for other political reasons.

But even after all that, the report said that none of this amounted to the sort of behavior that might discredit the House of Representatives and thus violate ethics rules. The committee, which never heard from Mr. Foley, did not call for disciplinary action against current members of the House or their staffs. The committee said those who have already left, like Mr. Foley, were no longer its problem.

The panel’s justification for inaction is a breathtaking exercise in sophistry: “the requirement that House members and staff act at all times in a manner that reflects creditably on the House does not mean that every error in judgment or failure to exercise greater oversight or diligence” is a violation.

No, not every error or failure should be a violation, but certainly the ones that lead to an elected official’s sexually stalking teenage boys while his colleagues turn a blind eye or cover it up should be. We’d set the bar at least there. Apparently, it’s too high for the House.

    Desperately Seeking Ethics, NYT, 9.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/09/opinion/09sat1.html

Editorial

A Crack in the Stone Wall

November 30, 2006
The New York Times

It was one of the more outrageous moments in the story of the Bush administration’s illegal domestic wiretapping. Almost a year ago, Congressional Democrats called for a review of the Justice Department’s role in the program. But the department investigators assigned to do the job were unable to proceed because the White House, at President Bush’s personal direction, refused to give them the necessary security clearance.

Now the president, for reasons we can’t help thinking might have something to do with this month’s elections, has changed his mind. The White House will give Justice Department inspectors the required clearance, and a review will go forward.

That’s all to the good, as long as the investigation is not intended to pre-empt any efforts by the new Democratic majority to conduct its own Congressional review of the wiretap program. The Justice Department inquiry will hardly do the full job.

The department’s inspector general, Glenn Fine, has already said that the question of whether the program was legal is beyond his jurisdiction. Instead, he will investigate whether department employees followed the rules governing the program — rules that were established in a secret executive order signed by the president in October 2001.

Whether or not Justice Department employees followed the rules they were given may have bearing on their individual performance evaluations, but it will tell us very little else. Since the rules Mr. Bush established under his secret order will presumably stay secret, the investigation will not even help us to understand just how far from established legal standards he strayed when he authorized the government to eavesdrop on Americans’ international calls and e-mail without a court-issued warrant.

The Justice Department inquiry also will do nothing to fix the biggest problem with Mr. Bush’s eavesdropping program, which is that — once again — he ignored existing law and instead tried to create a system outside the law, resting on his dangerously expansive claims of executive power.

If Mr. Bush had wanted to conduct the wiretapping within the law, he could have quite easily done so, using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That law, written after the Watergate scandal and the eavesdropping abuses of the Vietnam era, created a special court to approve applications for domestic surveillance. The court operates in secret, and has rarely denied the authorities’ requests. Even in the post-9/11 era, it should have met the administration’s needs. And if there was a problem, Congress had shown itself ready and willing to amend the law.

Mr. Fine, who has proved himself willing to criticize administration operations before, could still provide an important — if limited — service. He says, for instance, that he will examine how information gleaned from the wiretaps was used to pursue criminal cases. That inquiry should be useful for those who have been wondering whether the enormous amount of information collected significantly helped antiterrorism efforts, or simply complicated them with a flood of unmanageable data.

The investigation might also help Congress understand whether FISA needs updating — something the administration has been loath to discuss as long as it has been able to end-run the court. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who has introduced a bill aimed at making it easy for the government to get quick court approval of wiretaps on those suspected of terrorism or spying, has already said that nothing she has heard in secret briefings suggests that anything the administration needed could not have been conducted under FISA.

The question of the wiretap program’s constitutionality is now making its way through the courts and should ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court. Congress should not be satisfied with Mr. Fine’s very limited investigation. It should mount its own independent inquiry into how the war on terror, and American civil liberties, are being affected by an eavesdropping program about which we have been told so little.

    A Crack in the Stone Wall, NYT, 30.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/opinion/30thu1.html

Drug Industry Is on Defensive as Power Shifts

November 24, 2006
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 — Alarmed at the prospect of Democratic control of Congress, top executives from two dozen drug companies met here last week to assess what appears to them to be a harsh new political climate, and to draft a battle plan.

Hoping to prevent Congress from letting the government negotiate lower drug prices for millions of older Americans on Medicare, the pharmaceutical companies have been recruiting Democratic lobbyists, lining up allies in the Bush administration and Congress, and renewing ties with organizations of patients who depend on brand-name drugs.

Many drug company lobbyists concede that the House is likely to pass a bill intended to drive down drug prices, but they are determined to block such legislation in the Senate. If that strategy fails, they are counting on President Bush to veto any bill that passes. With 49 Republicans in the Senate next year, the industry is confident that it can round up the 34 votes normally needed to uphold a veto.

While that showdown is a long way off, the drug companies are not wasting time. They began developing strategy last week at a meeting of the board of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

Billy Tauzin, president of that group, a lobbying organization for brand-name drug companies, recently urged Representative Edolphus Towns, Democrat of New York, to seek a position as chairman of a powerful House subcommittee, said Karen Johnson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Towns. The subcommittee has authority over Medicare and the Food and Drug Administration.

Democrats have yet to decide who will head the subcommittee.

Mr. Tauzin, a former congressman, also met with Senator Byron L. Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat who has been trying for six years to allow drug imports from Canada. The industry vehemently opposes such legislation.

James C. Greenwood, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, another trade group, said, “There is a lot of pent-up animosity among Democrats against the pharmaceutical industry.”

Mr. Greenwood, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, said he had a list of 37 Congressional Democrats whom he intended to call in the next month.

Amgen, the biotechnology company, recently disclosed that it had retained as a lobbyist George C. Crawford, a former chief of staff for Representative Nancy Pelosi of California. Ms. Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, is in line to become speaker in January and has said that the House will immediately take up legislation authorizing Medicare to negotiate prices with drug manufacturers.

The 2003 Medicare law prohibits the federal government from negotiating drug prices or establishing a list of preferred drugs.

Amgen is also seeking strategic advice from the Glover Park Group, a consulting firm whose founders include Joe Lockhart, a former press secretary for President Bill Clinton.

Other major drug companies have been snatching up Democratic former-aides-turned-lobbyists. Merck recently has hired Peter Rubin, a former aide to Representative Jim McDermott of Washington, one of the more liberal House Democrats. Cephalon has hired Kim Zimmerman, a health policy aide to Senator Ben Nelson, a conservative Democrat of Nebraska.

The Biotechnology Industry Organization has retained Paul T. Kim, a former aide to two influential Democrats, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representative Henry A. Waxman of California.

A Medicare expert who works for House Democrats said he recently received three job offers in one day from the drug industry, by telephone and in person.

At a dinner last week at the Hotel Monaco here, as part of their board meeting, pharmaceutical executives dissected the midterm election results with experts including Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster, and Stuart Rothenberg, the editor of a political newsletter.

Drug makers have not set a budget for their campaign. They and their trade groups already spend some $100 million a year on lobbying in Washington.

“We have new political realities to attend to,” Mr. Tauzin said in an interview after the board meeting. “We and our allies will do everything we can to defend the Medicare drug benefit, to get out the message that it is working.”

