History > 2007 > USA > Politics > Congress (II)

White House Is Gaining Confidence

It Can Win Fight in Congress

Over Iraq Policy

August 30, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 — The White House is growing more confident that it can beat back efforts by Congressional Democrats to shift course in Iraq, a significant turnabout from two months ago, when a string of Republican defections had administration officials worried that President Bush’s troop buildup was in serious danger on Capitol Hill.

Current and former administration officials say they realize that the September battle over the troop buildup will be difficult. But they also say the president’s hand is stronger now than it was in early July, when Republican senators like Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico and Richard G. Lugar of Indiana publicly called for a change of course.

“There is a tonal shift, and that is important, but there is always the chance that it could be ephemeral, in the same way that the panic of early July proved ephemeral,” said Peter D. Feaver, who helped draft the buildup strategy as an official with the National Security Council but recently returned to his post as a political science professor at Duke University. “I don’t detect any triumphalism in the White House.”

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid upstaging the president, said there was “a sense the dynamic has changed.” But the official was also cautious, adding: “I don’t want to portray overconfidence. This is a very important debate, and September is going to be a very important month.”

With Congress in recess in August, no reliable indication of lawmakers’ sentiments will emerge until the House and Senate return next week.

Democratic leaders say they intend to renew their efforts to force Mr. Bush to withdraw troops as soon as possible, and one prominent Republican — Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee — rattled the White House last week when he called for Mr. Bush to begin bringing a small number of troops home by Christmas.

But other Republicans have not embraced Mr. Warner’s plan. At the same time, some Democrats who had been critical of Mr. Bush’s handling of the war have acknowledged that the heightened American troop levels in Iraq do appear to have produced some signs of military progress.

At least one nonpartisan analyst, Charlie Cook, the editor of The Cook Political Report, an independent newsletter, says the pendulum appears to be swinging — even though the war remains hugely unpopular and Republican lawmakers are under great pressure at home to end it.

“It’s a momentum situation,” he said. “The momentum back in June and early July was really running hard against the war, and it was starting to snowball. But that snowballing stopped, and it has probably kind of reversed itself somewhat.”

Democrats and White House officials say the snowballing could resume in September, with lawmakers back in Washington and the Iraq debate more fully engaged, through hearings and testimony from the top commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, and the top diplomat, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. While lawmakers have been home for summer recess, Mr. Bush has been able to use his presidential platform, delivering speeches to promote what he calls the success of his troop buildup.

But that is about to change, said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader.

“We’ve got a series of hearings and reports due that will provide a much-needed dose of reality to the spin coming out of the White House,” he said. “Republicans may be breathing a sigh of relief, but the fact is, they’re headed with the president over a cliff.”

The official line from the White House is that Mr. Bush will decide about the future of the troop buildup after hearing from General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker. But people familiar with the thinking of the administration say Mr. Bush is all but certain to press for the strategy that relies on heightened troop levels in Iraq to continue through spring, as initially planned.

To maintain the war effort, the White House will need to win Congressional approval for new financing, in the form of a defense budget for the coming year and a supplemental budget for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. White House officials said Wednesday that the size of the spending request had not been determined.

The supplemental spending bill will provide a vehicle for a Congressional battle over withdrawing troops. But Mr. Cook, the political analyst, predicted that if Democrats could not muster the votes to force a pullout earlier this year, they are unlikely to be able to do so in September.

Allies of the White House are encouraged, said Peter Wehner, a former policy analyst for Mr. Bush who works at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a research organization.

“I think the situation now is that people are confident the strategy is going to go forward until the spring,” he said Wednesday in an interview.

Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from New Orleans.

    White House Is Gaining Confidence It Can Win Fight in Congress Over Iraq Policy, NYT, 30.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/washington/30policy.html

Hear a General, Hug a Sheik:

Congress Visits Iraq

August 26, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and DAMIEN CAVE

WASHINGTON, Aug. 25 — On a Sunday morning in early August, just hours after Congress had recessed for the summer, Representative Jan Schakowsky and five of her colleagues boarded a military jet at Andrews Air Force Base. Three flights and a Black Hawk helicopter ride later, they were lunching on asparagus soup and lobster tortellini at the home of Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker in Baghdad.

“It was a lovely lunch, a nice-napkin lunch,” said Ms. Schakowsky, a liberal Democrat and ardent war critic from Chicago. But it was also, she said, a lunch with a message.

The featured guest was Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American military commander in Iraq. With an array of charts and maps behind him, he told the lawmakers President Bush’s troop buildup had produced “tactical momentum,” a phrase that he would use repeatedly in Congressional briefings and that lawmakers are now beginning to use as well.

The meal was just one stop in a jam-packed tour that included visits with Sunni and Shiite tribal leaders (“a sheik engagement,” the Pentagon itinerary said), a chat with the Kurdish deputy prime minister and the all-important photographs with hometown soldiers to show constituents at election time. Just another day in Baghdad in August, high season for Congressional travel to Iraq.

The trips, highly choreographed affairs known as codels, for Congressional delegations, are an annual rite of summer for lawmakers, but they have taken on fresh urgency. With Democrats running Congress and Mr. Bush’s troop increase due for an intense re-evaluation in September, roughly 50 lawmakers have tromped through Iraq this summer, and their impressions are having a profound effect on the debate.

Last week, Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said after visiting Iraq that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki should be ousted for making such poor progress in bridging his country’s sectarian differences. Then Mr. Levin’s Republican counterpart and Iraq travel partner, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, dropped his own bombshell, calling on the president to begin bringing troops home by Christmas.

Congress has had notoriously testy relations with the Pentagon over the war. But with a new defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, in charge, this summer’s trips have amounted to a kind of Pentagon charm offensive. Lawmakers say Mr. Gates seems especially encouraging of their visits; six freshmen traveled to Iraq recently at his invitation.

Inside the Pentagon, some were concerned about how the top generals in Baghdad could fight the war and accommodate so many lawmakers, with all their briefings, travel and security needs. The Pentagon press secretary, Geoff Morrell, said Mr. Gates and General Petraeus were determined to do both.

“You can’t fight the war in a vacuum,” Mr. Morrell said. “The reality is that there’s an audience in Washington that you need to be attentive to.”

The trips have clearly set the story line for the September debate, cementing the perception that the military is making progress, even if Mr. Maliki is not. For the White House, which sold the troop buildup as a way to create “political breathing space” for the Iraqis to form a unity government, it’s a glass-half-empty, half-full situation.

Ms. Schakowsky, for example, came away from the Petraeus lunch convinced more than ever that “the surge is a failure.” Representative Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican, took the opposite view; he’s now “leaning in the direction” of giving the buildup more time.

In Baghdad on Saturday, just hours after his own meeting with General Petraeus, James P. Moran, a Virginia Democrat and senior member of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, also said he was impressed with the presentation. “Based on the outline,” Mr. Moran said, “I just don’t see Congress pulling up stakes.”

The Pentagon is pleased and a senior White House official called the trips “a net plus.” And at least one Democrat, Representative Brian Baird of Washington, an early opponent of the war, has changed his mind.

Mr. Baird was especially struck by his trip to Yusufiya, a farm town about 15 miles south of Baghdad in an area long dominated by Sunni insurgents. He met the mayor, visited a market and chatted with two sheiks, a Sunni and a Shiite, who “embraced us in front of everybody out on the street,” he said.

“That’s real progress,” Mr. Baird said, though he confessed he did not tell his wife about the region’s nickname, the triangle of death, and said the whole scene was a little surreal. “You have your flak jacket on, and your Kevlar helmet and you’re surrounded by guys with automatic weapons as you’re standing there, talking to the mayor. And you realize there’s a dusty old car next to you and you’re saying, ‘God, I hope that doesn’t blow up.’ ”

The Congressional Iraq tours rarely include chats with ordinary Iraqis. “You don’t have the mobility for that,” Mr. Kingston said. And Iraqis are a tad suspicious of the marketplace scenes. When faced with an American in a business suit and a flak jacket, they tend to react warily, unsure of who the visitor might be, or what role he plays in Iraq policy.

Iraqi officials view the Congressional visits — quick in-and-out trips — with a blend of appreciation and scorn. Most wish the Americans would stay longer.

“They need to get out of the circle, to meet some new people, to understand, to hear some new ideas,” said Shatha al-Musawi, a Shiite lawmaker who founded a well-known women’s group soon after the American invasion. She said several women in Parliament asked to meet the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, during her recent visit. But the speaker did not have time.

Some lawmakers were frustrated too. “I call it the embassy P.R. tour,” Ms. Schakowsky said.

For members of Congress, visiting Iraq is a badge of honor, a license to stand on the House or Senate floor and begin a speech by saying, “When I was in Iraq ... .” Some keep going back; Representative Christopher Shays, the Connecticut Republican, just ended his 18th visit.

The trips also confer a certain credibility at home. Representative Peter Roskam, a freshman Republican from Illinois, held a conference call with his constituents from his dormitory room in Baghdad this summer; 6,000 people listened in. He had just come from dinner with General Petraeus at Ambassador Crocker’s house and, like others, said that the phrase “tactical momentum” stuck in his mind.

That is not entirely surprising; after a while, a kind of “how I spent my summer vacation” sameness emerges from the lawmakers’ accounts.

There is the helicopter ride out of the Green Zone to an open-air market, maybe in Anbar Province, a staple of Congressional tours now that local tribal leaders are cooperating with Americans in the fight against the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. A meeting with sheiks, a local mayor, or perhaps the Kurdish deputy prime minister, Barham Saleh, whose name some cannot seem to remember. (“If you told me who it was,” Mr. Roskam said, “I’d believe you.”)

