History > 2013 > USA > Senate (I)

Congress’s Temerity on Gun Safety

December 22, 2013
The New York Times
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Despite lawmakers’ copious sympathy for the 26 victims of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre, all members of Congress were able to manage in the way of gun safety as they left town was renewal of the ban on the manufacture of plastic firearms. This is a type of arcane weapon that figured not at all in the Sandy Hook Elementary School rampage in 2012, nor in the mass shootings featuring adapted weapons of war that have occurred on average every two weeks somewhere in America.

The measure is needed because guns made of plastic could render metal gun detectors ineffective. But it does nothing to control metal guns, and little to confront the awful challenge of Newtown and the nation’s ongoing history of gun carnage. In a politically safe gesture, both the House and the Senate voted by voice so members could duck individual accountability.

The process was a sad reminder of this Congress’s determined avoidance of meaningful laws controlling the lethal (metal) weapons regularly scourging the land.

An analysis of mass killings by USA Today found that the youngsters murdered in Newtown in rapid sprays of rifle fire were not alone. Nearly one-third of the victims of mass killings since 2006 have been children younger than 18 — 363 of them shot dead at an average age of 8 years old.

The grieving parents of Newtown were armed with facts like these when they visited Congress last summer to plead for gun safety. Their ghastly losses repeatedly drew tears from lawmakers but no determined action. Congress’s failure is part of the tragedy of Newtown.

    Congress’s Temerity on Gun Safety, NYT, 22.12.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/opinion/congresss-temerity-on-gun-safety.html

Senate Asks C.I.A.

to Share Its Report on Interrogations

December 17, 2013
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the C.I.A. for an internal study done by the agency that lawmakers believe is broadly critical of the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program but was withheld from congressional oversight committees.

The committee’s request comes in the midst of a yearlong battle with the C.I.A. over the release of the panel’s own exhaustive report about the program, one of the most controversial policies of the post-Sept. 11 era.

The Senate report, totaling more than 6,000 pages, was completed last December but has yet to be declassified. According to people who have read the study, it is unsparing in its criticism of the now-defunct interrogation program and presents a chronicle of C.I.A. officials’ repeatedly misleading the White House, Congress and the public about the value of brutal methods that, in the end, produced little valuable intelligence.

Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, disclosed the existence of the internal C.I.A. report during an Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday. He said he believed it was begun several years ago and “is consistent with the Intelligence’s Committee’s report” although it “conflicts with the official C.I.A. response to the committee’s report.”

“If this is true,” Mr. Udall said during a hearing on the nomination of Caroline D. Krass to be the C.I.A.’s top lawyer, “this raises fundamental questions about why a review the C.I.A. conducted internally years ago — and never provided to the committee — is so different from the C.I.A.’s formal response to the committee study.”

The agency responded to the committee report with a vigorous 122-page rebuttal that challenged both the Senate report’s specific facts and its overarching conclusions. John O. Brennan, one of Mr. Obama’s closest advisers before taking over the C.I.A. this year — and who denounced the interrogation program during his confirmation hearing — delivered the agency’s response to the Intelligence Committee himself.

It is unclear what the agency specifically concluded in its internal review.

Mr. Udall, whose public criticisms of the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of telephone data has raised his profile in Congress and won him praise from privacy advocates, said he would not support Ms. Krass’s nomination until the C.I.A. provided more information to the committee about the interrogation program.

Ms. Krass did not respond directly to Mr. Udall’s statements about the internal C.I.A. review. Dean Boyd, an agency spokesman, said the agency was “aware of the committee’s request and will respond appropriately.”

Mr. Boyd said that the C.I.A. agreed with a number of the conclusions of the voluminous Senate investigative report, but found “significant errors in the study.”

“C.I.A. and committee staff have had extensive dialogue on this issue, and the agency is prepared to work with the committee to determine the best way forward on potential declassification,” he said.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is the Intelligence Committee’s chairwoman, said recently that her committee would soon vote to adopt the report’s executive summary and conclusion, which would then be subject to a formal declassification process before it was publicly released.

Republican members of the committee, angry about what they see as a biased and shoddy investigation by their Democratic colleagues, are planning to make public a rebuttal of their own.

The Senate report, which took years to complete and cost more than $40 million to produce, began as an attempt to document what was perhaps the most divisive of the Bush administration’s responses to the Sept. 11 attacks. But it has since become enmeshed in the complex politics of the Obama administration.

President Obama ended the detention program as one of his first acts in the Oval Office, and has repeatedly denounced the C.I.A.’s interrogation methods under the program. During a speech in May, he said that the United States had “compromised our basic values by using torture to interrogate our enemies, and detaining individuals in a way that ran counter to the rule of law.”

And yet Mr. Obama has repeatedly resisted demands by human rights groups to seek prosecutions for the lawyers who approved the interrogation methods or the people who carried them out, and the White House has been mostly silent during the debate over the past year about declassifying the Senate report.

For all his criticisms of the counterterrorism excesses during the Bush administration, Mr. Obama has put the C.I.A. at the center of his strategy to kill militant suspects in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.

Human rights groups have tried to pressure the White House to intervene to get the Senate report declassified.

“Whether it’s stalling or concealing, the C.I.A. is trying to avoid reckoning with its past abuse,” said Naureen Shah of Amnesty International USA. “And that’s what makes declassifying the Senate’s report so crucial right now.”

Ms. Krass is a career government lawyer who works at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the arm of the department that advises the White House on the legality of domestic and foreign policies.

The office was particularly controversial during the Bush administration, when lawyers there wrote lengthy memos approving C.I.A. interrogation methods like waterboarding and sleep deprivation, as well as signing off on the expansion of surveillance by the National Security Agency.

Under Mr. Obama, the office has approved other controversial practices, including the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric living in Yemen who was an American. Mr. Awlaki was killed in September 2011 by a C.I.A. drone strike, launched from a secret base in Saudi Arabia.

Much of Tuesday’s hearing was consumed by a debate about whether the White House should be forced to share Justice Department legal memos.

Under polite but persistent questioning by members of both parties, Ms. Krass repeatedly said that while the two congressional intelligence committees need to “fully understand” the legal basis for C.I.A. activities, they were not entitled to see the Justice Department memos that provide the legal blueprint for secret programs.

The opinions “represent pre-decisional, confidential legal advice that has been provided,” she said, adding that the confidentiality of the legal advice was necessary to allow a “full and frank discussion amongst clients and policy makers and their lawyers within the executive branch.”

Senator Feinstein appeared unmoved. “Unless we know the administration’s basis for sanctioning a program, it is very hard to oversee it,” she said.

Still, it is expected that the committee will vote to approve Ms. Krass.

    Senate Asks C.I.A. to Share Its Report on Interrogations, NYT, 17.12.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/us/politics/
    senators-ask-to-see-internal-cia-review-of-interrogation-program.html

End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now

November 25, 2013
The New York Times
By RON WYDEN, MARK UDALL
and MARTIN HEINRICH

WASHINGTON — THE framers of the Constitution declared that government officials had no power to seize the records of individual Americans without evidence of wrongdoing, and they embedded this principle in the Fourth Amendment. The bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records — so-called metadata — by the National Security Agency is, in our view, a clear case of a general warrant that violates the spirit of the framers’ intentions. This intrusive program was authorized under a secret legal process by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, so for years American citizens did not have the knowledge needed to challenge the infringement of their privacy rights.

Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism. If government agencies identify a suspected terrorist, they should absolutely go to the relevant phone companies to get that person’s phone records. But this can be done without collecting the records of millions of law-abiding Americans. We recall Benjamin Franklin’s famous admonition that those who would give up essential liberty in the pursuit of temporary safety will lose both and deserve neither.

The usefulness of the bulk collection program has been greatly exaggerated. We have yet to see any proof that it provides real, unique value in protecting national security. In spite of our repeated requests, the N.S.A. has not provided evidence of any instance when the agency used this program to review phone records that could not have been obtained using a regular court order or emergency authorization.

Despite this, the surveillance reform bill recently ratified by the Senate Intelligence Committee would explicitly permit the government to engage in dragnet collection as long as there were rules about when officials could look at these phone records. It would also give intelligence agencies wide latitude to conduct warrantless searches for Americans’ phone calls and emails.

This is not the true reform that poll after poll has shown the American people want. It is preserving business as usual. When the Bill of Rights was adopted, it established that Americans’ papers and effects should be seized only when there was specific evidence of suspicious activity. It did not permit government agencies to issue general warrants as long as records seized were reviewed with the permission of senior officials.

Congress has a crucial opportunity to reassert constitutionally guaranteed liberties by reforming the N.S.A.’s overbroad collection of Americans’ personal data. But the Intelligence Committee bill squanders this chance. It would enable some of the most constitutionally questionable surveillance activities now exposed to the public eye. The Senate should be reining in these programs, not giving them a stamp of approval.

As members of the Intelligence Committee, we strongly disagree with this approach. We had already proposed our own, bipartisan surveillance reform legislation, the Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act, which we have sponsored with a number of other senators. Our bill would prohibit the government from conducting warrantless “backdoor searches” of Americans’ communications — including emails, text messages and Internet use — under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It would also create a “constitutional advocate” to present an opposing view when the F.I.S.C. is considering major questions of law or constitutional interpretation.

Rather than adopt our legislation, the Intelligence Committee chose to codify excessively broad domestic surveillance authorities. So we offered amendments: One would end the bulk collection of Americans’ records, but still allow intelligence agencies to obtain information they legitimately needed for national security purposes by getting the approval of a judge, which could even be done after the fact in emergency situations. Another of our amendments sought to prevent the N.S.A. from collecting Americans’ cellphone location information in bulk — a capability that potentially turns the cellphone of every man, woman and child in America into a tracking device.

Each of these proposals represents real and meaningful reform, which we believe would have fulfilled the purpose of protecting our security and liberty. Each was rejected by the committee, in some cases by a single vote.

But we will continue to engage with our colleagues and seek to advance the reforms that the American people want and deserve. As part of this effort, we will push to hold a comprehensive reform debate on the Senate floor.

There is no question that our nation’s intelligence professionals are dedicated, patriotic men and women who make real sacrifices to help keep our country safe and free. We believe that they should be able to do their jobs secure in the knowledge that their agencies have the confidence of the American people.

But this trust has been undermined by the N.S.A.’s domestic surveillance programs, as well as by senior officials’ misleading statements about surveillance. Only by ending the dragnet collection of ordinary Americans’ private information can this trust be rebuilt.

Congress needs to preserve the agencies’ ability to collect information that is actually necessary to guard against threats to our security. But it also needs to preserve the right of citizens to be free from unwarranted interference in their lives, which the framers understood was vital to American liberties.

Ron Wyden of Oregon, Mark Udall of Colorado and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, all Democrats, are United States senators.

    End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now, NYT, 25.11.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/opinion/end-the-nsa-dragnet-now.html

Government Shutting Down in Impasse

September 30, 2013
The New York Times
By JONATHAN WEISMAN
and JEREMY W. PETERS

WASHINGTON — A flurry of last-minute moves by the House, Senate and White House late Monday failed to break a bitter budget standoff over President Obama’s health care law, setting in motion the first government shutdown in nearly two decades.

After a series of rapid-fire back and forth legislative maneuvers, leaders of the House and Senate acknowledged there would not be a resolution in time to stop a shutdown before a midnight deadline, even as the House took steps to open talks. But Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, dismissed as game-playing the House proposal to begin conference committee negotiations.

“We will not go to conference with a gun to our heads,” he said, demanding that the House accept the Senate’s six-week stopgap spending bill, which has no policy prescriptions, before negotiations begin.

The impasse meant that 800,000 federal workers were to be furloughed and more than a million others would be asked to work without pay. The Office of Management and Budget issued orders that “agencies should now execute plans for an orderly shutdown due to the absence of appropriations” because Congress had failed to act.