To reinforce that message, drug companies plan to mobilize beneficiaries and urge them to contact Congress.

“I’m putting my trust in beneficiaries,” said Mr. Tauzin, who represented Louisiana in the House for more than two decades, first as a Democrat and then as a Republican. Several recent surveys suggest that at least three-fourths of the people with Medicare drug coverage are satisfied.

But Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, who hopes to head the health subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said price negotiations for Medicare were his priority.

“The 2003 Medicare law was essentially written by the drug industry,” Mr. Pallone said in an interview. “That’s why you don’t have negotiated prices. Republican policies have served special interests like the pharmaceutical industry, and the American taxpayer is paying the price.”

Drug lobbyists believe that the Senate will be receptive to their argument that price negotiations lead inevitably to price controls, and to restrictions on access to drugs, likely to be unpopular with beneficiaries.

Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said the White House opposed federal price negotiations because they would unravel the whole structure of the Medicare drug benefit, which relies on competing private plans.

Among leaders who attended the board meeting last week were Kevin Sharer, chairman of Amgen; Jeffrey B. Kindler, chief executive of Pfizer; Sidney Taurel, chairman of Eli Lilly; and Richard T. Clark, chief executive of Merck.

Drug lobbyists say they want to work with the new Democratic majority, but that will not be easy. In its campaign contributions, the pharmaceutical industry has overwhelmingly favored Republicans over Democrats. Drug companies infuriated many Democrats in 2003, when they worked closely with Republicans to create the Medicare drug benefit, in a process from which Democrats were largely excluded.

On other issues, Democrats are pushing for stricter regulation of drug safety and for legislation to encourage development of low-cost generic versions of expensive biotechnology drugs. They are determined to allow imports of drugs from Canada, where brand-name products are often cheaper.

They want to investigate drug pricing and profits, drug advertising aimed at consumers and the marketing of drugs to doctors for purposes not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Democrats may try to repeal some of the liability protections that have been given to vaccine manufacturers.

Outspoken critics of the pharmaceutical industry will gain power as a result of Senate committee assignments made last week. Senators Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, and Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, are joining the Finance Committee, which has sweeping authority over Medicare and Medicaid. Three liberal senators — Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Barack Obama of Illinois and Bernard Sanders of Vermont — are joining the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which oversees drug regulation and biomedical research.

The pharmaceutical industry lost one of its most effective defenders when Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, was not re-elected. The new Senate Republican whip, Trent Lott of Mississippi, is no friend of the brand- name drug industry. He supports bills to allow imports from Canada and to increase access to generic drugs.

Top pharmaceutical executives are hurriedly planning a response to the Democratic agenda.

“It’s all hands on deck,” said Ken Johnson, a senior vice president at Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. “It’s like a hurricane warning flag. You don’t know where it will hit. You don’t know who will be affected. But everybody has to be prepared.”

Drug companies may be open to some changes in the Medicare drug benefit, but they say they cannot accept any form of price negotiation.

“The new Medicare program is clearly benefiting seniors and people with disabilities and has exceeded initial expectations,” Mr. Tauzin said. “But we are open to new ideas that could make it even better. We will propose at the same time we are opposing.”

Specifically, Mr. Tauzin said, drug companies would like permission to fill a gap in coverage that has angered many Medicare beneficiaries.

Many drug companies have programs to provide free drugs to people with limited incomes. When such programs are used to fill the gap in the Medicare drug benefit, they may run afoul of federal law — the anti-kickback statute — because they steer patients to products made by one particular company.

The drug industry is anxiously waiting to see details of the Democratic proposal. Lawmakers are weighing several options. At a minimum, Congress could simply repeal the ban on price negotiations, without requiring Medicare officials to do anything. Many House Democrats want to go further. They would direct Medicare officials to negotiate prices for a government-run prescription drug plan, which would compete with dozens of existing private plans.

The government could negotiate prices for all drugs or just for brand-name drugs that have no competition. Alternatively, Congress could require manufacturers to provide a specified discount, so Medicare would get the “best price” available to any private buyer.

Such details, defining the federal role, are immensely important and could determine the outcome of any votes in Congress.

    Drug Industry Is on Defensive as Power Shifts, NYT, 24.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/24/washington/24drug.html?hp&ex=1164430800&en=e3a2a389f5280dcc&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Democrats Split on How Far to Go With Ethics Law

November 19, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 — After railing for months against Congressional corruption under Republican rule, Democrats on Capitol Hill are divided on how far their proposed ethics overhaul should go.

Democratic leaders in the House and the Senate, mindful that voters in the midterm election cited corruption as a major concern, say they are moving quickly to finalize a package of changes for consideration as soon as the new Congress convenes in January.

Their initial proposals, laid out earlier this year, would prohibit members from accepting meals, gifts or travel from lobbyists, require lobbyists to disclose all contacts with lawmakers and bar former lawmakers-turned-lobbyists from entering the floor of the chambers or Congressional gymnasiums.

None of the measures would overhaul campaign financing or create an independent ethics watchdog to enforce the rules. Nor would they significantly restrict earmarks, the pet projects lawmakers can anonymously insert into spending bills, which have figured in several recent corruption scandals and attracted criticism from members in both parties. The proposals would require disclosure of the sponsors of some earmarks, but not all.

Some Democrats say their election is a mandate for more sweeping changes, and many newly elected candidates — citing scandals involving several Republican lawmakers last year — made Congressional ethics a major issue during the campaign. After winning the House on election night, Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, promised “the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.”

Senator Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat tapped by party leaders last year to spearhead ethics proposals, said he was pushing for changes with more teeth. “The dynamic is different now,” Mr. Obama said Friday. “We control both chambers now, so it is difficult for us to have an excuse for not doing anything.”

He is pushing to create an independent Congressional ethics commission and advocates broader campaign-finance changes as well. “We need to make sure that those of us who are elected are not dependent on a narrow spectrum of individuals to finance our campaigns,” he said.

Sweeping change, however, may be a tough sell within the party. Representative John P. Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, was embarrassed by disclosures last week that he had dismissed the leadership proposals with a vulgarity at a private meeting. But Mr. Murtha is hardly the only Democrat who objects to broad changes.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who will oversee any proposal as the incoming chairwoman of the Rules Committee, for example, said she was opposed to an independent Congressional ethics watchdog. “If the law is clear and precise, members will follow it,” she said in an interview. “As to whether we need to create a new federal bureaucracy to enforce the rules, I would hope not.”

Other Democratic lawmakers argued that the real ethical problem was the Republicans, not the current ethics rules, and that the election had alleviated the need for additional regulations. “There is an understanding on our side that the Republicans paid a price for a lot of the abuses that evolved,” said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, alluding to earmarks. Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat and a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, said the scandals of the current Congress were “about the K Street Project for the Republicans,” referring to the party’s initiative to put more Republicans in influential lobbying posts and build closer ties to them.

“That was incestuous from the beginning. We never had anything like that,” Mr. Harkin said of Democrats. “That is what soured the whole thing.”