Mr. Saleh is a regular on lawmakers’ itineraries; he said he has met with about two dozen this summer at the request of the American embassy, including Mr. Moran and two others on Saturday. His message — that Iraqis need more time and that Congress has put too much emphasis on forcing the Maliki government to meet benchmarks — dovetails with the Bush administration’s.

“He painted a very direct picture for us,” Mr. Kingston said. “He said: ‘You need to understand how far we have come. We’re in a culture where just to get a Sunni and a Shiite just talking about talking is a huge step.’ ”

For his part, Mr. Saleh, who welcomed Mr. Moran and two other members of Congress to his spacious home in the Green Zone on Saturday evening, says he has just one goal: to impress on his steady parade of American summer visitors just how complex, difficult and nuanced Iraq can be.

“I tell them not to expect any miracles,” he said.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from Washington, and Damien Cave from Baghdad. James Glanz contributed reporting from Baghdad.

    Hear a General, Hug a Sheik: Congress Visits Iraq, NYT, 26.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/middleeast/26visits.html?hp

Congress Backs Tighter Rules on Lobbying

August 3, 2007
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY and CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 — The Senate gave final approval Thursday to a far-reaching package of new ethics and lobbying rules, with an overwhelming majority of Republicans and Democrats agreeing to improve policing of the relationship between lawmakers and lobbyists.

If President Bush signs the bill into law, members of Congress would face a battery of new restrictions. The legislation, approved by the Senate on a vote of 83 to 14, calls for bans on gifts, meals and travel paid for by lobbyists and makes it more difficult for lawmakers to capitalize quickly on their connections when joining the private sector.

The measure, which grew out of scandals that have tarnished the image of Congress, represents a cultural shift in the traditions of Capitol Hill. While proponents hailed the measure as the most significant reform since Watergate, open questions remained on how some provisions would be enforced and whether the measure would change lawmakers’ ability to secure pet projects known as earmarks.

Still, the legislation does require greater disclosure about how the projects are chosen, with an effort to shed light on backroom dealing at the root of scandals that landed four lawmakers in jail and contributed to Republicans losing control of Congress last year. The bill also requires lawmakers to disclose the names of lobbyists who raise $15,000 in contributions in a six-month period through the bundling of donations.

The measure also abolishes the practice of discounted rides on private planes, requiring senators as well as candidates for the Senate or the White House to pay full charter rates for trips. House members would be barred from accepting free trips on private planes.

“Regardless of how reforms might impact us, our priority must be to convince our constituents that we are here to advocate their best interests, not those of well-connected lobbyists,” said Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin. “Ethical conduct in government should be more than an aspiration. It should be a requirement.”

The legislation brings a close — for the moment, anyway — to quarreling among Democrats and Republicans over charges of corruption. The debate came amid a widening corruption investigation involving Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, the longest-serving Republican, and only weeks after Senator David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, was linked to a prostitution scandal. Both senators voted for the bill.

Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and longtime advocate of ethics overhaul, opposed the legislation, saying it did far too little.

“This will continue the earmarking and pork-barrel projects,” Mr. McCain said. “We are passing up a great opportunity and again the American people will have been deceived.”

For a special project to be approved, lawmakers would be required to publicize their plans 48 hours before the Senate votes on them. The projects could not directly benefit the member of Congress or a family member. One loophole, though, allows lawmakers to say such disclosure is not “technically feasible” or the majority leader could waive the provision.

Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, said the earmarks had “turned Congress into a giant favor factory for special interests.”

“This bill is actually worse than doing nothing,” Mr. DeMint said of the legislation approved by the House on Tuesday and by the Senate on Thursday, “because it preserves business as usual and fools people into thinking that things are fixed.”

Since January, when separate ethics and lobbying bills passed the House and Senate, Mr. DeMint has blocked efforts to form a conference committee to reach a compromise. So Democratic leaders, eager to make good on a promise after taking control of Congress, worked behind closed doors to develop the bill that was passed in both chambers.

Emily Lawrimore, a White House spokeswoman, said Mr. Bush did not believe the earmarking provisions were as strict as they should be.

“We are continuing to review this legislation,” Ms. Lawrimore said in an interview Thursday evening. But a veto was seen as highly unlikely, officials said, as many of the changes would be enacted through Congressional rules over which the president has no control.

Senator Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat who was tapped by leaders to oversee ethics overhaul, said the legislation would “ensure that committees aren’t slipping in earmarks in the dead of night.”

After overcoming resistance inside his own party, Mr. Obama pushed for a provision requiring, for the first time, disclosure by lobbyists who bundle political contributions of more than $15,000 in six months.

“My argument was that it was worth it for us to try to be aggressive on this front, particularly since we were just coming into power,” Mr. Obama said, adding that he wished the rules could be enforced by an outside group. “I do think that the public would have more confidence in the process if we had an independent enforcement mechanism.”

The legislation is designed to limit the social interaction between lobbyists and lawmakers, making it more difficult for them to get together at sporting events, parties at national political conventions and other social activities.

The bill also deprives former members of Congress who now work as lobbyists of some of the privileges that critics say give them an advantage in pushing legislation. The measure revokes floor privileges to former lawmakers who are lobbying, and denies them access to the House and Senate gyms, other exercise facilities and members-only parking.

Also tucked into the 107-page measure are several Senate procedural changes intended to curb a practice that has become more common in recent years: adding surprise, last-minute provisions to bills.

Until now, lawmakers could only challenge what they call “dead-of-night” provisions by objecting to the entire bill, an uphill battle because most members of Congress are reluctant to block major legislation on the verge of enactment over a single element. Under the bill, senators will be able to try to kill select provisions without endangering the entire bill.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Rules Committee, welcomed the change, saying the former practice “has been a bane of our existence for a long time.”

The lobbying restrictions also have implications for senior Congressional staff members. The one- and two-year bans on contacts with Congressional officials also apply to the staff members earning more than 75 percent of the salary earned by lawmakers, who make about $165,200. That description prevents top aides from watering down their titles.

Of the 516 members of Congress who voted on the legislation this week, only 22 lawmakers voted against it. Still, several argued that some provisions have unintended consequences. “Does that mean I have to refuse the key to a city since cities have their own lobbyists?” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, who voted for the bill. “How about a 22-year-old staff assistant who has to wait tables to make ends meet? What happens when they wait on a lobbyist, do they have to refuse their tips?”

    Congress Backs Tighter Rules on Lobbying, NYT, 3.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/washington/03lobby.html

Op-Ed Contributor

Put Out This Tobacco Bill

August 3, 2007
The New York Times
By PATRICK BASHAM

Washington

ACCORDING to anti-smoking groups, the current Congressional attempt to give the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco is the most important piece of legislation since the surgeon general spoke out on the dangers of smoking 40 years ago. Surprisingly, it is not just the foes of Big Tobacco that support the proposed law, which was approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Wednesday.

Philip Morris, the world’s largest tobacco company, is also firmly behind the bill. In fact, it played a pivotal role in writing the legislation, working with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. What these strange bedfellows came up with is bad for competition in the tobacco industry and bad for public health.

One problem is that under the proposed law, the F.D.A. would regulate any new “reduced-risk” tobacco products. And in so doing, the agency would be responsible for setting standards to determine which tobacco products pose a reduced health hazard. Since the F.D.A. has neither the resources nor the expertise to do this job itself, it most likely would need to turn to the industry for help.

Philip Morris, which is miles ahead of its competitors in developing the next generation of tobacco products, would be only too happy to assist. In effect, it would be Philip Morris’s standards and products that would define the F.D.A.’s definition of reduced-risk cigarettes.

This would give the company an unassailable competitive advantage. Unable to match Philip Morris’s technical prowess, its competitors would be reduced to licensing its technology and producing pale imitations.

Moreover, by setting regulatory standards for reduced-risk cigarettes, the F.D.A. would send a message to both smokers and nonsmokers that smoking is really not very risky. However, it will take several decades before anyone is able to do the epidemiological studies that could demonstrate whether this is true. In effect, this bill tosses aside decades of work by the public health community to convince people either to stop smoking or not to start in the first place.

By assigning the F.D.A. responsibility for all tobacco products, the new law would also relieve the industry of any liability for tobacco safety — and pass it along to the government.

Few lawmakers seem to understand either the bill’s origins or ramifications. But the Senate should send it back to the committee and start from scratch. Come up with a law that would give the F.D.A. authority to regulate tobacco, but do so in a way that would truly protect public health.

Patrick Basham, the director of the Democracy Institute, is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

    Put Out This Tobacco Bill, NYT, 3.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/opinion/03basham.html

Editorial

Stampeding Congress, Again

Published: August 3, 2007
The New York Times

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has repeatedly demonstrated that it does not feel bound by the law or the Constitution when it comes to the war on terror. It cannot even be trusted to properly use the enhanced powers it was legally granted after the attacks.

Yet, once again, President Bush has been trying to stampede Congress into a completely unnecessary expansion of his power to spy on Americans. And, hard as it is to believe, Congressional Republicans seem bent on collaborating, while Democrats (who can still be cowed by the White House’s with-us-or-against-us baiting) aren’t doing enough to stop it.

The fight is over the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to obtain a warrant before eavesdropping on electronic communications that involve someone in the United States. The test is whether there is probable cause to believe that the person being communicated with is an agent of a foreign power or a terrorist.

Mr. Bush decided after 9/11 that he was no longer going to obey that law. He authorized the National Security Agency to intercept international telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans and other residents of this country without a court order. He told the public nothing and Congress next to nothing about what he was doing, until The Times disclosed the spying in December 2005.

Ever since, the White House has tried to pressure Congress into legalizing Mr. Bush’s rogue operation. Most recently, it seized on a secret court ruling that spotlighted a technical way in which the 1978 law has not kept pace with the Internet era.