In the hours leading up the deadline, House Republican leaders won approval, in a vote of 228 to 201, of a new plan to tie further government spending to a one-year delay in a requirement that individuals buy health insurance. The House proposal would deny federal subsidies to members of Congress, Capitol Hill staff, executive branch political appointees, White House staff, and the president and vice president, who would be forced to buy their health coverage on the Affordable Care Act’s new insurance exchanges.

But 57 minutes later, and with almost no debate, the Senate killed the House health care provisions and sent the stopgap spending bill right back, free of policy prescriptions. Earlier in the day, the Senate had taken less than 25 minutes to convene and dispose of a weekend budget proposal by the House Republicans.

“They’ve lost their minds,” Mr. Reid said, before disposing of the House bill. “They keep trying to do the same thing over and over again.”

The federal government was then left essentially to run out of money at midnight, the end of the fiscal year, although the president signed a measure late Monday that would allow members of the military to continue to be paid.

“One faction in one branch of government doesn’t get to shut down the entire government just to refight the results of an election,” Mr. Obama said in the White House briefing room as the clock ticked to midnight. “You don’t get to extract a ransom for doing your job.”

Mr. Obama called House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, but they spoke for less than 10 minutes, without any sign of progress.

“I talked to the president tonight,” the speaker said on the House floor. He summed up Mr. Obama’s remarks as: “I’m not going to negotiate. I’m not going to negotiate.”

The House’s most ardent conservatives were resigned to seeing through their war on the health care law to its inevitable conclusion, a shutdown that could test voters’ patience with Republican brinkmanship.

“The fear shouldn’t be what’s going to happen at 12 o’clock tonight,” Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, said Monday night. “The fear needs to be on the future, what’s going to happen with jobs, what’s going to happen with health insurance for the American people.”

But cracks in the party were opening into fissures of frustration.

“You have this group that keeps saying somehow if you’re not with them, you’re for Obamacare,” said Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California. “If you’re not with exactly their plan, exactly what they want to do, then you’re somehow for Obamacare, and it’s just getting a little old.”

“It’s moronic to shut down the government over this,” he continued.

It was far from certain that Republicans could remain unified on their insistence on health care concessions if a shutdown lasted for some time. Asked whether Republicans could hold together through the end of the week, Representative Phil Gingrey of Georgia, one of the more conservative members, answered: “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Earlier Monday, the Senate voted 54 to 46 along party lines to kill the previous House plan immediately after ending a weekend break. Senators then sent the House a bill to finance the government through Nov. 15 without policy prescriptions.

But House leaders would have none of it, again demanding a significant hit to the health law as a price for keeping the government open.

Mr. Reid laid into Mr. Boehner and put the blame for a shutdown solely on his shoulders. “Our negotiation is over with,” he said.

“You know with a bully you cannot let them slap you around, because they slap you around today, they slap you five or six times tomorrow,” Mr. Reid, a former boxer, continued. “We are not going to be bullied.”

In addition to criticizing Mr. Boehner, Mr. Reid excoriated what he called the “banana Republican mind-set” of the House. He called on the speaker to put the Senate bill up for a vote, which would almost certainly pass in the House because of overwhelming Democratic support and backing from moderate Republicans.

In one of their final moves, House Republicans attached language to a government funding bill that would delay the mandate that individuals obtain health insurance and would force members of Congress, their staffs and White House staff members to buy their health insurance on the new exchanges without any government subsidies.

Conservative activists have portrayed the language as ensuring that Congress and the White House would be held to the same strictures that apply to ordinary Americans under the health care law. In fact, the language would put poorly paid junior staff members at a disadvantage.

Most people buying coverage on the exchanges will receive subsidies through generous tax credits. Most Americans will still get their insurance from their employers, who will continue to receive a tax deduction for the cost of that care. Under the House language, lawmakers and their staffs, executive branch political appointees, the White House staff, and the president and vice president would have to pay the entire cost of health insurance out of pocket.

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, said junior staff members were “being used as a sacrifice” for a political gambit, driven by Republican hard-liners in the Senate like Ted Cruz of Texas, that will go nowhere.

“They locked themselves into this situation, the dead end that Ted Cruz created,” Mr. King said.

The budget confrontation — which threatened to close federal offices and facilities, idling thousands of workers around the country — stemmed from an unusual push by Republicans to undo a law that has been on the books for three years, through a presidential election, and that the Supreme Court largely upheld in 2012. A major part of the law is set to take effect Tuesday: the opening of insurance exchanges, where people without insurance will be able to obtain coverage.

Republicans argue that the administration has itself delayed elements of the law. They say it should be postponed for at least a year.

Democrats say Republicans are being driven by the most extreme elements of their party. “The scary thing about the period we’re in right now is there is no clear end,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland.

Ashley Parker contributed reporting.

    Government Shutting Down in Impasse, NYT, 30.9.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/us/politics/congress-shutdown-debate.html

Senate Action on Health Law

Moves to Brink of Shutdown

September 29, 2013
The New York Times
By JEREMY W. PETERS
and JONATHAN WEISMAN

WASHINGTON — The Senate is expected to reject decisively a House bill that would delay the full effect of President Obama’s health care law as a condition for keeping the government running past Monday, as Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, expressed confidence that he had public opinion on his side.

Angering Republicans who lead the House, Mr. Reid kept the Senate shuttered on Sunday, in a calculated move to stall action on the House measure until Monday afternoon, just hours before the government’s spending authority runs out at midnight.

Without a complete capitulation by House Republicans, large sections of the government would close, hundreds of thousands of workers would be furloughed without pay, and millions more would be asked to work for no pay.

Polls show that the public is already deeply unhappy with its leaders in Congress, and the prospect of the first government shutdown in 17 years would be the latest dispiriting development. With a temporary shutdown appearing inevitable without a last-ditch compromise, the battle on Sunday became as much about blaming the other side as searching for a solution.

House Republicans, who insisted that they had passed a compromise over the weekend that would avoid a shutdown if only the Senate would act, blamed Mr. Reid for purposely running out the clock.

“Unlock those doors, I say to Harry Reid,” said Representative Ann Wagner, a Missouri Republican who stood on the steps of the empty Senate on Sunday with a dozen of her House colleagues. “Come out and do your job.”

But Mr. Reid sees little incentive or political advantage in bowing to those demands. He has held his 54-member caucus together so far. And because of support from some Senate Republicans who have called it a mistake for House Republicans to try to force changes to the health care law in an unrelated fight over the budget, Mr. Reid’s hand has been strengthened.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine became the latest Republican to criticize her House colleagues, saying on Sunday that an effort to link the health care amendments to the budget was “a strategy that cannot possibly work.”

Mr. Reid’s plan, which exploits the bypasses and delays available to him in Senate procedure, leaves little time for the House to act before the Tuesday deadline. The Senate on Monday is expected to send back to the House a plain budget bill, stripped of its provisions to delay the full effect of the health care law, repeal a tax on medical devices and allow businesses to opt out of contraception coverage for their employees.

All Mr. Reid needs are 51 Democrats to vote with him — not the usual 60-vote threshold required for most Senate business — and the spending bill will go back to the House in a matter of minutes. Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat, said that he had been canvassing Senate Democrats from Republican states and that the party remained unified.

Senate Democrats plan to emphasize a message that the blame for any shutdown rests squarely with Republicans. “They can decide at that point whether they’ll shut down the government or not,” Mr. Durbin said.

Republicans would then face a difficult choice. Speaker John A. Boehner could risk the ire of his more conservative members and put the Senate bill on the floor for a straight up or down vote, a route that his more moderate members have begun urging him to take.

Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, said on Sunday that he was actively courting Republicans and Democrats to get behind a temporary spending bill to avert a shutdown, even if it contained none of the additional measures the House passed over the weekend.

“I’m prepared to vote for a clean resolution tomorrow,” Mr. Dent said. “It’s time to govern. I don’t intend to support a fool’s errand at this point.”

Republican lawmakers said on Sunday that the House leadership had one more card to play, but that it was extremely delicate. They can tell Mr. Reid he must accept a face-saving measure, like the repeal of the tax on medical devices, which many Democrats support, or they will send back a new amendment that would force members of Congress and their staffs, and the White House staff, to buy their medical insurance on the new health law’s insurance exchanges, without any subsidies from the government to offset the cost.

Republicans expressed certainty that for all the discomfort a shutdown would inflict on Capitol Hill, Democrats would not risk it to protect their own benefits.

“The concern is palpable,” said Representative Reid Ribble, Republican of Wisconsin. “It will affect everybody, their staff, their budgets. But the American people feel we’re getting an unfair break.”

The Republican House leadership indicated on Sunday that it was planning to amend whatever the Senate sends back Monday.

“I think the House will get back together in enough time, send another provision not to shut the government down, but to fund it,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority whip. “And it will have a few other options in there for the Senate to look at again.”

Getting to that point would require agreement from a group of conservative Republicans who have often acted in discord with the rest of their conference. And it would require them to drop objections to defunding the health care law or delay the law’s full implementation for a year. People can begin signing up for insurance coverage under the law starting on Tuesday.

Representative Pat Tiberi, an Ohio Republican and close ally of Mr. Boehner, said House Republicans believed that they had already compromised by backing away from their demand that the health care law be defunded. Members of the large bloc of conservatives that often dictate the House agenda said they would not vote for any further government spending unless the health care law was gutted. The speaker talked them back this weekend to a one-year delay.

“Harry Reid likes to excoriate the Tea Party members of our conference for not compromising, when he’s doing the exact same thing,” Mr. Tiberi said.

Mr. Durbin said Mr. Reid’s resolve not to compromise has been helped by the shenanigans in the House, what he views as game-playing in the Senate by hard-liners like Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, and a sense that now is the time to break the power of Tea Party Republicans.

“This is what he believes,” Mr. Durbin said of Mr. Reid. “He’s sick and tired of the Tea Party caucus.”

Complicating matters further, Mr. Cruz, who thrilled the conservative base last week with a 21-hour verbal assault on the health care law, has been urging House members to hold firm.

There are many Republicans who are convinced that the public would not automatically blame them for a shutdown, and they sought over the weekend to make the case that Mr. Obama and Mr. Reid were slowing the process to score political points. They seized on a pair of images they hoped would resonate with the public: Mr. Obama playing golf on Saturday, and Mr. Reid keeping the Senate dark until Monday.

Mr. Boehner called Mr. Reid’s move “an act of breathtaking arrogance.”

The Capitol was quiet on Sunday. The action was on the morning talk shows, where leaders of both parties pointed fingers, and on the Senate steps, where Republicans gathered to demonstrate their anger at Mr. Reid. Neither Mr. Boehner nor Mr. Reid made any appearances.

With the government hurtling closer to a shutdown, the Republicans’ resolve has seemed only to irritate Mr. Reid more. In terms that are exceedingly antagonistic, Mr. Reid has insulted his Republican colleagues as “anarchists” and “rumps” and has called them the “weird caucus.”

And he has made little secret of the belief that the conservative wing of the House Republican conference has run roughshod over Mr. Boehner.

This month, at a private meeting of all four leaders of the two chambers — Mr. Reid; Mr. Boehner; Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader; and Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader — Mr. Reid tried to make light of the speaker’s difficulties with his more unmanageable members.

He told Mr. Boehner that he would trade two of the Senate’s more volatile members for two of the House’s, according to three people told of the exchange. Mr. Boehner chuckled, but did not entertain the idea for long. “You don’t want mine,” he said.

Brian Knowlton contributed reporting.

    Senate Action on Health Law Moves to Brink of Shutdown,
    NYT, 29.9.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/us/politics/
    time-short-but-gop-leaders-say-shutdown-can-be-avoided.html

Split Senate Panel

Approves Giving Obama

Limited Authority on Syria

September 4, 2013
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER, JONATHAN WEISMAN
and MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON — A sharply divided Senate committee voted Wednesday to give President Obama limited authority to use force against Syria, the first step in what remains a treacherous path for Mr. Obama to win Congressional approval for a military attack.