Democrats, of course, have also cultivated close ties to lobbyists, who play a major role in campaign fund-raising for members of both parties. Indeed, ethical violations and house-cleaning efforts have both been bipartisan activities over the years. Congress has seesawed between public calls for changes and a reluctance to cramp incumbents’ campaign fund-raising and political power.

The Republicans who took over the House in 1994 adopted some of the same policies the Democrats now propose, including a ban on gifts and travel, only to relax the rules later. In 2002, Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, pushed through a bipartisan law to restrict campaign donations and spending. The advocates of that bill are now pushing to close loopholes around so-called 527 groups.

And Republican leaders in the House and the Senate also vowed to pass what they called comprehensive ethics and earmark reform bills earlier this year. Critics complained that lawmakers had watered them down, and the two bills were never reconciled. (The Democratic proposals would also require a combination of internal House and Senate rules changes and legislation in both chambers.)

The current Congress, however, has set a high watermark for corruption scandals. One Republican, Representative Randy Cunningham of California, is in jail and another, Representative Bob Ney of Ohio, is on the way. The former House majority leader, Tom DeLay, resigned under indictment, and the payoff scandal surrounding the lobbyist Jack Abramoff may ensnare others as well. On the Democratic side, Representative William J. Jefferson of Louisiana faces bribery charges.

Advocates of an overhaul believe the reaction to the Congressional embarrassments make the Democratic takeover of Capitol Hill their best chance for significant change since the aftermath of Watergate, when Congress created the presidential campaign finance system. But they consider the Democratic proposals just the beginning of a cleanup.

“A ban on gifts, meals, corporate jet flights — a lot of that resonates with the public because people think there is just a lot of free giveaways in Congress,” said Chellie Pingree, president of the ethics advocacy group Common Cause. “A lot of this is sort of skirting the issue of how campaign funds are shaping the legislative process.”

Ms. Pingree noted that the scandals of the last Congress arose from actions that were illegal but went undetected for years because of lack of oversight. “Are they going to enforce the rules?” she asked.

Spurred by the election results, several Democrats in addition to Mr. Obama are pushing bigger changes. Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, is preparing a proposal for some form of public financing or free broadcast time for Congressional candidates to reduce their dependence on campaign donors. Common Cause says that 21 newly elected Democrats, more than half the class, and 69 incumbents have signed a pledge endorsing the idea.

That idea, however, has never gained much traction in Congress, in part because lawmakers balk at the notion of helping challengers who want their jobs. “You use taxpayer dollars to finance people who may not only be fringe candidates but — I was going to use the term ‘nut’— may be mentally incompetent,” Ms. Feinstein said.

Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, said last week that he hoped to add new restrictions on 527 groups, which operate largely outside the fund-raising and spending rules governing candidates or party committees. Many Democrats oppose that idea because many of the groups have supported Democrats.

Mr. McCain, who is exploring a presidential bid, is also pushing to extend the campaign finance rules to 527 groups. And he and some conservative Republicans are stepping up calls to restrict earmarks. But both Republican and Democratic members of the appropriations committees, which dole out earmarks, oppose any intrusions on their power.

The Democratic proposals seek more “transparency” in earmarks. But the House proposal would apply only to “district-oriented earmarks,” that is, projects obtained for constituents. Lawmakers already boast of sponsoring such items. The earmarks involved in corruption cases are often directed to contractors or campaign contributors elsewhere.

The Senate proposal would require the disclosure of the lawmaker who requested any earmark for funds paid directly to people outside the federal government, like a grant for a health clinic in a lawmaker’s hometown. But that would not address most earmarks because they are funneled through the defense department or other government agencies to contractors.

Two House Democrats, Representatives Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, have proposed a measure they say would block a lawmaker from requesting an earmark that would benefit a company, group or lobbying firm that employed a member of the lawmaker’s family or a former member of the lawmaker’s staff.

“The rules would prohibit any kind of self-dealing,” Mr. Van Hollen said in an interview, acknowledging that his party’s support for the idea remains to be seen. “It will be something of an indication of how serious we are about reform.”

Mr. Obama called the idea “sensible” and said he supported it. But almost no one expects the Democrats to enact such a change, in part because many have close ties to former staff members or family members in the lobbying business.

Ms. Feinstein, for example, said she hoped to extend the Senate bill to require disclosure of all earmarks, including defense projects. But she said she would oppose a measure like Mr. Van Hollen’s because it would prevent her from directing funds to California cities because their lobbyists include former staff members.

    Democrats Split on How Far to Go With Ethics Law, NYT, 19.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/washington/19ethics.html?hp&ex=1163998800&en=751f851c5d006a9e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Political Memo

A Sometimes Awkward Changing of the Guard

November 19, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 — It was a topsy-turvy week in the Capitol, one of resurrection and role reversal as ascendant Democrats — and a Republican or two — strutted back to power.

Most Republicans were trying to come to grips with their drastically reduced status as the new minority. Although they had contemplated the prospect of losing control of the Congressional apparatus, the reality was slow to sink in. The suddenly silent phones and the constant presence on cable news broadcasts of formerly obscure Democrats were unsettling, to say the least.

Some Republicans were quick to remind Democratic colleagues that they had not been all bad. “Bill, be nice to me,” Representative Peter T. King of New York, the departing chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, shouted to Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, a member of the panel. “I was always nice to you.”

The power shift was evident in ways large and small. For years, reporters have crowded the Republican end of the speaker’s lobby off the House floor, buttonholing majority lawmakers who ran the place, and virtually ignoring the opposite end, where somewhat irrelevant Democrats came and went with little notice. As soon as lawmakers returned Monday, the news tide flowed to the Democratic end as journalists swarmed for insights about the party’s infighting for majority leader.

“Wow,” said one longtime Congressional doorkeeper. “I thought that wouldn’t have happened until at least January.” That is when Democrats officially take power.

In the Senate, where shifting control is more common, it was still a difficult moment for the Republican incumbents who were turned out, the Republicans remaining who will no longer be chairmen and even for some of the resurgent Democrats who had developed relationships with those who are soon to depart.

“I am going to miss you,” Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, who has seen scores of senators come and go during his half-century in office, assured Senator Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, as they bumped into each other in a hallway just off the chamber.

Mr. Burns, who showed flashes of temper upon his return to Washington after his defeat, was nothing but gracious with Mr. Byrd, with whom he served on the Appropriations Committee. “I appreciate all your courtesies,” he told Mr. Byrd.

Mr. Byrd then asked Mr. Burns, a professional livestock auctioneer, to regale him with one last yodel, and Mr. Burns obliged, in expert fashion.

“Almost as good as the fiddle,” Mr. Burns said, referring to Mr. Byrd’s instrument of choice. “Almost,” responded the Democrat.

But Democrats were not the only winners. Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, who lost his Republican leadership job in 2002 after a racially charged remark and has been plotting his return ever since, won the No. 2 spot in the minority. He will serve as whip under the new Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Usually willing to share his opinions freely, Mr. Lott was uncharacteristically quiet after defeating Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee by one vote for the job.

Mr. Lott seemed determined not to take the limelight away from Mr. McConnell on the day of the elections even though it was obvious that Mr. Lott’s return would grab the headlines, given that Mr. McConnell was unopposed.