The government may freely monitor communications when both parties are outside the United States, but must get a warrant aimed at a specific person for communications that originate or end in this country. The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that the court that issues such warrants recently ruled that the law also requires that the government seek such an individualized warrant for purely foreign communications that, nevertheless, move through American data networks.

Instead of asking Congress to address this anachronism, as it should, the White House sought to use it to destroy the 1978 spying law. It proposed giving the attorney general carte blanche to order eavesdropping on any international telephone calls or e-mail messages if he decided on his own that there was a “reasonable belief” that the target of the surveillance was outside the United States. The attorney general’s decision would not be subject to court approval or any supervision.

The White House, of course, insisted that Congress must do this right away, before the August recess that begins on Monday — the same false urgency it used to manipulate Congress into passing the Patriot Act without reading it and approving the appalling Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Senator Jay Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, offered a sensible alternative law, as did his fellow Democrat, Senator Russ Feingold. In either case, the attorney general would be able to get a broad warrant to intercept foreign communications routed through American networks for a limited period. Then, he would have to justify the spying in court. This fix would have an expiration date so Congress could then dispassionately consider what permanent changes might be needed to FISA.

Congress was debating this issue yesterday, and the final outcome was unclear. But there are very clear lines that must not be crossed.

First, all electronic surveillance of communication that originates or ends in the United States must be subject to approval and review by the FISA court under the 1978 law. (That court, by the way, has rejected only one warrant in the last two years.)

Second, any measure Congress approves now must have a firm expiration date. Closed-door meetings under the pressure of a looming vacation are no place for such serious business.

The administration and its Republican supporters in Congress argue that American intelligence is blinded by FISA and have seized on neatly timed warnings of heightened terrorist activity to scare everyone. It is vital for Americans, especially lawmakers, to resist that argument. It is pure propaganda.

This is not, and has never been, a debate over whether the United States should conduct effective surveillance of terrorists and their supporters. It is over whether we are a nation ruled by law, or the whims of men in power. Mr. Bush faced that choice and made the wrong one. Congress must not follow him off the cliff.

    Stampeding Congress, Again, NYT, 3.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/opinion/03fri1.html

Congress Is Getting Ready to Debate Energy Bill

August 3, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 — This was to have been the year that that Congress finally took meaningful action to address the related problems of energy dependence and global warming. The new Democratic majority vowed to make these issues a top priority, President Bush spoke of ending America’s addiction to imported oil and industry groups promised to do their share to build a cleaner and more efficient future.

All this will come to a test Friday when the House debates a 786-page energy bill that could be a major leap toward the twin goals polls say most Americans have come to embrace: reducing reliance on dirty-burning fossil fuels and slowing global warming.

But the House Democratic leadership blinked on the issue of setting tough new automobile and truck mileage rules, deferring the question to a conference committee with the Senate later this year. The fate of a second major provision, requiring most electric utilities to produce 15 percent of their power from renewable sources, remains uncertain.

The energy bill — actually an amalgam of bills from a half-dozen House committees — contains a number of significant provisions on energy efficiency for appliances and buildings, incentives for production of alternative fuels, millions of dollars for new research on capturing carbon emissions from refineries and coal-burning power plants and the repeal of some tax breaks for oil and gas producers.

But even supporters of those measures say the bill will fall short without a renewable electricity mandate and stringent new mileage standards for cars and trucks, popularly known as CAFE, for corporate average fuel economy.

“The energy bill? What energy bill?” said Dan Becker, director of global warming programs for the Sierra Club and an advocate for more efficient vehicles from Detroit. “If you add everything else in the bill together, it doesn’t equal what you would get from a 35 m.p.g. CAFE standard.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a tactical decision Wednesday to put off the mileage debate rather than provoke a fierce fight among Democrats. Dozens of Democrats, led by Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, oppose a strict mileage standard because of the presumed costs to the auto industry.

But Ms. Pelosi decided to allow debate on the renewable electricity mandate, despite opposition among members from many parts of the country, particularly the Southeast, that lack ready access to wind, solar and hydroelectric power. The sponsors of the amendment, including Representatives Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico, and Todd Platts, Republican of Pennsylvania, said they believed they would prevail in a floor vote.

The utility industry, which wields considerable power in Washington, vehemently opposes the approach, saying it is too expensive and technologically unrealistic. The industry also says it conflicts with mandates on renewable power in 24 states and the District of Columbia.

Sponsors of the House bill claim its provisions on energy efficiency in household appliances and government buildings alone will remove more than 8.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2030, an amount equal to the annual emissions of all the cars on the road in the United States today.

That is an unverifiable estimate, but even if it is off by a factor of two it represents a significant contribution toward reducing global warming gasses. The bill sets as a goal that the federal government, the largest single consumer of energy in the country, be “carbon neutral” by 2050, meaning all federal operations, including the Pentagon, would not produce a net increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The bill also provides big subsidies for production of ethanol from corn and other sources and tax incentives for consumers who buy hybrid automobiles and solar roof panels.

There are dozens of relatively uncontroversial measures in the bill that should ease its passage. That is good, some say, unless it wrongly convinces people that the country has met all its energy and global warming challenges and that more painful steps are not necessary.

“The rest of the bill provides some of the building blocks for a transformation in our energy policy, but without a renewable electricity mandate and CAFE, we will not have that transformation,” said Tim Profeta, director of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University and a former senior Senate aide. “What is needed are actual changes in behavior, changes in technology and changes in the approach to how we generate our energy.”

Jason S. Grumet, executive director of the nonpartisan National Commission on Energy Policy, said it was difficult to get lawmakers to think beyond the next election. “It’s hard to convince an elected official to alienate existing constituencies in order to make the world better in 15 years,” Mr. Grumet said. “No matter what Congress does in the next few months, these key problems will get worse before they get better.”

Some environmentalists say an energy bill without auto efficiency standards or a renewable electricity mandate is worse than no bill at all. They argue that if this Congress cannot stomach the sacrifices that will be required to put the country on an energy diet, it is better to wait for the next Congress and the next president to tackle these issues.

But others say the current energy bill, even without the two most controversial items, still represents steady progress and can be strengthened in conference.

“I’m acutely aware of how little time we have to pass a piece of legislation,” said Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, a private research group. “I don’t think it’s responsible to tell Congress to stop working and wait two years.”

    Congress Is Getting Ready to Debate Energy Bill, NYT, 3.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/washington/03energy.html

Editorial

Coming Clean in the Capitol

August 1, 2007
The New York Times

It took a while, and the process certainly hasn’t been pretty, but the Democrats are close to winning passage of their long-promised ethics reform bill. We suspect it will take a lot more than one new law to break the binding and corrupting ties of lobbyist cash and politics. But the bill, which the House approved with overwhelming, bipartisan enthusiasm yesterday, is a good start.

If the Senate needs further impetus to follow, federal agents supplied it Monday when they raided the Alaska home of Senator Ted Stevens. Mr. Stevens, who denies any wrongdoing, has the distinction of being the longest-serving Republican in the Senate’s history. Unfortunately, when it comes to getting caught up in an investigation of political corruption, he’s just one in a long bipartisan line.

One of the important aims of the new legislation is to let the public see for itself how much money is being traded for access. For the first time, the lavish torrent of campaign money from eager lobbyists to grateful politicians would have to be reported quarterly to the public via the Internet, with tighter scrutiny and penalties for violators. The reports would highlight lobbyists’ so-called bundling, the massing of individual donations into eye-popping packages for politicians and their party committees.

And the bill would require that all earmarks — those budget-busting pet projects that fall like manna from heaven — as well as who’s sponsoring them be identified on the Internet before final passage. The bill would also curb such abuses as corporate-paid gifts and travel. It would end lobbyist-sponsored galas “honoring” ranking politicians at national conventions. It would even ban the ludicrous pensions now being paid to Congressional alumni doing prison time for felonies.

The bill is not perfect. It doesn’t place enough restrictions on the rush of lawmakers into lobbying careers, but it is a major step toward resisting the Capitol corruption laid bare in the downfall of Jack Abramoff. He’s the über-lobbyist whose lavish wooing of dodgy lawmakers led to the Republicans’ loss of Congressional control. In the minority now, Senate Republicans would be foolish to block this urgently needed reform, as some are threatening.

The commitment to reform goes far beyond any party’s campaign pledge. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, has an opportunity to join the majority leader, Harry Reid, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in delivering bipartisan reform. Voters are watching closely to see if Congress finally has the courage to clean itself up.

    Coming Clean in the Capitol, NYT, 1.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/opinion/01wed1.html

Editorial

The House’s Duty on Energy

July 20, 2007
The New York Times

The centerpiece of a generally constructive energy bill passed by the Senate last month was the first meaningful increase in fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks in 30 years. The House version does not include such a provision, a serious shortcoming that Representative Ed Markey of Massachusetts will try to remedy with an amendment when debate begins. His amendment is vital. It is also a no-brainer. Without it the bill will fall embarrassingly short of what it could and should do to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil as well as its contribution to global warming.

There is an element of risk here for Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker who must decide whether to allow a vote on the amendment. It is vigorously opposed by John Dingell, the powerful Michigan Democrat who for years has had great influence over energy policy in the House, and by some members of her Democratic caucus. Approval is not a sure thing.

But taking risks is what leaders are for. Moreover, apart from her fortitude, Ms. Pelosi’s credibility is on the line. She has proudly described the bill, a compendium of ideas from nearly a dozen House committees, as her “Energy Independence Day” package. But this country already imports 60 percent of its oil, and the bulk of that goes to transportation. Thus, any serious attempt to make the country independent of foreign oil — or, at the very least, less dependent — requires the very fuel-efficiency provision the bill is missing.