The resolution would limit strikes against Syrian forces to a period of 60 days, with the possibility of 30 more days after consultation with Congress, and it would block the use of American ground troops.

The vote of 10 to 7 by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee laid bare the complicated political crosscurrents raised by military intervention in Syria. Two liberal Democrats voted against the resolution, one voted present and three Republicans voted for it. The Senate panel’s action capped a day of fierce debate in both houses of Congress that indicated there is a widespread impulse to respond to the deadly chemical weapons attack but deep divisions over how much latitude the president should have to do so.

The White House welcomed the vote, declaring, “America is stronger when the president and Congress work together.” But administration officials said that while they expected the full Senate to vote next week, after Congress returns from recess, they did not think the House would act until the week after and were girding for a prolonged debate.

As the Senate committee hashed out its resolution, under the shadow of a potential filibuster, members of Mr. Obama’s cabinet pressed their case for action before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, drawing sharp criticism from Republicans, and raising doubts among Democrats, over the wisdom of getting drawn into a messy sectarian conflict.

However fractious the arguments, the lawmakers clearly responded to the challenge that Mr. Obama handed them earlier in the day, when he declared that authorizing a military strike was not a test for him but for Congress and the international community.

“I didn’t set a red line; the world set a red line,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference in Stockholm on the first day of a three-day visit to Sweden and Russia, where he will take part in a summit meeting that is likely to be dominated by the war in Syria.

“My credibility’s not on the line,” he said, appealing to lawmakers and foreign leaders to back his plan to retaliate against President Bashar al-Assad. “The international community’s credibility is on the line. And America and Congress’s credibility is on the line.”

Still, the Senate vote was hardly resounding. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, co-author of the resolution and the ranking Republican on the committee, was one of the Republicans who sided with Mr. Obama. Another was Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, a freshman who voted with his state’s senior senator, John McCain, an ardent proponent of robust intervention.

The three Democrats who did not support the resolution served as a warning to White House aides still searching for support in the House. Senators Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut and Tom Udall of New Mexico are newcomers who reflect the sentiment of the House Democratic ranks they recently left. Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, the Senate’s newest member and a longtime denizen of the House, voted present, saying he was still haunted by his vote to authorize war in Iraq.

“In the days to come, I will further examine the classified intelligence information and consult with experts before deciding how I will vote on the final resolution when it is considered on the Senate floor,” Mr. Markey said in a statement.

The panel had struggled in drafting the resolution, with the committee’s leaders pressing to limit the duration and nature of military strikes, while Mr. McCain demanded more — not less — latitude for the military to inflict damage on Mr. Assad’s forces. To assure the support of Mr. McCain, who is viewed as crucial to the authorization’s final passage, the committee toughened some of the language.

Noting that “it is the policy of the United States to change the momentum on the battlefield in Syria,” it urged a “comprehensive strategy” to improve the fighting abilities of the Syrian opposition.

The panel set aside a resolution by Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican leading the opposition to the strikes, which would have declared that the president has the authority to act unilaterally only when the nation faces attack. Democratic and Republican Senate leaders agreed on Wednesday night to gavel in a brief session on Friday to put the war resolution on the Senate’s calendar so the clock can begin counting down to a final vote toward the end of next week.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Paul said the senator was considering parliamentary maneuvers to ensure that final passage of the resolution would require a vote of 60 senators, but she said no decision had been made about how to do that. If the Senate does authorize military action, it will have to reconcile its authorization with whatever resolution emerges from the House. A resolution being circulated by two Democrats, Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Representative Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia, would impose even tighter limits on Mr. Obama, authorizing only a single round of missile strikes, unless there is another chemical weapons attack.

For the second day in a row, divisions over what do in Syria played out at a combative hearing in which Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, argued the Obama administration’s case.

Appearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Kerry offered a new argument: extremist groups fighting against the Syrian government would become stronger if the United States did not carry out a military strike.

Mr. Kerry said the United States had worked hard in recent months to persuade Arab nations and benefactors not to finance or arm the more extremist rebels who are battling Mr. Assad’s forces. But if the United States does not punish the Assad government, Mr. Kerry said, it is likely that some Arab supporters of the Syrian opposition will provide arms and financing to the best rebel fighters, regardless of whether they are extremists. “We will have created more extremism and a greater problem down the road,” Mr. Kerry said.

After days of discussion over whether a limited military strike would be effective, administration officials sought to assure anxious lawmakers that it would not provoke a major escalation in the fighting.

Representative Christopher H. Smith, a New Jersey Republican, asked if a missile attack might set off a chain reaction that could lead to a military action as prolonged as the 78 days of NATO bombing in Kosovo. “How do you define limited and short duration?” he asked. “And what might Assad do in retaliation?”

General Dempsey acknowledged that was a risk but argued that the danger had been mitigated since the United States had signaled that it was planning a limited strike, even as it retained the ability to carry out additional attacks if Mr. Assad responded in a provocative manner. “We’re postured for the possibility of retaliation,” he said.

The most heated moment in the hearing came when Representative Jeff Duncan, a South Carolina Republican, accused Mr. Kerry of taking a hawkish stand on Syria while ignoring the terrorist attack on the American Mission in Benghazi, Libya.

“Mr. Kerry, you have never been one that has advocated for anything other than caution when involving U.S. force in past conflicts,” Mr. Duncan said. “Is the power of the executive branch so intoxicating that you would abandon past caution in favor for pulling the trigger on a military response so quickly?”

His voice rising with anger, Mr. Kerry responded that as a senator, he had supported “military action in any number of occasions,” citing the invasions of Panama and Grenada. Mr. Kerry also voted in favor of President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, before turning against the war.

“We’re talking about people being killed by gas, and you want to go talk about Benghazi,” Mr. Kerry said.

In an indication of the hostility that Russia has shown to any American military action, President Vladimir V. Putin accused Mr. Kerry of lying to Congress.

“They lie beautifully, of course,” Mr. Putin said in remarks that were televised in Russia. “I saw the debates in Congress. A congressman asks Mr. Kerry, ‘Is Al Qaeda there?’ He says, ‘No, I am telling you responsibly that it is not.’ ”

“Al Qaeda units are the main military echelon, and they know this,” Mr. Putin said. “It was very unpleasant and surprising for me — we talk to them, we proceed from the assumption that they are decent people. But he is lying and knows he is lying. It’s sad.”

Peter Baker contributed reporting from Stockholm,

and David M. Herszenhorn from Moscow.

    Split Senate Panel Approves Giving Obama Limited Authority on Syria,
    NYT, 4.9.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/world/middleeast/
    divided-senate-panel-approves-resolution-on-syria-strike.html

More Fog From the Spy Agencies

July 31, 2013
The New York Times
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

The Obama administration released narrowly selected and heavily censored documents and sent more officials to testify before Congress on Wednesday in an effort to defend the legality and value of the surveillance of all Americans’ telephone calls. The effort was a failure.

The documents clarified nothing of importance, and the hearing raised major new questions about whether the intelligence agencies had been misleading Congress and the public about the electronic dragnet. At the end of the day, we were more convinced than ever that the government had yet to come clean on the legal arguments and court orders underlying the surveillance.

The documents were released before the start of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the government’s secret surveillance programs, details of which were disclosed in documents published by The Guardian, a British newspaper, showing that the United States has been vacuuming up data on every phone call made by every American.

The administration released three documents. One was an April order by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which operates in secret, approving the collection of “all call detail records” from a company that was not named but was a Verizon subsidiary. The order resolved nothing about the fundamental question of why the program was needed and authorized in the first place.

It merely said the court was reauthorizing the National Security Agency to scoop up the data, based on an earlier order (for which even the docket number was blanked out) that set rules to make sure that the database was not used to go after innocent people. It referred to Justice Department assurances that the collection was relevant to “authorized investigations” of terrorism but provided no details.

But the administration has still not released the underlying legal arguments and the original rulings by the surveillance court on which the released order was based. Those documents are essential to public understanding about the data collection, as the chairman of the judiciary committee, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and other members pointed out forcefully on Wednesday.

The two other documents released Wednesday were letters to Congress saying the N.S.A. had really analyzed only a tiny fraction of the data it was collecting but failed to say why the enormous collection was necessary, legal or wise. Those legal arguments remain classified. The declassified letters said the collection efforts “significantly strengthen” the discovery of terrorists and their plots; the agency has previously claimed that 54 plots were disrupted by the collection of phone records and a separate, targeted collection of Internet data.

But those claims seemed to fade away on Wednesday. In his testimony, the best that John Inglis, deputy N.S.A. director, could come up with was that “there is an example” that “comes close to a ‘but for’ example.” Senators Mark Udall and Ron Wyden, who have been arguing for the termination of the bulk collection of telephone data, were joined by Mr. Leahy and Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, in criticizing the N.S.A. director, James Clapper Jr., for falsely telling Congress that the agency was not collecting large volumes of data on Americans’ phone calls.

“Nothing can excuse this kind of behavior from a senior administration official,” Mr. Grassley said.

We strongly agree and hope that the Senate does not drop its investigation of the data collection program or of Mr. Clapper’s behavior. The program should be halted at least until the public gets a satisfactory accounting.

    More Fog From the Spy Agencies, NYT, 31.7.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/opinion/more-fog-from-the-spy-agencies.html

Senate Panel Presses N.S.A.

on Phone Logs

July 31, 2013
The New York Times
By CHARLIE SAVAGE and DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON — Senators of both parties on Wednesday sharply challenged the National Security Agency’s collection of records of all domestic phone calls, even as the latest leaked N.S.A. document provided new details on the way the agency monitors Web browsing around the world.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the chairman, Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, accused Obama administration officials of overstating the success of the domestic call log program. He said he had been shown a classified list of “terrorist events” detected through surveillance, and it did not show that “dozens or even several terrorist plots” had been thwarted by the domestic program.

“If this program is not effective it has to end. So far, I’m not convinced by what I’ve seen,” Mr. Leahy said, citing the “massive privacy implications” of keeping records of every American’s domestic calls.

At the start of the hearing, the Obama administration released previously classified documents outlining the rules for how the domestic phone records may be accessed and used by intelligence analysts. And as senators debated the program, The Guardian published on its Web site a still-classified 32-page presentation, apparently downloaded by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, that describes a separate surveillance activity by the agency.

Called the XKeyscore program, it apparently gives N.S.A. analysts access to virtually any Internet browsing activity around the world, data that is being vacuumed up from 150 foreign sites.

Together, the new disclosures provided additional details on the scope of the United States government’s secret surveillance programs, which have been dragged into public view and public debate by leaks from Mr. Snowden, who remains stranded in a Moscow airport.

The hearing came a week after the House voted narrowly to defeat an amendment to shut down the N.S.A.’s domestic phone record tracking program. The 217-to-205 vote was far closer than expected, and it — along with shifting poll numbers — suggested that momentum against the domestic program was building. In recent days even some of the most outspoken supporters of the program have said they are open to adjusting it.

The Obama administration has been trying to build public support for its surveillance programs, which trace back to the Bush administration, by arguing that they are subject to strict safeguards and court oversight and that they have helped thwart as many as 54 terrorist events. That figure, Mr. Leahy emphasized, relies upon conflating another program that allows surveillance targeted at noncitizens abroad, which has apparently been quite valuable, with the domestic one.

Still, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she supported overhauling the program but keeping it in place because it generates information that might prevent attacks.

John C. Inglis, the deputy director of the N.S.A., said there had been 13 investigations in which the domestic call tracking program made a “contribution.” He cited two discoveries: that several men in San Diego were sending money to a terrorist group in Somalia, and that a suspect who was already under scrutiny in a subway bomb plot was using a different phone.

Robert S. Litt, the top lawyer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, testified that the Obama administration was also “open to re-evaluating this program” to create greater public confidence that it protects privacy while “preserving the essence of the program.” Administration officials have emphasized that the program collects only so-called metadata, and not the contents of phone calls.