As the week wore on, however, it became harder for Mr. Lott to restrain himself. “I can still count votes,” beamed Mr. Lott, whose skill in that department is legendary.

Oddly enough, the closed-door nominations of Mr. Lott and Mr. Alexander, two Southerners, featured dueling hockey analogies.

In urging a vote for Mr. Alexander, Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia compared the Tennessee senator’s political radar to that of Wayne Gretzky, the hockey great who knew where the puck was going to be before it got there.

Not to be outdone, Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who told his colleagues he knew a thing or two about hockey, compared Mr. Lott to Bobby Orr, who he said knew where the puck was going before it went.

That, apparently, was enough to put Mr. Lott’s election on ice.

While Republicans were regrouping, Democrats were parceling out new positions, giving Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the new majority leader, a chance to demonstrate that once a Capitol Hill police officer, always a Capitol Hill police officer.

In a decision that set the building buzzing though it barely registered off Capitol Hill, Mr. Reid named the former chief of the Capitol Police, Terrance Gainer, to be the Senate’s sergeant-at-arms in the 110th Congress.

Mr. Gainer, who was forced out this year, was a favorite of the Capitol Hill police officers, who believed he had been given a bum deal.

In one shrewd maneuver, Mr. Reid, who served on the force while in law school 40 years ago, delivered yet another resurrection, secured loyalty in a key post and lifted the morale of the Capitol Police.

The week was full of awkward moments as newcomers wandered around lost, the formerly powerful had to deal with loss of power and winners and losers passed in the halls. But in the end, for beaten House Republicans, it came down to a song.

After his election on Friday as the new minority leader, it was noted that it was the 57th birthday of Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio. As the Republican leadership team wound up a news conference, Mr. Boehner was serenaded with a birthday ditty: “This is your birthday song. It doesn’t last too long. Hey!”

And that is just what Republicans hope about their newfound minority — that it doesn’t last too long.

    A Sometimes Awkward Changing of the Guard, NYT, 19.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/us/politics/19notebook.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

No solution in sight for U.S. gun violence

Mon Oct 23, 2006 8:19 AM ET
Reuters
By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It's an American way of death. More than 30,000 people die from gunshot wounds every year, through murder, suicide and accidents.

That is an average of 82 a day, and prospects for reducing the toll are dim.

The debate between gun control advocates and the pro-gun lobby was reignited briefly this month by four school shootings between September 26 and October 9.

In one, a man carrying a pistol, a shotgun and 600 rounds of ammunition shot 10 girls execution-style at an Amish school in Pennsylvania, killing five of them, and then killed himself. In another, a 13-year-old took an AK-47 assault rifle to his school in Missouri, pointed it at administrators and other students and fired it into a ceiling.

At a hastily arranged White House Conference on School Safety on October 10, panelists covered topics ranging from metal detectors and school bullies to the value of religious beliefs and good communication between parents and schools.

But the word "gun" was not mentioned until a plucky teenager pointed out to a panel moderated by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that the common factor was easy access to high-powered firearms. President George W. Bush and his wife Laura Bush attended separate parts of the conference but avoided mention of guns.

"The Bush administration is in complete denial regarding the catalytic role that guns play in school violence," said Kristen Rand of the Violence Policy Center, which like other gun control advocates was not invited to the conference.

"How is it even possible to have a discussion about preventing school shootings without talking about guns?"

Justice department figures put the number of guns in private hands at more than 200 million -- more than any other country -- and swelling by several million every year.

The annual U.S. production of pistols, revolvers, rifles and shotguns for the domestic civilian market has been running at between 2.6 million and more than three million for the past seven years, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives.

"The U.S. level of lethal violence is far out of line with those of other industrialized nations," said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. "The fact that most of our lethal violence involves firearms lends credence to the hypothesis that the prevalence of guns is a prime reason."

That hypothesis, widely accepted in much of the rest of the world, is hotly contested by American advocates of unfettered access to guns, led by the National Rifle Association (NRA), who say that the second amendment to the Constitution gives all law-abiding citizens the right to bear arms.

"It's not guns that kill people," the gun lovers' mantra goes, "people kill people."

GUN LOBBY SCORES WINS IN CONGRESS

The NRA wields enormous influence in Washington and traditionally backs candidates in local and national elections on the basis of their stand on one issue -- gun ownership -- regardless of their party affiliation.

Successful lobbying has led to a string of NRA of victories over its gun control adversaries. In 2004, Congress allowed a ban on assault weapons -- such as the AK47 used in the Missouri school shooting -- to lapse.

"Clearly, the past two years represent one of the most successful congressional sessions that gun owners have ever had," the NRA said in a message to its four million members this month, in advance of midterm congressional elections on November 7. "All our hard work and vital victories must be protected."

Proponents of tighter gun controls see things differently. "Congress has been in denial about gun violence ... and is moving in the wrong direction," said Joshua Horwitz, the executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. He noted that the annual death toll from gun violence in the United States is ten times the total of U.S. combat deaths, to date, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Statisticians say such comparisons are misleading but the parallel has been drawn before, most notably by then president George H.W. Bush, the present president's father, after the end of the first Gulf War.

"During the first three days of the ground offensive, more Americans were killed in some American cities than at the entire Kuwaiti front," Bush said at the time.

"Think of it, one of our brave National Guardsmen may have actually been safer in the midst of the largest armored offensive in history than he would have been on the streets of his home-town."

That was in 1991, when the U.S. murder rate, driven by turf wars between crack dealers, reached an all-time peak of 24,700, according to FBI statistics. It declined steadily in the 1990s and stood at just under 17,000 last year. Guns accounted for two thirds of the killings.

"There are signs of changing attitudes toward guns, particularly among younger Americans, said the Violence Policy Center's Rand. "But change will come slowly, over the next 20, 30 years."

    No solution in sight for U.S. gun violence, R, 23.10.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-10-23T121928Z_01_N20391974_RTRUKOC_0_US-LIFE-GUNS.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-politicsNews-3

In the Congressional Hopper: A Long Wish List of Special Benefits and Exemptions

October 11, 2006
The New York Times
By DIANA B. HENRIQUES

For all their gains, some advocates for religious freedom see the last 15 years not as a time of increased accommodation for religious groups but as a long battle in which religious groups have had to fight hard just to hold their own against a tide of unsympathetic policies. Indeed, they say government must do more to protect religious institutions of all kinds from the hostile environment of modern America.

A Congressional wish list supported by some religious leaders and other advocacy groups would accomplish that.

One bill, H.R. 235, would exempt churches and other religious institutions — but not secular nonprofits — from the I.R.S. rule against partisan political endorsements by tax-exempt organizations. Another, H.R. 27, would grant religious employers even more leeway to discriminate on religious grounds in their hiring, specifically in job training programs paid for with federal tax dollars.

There’s also H.R. 2679, which passed in the House on Sept. 26 by a vote of 244 to 173. It would prohibit the courts from awarding damages, lawyers’ fees or costs to any plaintiff who successfully sues over possible violations of the establishment clause of the First Amendment, cases involving things like the erection of crosses or nativity scenes on public land.