Mr. Markey is not asking for the moon. His amendment would raise mileage standards from a fleetwide average of about 25 miles per gallon to 35 miles per gallon 2018. The National Academy of Sciences has said that this target can be achieved in a cost-effective manner without loss in performance or safety. By 2025, the country would also be saving 2.3 million barrels a day — roughly equal to current imports from the Persian Gulf.

The timing is right. A report last week from the authoritative International Energy Agency in Paris predicted that worldwide oil demand will rise faster than expected over the next five years while production declines — threatening supplies, increasing prices and placing an even greater emphasis on conservation of existing fuels and the development of alternatives.

In its present form, the bill contains positive elements for which Mr. Dingell and other committee chairmen can rightly claim credit — tax credits for clean energy, requirements for more efficient appliances and buildings, environmental safeguards that would protect sensitive public lands from the effects of oil and gas drilling. Some members of the House are urging that the wiser and less contentious course would be to pass this bill now and leave the fuel economy question for another day.

From where we sit, though, delay is incredibly risky. The Senate, the polls, the experts all say that the moment for strong action — a moment Ms. Pelosi cannot afford to miss — is at hand.

    The House’s Duty on Energy, G, 20.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/20/opinion/20fri1.html

Pentagon Seeks $1.2 Billion for Trucks Made to Withstand Roadside Bombs

July 19, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, July 18 — Pentagon officials said Wednesday that they were asking Congress to use $1.2 billion this year to build nearly 4,000 armored trucks designed to withstand roadside bomb attacks, a move that follows Congressional criticism that the Defense Department has been too slow to buy enough of the vehicles for troops in Iraq.

The additional money, which Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates asked for in a meeting with senior lawmakers on Tuesday night, would allow 1,500 additional Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, to be produced this year, Pentagon officials told reporters.

A Pentagon spokesman, Geoff Morrell, described Mr. Gates’s meeting with lawmakers as “very positive” and said the defense secretary was “optimistic that they will swiftly approve this reprogramming request.”

The vehicles, which cost around $1 million each, have a raised chassis and V-shaped underside that deflects explosions better than the flat underbelly on Humvees, which most combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan have. But only about 200 MRAPs are in use in Iraq.

The Bush administration originally sought $2.6 billion for fiscal 2007 to buy additional MRAPs but Congress increased the total by $1.2 billion. The Pentagon’s request this week, which shifts money from other Defense Department accounts, together with an additional $400 million the Pentagon now plans to spend on its own, would raise the total yet again, to around $5.4 billion, making the MRAP the Pentagon’s third largest acquisition program. The additional money will enable the Pentagon to increase the number of MRAPs due for delivery by the end of the year to 3,900 from 2,400, according to John J. Young Jr., director of Defense Research and Engineering at the Pentagon. About 3,500 are scheduled to be delivered to Iraq by then, he said. By next March, a total of 6,415 are due to be built, he said

By this December, contractors building the vehicles are scheduled to be producing 1,300 vehicles a month, up from 82 that were produced by all suppliers last month, Mr. Young said. He conceded that increasing the production so steeply could lead to bottlenecks that might cause delays. “This is an extremely aggressive program and the Defense Department is accepting risk here, and we may encounter manufacturing issues as we accelerate,” he said. “The entire Defense Department leadership team agrees we should accept these risks in order to provide more capable vehicles to our troops as fast as possible.”

Before the Pentagon decided several months ago to buy as many MRAPs as could be made, the vehicles were bought primarily for units with high-risk missions, like clearing roads of bombs, officials said.

Mr. Gates ordered an acceleration in production in May after news reports indicated that Marine units using the vehicles in Anbar Province had a substantial decline in casualties from roadside bombs. Representative Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he was pleased the Pentagon “finally acknowledged the true magnitude of this need.”

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, and Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, in a letter to Mr. Gates last month estimated that delays in producing the vehicles had “cost the lives” of more than 700 soldiers, who they said would have survived bomb attacks had they been riding in MRAPs, instead of Humvees.

When outside American bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, most service members drive in armored Humvees, which have proved increasingly vulnerable as roadside bombs have grown more powerful.

    Pentagon Seeks $1.2 Billion for Trucks Made to Withstand Roadside Bombs, NYT, 19.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/washington/19military.html

Tobacco Bill Delayed by War Debate

July 18, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:37 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Tobacco would be placed under federal regulation under legislation being readied for a Senate committee vote over objections from lawmakers who call the bill a misguided effort to reduce the dangers of smoking.

The bill, matched by identical House legislation, would give the Food and Drug Administration the same authority over cigarettes and other tobacco products that the regulatory agency now has over drugs, food, medical devices and other consumer products.

The bill has broad bipartisan support. It had been scheduled to be considered Wednesday in the Senate Health Committee, but the vote was postponed because of the Senate's all-night debate on the war in Iraq. It was unclear when the vote would occur.

The full Senate also was expected to pass the measure, even though some lawmakers, including Republican members of the committee, view any effort to create a safer cigarette an impossible task.

Smoking now kills more than 400,000 people a year. It accounts for nearly one in five deaths in the United States.

Scientists count some 4,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke. Of them, more than 40 are known to cause cancer.

The bill would let the FDA regulate the levels of tar, nicotine and any other of those harmful components. Tobacco foes hope the legislation would allow the agency to force changes to the cigarette that, eventually, would make the smoking habit both harder to start and easier to stop.

''That won't produce a safe cigarette, but it could save lives,'' said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

But others who oppose the legislation maintain the government should focus more on getting people to quit or not smoke in the first place.

''It would still be a deadly product,'' Dr. Michael Siegel, a Boston University School of Public Health professor, said in a recent interview. ''They are not going to make it a safe product by taking out particular smoke constituents.''

Philip Morris USA, maker of Marlboro, the nation's top-selling cigarette brand, supports the bill. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and others oppose the legislation, saying its restrictions on advertising would help cement Philip Morris' No. 1 market position.

Separate Senate legislation calls for a 61-cent-a-pack increase in the federal excise tax on cigarettes. That money would go to increase funding for children's health insurance.

''These consecutive committee actions beg the question of whether the Senate is trying to have it both ways: sell more cigarettes so the federal government can have billions of dollars more in tax revenue, while at the same time regulating tobacco products to the point no one will use them,'' said Tommy Payne, a spokesman for Reynolds American Inc., the parent company of R.J. Reynolds.

    Tobacco Bill Delayed by War Debate, NYT, 18.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Safer-Cigarette.html

Editorial

Terrorism and the Law: In Washington, a Need to Right Wrongs

July 15, 2007
The New York Times
 

Congress and President Bush are engaged in a profound debate over what the founding fathers intended when they divided the powers to declare and conduct war between two co-equal branches of government. But on one thing, the Constitution is clear: Congress makes the rules on prisoners.

At least that is what it says in Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 11 of the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to “make rules concerning captures on land and water.” And it is good that Congress seems finally ready to get back on the job. This week, the Senate will consider a bill that would restore to the prisoners of Guantánamo Bay the right to challenge their detention in court.

The Senate and then the House must pass the bill with veto-proof majorities. But that is only a start. The White House and its Republican allies have managed to delay consideration of bills that would finally shut the prison at Guantánamo Bay and begin undoing the damage wrought by the Military Commissions Act of 2006. That national disgrace gave legal cover to secret prisons, kangaroo courts and the indefinite detention of prisoners without charges in a camp outside the United States.

Shutting Guantánamo Bay will not be easy — and it will not be enough. Of about 375 inmates, the administration says only about 80 can be charged under the Military Commissions Act. Along with Guantánamo the entire law needs to be scrapped. Prisoners against whom there is actual evidence of crimes should be tried either in military or federal courts. Mounting an effective prosecution may be hard, since these prisoners were held for years without charges and some were tortured. But it is up to the administration’s lawyers — who helped Mr. Bush create the problem by allowing indefinite detention and torture to begin with — to deal with it.

Human rights groups say there are about 30 inmates who should be released but have legitimate fear of persecution or torture if sent home. The administration reportedly has already sent back some vulnerable prisoners, after obtaining what it must know are worthless assurances of their safety. Congress should require notice of such transfers, real guarantees of protection for released prisoners, and a review of the deal by outside judicial authority.

That leaves around 265 prisoners who have been held for years in violation of American and international law because Mr. Bush decided they were illegal enemy combatants — even though most were captured while fighting the invasion of Afghanistan. Under pressure from the courts, the administration created Combatant Status Review Tribunals to rubber-stamp that designation. These tribunals must be disbanded and their rulings reviewed by courts. Inmates who are not security risks should be released, and the others held under normal articles of war.

President Bush, of course, wants Congress to simply endorse his arrogation of power. The Times reported recently that the White House is seeking support for legislation that would permit the long-term detention of foreigners on American soil without charges or appeal, just on Mr. Bush’s say-so. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said “the biggest challenge is finding a statutory basis for holding prisoners who should never be released and who may or may not be able to be put on trial.”

Challenge? The very idea is anathema to American democracy. Congress did harm enough by tolerating Mr. Bush’s lawless detainee policies, and then by passing the Military Commissions Act. Giving the president a dictator’s power to select people for detention without charges on American soil would be an utter betrayal of their oath to support and defend the Constitution, and of the founders’ vision of America.

    Terrorism and the Law: In Washington, a Need to Right Wrongs, NYT, 15.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/opinion/15sun1.html

Bush Denies Congress Access to Aides

July 9, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:18 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush invoked executive privilege Monday to deny requests by Congress for testimony from two former aides about the firings of federal prosecutors.

The White House, however, did offer again to make former counsel Harriet Miers and one-time political director Sara Taylor available for private, off-the-record interviews.

In a letter to the heads of the House and Senate Judiciary panels, White House counsel Fred Fielding insisted that Bush was acting in good faith and refused lawmakers' demand that the president explain the basis for invoking the privilege.