Still, the top Republican on the committee, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, asked skeptical questions about the legal basis for the program while criticizing the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, for making inaccurate statements to Congress about it in March. Mr. Clapper has since apologized.

“Nothing can excuse this kind of behavior from a senior administration official of any administration, especially on matters of such grave importance,” Mr. Grassley said.

A series of slides describing XKeyscore, dated 2008, make it clear that the security agency system is collecting a huge amount of data on Internet activity around the globe, from chats on social networks to browsing of Web sites and searches on Google Maps. The volume of data is so vast that most of it is stored for only three days, although metadata — information showing logins and server activity, but not content — is stored for a month. Several of the pages were redacted by The Guardian.

Some of the servers the agency uses are run by foreign intelligence services of friendly nations, including Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, but other servers may be on the soil of countries unaware the agency is mining Internet “pipes” on their soil. Some of the harvesting of data takes place on the coasts of the United States, and along the Mexican border. Most sites are in Europe, the Middle East, and along the borders of India, Pakistan, and China.

The intelligence analysts search for terrorist cells by looking at “anomalous events” — someone searching in German from Pakistani sites, or an Iranian sending an encrypted Microsoft Word file. But one slide says the system can be used to identify anyone “searching the Web for suspicious stuff.”

The presentation says the system enables analysts to identify and pursue leads even if they do not yet know the name, or the e-mail address, of a suspect. “A large amount of time spent on the Web is performing actions that are anonymous,” it explains.

One example of how analysts might use the system is to search for whenever someone has started up a “virtual private network” in a particular country of interest; the networks are pipelines that add greater security to online communications. N.S.A. analysts are able to use the system to extract the activity retrospectively from “raw unselected bulk traffic,” the documents say, and then decrypt it to “discover the users.”

The agency said its surveillance of the Internet was part of its “lawful foreign signals intelligence collection” and not “arbitrary and unconstrained.” The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Mike Rogers, and the ranking Democrat, C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger, said, “The program does not target American citizens.”

The XKeyscore presentation claimed the program had generated intelligence that resulted in the capture of more than 300 terrorists. By contrast, the documents released by the government about the domestic phone log program were more abstract.

They included briefing papers to Congress from 2009 and 2011 about the “very large scale” logging of Americans’ calling records — along with a related program that logged Americans’ e-mails, and that was shut down later in 2011 — portraying the programs as providing a vital and important capability.

But Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee who has been a leading critic of the bulk collection programs, said the program had been shut down because officials were unable “to provide evidence to support the claims” of operational value. Mr. Wyden has also questioned the utility of the phone log program.

The new documents also included an April “primary order” by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that supported orders requiring phone companies to turn over all customer records. It said the government may access the records only when there are “facts giving rise to a reasonable, articulable suspicion” that the number to be searched is associated with terrorism.

However, it said that the results of each inquiry are then placed in a “corporate store” that analysts may search without any such limits. Intelligence officials have separately said that search results include not just a target’s phone records, but also exponentially larger sets of the records of people in as many as three concentric circles around the target.

    Senate Panel Presses N.S.A. on Phone Logs, NYT, 31.7.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/us/nsa-surveillance.html

Senate,

68 to 32,

Passes Overhaul for Immigration

June 27, 2013
The New York Times
By ASHLEY PARKER and JONATHAN MARTIN

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday approved the most significant overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws in a generation with broad support generated by a sense among leading Republicans that the party needed to join with Democrats to remove a wedge between Republicans and Hispanic voters.

The strong 68-to-32 vote in the often polarized Senate tossed the issue into the House, where the Republican leadership has said that it will not take up the Senate measure and is instead focused on much narrower legislation that would not provide a path to citizenship for the 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the country. Party leaders hope that the Senate action will put pressure on the House.

Leading up to the final votes, which the senators cast at their desks to mark the import of the moment, members of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight,” who drafted the framework of the legislation, took to the Senate floor to make a final argument for the measure. Among them was Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, who is one of his party’s leading Hispanic voices. When Mr. Rubio finished, the other senators in the group surrounded him on the floor, patting him on the back and offering words of encouragement. “Good job,” one said. “I’m proud of you,” another offered.

The future will show whether voters in Republican presidential primaries share that pride.

After Mitt Romney’s loss in November, top Republicans immediately began formulating a way to improve the party’s standing with Hispanics, who have flocked to Democrats. A group of top Republican political and business officials who support an immigration overhaul met at the downtown Washington office of the anti-tax leader Grover Norquist on Jan. 17 with memories of Mr. Romney’s poor showing in their minds.

Optimism ran high at the session, which included Mr. Norquist, the former national party chairman Ed Gillespie and representatives of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Republican “super PACs.” Reeling from a second consecutive presidential loss and with Mr. Rubio taking the place of Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, as the face of the immigration reform movement, the strategists were hopeful that the wall of conservative opposition that blocked immigration legislation under President George W. Bush could be breached.

Now, even after the lopsided Senate vote, the prospects appear grim for the pro-overhaul Republicans. And Mr. Rubio, the 42-year-old Cuban-American who is seen as a prime White House contender in 2016, is confronting rising criticism from conservatives for pushing legislation with Democratic boogeymen like President Obama and Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York.

“Before the Gang of Eight and the immigration debate, I think many conservatives as well as some establishment Republican folks saw Senator Rubio as a possible bridge candidate between the conservative Tea Party base of the G.O.P. and more establishment G.O.P. voters,” said Greg Mueller, a conservative public relations executive who opposed the Senate bill. “That position is on much shakier ground today because conservatives and the Tea Party see the immigration bill as a big-government piece of legislation resembling Obamacare.”

Republicans strongly opposed to the immigration bill said they had little sympathy for Mr. Rubio.

“I don’t think we’re doing any damage to him,” said Representative Tim Huelskamp, Republican of Kansas. “I think he’s done damage to himself with the amnesty bill.”

Alex Conant, Mr. Rubio’s spokesman, said: “Immigration is a personal issue for Senator Rubio, and he took it on because he thought it was the right thing to do. There may be some political implications, especially in the short term, but it wasn’t an issue he believed he could ignore. We don’t expect any parades for our work on this.”

On Thursday, Mr. Rubio had little cover from his party’s right flank, much less a parade. Not wanting to tempt primary opponents next year, the top two Senate Republican leaders — Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and John Cornyn of Texas — cast “no” votes. And a potential 2016 presidential primary rival for Mr. Rubio, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, also voted against the legislation, despite making a show of announcing his general support for an immigration overhaul earlier in the year.

The Senate bill provides a 13-year path to citizenship for the 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the country, as well as tough border security provisions that must be in place before the immigrants can gain legal status.

The legislation — drafted largely behind closed doors by the group of eight senators — brought together an unlikely coalition of Democrats and Republicans; business groups and labor unions; farmworkers and growers; and Latino, gay rights and immigration advocates. Along the way, the legislation was shaped and tweaked in a series of back-room deals and negotiations that, in many ways, seemed to mirror its inception.

As late as Wednesday night, several members of the bipartisan group, including Mr. McCain and his Republican colleague Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, as well as Mr. Schumer, found themselves calling Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, trying to shore up support. In separate calls, the senators urged Mr. Christie to help persuade Senator Jeffrey S. Chiesa, Republican of New Jersey — newly appointed by Mr. Christie — to vote for the bill. (Mr. Chiesa was one of the 14 Republicans who voted “yes” on Thursday.)

The first big deal on the legislation came at the end of March, when the nation’s top labor and business groups reached an agreement on a guest worker program for low-skilled immigrants. Disagreements between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. had helped doom a 2007 attempt at a similar overhaul, but the two groups came together to create a program that would expand and shrink based on economic indicators — like unemployment and job openings figures — and offer a maximum of 200,000 guest visas annually.

The group of senators who wrote the legislation had originally hoped it would receive overwhelming bipartisan support — as many as 70 votes, some senators suggested — to help propel it through the House, and when the bill moved to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the group took pains to win bipartisan support there, too.

The bill passed through the committee, in a process that stretched over five days and included the consideration of more than 300 amendments, on a strong 13-to-5 bipartisan vote.

The bill’s largest, and perhaps most critical, change came in a package that promised to substantially bolster security along the nation’s southern border. The proposal, by Senators Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota, both Republicans, would devote about $40 billion over the next decade to border enforcement measures, including adding 20,000 Border Patrol agents and 700 miles of fencing along the southern border.

The amendment, which passed Wednesday with broad bipartisan support, helped bring along more than a dozen reluctant Republicans. But even that measure does not seem to have altered firm House resistance to the Senate bill. Speaker John A. Boehner threw cold water on any hope that the House would vote on the Senate plan, and he insisted that whatever immigration measure his chamber took up would have to be supported by a majority of his Republican conference.

“I issued a statement that I thought was pretty clear, but apparently some haven’t gotten the message: the House is not going to take up and vote on whatever the Senate passes,” he said Thursday morning. “We’re going to do our own bill.”

As daunting to the pro-overhaul Republicans as Mr. Boehner’s apparent opposition is the structure of the Republican House majority, strategists say. More than 70 percent of districts held by House Republicans have a population that is 10 percent or less Hispanic, National Journal reported. And the Republican districts where there is a significant Hispanic population are in heavily conservative terrain in California and Texas.

    Senate, 68 to 32, Passes Overhaul for Immigration, NYT, 28.6.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/us/politics/
    immigration-bill-clears-final-hurdle-to-senate-approval.html

Senators Say Case Indicates

That Problems Persist

in Agencies’ Data Sharing

April 23, 2013
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT and JULIA PRESTON

WASHINGTON — As investigators sought answers to what or who may have radicalized the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings, leading lawmakers said Tuesday that potentially important clues about at least one of the men might not have been widely shared within investigative circles months before the attack.

Emerging from a closed two-hour hearing with three senior law enforcement and intelligence officials, several members of the Senate Intelligence Committee raised new questions about how the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security apparently handled information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, the suspect who was killed in a shootout with the police on Friday.

“I’m very concerned that there still seem to be serious problems with sharing information, including critical investigative information,” Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, told reporters. “That is troubling to me that this many years after the attacks on our country in 2001, that we still seem to have stovepipes that prevent information from being shared effectively, not only among agencies but also within the same agency, in one case.”

Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican who is the committee’s vice chairman, also voiced worries that efforts to break down barriers of communication between federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks may have started to erode. “There have been some stone walls and stovepipes reconstructed that were probably unintentional,” he said. “We’re going to continue to look at whether or not all the information was adequately shared and given to all the law enforcement agencies. If it wasn’t, we’ve got to fix that.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who heads the panel, said every investigation revealed flaws, but when asked at a briefing after the hearing if the F.B.I. had “dropped the ball,” she said, “No.”

None of the senators would identify what information was not shared adequately or which agencies were involved, but the issue seemed to center on Mr. Tsarnaev’s six-month trip in 2012 to Dagestan and Chechnya, predominantly Muslim republics in the North Caucasus region of Russia. Both have been hotbeds of militant separatists.

Testifying earlier in the day before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano sought to clarify what the authorities knew about Mr. Tsarnaev’s trip. He left the country on Jan. 12 and returned on July 17.

His flight reservation set off a security alert to customs authorities when he departed, Ms. Napolitano said, in spite of a “mismatch” in the spelling of his name on his airline ticket, his travel document and the passenger manifest of his flight.

As a result of “redundancies” in the system, the error was detected, the secretary said, and “there was a ping on the outbound to customs.”

But when Mr. Tsarnaev returned, more than a year had gone by since the F.B.I. closed a background review of his possible links to extremist groups that had been requested by the Russian government in January 2011. It was determined that he posed no threat. The security alert “at that point was more than a year old and had expired,” Ms. Napolitano said.

It is not clear, however, that the customs security alert, flagging Mr. Tsarnaev’s travel to Russia, was ever passed on to the F.B.I. And even if it had been, it is not certain what the F.B.I. would have done with that information.

Once investigators closed the background check, it would have been a violation of federal guidelines to keep investigating Mr. Tsarnaev without additional information, a senior law enforcement official said.