The Public Prayer Protection Act, H.R. 4364, would protect the right of government officials “to express their religious beliefs through public prayer” by barring federal courts, including the Supreme Court, from hearing lawsuits raising constitutional objections to those prayers.

The list also includes the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, H.R. 1445 and S. 677, introduced last year with bipartisan support in both houses, which would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to require employers to be more accommodating to the religious observances of their employees. The bills do not say whether religious employers would be exempt, as they are from the Civil Rights Act’s prohibition on discrimination based on religion.

Another bill, H.R. 1054, would transform into law the executive orders that created President Bush’s “faith-based initiative,” to make federal grants and contracts more available to religious groups.

Among those who think more should be done is Anthony R. Picarello Jr., vice president and general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, one of a growing roster of law firms and legal advocacy groups ready to provide free legal help for religious groups or individual believers involved in First Amendment litigation or disputes.

“I don’t think we can say the climate for religious freedom is so dramatically improved that we don’t need these laws,” Mr. Picarello said.

There are still fierce battles over individual religious practices and the display of religious symbols on public property, he noted. And religious organizations — especially those outside the nation’s mainstream traditions, like small Latin American or Asian sects and non-Christian houses of worship like mosques, Orthodox synagogues and Hindu temples — still face discriminatory zoning decisions in towns across the country.

He is also concerned that the sexual abuse cases pending against the Catholic church will erode the longstanding judicial doctrine that protects religious employers from lawsuits by disgruntled clergy members and other employees.

“I don’t necessarily view the climate as improving,” he said, adding a few moments later: “The idea that special protection in the law for religion is unconstitutional has been rejected over and over and over. Yet all these statutes are under continuous attack.”

“A lot less frequently, perhaps,” he added, “but it hasn’t stopped.”

Given the broad and expanding benefits available to religious organizations, from tax breaks to government contracts, what explains the continuing complaints about a nationwide hostility toward religion and religious organizations?

A number of legal scholars say some justifiable discontent is warranted over the erratic path the Supreme Court has followed on First Amendment cases since 1990. Derek H. Davis, formerly the director of the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor University, said that although the courts had clearly become more accommodating to religion, “the whole landscape is in disarray about what the law is.”

But at a more human level, specialists on religious law said, basic changes in the workings of government — more lenient rules on revenue bonds, new tax breaks for faculty housing at church schools, higher barriers to workplace lawsuits, beneficial exemptions from licensing rules — just don’t attract the emotional lightning that flares over same-sex marriage and religious symbols on public land.

For example, a federal court ruled that a giant cross on city-owned land at the Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial in San Diego was unconstitutional and ordered it removed by August of this year. The public reaction was so fierce that Congress took less than six weeks in the summer to approve a law providing for the federal government to buy the site and preserve it intact.

Much of the angry talk about a national war on religion “is a reaction to modernity and the pace of change in our society,” said Edward R. McNicholas, a director of the religious institutions law practice at Sidley Austin. “People want to cling to their religious values as they encounter more cultures that are different and foreign to them. So the language of exclusion has been taken up in the political rhetoric.”

Beyond just the talk, the Becket Fund and other religious freedom advocacy groups can cite what they say are examples of unfair attacks on people of faith: a devout librarian fired for refusing to work on Sunday; a local zoning law that allows no churches; a student rebuked for saying “God bless you” to a classmate who sneezed. With the involvement of these advocacy groups, battles like these are getting far more attention, adding to the public concern about threats to religious freedom.

While many of these cases are quickly resolved with a single warning letter or sometimes just a telephone call, they leave a bitter aftertaste in the political arena, said the Rev. Barry Lynn, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Some scholars and leaders of faith worry that the real threat to religious vitality in the United States is not the “hostility” of a secular culture.

“What’s happening with all these tax breaks and exemptions is a soft, subconstitutional establishment of religion returning to the country,” said John Witte Jr., director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at the Emory University law school. That increasing level of indirect support and patronage, he said, “breeds a level of dependency that I think is dangerous for both religion and government.”

Professor Davis, now the dean of humanities at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, Tex., agreed with that view, but said he was also troubled that religious organizations were pursuing more regulatory exemptions even as more government money is heading their way through contracts, vouchers and grants under the faith-based initiative.

“That suggests to me that they don’t want government involved in monitoring religious institutions, but they want the benefits that government is dispensing anyway,” he said. “To me, that’s unfair. If you’re going to take government money, you should abide by the rules, like everyone else.”

    In the Congressional Hopper: A Long Wish List of Special Benefits and Exemptions, NYT, 11.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/business/11religside.html

Poll Shows Foley Case Is Hurting Congress’s Image

October 10, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER

Americans say that Republican Congressional leaders put their political interests ahead of protecting the safety of teenage pages, and that House leaders knew of Mark Foley’s sexually charged messages to pages well before he was forced to quit Congress, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll, completed before North Korea announced that it had detonated its first nuclear test, also found that the war in Iraq was continuing to take a toll on President Bush and the Republican Party, and that the White House was having difficulty retaining its edge in handling terrorism.

The number of Americans who approve of Mr. Bush’s handling of the campaign against terrorism dropped to 46 percent from 54 percent in the past two weeks, suggesting that he failed to gain any political lift from an orchestrated set of ceremonies marking the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. In addition, the poll shows that Americans are now evenly divided over which party they think can better handle terrorism, the first time in the Bush presidency that Democrats have matched Republicans on national security, despite a concerted White House effort to seize the advantage on the issue this month.

With four weeks left before Election Day, the poll indicates that the scandal involving Mr. Foley, a former Republican congressman from Florida, is alienating Americans from Congress, and weakening a Republican Party that was already struggling to keep control of the House and Senate. By overwhelming numbers, including majorities of Republicans, Americans said that most members of Congress did not follow the same rules of behavior as average Americans, and that most members of Congress considered themselves above the law.

“Politics goes to people’s heads and they see themselves as their own little entity,” said Donna Mummert, 68, a Republican from Marsing, Idaho, in a follow-up interview after participating in the poll. “They forget why they’re there to represent us.”

Seventy-nine percent of respondents said House Republican leaders were more concerned about their political standing than about the safety of teenage Congressional pages. About half of respondents said that the House Republican leadership had improperly handled the Foley case, compared with 27 percent who said they approved of how it was handled; 46 percent of respondents said Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois should step down. And Americans are more likely to say that Democrats, and not Republicans, share their moral values.

The nationwide telephone poll was conducted Thursday through Sunday with 983 adults, including 891 registered voters. The margin of sampling error for the entire sample is plus or minus three percentage points and is the same for the registered voters.

The poll describes what is by any measure a difficult political environment for the White House and Republican Congressional leaders. Still, it is a measure of national sentiment rather than the likely outcome in the approximately 40 House races and 8 Senate races that will determine which party controls Congress next January.

In many of the races where Republicans are in danger of losing seats, Democrats hold relatively slight leads, according to local polls and internal party polls. Republicans are counting on their strong voter turnout operation, and sizable financial advantage over Democrats, to compensate for the difficulties they face.

There has been no change since mid-September in the gap between Americans who said they planned to vote for a Democrat over a Republican in their district this November: 49 percent to 35 percent. But Democratic voters are more likely than Republicans to say they are enthusiastic about voting this November.