''You may be assured that the president's assertion here comports with prior practices in similar contexts, and that it has been appropriately documented,'' the letter said.

Retorted House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers:

''Contrary what the White House may believe, it is the Congress and the courts that will decide whether an invocation of executive privilege is valid, not the White House unilaterally,'' the Michigan Democrat said in a statement.

The exchange Monday was the latest step in a slow-motion legal waltz between the White House and lawmakers toward eventual contempt-of-Congress citations. If neither side yields, the matter could land in federal court.

In his letter regarding subpoenas the Judiciary panels issued, Fielding said, ''The president feels compelled to assert executive privilege with respect to the testimony sought from Sara M. Taylor and Harriet E. Miers.''

Fielding was responding to a 10 a.m. EDT deadline set by the Democratic chairmen, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, for the White House to explain it's privilege claim, prove that the president personally invoked it and provide logs of which documents were being withheld.

As expected, Fielding refused to comply. He said he was acting at Bush's direction, and he complained that the committees had decided to enforce the subpoenas whether or not the White House complied.

''The committees have already prejudged the question, regardless of the production of any privilege log,'' Fielding wrote. ''In such circumstances, we will not be undertaking such a project, even as a further accommodation.''

The privilege claim on testimony by former aides won't necessarily prevent them from appearing under oath this week, as scheduled.

Leahy said that Taylor, Bush's former political director, may testify as scheduled before the Senate panel on Wednesday. The House Judiciary Committee scheduled Miers' testimony for Thursday, but it was unclear whether she would appear, according to congressional aides speaking on condition of anonymity because negotiations were under way.

The probe into the U.S. attorney firings was only one of several Democratic-led investigations of the White House and its use of executive power spanning the war in Iraq, Bush's secretive wiretapping program and his commutation last week of I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby's prison sentence.

Fielding's letter welcomed lawmakers back to town with a clear indication that relations between Congress and the White House had soured during the break.

Bush's counsel cloaked his tough rejoinder to the Democratic committee chairmen in gentlemanly language, but his message was unequivocal: the White House won't back down, and believes the congressional legal argument to be far weaker than its own and its attitude less appealing.

Fielding dismissed the chairmen's attempt to ''direct'' the White House to provide the legal underpinning of Bush's executive privilege claims and a detailed listing of the documents he is withholding. He said the White House already has provided its legal argument and so does not need to do so again -- and won't.

''We are aware of no authority by which a congressional committee may `direct' the Executive to undertake the task of creating and providing an extensive description of every document covered by an assertion of Executive Privilege,'' he wrote. Fielding suggested that asserting executive privilege on the testimony comes as a result of this impasse and the lack of good faith it demonstrates on the part of Congress.

More broadly, Fielding suggested that the congressional inquiry into the entire matter of the U.S. attorneys' dismissals has no constitutional basis, in large part because the president has sole authority to hire and fire federal prosecutors.

''Although we each speak on behalf of different branches of government, and perhaps for that reason cannot help having different perspectives on the matter, it is hoped you will agree, upon further reflection, that it is incorrect to say that the President's assertion of executive privilege was performed without `good faith,' '' Fielding's letter said.

    Bush Denies Congress Access to Aides, NYT, 9.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Congress-Bush.html?hp

Bush Asserts Executive Privilege on Subpoenas

June 29, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, June 28 — President Bush moved one step closer to a constitutional showdown with Democrats on Thursday, as the White House asserted executive privilege in refusing to comply with Congressional subpoenas for documents related to the dismissal of federal prosecutors.

The move prompted Democrats to accuse the White House of stonewalling, and seemed to put the legislative and executive branches on a collision course that could land them in court. It was the second time in Mr. Bush’s presidency that he has formally asserted executive privilege, the power first recognized by the Supreme Court in a 1974 Watergate-era case.

On Thursday morning, the White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding, telephoned the Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, which had issued the subpoenas, to inform them of Mr. Bush’s decision. The president also intends to invoke executive privilege to prevent two of his former top aides, Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and Sara Taylor, the former political director, from testifying, officials said.

“With respect, it is with much regret that we are forced down this unfortunate path,” Mr. Fielding wrote in a letter to the committee chairmen, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont and Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan. He said the committees had issued “unfettered requests.”

Mr. Conyers, in a telephone interview, called the letter “an appalling response to a reasonable question,” adding, “This is reckless; it’s a form of governmental lawlessness that is really astounding.”

The letter seemed to lay the groundwork for how the administration will respond to a separate, unrelated, round of subpoenas, issued by the Senate panel Wednesday to the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and the Justice Department for information about the domestic eavesdropping program run by the National Security Agency.

Administration officials said they had not decided how to respond to those demands, but experts said it seemed clear that the White House would refuse to comply there, too.

“Given the way in which both the U.S. attorney matter and the N.S.A. matter are now percolating through committees, I would be very surprised if there were not a major showdown over executive privilege,” said Peter M. Shane, a law professor at Ohio State University and an authority on executive privilege. “It might not get to court, but there will have to be some very high pressure negotiations at a very late stage to avoid that.”

The clash pits the Congressional right to conduct oversight — in this case, an investigation into whether the Justice Department allowed partisan politics to interfere with hiring and firing of federal prosecutors — against the president’s right to unfettered and candid advice from his top aides. Experts disagree about how a court might rule.

Mr. Shane says Congress has a strong argument, because it is making a specific claim that it needs information to conduct an oversight investigation, and “specific claims of necessity usually outweigh general claims” like the one the administration asserts, arguing the president’s need for unfettered advice.

But David B. Rivkin, who worked as a lawyer in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, argues that the president has the stronger case, because Congress has only weak oversight authority in the area of hiring and firing federal prosecutors. “In this area, executive power is nearly absolute,” Mr. Rivkin said.

The next step is for Democrats to decide whether to try to negotiate with the White House or to vote on a contempt resolution, a process that could take months and would lay the groundwork for sending the matter to court. Democrats did not say Thursday how they intended to proceed, although by the sound of their comments, negotiations did not seem likely any time soon.

“This is a further shift by the Bush administration into Nixonian stonewalling and more evidence of their disdain for our system of checks and balances,” Mr. Leahy said.

The dispute dates to February, when Democrats began investigating the dismissals. The White House offered lawmakers access to certain documents as well as private interviews — not under oath, and without transcripts — with top aides to Mr. Bush, including Ms. Miers, Ms. Taylor and Karl Rove, the chief political strategist. The Democrats, demanding formal testimony under oath, rejected the offer. That led to the subpoenas, though Mr. Rove has yet to receive one.

Some Republicans, including Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a strong critic of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, have pressed the administration to agree at least to transcripts. But on Thursday, Mr. Specter backed off, saying now that the president has invoked executive privilege, Congress should take whatever information it can get “on the president’s terms” to avoid a protracted legal battle.

“This investigation is lagging very, very badly,” Mr. Specter said, adding, “and while the investigation is lagging, Attorney General Gonzales continues to serve.”

The first time Mr. Bush asserted executive privilege, in 2001, he inherited claims from the Clinton administration. Representative Dan Burton, Republican of Indiana, was demanding information from the Justice Department pertaining to the tenure of the former attorney general, Janet Reno, but the Bush administration refused, saying it would set a bad precedent. Mr. Burton backed down.

    Bush Asserts Executive Privilege on Subpoenas, NYT, 29.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/washington/29bush.html

Bill OKs Lowering Flags

When Troops Die

June 15, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:58 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Legislation passed by Congress would require all federal agencies in a state to comply with a governor's request that they fly their flags at half-staff to honor a fallen service member.

The bill, which now goes to President Bush for his signature, was crafted by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who was upset by what he said was the ''inconsistent, patchwork display of respect'' in his state toward troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The House passed the bill in May and the Senate approved it late Thursday -- Flag Day -- on a voice vote.

The measure would amend federal law with regard to the flying of the national flag at half-staff to allow a governor to require that federal facilities in the state lower their flags when a member of the armed forces from that state dies while on active duty.

It is named for Army Specialist Joseph P. Micks, a 22-year-old from Rapid River in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan who was killed in Iraq last year.

Stupak said there were several instances in his state of federal facilities ignoring the governor's request to lower flags, and this was particularly painful in rural communities when funeral facilities pass through multiple communities, some with lowered flags, some without.

In the Senate, the bill was backed by Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., who said that flying the flag at half-staff was ''one of the most powerful ways we honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice.''

More than 3,800 Members of the military have died as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

------

The bill is H.R. 692

On the Net:

Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov/

Bill OKs Lowering Flags When Troops Die, NYT, 15.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Flags-US-Troops.html

Congress Passes War Funds Bill,

Ending Impasse

May 25, 2007
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, May 24 — Congress voted Thursday to meet President Bush’s demand for almost $100 billion to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through September, providing a momentary truce in a bitter struggle over war policy.

Even before the House and the Senate acted, Mr. Bush welcomed the legislation, which does not set the timetable sought by Democrats for withdrawing troops but requires the Iraqi government to meet a series of benchmarks as a condition of receiving further American reconstruction aid.

The measure also calls for reports from Mr. Bush in July and September about how his strategy is unfolding in Iraq and requires independent assessments of the performance of the Iraqi government by Sept. 1 and the abilities of Iraqi military forces within 120 days.

“As it provides vital funds for our troops, this bill also reflects a consensus that the Iraqi government needs to show real progress in return for America’s continued support and sacrifice,” Mr. Bush said at a White House news conference on Thursday morning.

The Senate, on a vote of 80 to 14, quickly followed the House’s approval and sent the measure to the White House, ending a months-long impasse between the Bush administration and Democrats who took control of Congress in January.

The action came at a time when Americans view the war in Iraq more negatively than at any time since the invasion more than four years ago, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Still, the poll found that a majority of Americans supported continuing to finance the war as long as the Iraqi government met specific goals.