Two months after he returned from Russia, Mr. Tsarnaev applied for naturalization. The application prompted Homeland Security Department officials to review a 2009 domestic abuse arrest, and they found he had not been convicted in that case. They also contacted the F.B.I. and learned that “no derogatory information” on him had emerged from an interview that the agency conducted in January 2011.

According to federal law enforcement officials, Homeland Security Department officials left the naturalization “pending,” without approving it, as a precaution to see if new information would emerge, but they did not open a new investigation.

Ms. Napolitano said that a bipartisan bill in the Senate to overhaul immigration would further tighten security, because it would require all passports to be electronically readable, to avoid errors in flight records.

More questions surfaced Tuesday evening when House members attended a classified hearing with Ms. Napolitano and Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I. Some lawmakers emerged saying they still felt uninformed about many aspects of the case.

Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who heads the House Homeland Security Committee, said he and other members of Congress were frustrated by the lack of answers on why Mr. Tsarnaev’s trip to Russia slipped through the cracks.

Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting.

    Senators Say Case Indicates That Problems Persist in Agencies’ Data Sharing, NYT, 23.3.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/us/politics/
    senators-say-case-indicates-that-problems-persist-in-agencies-data-sharing.html

A Senate in the Gun Lobby’s Grip

April 17, 2013
The New York Times
By GABRIELLE GIFFORDS

WASHINGTON

SENATORS say they fear the N.R.A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets. The fear that those children who survived the massacre must feel every time they remember their teachers stacking them into closets and bathrooms, whispering that they loved them, so that love would be the last thing the students heard if the gunman found them.

On Wednesday, a minority of senators gave into fear and blocked common-sense legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental illnesses to get hold of deadly firearms — a bill that could prevent future tragedies like those in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., Blacksburg, Va., and too many communities to count.

Some of the senators who voted against the background-check amendments have met with grieving parents whose children were murdered at Sandy Hook, in Newtown. Some of the senators who voted no have also looked into my eyes as I talked about my experience being shot in the head at point-blank range in suburban Tucson two years ago, and expressed sympathy for the 18 other people shot besides me, 6 of whom died. These senators have heard from their constituents — who polls show overwhelmingly favored expanding background checks. And still these senators decided to do nothing. Shame on them.

I watch TV and read the papers like everyone else. We know what we’re going to hear: vague platitudes like “tough vote” and “complicated issue.” I was elected six times to represent southern Arizona, in the State Legislature and then in Congress. I know what a complicated issue is; I know what it feels like to take a tough vote. This was neither. These senators made their decision based on political fear and on cold calculations about the money of special interests like the National Rifle Association, which in the last election cycle spent around $25 million on contributions, lobbying and outside spending.

Speaking is physically difficult for me. But my feelings are clear: I’m furious. I will not rest until we have righted the wrong these senators have done, and until we have changed our laws so we can look parents in the face and say: We are trying to keep your children safe. We cannot allow the status quo — desperately protected by the gun lobby so that they can make more money by spreading fear and misinformation — to go on.

I am asking every reasonable American to help me tell the truth about the cowardice these senators demonstrated. I am asking for mothers to stop these lawmakers at the grocery store and tell them: You’ve lost my vote. I am asking activists to unsubscribe from these senators’ e-mail lists and to stop giving them money. I’m asking citizens to go to their offices and say: You’ve disappointed me, and there will be consequences.

People have told me that I’m courageous, but I have seen greater courage. Gabe Zimmerman, my friend and staff member in whose honor we dedicated a room in the United States Capitol this week, saw me shot in the head and saw the shooter turn his gunfire on others. Gabe ran toward me as I lay bleeding. Toward gunfire. And then the gunman shot him, and then Gabe died. His body lay on the pavement in front of the Safeway for hours.

I have thought a lot about why Gabe ran toward me when he could have run away. Service was part of his life, but it was also his job. The senators who voted against background checks for online and gun-show sales, and those who voted against checks to screen out would-be gun buyers with mental illness, failed to do their job.

They looked at these most benign and practical of solutions, offered by moderates from each party, and then they looked over their shoulder at the powerful, shadowy gun lobby — and brought shame on themselves and our government itself by choosing to do nothing.

They will try to hide their decision behind grand talk, behind willfully false accounts of what the bill might have done — trust me, I know how politicians talk when they want to distract you — but their decision was based on a misplaced sense of self-interest. I say misplaced, because to preserve their dignity and their legacy, they should have heeded the voices of their constituents. They should have honored the legacy of the thousands of victims of gun violence and their families, who have begged for action, not because it would bring their loved ones back, but so that others might be spared their agony.

This defeat is only the latest chapter of what I’ve always known would be a long, hard haul. Our democracy’s history is littered with names we neither remember nor celebrate — people who stood in the way of progress while protecting the powerful. On Wednesday, a number of senators voted to join that list.

Mark my words: if we cannot make our communities safer with the Congress we have now, we will use every means available to make sure we have a different Congress, one that puts communities’ interests ahead of the gun lobby’s. To do nothing while others are in danger is not the American way.

Gabrielle Giffords, a Democratic representative from Arizona from 2007 to 2012, is a founder of Americans for Responsible Solutions, which focuses on gun violence.

    A Senate in the Gun Lobby’s Grip, NYT, 17.4.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/opinion/a-senate-in-the-gun-lobbys-grip.html

The Senate Fails Americans

April 17, 2013
The New York Times
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

For 45 senators, the carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary School is a forgotten tragedy. The toll of 270 Americans who are shot every day is not a problem requiring action. The easy access to guns on the Internet, and the inevitability of the next massacre, is not worth preventing.

Those senators, 41 Republicans and four Democrats, killed a bill on Wednesday to expand background checks for gun buyers. It was the last, best hope for meaningful legislation to reduce gun violence after a deranged man used semiautomatic weapons to kill 20 children and six adults at the school in Newtown, Conn., 18 weeks ago. A ban on assault weapons was voted down by 60 senators; 54 voted against a limit on bullet magazines.

Patricia Maisch, who survived a mass shooting in Tucson in 2011, spoke for many in the country when she shouted from the Senate gallery: “Shame on you.”

Newtown, in the end, changed nothing; the overwhelming national consensus to tighten a ridiculously lax set of gun laws was stopped cold. That’s because the only thing that mattered to these lawmakers was a blind and unthinking fealty to the whims of the gun lobby.

The National Rifle Association once supported the expansion of background checks, but it decided this time that President Obama and gun-control advocates could not be allowed even a scintilla of a victory, no matter how sensible. That group, and others even more militant, wanted to make sure not one bill emerged from the Newtown shooting, and they got their way. A vast majority of Republicans meekly followed along, joined by a few nervous red-state Democrats, giving far more weight to a small, shrill and largely rural faction than to the country’s overwhelming need for safety and sanity.

Guns had not been on the president’s campaign agenda, but, to his credit, he and Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. came up with a solid package of proposals after Newtown that would have reduced the number of dangerous weapons on the street and in the hands of criminals. Mr. Obama traveled the country to promote it in 13 speeches, and he has spent the last weeks unsuccessfully trying to pry senators out of the pocket of the gun lobby.

The most important aspect of his proposal, in the eyes of many gun-control advocates, was the expansion of background checks, both because it closed an important loophole and because it seemed the easiest to pass. From 20 percent to 40 percent of all gun sales now take place without a background check, and the bill rejected on Wednesday would have required the check for buyers at gun shows, on the Internet and at other commercially advertised sales. It was sponsored by two pro-gun senators with the courage to buck the lobby, Joe Manchin III, a Democrat of West Virginia, and Patrick Toomey, a Republican of Pennsylvania.

The critical need for this measure was illustrated by a report in The Times on Wednesday that showed how easy it is for criminals to buy weapons on the Internet without a look at their backgrounds. One widely popular Web site contains tens of thousands of private postings of gun sales, and The Times’s investigation found that many buyers and sellers were criminals. Some of the guns have been used to kill.

A vote to continue this practice would be hard to explain to constituents, so lawmakers simply invented reasons to oppose background checks. Some insisted it would lead to a national gun registry, though the plain language of the bill prohibited that. Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said it would raise taxes. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona said it would require checks even when a gun sale is posted on an office bulletin board. (There’s nothing wrong with that, but it wouldn’t.) Mr. Obama, after the vote, said those who made these arguments had “willfully lied.”

It’s now up to voters to exact a political price from those who defied the public’s demand, and Mr. Obama was forceful in promising to lead that effort. Wednesday was just Round 1, he said; the next step is to replace those whose loyalty is given to a lobby rather than the people.

“Sooner or later, we are going to get this right,” he said. “The memories of these children demand it, and so do the American people.”

    The Senate Fails Americans, NYT, 17.4.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/opinion/the-senate-fails-americans-on-gun-bills.html

Senate Blocks Drive for Gun Control

April 17, 2013
The New York Times
By JONATHAN WEISMAN

WASHINGTON — A wrenching national search for solutions to the violence that left 20 children dead in Newtown, Conn., all but ended Wednesday after the Senate defeated several measures to expand gun control.

In rapid succession, a bipartisan compromise to expand background checks for gun buyers, a ban on assault weapons and a ban on high-capacity gun magazines all failed to get the 60 votes needed under an agreement between both parties. Senators also turned back Republican proposals to expand permission to carry concealed weapons and to focus law enforcement efforts on prosecuting gun crimes.

Sitting in the Senate gallery with other survivors of recent mass shootings and their family members, Lori Haas, whose daughter was shot at Virginia Tech, and Patricia Maisch, a survivor of the mass shooting in Arizona, shouted together, “Shame on you.”

President Obama, speaking at the White House after the votes, echoed the cry, calling Wednesday “a pretty shameful day for Washington.”

Opponents of gun control from both parties said that they made their decisions based on logic, and that passions had no place in the making of momentous policy.

“Criminals do not submit to background checks now,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. “They will not submit to expanded background checks.”

It was a striking defeat for one of Mr. Obama’s highest priorities, on an issue that has consumed much of the country since Adam Lanza opened fire with an assault weapon in the halls of Sandy Hook Elementary School in December.

Faced with a decision either to remove substantial new gun restrictions from the bill or to allow it to fall to a filibuster next week, Senate leaders plan to put it on hold after a scattering of votes Thursday. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader and a longtime gun rights advocate who had thrown himself behind the gun control measures, is expected to pull the bill from the Senate floor and move on to an Internet sales tax measure, then an overhaul of immigration policy, which has better prospects.

More than 50 senators — including a few Republicans, but lacking a handful of Democrats from more conservative states — had signaled their support for the gun bill, not enough to reach the 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster.

Democratic leadership aides said the effort could be revived if a public groundswell demanded it. “The world is watching the United States Senate, and we will be held accountable,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, who helped lead the gun control effort.

But with the families of Sandy Hook students in the Senate gallery and a flurry of gun rights phone calls flooding Senate offices, it was hard to imagine how much more emotion could be brought to bear. Aides to senators supporting the bill said that only outside circumstances, like another mass shooting, might cause those who voted “no” to reconsider their positions.

“It’s almost like you can see the finish line, but you just can’t get there,” said Andrew Goddard, whose son, Colin, was hurt but survived the shooting at Virginia Tech. “It’s more annoying to be able to see it and not get to it.”

Mr. Obama — who avoided the gun issue in his first term and focused on proposals he thought had a better chance of passing, only to seize on expansive measures after the Newtown shootings — made last-ditch appeals to senators, including Dean Heller, Republican of Nevada, and Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire. Both rejected his entreaties.

Standing in the Rose Garden next to former Representative Gabrielle Giffords and other victims of gun violence, Mr. Obama flashed anger as he said that the gun rights lobby had “willfully lied” about the legislation, and that Republicans and Democrats had “caved to the pressure.”

“But,” he added, “this effort is not over.”

For now, the gun rights lobby has proved more persuasive.