The public’s view of Iraq is as dark as it has been since the war began in 2003, with two-thirds saying it is going somewhat or very badly, while only 3 percent are saying the war is going very well. Two-thirds said they disapproved of how Mr. Bush was handling Iraq.

Mr. Bush’s job approval rating has slipped to 34 percent, from 37 percent in September. That is one of the lowest levels of his presidency and poses a complication for the White House as it seeks to send him out on the road to rally base voters. Mr. Bush’s job approval rating has even slipped with his base: 75 percent of conservative Republicans approve of the way he has handled his job, compared with 96 percent in November 2004.

The president clearly faces constraints as he seeks to address the public concerns about Iraq that have shrouded this midterm election: 83 percent of respondents thought that Mr. Bush was either hiding something or mostly lying when he discussed how the war in Iraq was going. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said Mr. Bush was personally aware of intelligence reports before Sept. 11 that warned of possible domestic terrorist attacks using airplanes. When the same question was asked in May 2002, 41 percent said they believed Mr. Bush was aware.

“Iraq was a mistake, and even though he gets up and says it’s going O.K., it hasn’t been going O.K. since Day One,” said Gertrude Knowles, a self-described independent voter from Quincy, Mass. “Now he’s got to make it sound better than it is.”

So far, at least, it appears that, at least nationally, Republicans have had little success in pressing what have been their two biggest lines of attacks against Democratic challengers this fall: taxes and terrorism. The poll found that 41 percent of respondents thought Republicans were stronger on handling terrorism, compared with 40 percent who named Democrats, a statistically insignificant difference. Before Labor Day, Republicans had a 42 percent to 34 percent edge on handling terrorism.

And in a month in which Republicans have sought to discredit Democratic challengers as advocates of big spending and high taxes, 52 percent of respondents said that Democrats would make the right decisions on how to spend taxpayers’ money, while 29 percent said Republicans would.

Americans said that Democrats would do a better job than Republicans in making decisions on the war, on the economy and on taxes. Democrats are viewed more positively, or less negatively, than Republicans, with 39 percent saying they held a favorable view of Republicans, compared with 54 percent who said they held an unfavorable view. By contrast, 52 percent of respondents had a favorable view of the Democratic Party, compared with 40 percent who had an unfavorable view.

The problems for Congress have clearly been exacerbated by the Foley scandal. Eighty percent of Americans said they considered the Foley revelations either very serious or somewhat serious. Two-thirds said that House Republicans did not initially take the warnings seriously enough, and 62 percent said they believed House Republican leaders knew before last week that Mr. Foley had sent sexually explicit messages to teenagers.

“They just covered it up,” said Charles Young, a Republican from upstate New York. “We put them in office to do what is right for the country. It should have been brought to their attention and disposed of. We don’t need people in office who corrupt our children.”

The poll found that 69 percent of Americans thought that members of Congress considered themselves above the law, and 69 percent thought that members of Congress did not live by the same rules of behavior that they did.

The poll found that 47 percent of respondents believed that Democrats came closer to sharing their moral values, compared with 38 percent who said Republicans did. The Democratic standing in this area included some unlikely groups: 26 percent of conservatives and 43 percent of people who live in the South named Democrats as the party that came closer to sharing their values.

Marjorie Connelly, Marina Stefan and Megan C. Thee contributed reporting.

    Poll Shows Foley Case Is Hurting Congress’s Image, NYT, 10.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/us/politics/10poll.html?hp&ex=1160539200&en=786ae5a101ecd2d0&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Foley Case Upsets Tough Balance of Capitol Hill’s Gay Republicans

October 8, 2006
The New York Times
By MARK LEIBOVICH

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 — Every month or so, 10 top staff members from Capitol Hill meet over dinner to commiserate about their uneasy experience as gay Republicans. In a wry reference to the K Street Project, the party’s campaign to build influence along the city’s lobbying corridor, they privately call themselves the P Street Project, a reference to a street cutting through a local gay enclave.

For many of those men and other gay Republicans in political Washington, reconciling their private lives and public roles has required a discreet existence. But in the last week, the Mark Foley scandal has upset that careful balance.

Since Representative Foley, Republican of Florida, resigned after it was revealed he had sent sexually explicit electronic messages to male pages, gay Republicans in Washington have been under what one describes as “siege and suspicion.”

Some conservative groups blamed the “gay lifestyle” and the gathering force of the “gay agenda” for the scandal. Others equated homosexuality with pedophilia, a link that has long outraged gay men and lesbians.

Conservative blogs and Web sites pointed out that gay staff members played principal roles in investigating the Foley case, suggesting that the party was betrayed by gay men trying to hide misconduct by one of their own. In the meantime, a group of gay activists, angered by what they see as hypocrisy by gay Republicans, have begun circulating a document known as The List, a roster of gay Congressional staff members and their Republican bosses.

“You can see where it would be easy for some people to blame gays for something that might bring down the party in Congress,” said Brian Bennett, a gay Republican political consultant. He was a longtime chief of staff to former Representative Robert K. Dornan, Republican of California, who regularly referred to gays as Sodomites.

“I’m just waiting for someone in a position of authority to make this a gay issue,” Mr. Bennett said of the Foley case.

The presence of homosexuals, particularly gay men, in crucial staff positions has been an enduring if largely hidden staple of Republican life for decades, and particularly in recent years. They have played decisive roles in passing legislation, running campaigns and advancing careers.

Known in some insider slang as the Velvet Mafia or the Pink Elephants, gay Republicans tend to be less open about their sexual orientation than their Democratic counterparts. Even though the G.O.P. fashions itself as “the party of Lincoln” and a promoter of tolerance, it is perceived as hostile by many gay men and lesbians. Republicans have promoted a “traditional values” agenda, while some conservatives have turned the “radical gay subculture” into a reliable campaign villain. And there are few visible role models in the party; Representative Jim Kolbe of Arizona is the only openly gay Republican in Congress.

As the blame from the Foley case has been parceled out in recent days, some people in Washington suggested that the Republican leadership’s inadequate response to alarms about Mr. Foley was borne of squeamishness in dealing with a so-called gay issue. Meanwhile, some Republican staff members worried that several gay men caught up in the scandal would be treated unfairly.

They include Kirk Fordham, Mr. Foley’s onetime chief of staff who resigned Wednesday as an aide to Representative Thomas M. Reynolds, Republican of New York, and Jeff Trandahl, formerly the clerk of the House of Representatives, a powerful post with oversight of hundreds of staffers and the page program. The two men were among the first to learn of Mr. Foley’s inappropriate communications. Along with the Republican leadership, they have been criticized for failing to act more aggressively to stop the congressman’s behavior, and possibly covering up for Mr. Foley.

Mr. Fordham and Mr. Trandahl did not hide their homosexuality, and they were well known in Washington’s gay community. (Neither returned phone calls seeking comment.) Others, though, strenuously protect their private life.

“You learn to compartmentalize really well,” said one Republican strategist who, like many gay Republicans interviewed for this article, would speak only anonymously for fear of adversely affecting his career.