In the House, the war money was supported mainly by Republicans on a 280-to-142 vote. A majority of the House Democrats — 140 — voted against it while 86 supported it.

Many House Democrats were dissatisfied with how the dispute with the White House was resolved, and their party leadership was under fire for the concession to the president on a troop withdrawal timetable. But leading Democrats said they had little choice but to send the money to the Pentagon or risk being accused of abandoning troops in the field.

“Like it or not, we ran out of options,” said Representative David R. Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin and chairman of the Appropriations Committee. “There has never been a chance of a snowball in Hades that Congress would cut off those funds to those troops in the field.”

Showing the political implications of the vote, three Senate Democrats seeking the party’s presidential nomination — Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Barack Obama of Illinois — were among the 14 Democrats who opposed the war spending bill. Another Democratic candidate, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, supported it.

Mrs. Clinton said she had thought “very long and hard” about the vote, because she wanted to ensure that “we do everything we can to protect our troops.”

She dismissed the idea that it could be used against her politically as evidence of abandoning the troops. “The president has resisted every effort by not just the political process, but by independent experts like the Iraq Study Group, to change course,” she said. “And enough is enough.”

Under a deal that made possible the vote on war spending, the House also voted Thursday on a package that included the first increase in the federal minimum wage in more than a decade and $17 billion in domestic spending on veterans and military health care, Gulf Coast hurricane recovery, farm aid and children’s health care. This bill was approved overwhelmingly — 348 to 73 — with strong support from both parties.

The added spending drove the total cost of both bills, which were combined into one bill for a Senate vote, to just under $120 billion.

Democrats in the House and Senate promised to renew the push for a timetable for Iraq withdrawal in other bills on Pentagon spending and policy. And the House, as part of its consideration of the money, set a framework for another round of votes in the fall on troop withdrawal and overturning the original authority for the war.

“This debate will go on,” promised Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, who voted against the war money and described the new benchmarks as token restrictions.

While many Democrats joined Ms. Pelosi in dismissing the benchmarks as inconsequential because any withholding of aid could be waived by the president, other senators said the conditions and the new reporting requirements were significant and could force a serious review of administration strategy as early as July.

“This legislation will not only ensure that our troops get the funding that they need for training, for equipment, for other essential purposes, this legislation is also about accountability and consequences,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, a co-author of the approach, which was written chiefly by Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia.

But to many House Democrats, the new conditions represented a failure by their party to fulfill the promise of the November victory that gave them control of Congress. “The American people voted us into power for one reason,” said Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat of California. “They trusted us to hold this administration accountable and to bring our troops home.”

The fight over the money began in earnest on Feb. 5, when Mr. Bush requested the Pentagon financing and urged Democrats to deliver a bill without restrictions. But Democrats sought to use the “power of the purse” to push him toward beginning a withdrawal of combat troops.

The first spending measure, approved last month, would have ordered a withdrawal beginning Oct. 1. The president vetoed that measure on May 1 — the fourth anniversary of the speech about Iraq that he delivered aboard an aircraft carrier before a banner declaring “Mission Accomplished.”

The House then passed a bill that would have provided the Pentagon money in stages, requiring more votes for future installments. After that approach went nowhere in the Senate, Democrats and the White House entered negotiations that produced the legislation being considered in the hours before Congress left town for a Memorial Day break.

“Thank goodness we are finally here,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, who choked up on the House floor as he discussed the responsibility of Congress to finance the military and fight terrorism. “We have no artificial deadlines, no surrender dates, no shackles on our generals and our troops on the ground.”

He and other Republicans accused Democrats of slowing the money to score political points at the expense of the military. “Three and a half months to respond to our troops and their families is too long,” said Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 2 House Republican.

In the Senate, some antiwar Democrats joined their counterparts in the House in vowing to oppose the legislation.

“It’s wrong for Congress to continue to defer to a presidential decision that we know is fatally flawed,” said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. He voted against the compromise even though it contained the increase in the minimum wage that he had long pursued. “It’s wrong to abdicate our responsibility by allowing this war to drag on and on while our casualties mount higher and higher.”

But others from both parties portrayed the Iraq benchmark provisions as an important step toward reaching consensus on how, according to Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, “we’re going to draw down troops in Iraq and make sure that in that drawdown we maintain stability of the government and also the security of our nation.”

Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, said the benchmarks would ensure that the Iraqi government understood it must stabilize the country both politically and militarily. “As our men and women are there dying and fighting for the preservation of a democracy, it is not too much to expect that the Iraqi government take a greater role in this endeavor,” he said.

Representative C. W. Bill Young, Republican of Florida, said neither Democrats nor Republicans should rush to claim victory with the end of the dispute. “The victory goes to the members of our military who are going to have the funding they need,” he said.

Robin Toner contributed reporting.

Congress Passes War Funds Bill, Ending Impasse, NYT, 25.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/washington/25cong.html

Congress Passes

Increase in the Minimum Wage

May 25, 2007
The New York Times
By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, May 24 — Congress handed a major victory to low-income workers on Thursday night by approving the first increase in the federal minimum wage rate in a decade.

By a vote of 348 to 73, the House approved the measure as part of a deal on Iraq spending. Less than two hours later, the wage increase was approved in the Senate, where it was combined with a bill providing more money for the Iraq war. That vote was 80 to 14.

The measure would raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour from $5.15 in three stages over two years. The bill includes $4.84 billion in tax breaks for small businesses. They have made a case, supported by Republicans and the White House, that the wage increase would be a burden for them.

President Bush said he would sign the measure as part of the bigger spending package that had been negotiated between Democratic lawmakers and the administration.

After the bill is signed, the wage increase will become the first item in the “Six for ’06” agenda of the new Congressional Democratic leadership to become law.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said the increase was overdue.

“After 10 years of indifference,” Ms. Pelosi said, “we are raising wages for the hardest-working Americans.”

The House and Senate approved the increase months ago in different packages, but it stalled over disagreements about the tax breaks. Republicans had sought larger tax breaks for businesses.

The minimum wage was an important sweetener for Democrats in dealing with the larger package, which includes money for the military in Iraq and Afghanistan and which had been delayed by a partisan battle over imposing a timetable to reduce troop levels in Iraq.

Although more than half the states have higher minimum wages than the existing federal rate, the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group, estimates that 4 percent of the work force, or 5.6 million workers, earns less than $7.25 an hour.

President Bill Clinton signed the last increase in 1997. Seven states now have minimum wages higher than $7.25 an hour.

A number of business interests lobbied strongly against the increase. One group, the National Restaurant Association, said the last increase led to a reduction of 146,000 jobs in the industry and prompted owners to postpone plans to hire an additional 106,000 workers.

The House debate over the wage was limited, as most lawmakers spent their floor time arguing over Iraq spending.

Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio and the House minority leader, criticized the wage provision along with a set of domestic spending measures attached to what was viewed as “must pass legislation.”

“We’ve got a host of issues that don’t deserve to be put on the backs of the military,” Mr. Boehner said. “It’s a sneaky way to do business.”

Democrats countered that Congress had waited too long and that many workers had suffered because of the lower rate.

“Wages have been unconscionably frozen for the last decade” said Representative David R. Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, estimated that in the first year that the full increase would take effect, it would provide a family of three with money to buy an additional 15 months of groceries.

In addition to the tax breaks, the Iraq spending bill had benefits for businesses. Major airline carriers, for example, successfully lobbied for a provision to relieve them of some pension liabilities.

The National Association of Manufacturers succeeded in having a provision stricken that would have blocked federal officials from lowering tougher state safety standards for chemical plants.

The bill includes $6.3 billion more for areas damaged by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma, $600 million for health insurance for children in low-income families and $3 billion for aid in farm disasters.

The White House had opposed many of the domestic spending provisions, which totaled $22 billion. Republicans managed to remove some of them shortly before the bill reached the floor, including $660 million to stockpile medicine for a flu pandemic and $400 million for energy assistance for low-income families.

    Congress Passes Increase in the Minimum Wage, NYT, 25.5.29007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/washington/25wage.html

New Coalition of Christians Seeks Changes at Borders

May 8, 2007
The New York Times
By NEELA BANERJEE

WASHINGTON, May 7 — A new coalition of more than 100 largely evangelical Christian leaders and organizations asked Congress on Monday to pass bills to strengthen border controls but also give illegal immigrants ways to gain legal residency.

The announcement spotlights evangelical leaders’ increasingly visible efforts to push for what they say is a more humane policy in keeping with biblical injunctions to show compassion for their neighbors, the weak and the alien.

The new group, Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, includes members like the Mennonite Church U.S.A. and the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, which represents Latino evangelicals.

It includes individuals like Dr. Joel C. Hunter, pastor of Northland, a megachurch in Longwood, Fla., and Sammy Mah, president of World Relief, an aid group affiliated with the National Association of Evangelicals.

The concerns of the coalition mirror those of many evangelical leaders who have often staked out conservative positions on other social issues or who have avoided politics entirely.

In late March, Dr. Richard Land, the conservative president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, stood with Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, in supporting routes to legalization for illegal immigrants.

The Rev. Joel Osteen, whose television ministry reaches millions but who steers clear of politics, has also spoken out for compassionate changes.

Immigration “for us is a religious issue, a biblical issue,” said the Rev. Jim Wallis, president of a liberal evangelical group, Call to Renewal, and a member of the coalition. “We call it welcoming the stranger.”

Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform does not back particular measures, said Katie Barge, a spokeswoman for Faith in Public Life, the organizers of a news conference about the group.

Rather, the coalition calls for bills that would push for border enforcement while improving guest worker programs and offering chances for illegal immigrants to obtain legal status, an approach similar to bills that Congress is considering.