The National Rifle Association mobilized members to blanket the Senate with phone calls, e-mails and letters. The group also spent $500,000 on Wednesday alone, on an advertising campaign criticizing “Obama’s gun ban” and using Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a deep-pocketed gun control advocate, as a foil. “Tell your senator to listen to America’s police instead of listening to Obama and Bloomberg,” the ad said.

The action on Wednesday was initially supposed to be only the first series of votes in a debate to take days if not weeks. But as the measures’ chances faded this week, Senate leaders decided to rush the process, reaching a bipartisan agreement to hold nine votes in succession, each with a 60-vote threshold for passage.

Using the 60-vote hurdle so early in the process allowed Democrats to prevent the passage of an amendment mandating that any state with a concealed-weapons law, no matter how rigorous, would have to recognize the concealed-weapons permit of residents from any other state. The amendment received 57 votes in favor, including those of 12 Democrats, and 43 votes against.

Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, a lifelong backer of the N.R.A. who also pushed for new restrictions in recent weeks, made one last plea for his amendment, which would extend background checks to Internet and gun show sales. While acknowledging that “the politics are risky,” he said it was “a defining time in politics, where you know the facts are on your side.”

The bipartisan measure, which had appeared to have a strong chance of passage, received 55 votes before Mr. Reid changed his vote to “no” to preserve the parliamentary right to bring the measure up again. Four Republicans voted “yes”: Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, a co-author of the legislation; John McCain of Arizona; Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois; and Susan Collins of Maine. An equal number of Democrats voted “no”: Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Max Baucus of Montana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. All are from states that Mr. Obama lost by wide margins last fall, and all but Ms. Heitkamp face difficult re-election campaigns in 2014.

Debate over the measures consumed the Senate on Wednesday, with speeches from both sides meant to stir emotions. “I choose to vote my conscience,” Mr. Reid said, announcing his decision to vote for the bans on assault weapons and magazines that carry more than 10 rounds of ammunition, “because, if tragedy strikes again — if innocents are gunned down in a classroom or a theater or a restaurant — I could not live with myself as a father, as a husband, as a grandfather or as a friend knowing that I didn’t do everything in my power to prevent it.”

The assault weapons vote was 40 in favor and 60 against. The magazine ban fell with 46 in favor and 54 against.

Even a bipartisan amendment to impose stiff penalties on gun traffickers, which was supported by the N.R.A. and expected to be adopted by voice vote, instead was defeated, receiving 58 votes, as the partisan lines hardened.

The successive defeats left senators on both sides of the issue dazed and disappointed. Mr. Begich said the Senate could have united behind measures with broad support, like strengthening the existing background check system with more data about would-be gun buyers who have been deemed mentally ill, rather than expanding the checks to sales not now covered. Mr. Begich also cited bolstering school safety, criminalizing gun trafficking and improving mental health programs.

“That’s a lot,” he said. “Is it perfect? No. But it’s a lot.”

Those modest steps, however, were sacrificed because other Democrats did not want to see further-reaching provisions fail at the expense of a package that the gun rights lobby wanted, aides said.

    Senate Blocks Drive for Gun Control, NYT, 17.4.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/us/politics/senate-obama-gun-control.html

Senators Agree to Start Debate

on Gun Safety Measures

April 11, 2013
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

WASHINGTON — Pressed by shooting victims and relatives of Americans slain in gun violence, the Senate on Thursday voted to begin an emotionally and politically charged debate on gun safety proposals as advocates of new laws overcame a Republican filibuster threat.

The strong majority in favor of considering legislation that would expand background checks and increase the penalties for illegal gun sales reflected the power of a lobbying campaign by parents of students killed in Newtown, Conn., and by others who persuaded reluctant lawmakers to back them in an initial fight that looked lost just last week. The vote was 68 to 31.

“It’s remarkable,” said Senator Christopher S. Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut whose nascent Senate career has been devoted to gun safety. “You can’t turn a corner in the Capitol this week without meeting a family of a gun violence victim. It’s hard to say no to these families.”

But the victory could be short-lived. The vote in no way guaranteed passage of the gun measure; some Republicans and Democrats who voted for this initial step made clear they are not committed to supporting any final measure, even if they agreed to allow the debate.

“I am not sure I could have the courage to do what they did,” said Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina, who met with family members of the Newtown victims on Wednesday. “It really does have an impact.” Mr. Burr voted to debate the bill, but said he was unlikely to go further. “Is there anything I’ve seen so far that would move me to vote for new gun laws?” he said. “No.”

The coming weeks and even months will test both the resolve and the stamina of the families, who are both the best advocates for their cause and, in many ways, least equipped for its struggle.

“Every day is hard for me,” said Mark Barden, the father of Daniel, who was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. “Making lunch for my kids is hard for me. Sleeping is hard. Waking up is hard. That being said, I just feel I need to be doing this.”

The bill will again need 60 votes to end the debate after consideration of contentious amendments offered by both supporters and opponents of new laws. Opponents of the measure could also try to filibuster individual amendments.

Should the bill reach the stage where it could pass with a simple majority, it would still face a challenge. Though Democrats control 55 seats, many from conservative states who face re-election campaigns next year have indicated that they do not intend to vote for the bill, meaning Republican votes could be required to put it over the top.

Twenty-nine Republicans opposed bringing the measure to the floor, along with two Democrats. Sixteen Republicans joined 50 Democrats and two independents in voting to proceed to consideration of the legislation. The two Democrats who voted against measure are both up for re-election in tough states in 2014: Senators Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas.

Next week, the Senate is expected to begin reviewing the bill in earnest by voting on an amendment offered by Senators Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia and Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, that would expand background checks to cover unlicensed dealers at gun shows as well as all online sales. It would also maintain record-keeping provisions that law enforcement officials find essential in tracking guns used in crimes.

This amendment would replace the background check provision of the original legislation, which would also create harsher penalties for the so-called straw purchasing of guns, in which people buy guns for others who are not able to legally. Subsequent amendments, dealing with mental health, a ban on assault weapons and other issues, are expected in the days ahead before a vote on the overall measure.

The omnipresence of the families this week, encouraged by President Obama, and former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, appeared to stretch even toward the House, where the journey will be even more difficult should the Senate pass legislation.

Speaker John A. Boehner, for instance, who earlier in the week reacted icily to the idea of new gun legislation, referred to the advocates Thursday after the Senate vote. “Listen, our hearts and prayers go out to the families of these victims,” Mr. Boehner told reporters. “And I fully expect that the House will act in some way, shape or form. “

Alternating between moments of intense privacy — they wept openly in the offices of senators but would not say whom they met with — and their desire to promote their cause, family members inhabited a strange world of boom mikes and cameras and procedural votes. Senators laughed and visited on the floor, as they sat in the gallery hovering above them, listening to the clerk call each vote.

Shortly after the Senate vote, Mr. Obama spoke on the phone with Newtown family members to thank them for their advocacy efforts, saying “it wouldn’t have been possible without them,” said his spokesman, Jay Carney.

History has shown that family members of those killed in natural disasters, terrorist attacks and other tragedies have been able to affect public policy, most recently those of people killed on Sept. 11, as well as people suffering illness in the aftermath.

“I think that it will make a difference,” said Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York. “It worked when we had the 9/11 legislation on the floor of the Senate. We had the first responders, the survivors, come to Washington, talk to senators, talk to House members, tell their personal stories, tell about the horrible disease that they were fighting and that they had nowhere to turn.

A sense of the oncoming debate could be seen Wednesday and Thursday as senators from both parties took to the floor to make their case for and against new gun laws.

Mr. Murphy, a freshman who in other circumstances would draw scant notice, spent hours both days on the floor with large poster-size photos of the children killed in Newtown in December. He talked about their lives, too, saying that one had an interest in the piano and another a proclivity for sharing a tiny bed with a sibling.

Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, served as the voice of the opposition, reading letters from gun owners who fear infringement on their constitutional rights, among them a pair of first-time gun owners. “Protecting our rights, the few the government has left us, is of utmost importance to us,” Mr. Lee said, quoting from a letter.

Mr. Barden, the father of the child killed in Connecticut, said he expected to return frequently to the Capitol as the debate plays out. “It’s not just about our kids,” he said. “It’s about our society that needs to continue to evolve and continue to mature. And its certainly not just about firearms.

Jonathan Weisman contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 11, 2013

An earlier version of a photo caption accompanying this article misstated Senator Ted Cruz’s position on proceeding with gun legislation. He voted against allowing debate, not in favor of it. Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article also misstated the number of Senate Democrats who voted to cut off debate and proceed to consideration of gun-control legislation. It was 50 Democrats and 2 independents, not 52 Democrats.

    Senators Agree to Start Debate on Gun Safety Measures, NYT, 11.4.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/us/senate-votes-to-allow-debate-on-gun-bill.html

As Views Shift on Guns, Reid Corrals Senate

March 31, 2013
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

WASHINGTON — It was, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada ebulliently proclaimed, a “happy day for me” as he stood with Wayne LaPierre, the head of the National Rifle Association, in 2010 at a new shooting range in Las Vegas made possible by federal money secured by Mr. Reid. “People who criticize this probably would criticize baseball,” Mr. Reid said before firing off a few rounds.

These days, Mr. Reid, the Senate majority leader, is far more likely to meet with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, an outspoken advocate of stricter gun control, than with Mr. LaPierre as he prepares to bring the most expansive package of gun safety legislation in a decade to the Senate floor over the next few weeks.

Mr. Reid’s evolution from a proponent of gun rights to the shepherd of legislation that would expand background checks, among other gun control measures, emerges from a complex web of political calculations that have come to define his leadership style over the last decade.

How tenacious Mr. Reid is willing to be — and whether he will extract votes one by one as he has for other big pieces of legislation — may well determine the fate of the measures.

Mr. Reid declined to be interviewed but answered questions by e-mail. “The families of Newtown and Aurora and the victims of gun violence everywhere deserve a vote on these issues,” Mr. Reid wrote. “We owe them a vote, and I will make sure they get a vote.” He added, “Only those who are afraid of a free and open debate would try to block it or shut it down.”

With guns, as with gay rights and immigration, Washington has observed in Mr. Reid an evolution — less flip-flops than slow dances to the left — that reflects shifting attitudes not only in his Democratic conference but also in Nevada, where Democrats have gained an edge in the last decade. Voter registration in the state has become increasingly Democratic as its population has swelled, and Barack Obama won the state twice, the only Democrat besides Bill Clinton to win the state in the last 40 years.

“Harry Reid is the most calculating individual I have ever covered in politics,” said Jon Ralston, editor of Ralston Reports, who has covered Nevada politics for three decades. “If he is making the right move for his members, he is making the right move for himself.”

Mr. Reid voted proudly against an assault weapons ban in both 1993 and 2004, even as most Senate Democrats voted for it, and voted for a successful 2005 measure that limited lawsuits against gun manufacturers and dealers for negligence. He has also long supported the N.R.A.

But now, in a demonstration of his loyalty to President Obama, Mr. Reid is helping him pursue his agenda for stemming gun violence. Many of the more senior members of his caucus, notably Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, also want these votes.

“He is doing what a leader needs to do,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, one of Mr. Reid’s protégées in the Senate, “to move the caucus forward so it stays in tune with where the American people are.”

Mr. Reid, aides said, is also motivated by both the personal angst he felt over the killing of 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., last year, as well as the anger he feels toward the N.R.A., which was widely expected to endorse him in his 2010 re-election campaign but then declined to do so.

After the Senate returns from its recess next week, it will consider a bill that would expand background checks and increase penalties for so-called straw purchases, in which someone buys a gun for another person who is unable to buy one. Mr. Reid opted not to include in the bill a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines but plans to hold a separate vote on both measures. His hope was to not let the less popular measures jeopardize passage of the expanded background checks.

Mr. Reid is almost certain to vote in favor of at least some of the new gun safety measures, if not all of them.