Mr. Fordham’s history illustrates the potential tensions between private life and professional rhetoric. After leaving Mr. Foley’s office in 2004, he worked as finance director for the campaign of Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida. In that race, a Martinez campaign flier accused a political rival of favoring the “radical homosexual lobby” by supporting hate crimes legislation that included protections for gay men and lesbians.

One of the inevitable facts, said Mr. Bennett, the former Dornan aide, is that “there are just going to be some days when it’s hard to be a gay Republican.”

When asked why he remains in the party, Mr. Bennett gave an answer common to gay Republicans: he said that he remained fundamentally in sync with the small government principles of the party and its approach to national security, and that he was committed to changing what he considers its antigay attitudes.

“I’m fighting hard, every day,” said Mr. Bennett, who was among a small group of gay Republicans who met with George W. Bush during his 2000 presidential campaign.

Like Mr. Bennett, other gay staff members wind up working for politicians they consider infamous for their inflammatory remarks and hostility to their cause.

Robert Traynham, the top communications aide to Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, endured the fallout from an interview with The Associated Press in 2003 in which Mr. Santorum seemed to equate homosexuality with bestiality, bigamy and incest, among other things. Mr. Traynham had been openly gay for years, but that was not widely known in his professional life — until a gay rights advocate revealed his sexual orientation last year. Mr. Traynham confirmed the report, and Mr. Santorum issued a statement in support of his aide.

In contrast to what many view as the right’s increasingly antigay rhetoric, members of both parties say there has been a growing tolerance for gay men and lesbians within the Republican ranks.

“There’s been a change from 20 years ago when people used to be hyperconscious of staying in the closet,” said Steve Elmendorf, an openly gay Democratic strategist who was the chief aide to former Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, who served as the Democratic leader. “Now there’s more of an evolution to a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ rule.”

An addendum could be “don’t flaunt.” “You just don’t wear it on your sleeve, bottom line,” said one gay Republican staff member.

“I always made a point of dating women,” said Mr. Bennett, who disclosed that he was gay after his tenure with Mr. Dornan.

Others point out that advancing the beliefs and careers of the boss is a priority, and staff members are expected to stay in the background. “Discretion is what most members expect from their staff, no matter who you are,” said Tracey St. Pierre, who was chief of staff for former Representative Charles T. Canady, Republican of Florida.

“For many conservative Republicans, just being gay in itself is an act of indiscretion,” said Ms. St. Pierre, who is gay but was not open about it until shortly before leaving Mr. Canady’s office. When she worked with him in the mid-1990’s, one of his chief causes was legislation that would ban same-sex marriage. Ms. St. Pierre, who works for a federal agency, considers herself an independent now.

The code of behavior largely extends to Republican politicians themselves, a point underscored by Mr. Foley, who just this week publicly acknowledged that he was gay. He appeared in public with women whenever possible and held parties at his home, which one guest described as decorated with photographs of himself with attractive women.

Mr. Foley had always refused to discuss his sexual orientation, a topic that drew increasing attention as he considered a bid for the Senate in 2004. Amid intensifying rumors about his personal life, he decided not to run.

Despite Mr. Foley’s silence, people on Capitol Hill assumed he was gay. “It was commonly known on Capitol Hill by staff and members,” said Representative Ray LaHood, Republican of Illinois. “People have their own lifestyles as long as they mind their own business and play by the rules.”

Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida who served with Mr. Foley, said, “If you’re a gay Republican, you have to act like a Republican.” Mr. Scarborough, who is now the host of “Scarborough Country” on MSNBC, said “acting like a Republican” entailed going out on the campaign trail “talking about guns, chewing tobacco and riding around in a pickup truck.”

He contrasted that with gay Democrats, “who can strut around and still get a standing ovation.” He cited the case of former Representative Gerry E. Studds, a Democrat of Massachusetts who is openly gay, who became embroiled in a sex scandal involving a page and still won re-election. And Representative Barney Frank, another gay Democratic Massachusetts congressman, has attained almost iconic status among gay men and lesbians.

Gay members of both parties describe the Foley matter as something that could jeopardize the role that gay men and lesbians have assumed in Republican politics.

One gay Republican campaign strategist said he feared that conservatives would “play to the base” and redouble their efforts to vilify homosexuals. “It’s one of the places the party goes when it’s in trouble,” he said. “A lot of us are holding our breath to see how this plays out.”

Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.

    Foley Case Upsets Tough Balance of Capitol Hill’s Gay Republicans, NYT, 8.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/washington/08culture.html?hp&ex=1160366400&en=04a2c0bca257d759&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Behind the Victory Money Lies Vietnam

October 5, 2006
The New York Times
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 — The mystery over who championed legislation authorizing $20 million in spending for a celebration of United States success in Iraq and Afghanistan was resolved on Wednesday.

The office of the Republican whip, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, acknowledged that he had pushed the bill out of lingering anger that Vietnam veterans had to “sneak back” home after that war and out of a desire that this generation of troops be thanked.

Mr. McConnell sponsored language in last year’s military spending bill, which authorized up to $20 million for a “commemoration of success” in Washington saluting the end of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. No money was set aside or used because fighting continues..

The senator wrote language for the new budget bill that rolls over the authorization into 2007.

“People came home from Vietnam and had to sneak back in and they were spit upon,” said Don Stewart, communications director for the senator’s office. For Iraq and Afghanistan, he said, Mr. McConnell felt the troops should be able to “attend ceremonies, get awards.”

    Behind the Victory Money Lies Vietnam, NYT, 5.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/washington/05victory.html

Op-Ed Contributor

Get Congress Out of the Page Business

October 4, 2006
By JONATHAN TURLEY
WASHINGTON
The New York Times

MEMBERS of Congress have been falling over themselves this week to assign blame to other people in the aftermath of the resignation of their colleague Mark Foley, the Florida Republican who has acknowledged sending improper e-mail messages to a former House page. The fact is, however, that they are all to blame to different degrees for this latest page scandal.

I served as a House leadership page in 1977 and 1978 under the sponsorship of Sidney Yates, an Illinois Democrat. This was during the dark ages when male pages were simply given a salary and told to find their own housing. (Female pages were housed at the Y.W.C.A.) It goes without saying that pages grew up fast and had to learn self-discipline and survival skills.

During my tenure, I was taken by other pages to the home of a man who lived on Capitol Hill — not a member of Congress — and who would give male pages alcohol and drugs. He was clearly a pedophile. On weekends, he brought boys into the woods to drink, shoot guns and pose for semi-nude pictures for his “collection.” I knew enough to leave, but, given the extent of his “collection,” some clearly did not.

It later became obvious, however, that some of the greatest dangers lurked inside, not outside, the halls of Congress. In 1983, two members were censured for having had sexual relationships with House pages. Dan Crane of Illinois was defeated after he said he had sex with a 17-year-old female page in 1980. Gerry Studds of Massachusetts refused to apologize for a 1973 relationship with a 17-year-old male page, saying that the page was above the age of consent. Mr. Studds was elected five more times.