The group advertised in newspapers like Roll Call here on Monday and plans to expand to other papers and radio. It is also trying to present at least 200,000 letters to Congress and the White House on immigration, the first 50,000 of which arrived at the news conference.

The group plans to focus its initial efforts on the news media and church members in Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, because of the high visibility of the immigration debate in some of those states and the pivotal role some of their members of Congress have in the debate.

Evangelical leaders have a delicate balance to strike among their rank and file. A poll in March 2006 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that white evangelicals favored a more conservative policy toward immigrants than other Americans. That position is largely based on concerns that immigrants threaten the American way of life, rather than economic worries, the survey said.

Immigrants, many of them illegal, have flocked to evangelical congregations, and evangelical pastors understand that immigration changes increasingly affect their congregants directly.

The Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution last year calling for improved border protection and financial and language tests for legalization along with ministry to immigrants, a position most heartily backed, Dr. Land said, by Hispanic Baptists.

John Green, senior fellow with the Pew Forum, said: “There are risks coming out with any positions for evangelical leaders. They risk taking a position that many in their pews don’t agree with.”

But given the great efforts that evangelicals have been making to reach out to Asians and Hispanic immigrants, Mr. Green added, “if they remain silent, there are great risks as well.”

    New Coalition of Christians Seeks Changes at Borders, NYT, 8.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/washington/08immigration.html

Bush Warns of Vetoes Over Abortion Issue

May 4, 2007
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON, May 3 — President Bush told Congressional leaders Thursday that he would veto any legislation that weakened federal policies or laws on abortion.

In a two-page letter sent to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Mr. Bush said his veto threat would apply to any measures that “allow taxpayer dollars to be used for the destruction of human life.”

Douglas Johnson, legislative director for National Right to Life, characterized the president’s message as “drawing a bright line.”

A statement from the group noted that many appropriations bills that Congress will take up include provisions to limit federal financing of abortion and that abortion rights groups have been urging Democratic leaders in Congress to change.

For example, a provision is under consideration for a foreign appropriations bill that would end a ban on discussing abortion in family planning clinics in developing nations.

Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi, said she interpreted the president’s letter as a broader threat “to veto any pro-choice legislation.”

“Instead of trying to work with Congress he’s trying to threaten Congress, and that won’t work,” he said.

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said: “The president felt that it was important to remind Congress of his position on these issues. It’s not about vetoing, it’s about standing firm on his core beliefs.”

    Bush Warns of Vetoes Over Abortion Issue, NYT, 4.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/washington/04veto.html

Clinton Proposes Vote to Reverse Authorizing War

May 4, 2007
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and PATRICK HEALY

WASHINGTON, May 3 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed Thursday that Congress repeal the authority it gave President Bush in 2002 to invade Iraq, injecting presidential politics into the Congressional debate over financing the war.

Mrs. Clinton’s proposal brings her full circle on Iraq — she supported the war measure five years ago — and it sharpens her own political positioning at a time when Democrats are vying to confront the White House.

“It is time to reverse the failed policies of President Bush and to end this war as soon as possible,” Mrs. Clinton said as she joined Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, in calling for a vote to end the authority as of Oct. 11, the fifth anniversary of the original vote.

Her stance emerged just as Congressional leaders and the White House opened delicate negotiations over a new war-financing measure to replace the one that Mr. Bush vetoed Tuesday.

Even if Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Byrd succeed in their effort, it is not clear whether President Bush would have to withdraw troops, or if he could resist by claiming that Congress cannot withdraw its earlier authorization but instead has to deny money for the war to achieve that result.

The question could prompt a constitutional debate over war powers that only the federal courts could resolve.

Mostly, Mrs. Clinton appeared to be trying to claim a new leadership position among the Democratic presidential candidates against the war in Iraq.

She supported the war early on, but she has turned into a staunch critic of the administration’s performance on Iraq. She has been saying that she granted Mr. Bush the authority to go to war based on intelligence reports at the time, but that the reports have since proved wrong.

Now, her advisers say, a vote to withdraw authorization would make plain to antiwar and liberal Democrats that she was repudiating her 2002 vote. The hope among her aides was that demands by antiwar voters for her to apologize for her vote would be rendered moot.

Mrs. Clinton’s vote for the original authorization has been a persistent problem in her presidential bid when contrasted with the positions of other Democratic contenders.

Former Senator John Edwards has repudiated his vote for the war. After Mr. Byrd and Mrs. Clinton announced their plan, Mr. Edwards quickly put out a statement urging Congress to focus on withdrawing troops and not revoking the 2002 authorization.

“Congress should stand its ground and not back down to him,” Mr. Edwards said. “They should send him the same bill he just vetoed, one that supports our troops, ends the war and brings them home.”

Mrs. Clinton pointedly noted that she voted in 2002 to put a one-year limit on Mr. Bush’s war authority, an effort led by Mr. Byrd that failed. Mr. Edwards had opposed that limit.

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, who was not in Congress at the time of the vote, cites his consistent opposition to the war. Mr. Obama issued a statement on Thursday evening indicating that he would support the effort by Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Byrd.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, beating Mrs. Clinton to the punch, called on Congress on Tuesday to withdraw authorization and develop a schedule for the rapid withdrawal of troops.

In February, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, another presidential contender, also raised the prospect of rewriting the authorization to give American forces a much more limited role in Iraq, but that approach ran into resistance from Democrats who said it could be perceived as giving new authority for the war.

Mrs. Clinton said her push for a new vote on the war authority did not mean she would oppose whatever new spending measure might emerge from negotiations between Congress and the White House. But she said she was joining Mr. Byrd in trying to force a new examination of the war in its entirety, rather than simply joust over specific elements of the spending measure.

Talking to reporters after her floor speech in a mostly empty Senate chamber, Mrs. Clinton indicated that her view was that rescinding the original vote would mean that troops would be out as of October. “They have no authority to continue,” she said. “That is the point.”

Later, however, her aides said Mrs. Clinton was not seeking a total withdrawal of troops from Iraq, or a quick pullout that could put troops at risk. They said she had called for a phased pullout that would leave a reduced American force to pursue terrorist cells in Iraq, support the Kurds and conduct other missions — a position she continued to support, her aides said.

The White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said the Clinton-Byrd proposal represented the same sort of artificial timeline that led Mr. Bush to veto the $124 billion spending bill on Tuesday.

“Here we go again,” she said. “The Senate is trying another way to put a surrender date on the calendar. Welcome to politics ’08-style.”

The idea of revoking authority for the war has circulated on Capitol Hill for weeks without gaining much ground. Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, had raised the idea because the original resolution did not envision the prospect of troops caught in a civil war.

Clinton aides said Thursday that while Mr. Byrd’s advisers had talked to them this winter about withdrawing authorization, the new plan only came up between the two senators and their staffs earlier in the day. Moreover, one adviser to Mrs. Clinton said, President Bush’s veto of the Iraq spending bill had left her believing that new types of pressure were needed to force the White House to adopt an exit strategy.

If the White House and Iraqis failed to meet certain benchmarks for progress, according to the proposed legislation, Mr. Bush would need to seek new authority from the Senate to continue in Iraq, which would render the 2002 authority moot, her aides said.

Whatever the prospects for that proposal, Congress and the White House took their first steps on Thursday toward trying to reach agreement on a revised spending measure, when the White House chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, went to the Capitol to meet with Senate leaders of both parties and the leaders of the House Appropriations Committee.

The legislators would disclose few details, though Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said the talks were constructive. At the same time, Congressional Republicans expressed willingness to consider some form of benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet to demonstrate that it was bringing the situation there under control.

Democratic aides said the idea of short-term financing of the military was also gaining momentum among their leaders.

Both parties said the critical question would be how or whether to hold the Iraqis responsible for meeting benchmarks of progress. Democrats have suggested that failure to comply should lead directly to troop withdrawals, but Republicans open to the idea of putting teeth in the legislation said any penalties or incentives should be tied to nonmilitary aid.

“I don’t think benchmarks should be taken off the table as a way of putting accountability on the civilian side of the Iraqi effort,” said Representative Adam Putnam of Florida, the No. 3 Republican in the House, who noted that state governments can have federal aid held up if they do not enforce federal laws adequately. “On the Iraqi politicians, it makes some sense, but not on our troops.”

Other Republicans said they were uncertain whether they could go along with penalizing the Iraqis for failing to show gains, but they made it clear that benchmarks were a likely part of any compromise. “I’m willing to talk about benchmarks, as I’ve said before,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House minority leader.

Mr. Reid and other Democrats said that all options, including timelines, remained on the table in their talks with the White House, and he raised the idea of giving the administration the ability to waive such requirements. But, he added, “we aren’t taking it all out.”

    Clinton Proposes Vote to Reverse Authorizing War, NYT, 4.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/washington/04cong.html?hp

Privacy Laws Slow Efforts on Gun-Buyer Data

May 2, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL LUO

WASHINGTON, May 1 — Momentum is building in Congress behind a measure that would push states to report their mental health records to the federal database used to conduct background checks on gun buyers.

But a thicket of obstacles, most notably state privacy laws, have thwarted repeated efforts to improve the reporting of such records in the past and are likely to complicate this latest effort, even after the worst mass shooting in United States history at Virginia Tech last month.

Federal law prohibits anyone who has been adjudicated as a “mental defective,” as well as anyone involuntarily committed to a mental institution, from buying a firearm. But only 22 states now submit any mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, against which all would-be gun purchasers must be checked.

The erratic reporting is a problem to which gun-control advocates, law enforcement officials and others have sought to draw attention for years.

“We’ve had these wake-up calls for years, and all we ever do is push the snooze button,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

The federal system, in fact, contained only about 235,000 mental health records as of January 2006, even though it is estimated that as many as 2.7 million people have been involuntarily institutionalized nationwide.