It would not be the first time Mr. Reid had shifted his position on a significant public policy issue. For example, in 1993, Mr. Reid co-sponsored legislation that would have stripped the citizen rights from babies born to illegal immigrant mothers, and vigorously denounced immigrants from the floor. The bill did not make it out of the Judiciary Committee.

Just over a decade later, Mr. Reid apologized for the legislation, which he called “the low point of my governmental career,” and became a proponent of the Dream Act, which would give a pathway to citizenship to some children of illegal immigrants. Immigration reform was a centerpiece of his 2010 re-election campaign, against the advice of many of his political strategists.

Similarly, Mr. Reid voted for a 1993 measure that institutionalized the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gay members of the military. But by 2009 he had became an opponent of the policy. That year, Mr. Reid, asked to support a moratorium on the practice, said he would go further and press for its repeal, an offhand statement that ignited the repeal efforts in his chamber.

During the 2010 lame-duck session, Mr. Reid repeatedly and vociferously pressed for the repeal, including making an emotional floor speech in which he said: “Discrimination has never served America well. When it applies to those who serve America in the armed forces, it is both disgraceful and counterproductive.”

When a move to repeal the policy failed on a procedural vote, Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, went back to Mr. Reid and begged for a second vote, which he delivered, and the measure passed, with bipartisan support.

Like many Democrats — and a few Republicans — Mr. Reid has also re-evaluated his views on same-sex marriage. For years, Mr. Reid repeatedly said that “marriage is between a man and a woman,” and he voted for the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which denied federal marital benefits to gay couples. Only recently has Mr. Reid starting saying that gay and lesbian couples have the right to marry; he co-signed the amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to find the law unconstitutional. Gay marriage was banned in Nevada by initiative a decade ago and there is now a bill to repeal the ban before the State Legislature.

“He deserves a lot of credit for having the guts to stick his neck out,” Mr. Bloomberg, an independent, wrote in an e-mail, “especially on guns and immigration when others are worried about special-interest politics.”

Mr. Reid’s biggest struggle is to balance the needs of vulnerable Democrats who are up for re-election — especially moderate, long-serving members who are largely institutionalists — with the agendas of newcomers who lean farther to the left.

Since 2006, as larger-than-life Democrats like Senators Robert C. Byrd, Edward M. Kennedy and Daniel K. Inouye have died, Democrats have had a big influx of members pressing Mr. Reid toward a more aggressive and often liberal stance.

“My role is to listen to every single member of the caucus and understand where they are coming from,” Mr. Reid said by e-mail. “Everyone won’t be 100 percent happy all the time, but I try to make sure that all voices have input on the decision-making process, and understand the steps we are taking.”

This conflict came to the fore during discussions of changing the filibuster rules; Mr. Reid ultimately chose an approach that placed fewer limitations on a minority party’s ability to filibuster than the newer members wanted.

“The Democratic caucus is a progressive caucus,” said Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio. “I think he leads us mostly the way we want to go. I think we all learned lessons on the filibuster.”

Mr. Reid remains an enigma of sorts in Washington, a quiet force whose voice is often barely audible, who skips Sunday talk shows in favor of church and lunch with his wife and remains, by all accounts, gaga for her after decades of marriage.

He is a man who relies on his members to do the routine prep work on bills until the time comes to marshal votes. He also prefers brief conversations to lengthy ones. “There isn’t one senator who doesn’t know when you talk to Harry Reid on the phone you better say what you have to say fast,” Ms. Murray said. “Many senators have found themselves talking after he has already hung up.”

    As Views Shift on Guns, Reid Corrals Senate, NYT, 31.3.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/us/politics/
    harry-reid-draws-on-political-calculus-as-he-leads-senate.html

Malicious Obstruction in the Senate

March 28, 2013
The New York Times
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Earlier this month, during one of his new across-the-aisle good-will tours, President Obama pleaded with Senate Republicans to ease up on their record number of filibusters of his nominees. He might as well have been talking to one of the statues in the Capitol. Republicans have made it clear that erecting hurdles for Mr. Obama is, if anything, their overriding legislative goal.

There is no historical precedent for the number of cabinet-level nominees that Republicans have blocked or delayed in the Obama administration. Chuck Hagel became the first defense secretary nominee ever filibustered. John Brennan, the C.I.A. director, was the subject of an epic filibuster by Senator Rand Paul. Kathleen Sebelius and John Bryson, the secretaries of health and human services and commerce, were subjected to 60-vote confirmation margins instead of simple majorities. Susan Rice surely would have been filibustered and thus was not nominated to be secretary of state.

Jacob Lew, the Treasury secretary, was barraged with 444 written questions, mostly from Republicans, more than the previous seven nominees for that position combined. Many were ridiculous and had nothing to do with Mr. Lew’s fitness for office, such as a demand to explain the Treasury’s social media policies, or questioning an infographic on the department’s blog eight months ago.

Gina McCarthy, the nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, is being blocked by Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri until he gets the answers he wants on a local levee project. And Thomas Perez, nominated to be labor secretary, is being held up by Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, who is angry about the Justice Department’s enforcement of voting rights laws. By comparison, there were four filibusters of cabinet-level positions during George W. Bush’s two terms, and one under President Ronald Reagan.

There have also been several impediments to executive-branch nominees beneath the cabinet level, the most troubling being that of Richard Cordray, whom Mr. Obama has renominated to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Because the bureau cannot properly run without a full-time director, Republicans intend to nullify many of its powers by blocking Mr. Cordray for the second time.

Mr. Obama’s judicial nominees are also waiting for exceptionally long periods to be confirmed. The average wait for circuit and district judges under Mr. Obama has been 227 days, compared with 175 days under Mr. Bush. Last week, the Senate confirmed Richard Taranto as an appellate judge 484 days after his first nomination. (Republicans refused to confirm him in an election year.) The next appellate judge to come up, Patty Shwartz, has been waiting a year for a vote.

Last week, Caitlin Halligan, another appeals court nominee, had to withdraw from consideration after Republicans filibustered her for the second time, on the flimsy pretext that she was a legal activist. Republicans clearly don’t want any of Mr. Obama’s judges on the important United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to which she was nominated, and the president needs to be more aggressive about filling the four vacancies on the court.

Republicans clearly have no interest in dropping their favorite pastime, but Democrats could put a stop to this malicious behavior by changing the Senate rules and prohibiting, at long last, all filibusters on nominations.

    Malicious Obstruction in the Senate, NYT, 28.3.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/opinion/malicious-obstruction-in-the-senate.html

Current Laws May Offer

Little Shield Against Drones,

Senators Are Told

March 20, 2013
The New York Times
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — Targeted killings have made drones controversial, but a new class of tiny aircraft in the United States — cheap, able and ubiquitous — could engage in targeted snooping that existing laws are inadequate to address, witnesses and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said in a hearing on Wednesday.

The drones, or unmanned aerial systems, have already helped the police find missing people and county planners measure the growth of a landfill. But they could also be used by drug dealers, pedophiles and nosy neighbors, the witnesses and a senator said.

Surveillance by government is limited by the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and snooping by corporations and individuals is covered by privacy law and common law. But these were not written with drones in mind. The issue has taken on new urgency as the Federal Aviation Administration prepares to set forth rules for drones’ commercial use and as prices for the aircraft drop. Many states are considering legislation, but Congress is only beginning to consider the problem.

“There’s very little in American privacy law that would limit the use of drones for surveillance,” said one witness, Ryan Calo, an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law. “Drones drive down the cost of surveillance considerably. We worry that the incidence of surveillance will go up.”

But Benjamin Miller, of the sheriff’s office in Mesa County, Colo., who flies a two-pound, battery-powered six-rotor helicopter drone that he placed on the table in front of him, said his department had used a drone equipped with a thermal camera to investigate arson at a historic church, which helped firefighters identify hot spots and determine which direction the fire had traveled through the building. The sheriff’s office also used a drone for Mesa County’s annual survey of the landfill where it buries its garbage (to determine how quickly it is filling up), for about $200. The usual cost was nearly $10,000, Mr. Miller said.

The sheriff’s office operates its drones under a permit from the F.A.A., which requires that the aircraft stay under 400 feet and fly only in daylight. The rules are similar to the ones for radio-controlled model airplanes, which the drones resemble, although they have refinements like sophisticated autopilots, GPS navigation systems and stabilized cameras. Use of such drones by police departments and government agencies is still extremely limited. And commercial use — that is, a company flying a drone and being paid for it — is not yet legal.

The F.A.A. is to have rules in place for commercial use, including how to prevent collisions, by September 2015. But already there are thousands of drones in the nation’s skies.

Drones could be outfitted to read license plates and recognize faces, said Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “Just because the government may comply with the Constitution does not mean they should be able to constantly surveil, like Big Brother,” he said.

He warned that criminals could use drones because they were so inexpensive and capable, and that news reporters could use them in an intrusive way.

The hearing came the day after an unlikely pair on the House side, Representative Joe L. Barton, Republican of Texas, and Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, introduced a bill to limit data-gathering by drones.

They said one problem was that the F.A.A., which would eventually be the licensing agency for those drones for which pilots needed licenses, had no jurisdiction in privacy, nor much expertise in the area. Mr. Barton’s and Mr. Markey’s bill would require licensed drone pilots to say publicly what their drones were doing and how the information would be used, among other protections. It is not yet clear which drones the F.A.A. will require licenses for, although people flying many of the smallest ones are unlikely to need them.

Some experts think the threat from the government is bigger than any from private use. “If it’s my neighbor that wants to snoop on me, he can’t put me in jail,” said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “If Google or Amazon wants to use drone surveillance to figure out my market preferences, the worst thing that happens is I get marketed stuff I don’t need.”

Showing the public uneasiness over the new technology, one young protester at the hearing was led away by Capitol police after she stood up and declared, “Drones are responsible for the death of people in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Yemen!” Another protester held a sign that said, “1984.”

As Ms. Goitein observed, “The country can be divided into people who think this is horrifying and people who think this is neat.”

    Current Laws May Offer Little Shield Against Drones, Senators Are Told, NYT, 20.3.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/us/politics/
    senate-panel-weighs-privacy-concerns-over-use-of-drones.html

Senate Votes Overwhelmingly

to Expand Domestic Violence Act

February 12, 2013
The New York Times
By JONATHAN WEISMAN

WASHINGTON — The Senate, with broad bipartisan support, voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to expand the reach of the landmark Violence Against Women Act of 1994 by fortifying the power of American Indian tribal courts and explicitly protecting gay victims of domestic abuse.

The 78-to-22 vote raised the pressure on the House to act and expanded by 10 votes the margin of approval that a nearly identical bill garnered in the Senate last April. Twenty-three Republicans backed the measure on Tuesday, up from 15 last year. The vote came after 17 House Republicans on Monday wrote Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, demanding immediate action on a domestic violence bill that could get bipartisan support, unlike the House bill that passed largely on party lines last year.

The new version “must reach all victims and perpetrators of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking in every community in the country,” the letter stated, echoing the language used by supporters of the Senate bill, which expands the law’s focus to include homosexual and American Indian victims and assailants.

The law, reauthorized twice before with almost no controversy, has been stuck this time in the broader fight over the size and scope of government, and a more specific battle over the powers Congress should afford tribal courts, which now cannot pursue non-Indians who attack Indian women on tribal land. Conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and the Independent Women’s Forum have blasted the law as an ineffective waste of money and the new version as a dangerous expansion of governmental powers.

“I never thought the day would come when this issue would become politicized, but I’m afraid it has,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, as he led conservative opposition to the bill.

But the 2012 election results — and the yawning gender gap that kept the White House in President Obama’s hands, expanded Democratic control of the Senate and chipped away at the Republicans’ House majority — may have changed the political dynamics on the antiviolence bill.

“Quite honestly, we can’t afford to be sitting on this for months or another year,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska and a supporter of the Senate bill.

After the vote, President Obama called on the House to act.