Like the rest of society, Congress has always had sexual deviants and sexual predators who cultivated images of themselves as churchgoers with family values. Mr. Foley was a co-chairman of the House Caucus of Missing and Exploited Children and an author of various bills about abuse of children. For a member with dark predilections, the presence of trusting and vulnerable pages can be an irresistible temptation.

There are aspects of the representative-page relationship that can unfortunately provide ample opportunities for sexual predators. Pedophiles often assume fatherly roles, reassuring pages living far from their parents. The subordinate position of pages also fulfills power fantasies for some pedophiles.

What is at risk is something truly unique. Since the 1820’s, pages have been an official part of Congress, but there were probably pages even in the first Congress, in the 1790’s. For these young men and women, being a page is an experience that will resonate with them for the rest of their lives. (It is therefore particularly galling that, as in 1983, the misconduct of members often leads to calls to abolish the page service — removing the temptations rather than deterring the abuses.)

As a 16-year-old page, I served such iconic figures as Barbara Jordan and heard addresses from leaders like Hubert Humphrey. I still remember the first time I had to hoist the flag on top of the House of Representatives, walking over a narrow plank of rotted wood that was probably 200 years old. I stood on top of the windy Capitol holding that flag and having my own “Titanic” moment: I felt as if there was no limit to this country or its promise. When I sat to catch my breath I noticed a spot near the door where pages had recorded their names for over a century. You could feel a connection that ran for generations, as if pages were part of the Capitol itself.

Pages also serve as reminders to members of Congress of the idealism that first drove them to choose public service. In the hallways of the Capitol they seem like antidotes to the Abramoffs, the Cunninghams and the general stifling cynicism that has taken over government. That is why many of us are so angry with the failure, yet again, to protect our pages.

The 1980’s scandals led to some important reforms on housing and schooling (including the creation of a page dormitory). These reforms, however, fell short of the needed changes.

The most glaring problem is that the House Page Board, which supervises the pages, is made up mostly of members of Congress (the Senate Page Board is composed of only two Senate officials, with no members). The representatives on the board have built-in conflicts of interests in moving against members accused of harassment. Political and social alliances complicate the process and many members would prefer to remain in blissful ignorance when rumors arise. Indeed, some (including the House speaker, Dennis Hastert) are accused of having known about Mr. Foley’s inappropriate messages months ago but allowing the matter to be addressed only informally and without serious action.

The solution is simple: the alumni of the page program need to protect their own ranks. Some of Washington’s most powerful figures in politics, media, business and the law are former pages. They are neither intimidated by members of Congress nor hesitant to drag a member to account. They are protective of pages and have the clout to match their concern.

Congress should create a Congressional Page Board composed of former pages. This board would have the ability to report infractions directly to the respective Ethics Committees for each house, which would be required to investigate and act upon any complaint submitted by the board.

One of the benefits of such a board is that former pages are likely to have a greater connection and rapport with current pages. Indeed, what is unusual about this case is that the page actually came forward — reports suggest that other pages had known of Mr. Foley’s conduct for years. They were wrong in not coming forward with the information. But that’s a difficult thing to do. It might have been easier if the voice on the other end of a telephone line was a former page.

If members are truly outraged, they will help us protect pages from predators in their own ranks. Power and pedophilia are by no means inevitable allies, but it is ridiculous and reckless to ignore their historical relationship. As former pages, we are happy to leave the Foleys, Cranes and Studdses to Congress. But Congress should leave the welfare of the pages to us.

Jonathan Turley,a lawprofessor at George Washington University, was aHousepage from 1977 to 1978.

    Get Congress Out of the Page Business, NYT, 4.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/opinion/04turley.html

In Bill’s Fine Print, Millions to Celebrate Victory

October 4, 2006
The New York times
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — Even as the Bush administration urges Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Republicans in Congress have put down a quiet marker in the apparent hope that V-I Day might be only months away.

Tucked away in fine print in the military spending bill for this past year was a lump sum of $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation’s capital “for commemoration of success” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not surprisingly, the money was not spent.

Now Congressional Republicans are saying, in effect, maybe next year. A paragraph written into spending legislation and approved by the Senate and House allows the $20 million to be rolled over into 2007.

The original legislation empowered the president to designate “a day of celebration” to commemorate the success of the armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to “issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe that day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.”

The celebration would honor the soldiers, sailors, air crews and marines who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it would be held in Washington, with the $20 million to cover the costs of military participation.

Democrats called attention to the measure, an act that Republicans are likely to portray as an effort to embarrass them five weeks before the midterm election. The Democrats said both the original language and the extension were pushed by Senate Republicans. A spokesman for the Republican-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee said it was protocol not to identify sponsors of such specific legislation.

The overall legislation was approved in the Senate by unanimous consent and overwhelmingly in the House after a short debate.

Democrats nevertheless said they were not pleased.

“If the Bush administration had spent more time planning for the postwar occupation of Iraq, and less time planning ‘mission accomplished’ victory celebrations, America would be closer to finishing the job in Iraq,” said Rebecca M. Kirszner, communications director for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader.

Lt. Col. Brian Maka, a Pentagon spokesman, said late Tuesday that the event was envisioned as an opportunity for “honoring returning U.S. forces at the conclusion” of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. “As the funds were not used in F.Y. 2006,” the official said, using the initials for fiscal year, “the authorization was rolled over into F.Y. 2007.”

    In Bill’s Fine Print, Millions to Celebrate Victory, NYT, 4.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/washington/04victory.html?hp&ex=1160020800&en=4ad8d391104e9988&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Chaplain Prayer Provision Cut From Military Spending Bill

October 1, 2006
The New York Times
By NEELA BANERJEE

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 — Congress removed a controversial provision in a military bill on Friday that would have permitted chaplains to offer sectarian prayer at mandatory nondenominational events. At the same time, lawmakers moved to rescind guidelines issued last year by the Air Force and Navy meant to curtail the risk of religious coercion and proselytizing within the ranks.

“The provisions in today’s bill represent a full step forward and a half step back,” said Representative Steve Israel, Democrat of New York and a member of the House Armed Services Committee. “We removed dangerous language undermining religious freedom and military effectiveness, but I am distressed that instead of moving forward with unequivocal religious tolerance in the military, we are reopening old loopholes that permitted some acts of coercion and proselytizing.”

For several weeks, wrangling over the chaplain prayer provision had stalled the National Defense Authorization Act, a bill that sets military spending levels.

The provision was championed by some evangelical chaplains and Christian groups, like Focus on the Family.

But it was opposed by the Pentagon, the National Association of Evangelicals and a dozen or so ecumenical groups, which maintained that offering sectarian prayer would create division within the military.

Congress did hand some evangelicals a victory by abrogating the Air Force and Navy guidelines on religious expression first issued in the wake of a 2004 scandal in the Air Force Academy, when some staff members, alumni and cadets accused evangelical Christians in leadership posts of aggressive proselytizing and discrimination.

Spokesmen for the Air Force and the Navy said Friday that they had not had a chance to review Congress’ decision and so had no comment on eliminating the guidelines.

    Chaplain Prayer Provision Cut From Military Spending Bill, NYT, 1.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/washington/01chaplain.html