“The biggest impediment is privacy relating to mental health records,” said Joey Hixenbaugh, a unit chief in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s criminal justice information systems division.

In 1998, Russell Weston barged into the United States Capitol and fatally shot two police officers. Mr. Weston had been involuntarily committed in Montana as a paranoid schizophrenic, but the authorities in Illinois, where he bought the gun, were unaware of that because privacy laws bar Montana from reporting those records to federal authorities.

Several years later, Peter Troy, who was twice admitted to a mental hospital, killed a priest and a parishioner at a Long Island church with a .22-caliber rifle he bought.

In the case of Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech gunman, a special justice declared in late 2005 that Mr. Cho was mentally ill and a danger to himself, ordering him to outpatient treatment after two women complained that he was harassing them. The finding should have disqualified him from buying a gun under federal law, which says that any court ruling that a person is a “danger to himself or others” because of mental illness is adjudicated as a mental defective.

But because Virginia reported only involuntary commitments to mental health facilities, Mr. Cho’s information was not reported to the state police and federal authorities.

Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia issued an executive order this week to try to close the gap between state and federal law by requiring that commitments for outpatient treatment be reported, as well.

The bill being pushed by Representative Carolyn McCarthy and Senator Charles E. Schumer, both New York Democrats, takes a carrot-and-stick approach that offers money to states to automate records and speed their transmission to the federal database. It also withholds part of federal financing for a crime-prevention program from states that do not comply.

The measure is co-sponsored by Representative John D. Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who is a former board member of the National Rifle Association and a longtime opponent of gun control. Senator Larry E. Craig of Idaho, a current member of the association board, said he supported the thrust of the bill.

Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the N.R.A., said it was mainly mental health groups that had stood in the way of similar legislation in the past.

“We are not an obstacle,” Mr. LaPierre said. “We’re strongly in support of putting those records in the system.”

But Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, said his group was fighting the bill.

“Our biggest concern is this is being done as a denial of a civil liberty, and it’s being done without due process,” Mr. Pratt said.

Mental health advocates also opposed the measure, arguing that reporting these records to a federal database contributed to the stigmatization of mental illness.

David L. Shern, chief executive of Mental Health America, said the bill did not take into account how treatment could cure people.

“This is a classic example of a well-intentioned effort that’s going to have almost no effect and, in fact, is going to do harm,” Mr. Shern said.

The Supreme Court put up another hurdle to having states report records to federal authorities with a controversial ruling in 1997. In a lawsuit financed by the N.R.A.’s civil defense fund, the court struck down an earlier provision of the Brady bill that governs the background checks on gun purchases and ruled that state workers could not be ordered to carry out a federal regulatory program. States can be encouraged to share their information voluntarily, but in many cases they would have to amend their privacy laws to do so, an uphill battle in many states.

In North Carolina, gun-control groups tried in 2002 to require the reporting of additional mental health records but were stymied by both mental health and pro-gun groups.

Robin Peyson of the Texas chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness said she would oppose efforts to change privacy laws in her state.

“Its unintended consequence will be to discourage people from seeking treatment when they need it most,” Ms. Peyson said.

    Privacy Laws Slow Efforts on Gun-Buyer Data, NYT, 2.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/us/02guns.html

Democrats to Send Iraq Bill to Bush

May 1, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, May 1 — Democrats seized on the fourth anniversary of President Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech today as they prepared to formally send him the Iraq war-spending bill this afternoon, amid strong hints that Mr. Bush would then fulfill his threat to veto it before going to dinner.

“Today is the fourth anniversary of what I consider to be one of the most shameful episodes in American history,” said Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, a Democratic candidate for president. “Never before in our history has a president said ‘mission accomplished’ when the mission had barely begun.”

The White House quickly pointed out that Mr. Bush never spoke those words in his speech. Rather, they were displayed on a banner aboard the aircraft carrier where Mr. Bush landed shortly after the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was toppled by the American-led invasion.

Dana Perino, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bush, told reporters on Air Force One today that the speech Mr. Bush delivered as he stood on the carrier’s flight deck on May 1, 2003, “has been widely misconstrued.”

“I encourage people to go back and read it,” Ms. Perino said as the president traveled today to Tampa, Fla., to take part in a conference of the United States Central Command, which oversees military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The president did say we had a long and difficult road ahead of us. We’re moving from a dictatorship to a democracy.”

As for the $124 billion supplementary spending bill, which Mr. Bush dislikes because it also includes a timetable for American forces to begin withdrawing from Iraq, Ms. Perino said it was “within the realm of possibility” that the president would wield his veto shortly after arriving back at the White House in the late afternoon or early evening.

But a veto before nightfall seemed not just possible, but probable. “The president is likely to veto it tonight,” Representative Adam Putnam of Florida, the chairman of the House Republican Conference, said on the Fox News Channel this morning. It would not be surprising if Mr. Putnam had a hint, at least, of Mr. Bush’s plans for this evening.

Democrats were planning their own photo opportunity: a ceremony at 3 p.m. Eastern time at the Capitol, where Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California were to sign the bill and, no doubt, speed it on to the White House.

The bill says that American troops must begin withdrawing from Iraq by Oct. 1.

Supporters of the bill do not have enough votes to override a veto, so it appeared that after the veto, there would have to be negotiations between the White House and Congress over a replacement bill. Over the past several days, Mr. Bush and Democratic legislators have sounded conciliatory and hinted that they are ready for a serious exchange of views.

But not before trading gibes: Taking advantage of the anniversary of the speech in which Mr. Bush did not say “mission accomplished” is “a trumped-up political stunt that is the height of cynicism,” Ms. Perino said today aboard Air Force One.

    Democrats to Send Iraq Bill to Bush, NYT, 1.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/washington/01cnd-policy.html?hp

Iraq Pullout Plan a Rare Wartime Rebuke

May 1, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:06 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Anti-war legislation on the way to President Bush for his promised veto represents a rare rebuke by Congress of a large and ongoing ground conflict, even eclipsing challenges made during the Vietnam War.

While a bill ordering troops home from an ongoing military mission is not unprecedented -- legislation aimed at conflicts in Somalia and Haiti are other examples -- the Iraq bill is an unusually swift feat by a Congress forcefully challenging a war involving thousands of U.S. troops.

''Congress is not shy usually about attempting to create problems for a president when a war becomes unpopular,'' said Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian and professor at Boston University. ''But I think the significance here is that in a big war, they were able to at least get the legislation to the president's desk pretty early from a historical perspective.''

Congress' role in Iraq policy has dominated Capitol Hill since Democrats regained the majority in January, a change in party control due in large part to voter frustration with the war. The campaign is in its fifth year, with more than 3,300 troops dead and tens of thousands more wounded. Tuesday is the fourth anniversary of Bush's May 1, 2003 ''Mission Accomplished'' speech aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, in which he declared, ''Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.''

Last week, Democrats said they were acting on a mandate by voters when they passed the legislation, which calls for troops to begin leaving Iraq by Oct. 1. Lawmakers are expected to fall short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a Bush veto.

Nevertheless, said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who heads a House subcommittee that controls defense spending, a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is inevitable.

''The American people want them out. The Iraqis want them out. The world wants us out of Iraq, and it's going to happen,'' Murtha told NBC's ''Today'' show Tuesday. ''The president better plan for redeployment or he's going to have the kind of chaos he's predicting.''

The passage of the legislation in many ways surpasses congressional efforts to end the Vietnam War, a longer and far deadlier war for U.S. forces. Congress went years before it was able to agree on legislation significantly challenging presidential war policy, holding some 94 roll call votes on the war between 1966 and 1972, according to data provided by the Senate Historian office.

By the time legislation cutting off funds for the war went into effect in 1973, the U.S. military mission was already over.

Republicans have stood by Bush in denouncing a timetable on Iraq, although their opposition to setting an end date to an ongoing war hasn't always been the case.

In 1993, Sen. John McCain led an effort to cut off funds immediately for military operations in Somalia after a firefight in Mogadishu killed 18 U.S. troops. The former prisoner of war in Vietnam brought a hush to the chamber floor when he asked what would happen if Congress failed to act and more Americans died.

''On whose hands rest the blood of American troops? Ask yourself this question,'' said McCain, R-Ariz.

Congress ultimately agreed to back President Clinton's request to give him until March 1994 to get troops out, with funding denied after that date. In 1999, Congress passed similar legislation prohibiting money spent to keep U.S. troops in Haiti after May 2000.

''When Americans are imperiled, ultimately the president has to bear that responsibility,'' Clinton said at the time of the Somalia vote.

Now, McCain -- a GOP presidential contender for 2008 -- says setting a date certain on the war in Iraq is like sending a ''memo to our enemies to let them know when they can operate again.''

Matt David, McCain's campaign spokesman, said it is ''intellectually dishonest'' to compare Iraq to Haiti and Somalia because of the volatility now in the Middle East and terrorist threat.

''Haitians and Somalians do not want to follow us home and attack us on American soil,'' David said in a statement.

William Howell, a war powers expert and associate professor at the University of Chicago, said whatever the historical significance of last week's vote, Democrats have gained considerable traction in opposing a wartime president because of the war's unpopularity.

''It establishes this marker so that not now, but six months from now ... Democrats can have the momentum to (override) a presidential veto'' if the war is still going badly, Howell said. ''Just because it doesn't pass doesn't mean it's not of consequence.''

Zelizer agreed, adding that an anti-war vote is no easy task when U.S. troops are fighting abroad.

''It's harder to extricate yourself from a big war, not just strategically but politically,'' Zelizer said. ''It's that first vote that's sometimes the hardest.''

Iraq Pullout Plan a Rare Wartime Rebuke, NYT, 1.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Congress-Wars.html