“Delay isn’t an option when three women are still killed by their husbands or boyfriends every day,” the president said in a statement. “Delay isn’t an option when countless women still live in fear of abuse, and when one in five have been victims of rape. This issue should be beyond debate — the House should follow the Senate’s lead and pass the Violence Against Women Act right away. This is not a Democratic or Republican issue — it’s an issue of justice and compassion.”

House Republican leaders find themselves squeezed between moderate — and many conservative — Republicans who want to put the issue behind them and some senior Republicans who remain adamantly opposed to reauthorizing the act. Aides to Mr. Cantor have been meeting with both sides for weeks, and say they will not move legislation to the House floor until both sides sign off on a bill that will have broad support.

The biggest sticking point is the expansion of tribal court authority, which many Republicans see as an unconstitutional power grab by the tribes that will deprive non-Indians of their fundamental constitutional rights. Social conservatives object to a provision in the Senate bill that clarifies that victims rights and prosecution programs created by the law can be used in cases of domestic abuse involving same-sex couples.

But as senior Republican leaders like Mr. Cantor urge their party to project a more can-do image on issues beyond budget cuts and taxes, moderate Republicans say a bill like the Violence Against Women Act is a crucial test.

“At a time like this, we have to show we can get something done,” said Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, one of the signers of the House letter. And, he added, legislation like the Violence Against Women Act “should not be a heavy lift.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 12, 2013

An earlier version of this story included a statement

from Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that was attributed to the president.

The current quotation is a statement from the president.

    Senate Votes Overwhelmingly to Expand Domestic Violence Act, NYT, 12.2.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/us/politics/senate-votes-to-expand-domestic-violence-act.html

Congress Takes Up Gun Violence

January 29, 2013
The New York Times

Senate hearings on stronger gun controls are scheduled to begin on Wednesday before a divided Congress and a nation agonizing over how to prevent more of the carnage that killed 20 schoolchildren and six adults last month at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school. The gun lobby’s opposition to reasonable controls is already fierce, and political courage is, as ever, wavering in Congress. But this singular opportunity to curb the gun violence must not be wasted in more of the posturing in Washington that tolerates 30,000 gun deaths a year.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hear a raft of proposals, including a vitally needed ban on fast-firing semiautomatic weapons, like the military-style Bushmaster assault rifle the Newtown gunman used in his killing spree at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The measure would also ban ammunition magazines that can hold more than 10 bullets, which have facilitated battlefield-scale killing of the innocent in the Newtown school, the movie theater in Aurora, Colo., and dozens of similar tragedies.

Making federal background checks universal, instead of limiting them to sales by licensed gun dealers, is no less vital, closing a loophole that lets 40 percent of firearm sales take place with no oversight. This proposal is the chief goal of many gun-control groups and has a different aim than the assault weapons ban: the proliferation of handguns that are used in most gun violence, particularly in cities.

Another measure would create a separate criminal offense for gun trafficking and toughen penalties on those involved, including the “straw buyers” who purchase weapons later funneled into criminal hands. This should be accompanied by tighter restrictions on high-risk gun dealers who sell a disproportionate number of the guns traced to crimes, as well as new resources for more frequent inspection of all gun stores. Congressional corridors and committee evasions are not the way to advance these bills. They should be debated and voted on in public view so each lawmaker can be tallied on these major issues. The Second Amendment is nowhere at stake.

The fight will not be easy. A bill introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California would, for example, ban 157 of the worst assault weapons while leaving 2,200 guns untouched in the sportsmen’s marketplace. “I understand how difficult this is,” Ms. Feinstein said. “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”

The reform effort will require an unprecedented outpouring of public support and pressure on Congress — a national drive that President Obama needs to make unrelenting and well-organized. The sponsor of the assault weapons ban in the House, Representative Carolyn McCarthy of New York, wisely says nothing will come of the reform effort unless the president is “out there selling it.”

Mr. Obama is supposed to follow Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. in leaving Washington for drumbeating rounds with community leaders. Mr. Biden is already emphasizing his mantra for audiences: “Tell your congressman.”

Republicans and wobbly Democrats in the House are waiting on results from the Senate, where the Democratic majority leader, Harry Reid, will play a crucial role. He is skeptical of an assault weapons ban and wary of losing Senate Democrats in next year’s elections. But he admits, “We need to accept the reality that we are not doing enough to protect our citizens.”

Mr. Reid aims to have legislation shaped by the Judiciary Committee for floor debate that will be freely open to amendment. This unusual process has the virtue of putting senators on the record for each major proposal, but could weaken a measure as much as strengthen it.

Nothing is settled in Congress. The outcome depends to a great degree on how demanding the public is for credible action against the gun violence ravaging the nation.

•

This is part of a continuing series on the epidemic of gun violence

and possible solutions. Other editorials are at nytimes.com/gunchallenge.

    Congress Takes Up Gun Violence, NYT, 29.1.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/opinion/congress-takes-up-gun-violence.html

Senators Call Their Bipartisan Immigration Plan

a ‘Breakthrough’

January 28, 2013
The New York Times
By ASHLEY PARKER

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of senators unveiled on Monday a set of principles for comprehensive immigration legislation that includes a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants already in the country illegally, contingent on first securing the nation’s borders.

The group hopes to have legislation drafted by March, and a vote before the August recess. Speaker John A. Boehner, whose support will be crucial for shepherding any bill through the Republican-controlled House, did not comment on the principles, but his office offered a brief statement.

“The speaker welcomes the work of leaders like Senator Rubio on this issue,” referring to Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican. The speaker “is looking forward to learning more about the proposal in the coming days,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner.

Five of the group’s eight senators — Charles E. Schumer of New York, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, all Democrats, and Mr. Rubio and a fellow Republican, John McCain of Arizona — made the announcement. Senators Jeff Flake of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both Republicans, and Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, a Democrat, were not present but are part of the group.

The eight senators, Mr. Schumer said, “have come together on a set of bipartisan principles for comprehensive immigration reform legislation that we hope can pass the Senate in overwhelming and bipartisan fashion.”

“We still have a long way to go, but this bipartisan movement is a major breakthrough,” he said.

The group described four main pillars: border enforcement, employer enforcement, the handling of the flow of legal immigration (including temporary agricultural workers and high-skilled engineers) and a pathway to citizenship for those who entered the nation illegally. Mr. McCain called the pathway to citizenship the “most controversial piece of immigration reform,” saying that the current situation amounts to “de facto amnesty” and that the illegal immigrants deserve a chance to live legally in the country and ultimately become citizens.

“We have been too content for too long to allow individuals to mow our lawn, serve our food, clean our homes and even watch our children, while not affording them any of the benefits that make our country so great,” he said. “I think everyone agrees that it’s not beneficial to our country to have these people hidden in the shadows.”

Mr. Schumer said that he and Mr. Durbin spoke Sunday evening with President Obama, who plans to deliver his own speech on immigration Tuesday in Nevada, and that “he couldn’t be more pleased.” Mr. Menendez met with the president Friday as part of a meeting that the White House held with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Democratic and Republican senators alike had feared that any White House proposal could undercut their efforts by frightening away Republican lawmakers skittish about backing Mr. Obama’s plan. When it became clear last week that the president planned to detail his own immigration blueprint on Tuesday, they rushed to make their announcement ahead of him. When asked if the senators’ proposal was undercutting the president, Mr. McCain replied that he thought their principles helped Mr. Obama.

    Senators Call Their Bipartisan Immigration Plan a ‘Breakthrough’, NYT, 28.1.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/us/politics/senators-unveil-bipartisan-immigration-principles.html

New Senate Rules to Curtail the Excesses of a Filibuster

January 24, 2013
The New York Times
By JEREMY W. PETERS

WASHINGTON — Senators will still be able to talk and talk and talk, though for not quite as long as they have grown accustomed to. Legislation will still be mired in mucky procedural delays, though there will be fewer of them to exploit. And there is a glimmer of hope that rank-and-file senators will actually be able to do what they were elected to do: shape legislation.

Under new rules approved overwhelmingly by the Senate on Thursday, Democrats and Republicans agreed to take some modest steps to limit the filibuster and help break the gridlock that has rendered the modern Congress ineffective and inefficient. The measures passed in two separate votes, one 78 to 16, the other 86 to 9.

Senators who rarely reach across the aisle on much of anything these days found common ground in their disillusionment and decided on a compromise in which both parties will give something up.

The end result preserved one of the more peculiar aspects of the Senate. The majority will still not have absolute rule. The minority — currently Republican — will preserve its ability to force a supermajority of 60 votes to advance bills.

Advocates of a more comprehensive overhaul wrote the new rules off as just one more disappointment from a Senate that has failed time after time to act decisively on major issues. Common Cause, a watchdog group, called it a capitulation.

Senators who supported greater limits on the filibuster characterized the moves as incremental.

“It’s some change,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, a freshman Democrat from Massachusetts, said with a shrug after being asked whether the new rules went far enough. But in a body that considers its rules sacrosanct and regards even the most modest changes as a momentous undertaking, Ms. Warren said she thought progress was achieved.

“It’s some change in a Senate committed to no change. So that’s important,” she said.

Under the agreement struck between Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, majority Democrats will lose some of their ability to block Republicans from trying to amend bills on the Senate floor.

Republicans will give up a favorite method of killing bills before they could ever be debated. Members of both parties will be able to have more of a role in proposing changes to bills, something they have complained party leadership often kept them from doing.

But the set of new provisions, many of which will expire when the new Congress convenes in 2015, left many loopholes, and it sidestepped entirely the kinds of reforms that would have made the agreement historic.

Senators will still not be required to actually talk or even be anywhere near the Capitol when they filibuster a bill. Contrary to the popular perception, senators no longer hold the floor like Huey P. Long Jr. of Louisiana did, reading passages from Shakespeare and recipes for pot likker to stop a piece of legislation.

Another reform that was not included in the new rules package was a change pushed by liberals that would have placed the onus on the minority by forcing them to find 41 votes to sustain a filibuster.

“They’re not making the Senate more efficient, I wouldn’t use that word,” said Sarah Binder, a political scientist at George Washington University who has written a book on the filibuster. “But they are sort of doing away with the excesses of how long it takes to act when the minority and majority have already agreed.”

One thing the new rules will do is compress the amount of time it takes to get a bill through the Senate. Under the rules that have existed, when senators wanted to advance a bill to debate by filing what is known as a motion to proceed, they would often have to wait three days.

If Mr. Reid, for instance, made a motion to proceed on a Monday and Republicans objected — which they frequently did — he would have to wait until Wednesday before his motion could go forward.

Then on Wednesday, one hour after convening the Senate as stipulated by the rules, Mr. Reid would be able to call a vote. And if he could muster 60 supporters, the bill could then be delayed another 30 hours for debate, meaning that it was often Thursday before any meaningful legislative action could take place.

Under the new rules, if Mr. Reid agrees to give Republicans two amendments, he can call up a bill Monday morning, then four hours later vote to formally take it up, with only a majority of senators needed instead of 60.

The amount of time that lower-level presidential nominees can be delayed after they have cleared the initial procedural vote will now be eight hours for an executive branch position and two hours for a district court judge. Supreme Court nominees, Circuit Court nominees and cabinet-level positions were not included as part of the agreement.

There are also provisions in the new rules that will limit the chances for filibuster once a bill has passed the Senate and is moving toward negotiations with the House. There were three. Now there will be just one. Unlike most of the other changes, this one is permanent.

Part of the hope is that the reforms will facilitate more involvement from individual senators in the legislative process either through the amendment process or the conferences that reconcile House and Senate bills.

“That’s significant,” said Eric Ueland, a former chief of staff to Bill Frist, the former Republican majority leader. “It makes the majority consider the role of a minority in crafting legislation.”

Something that could not be written into the rules, but a change that senators said they hope occurs as a result, is greater civility.

Said Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, “Perhaps we can create a new environment in the Senate.”

Jonathan Weisman contributed reporting.

    New Senate Rules to Curtail the Excesses of a Filibuster, NYT, 24.1.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/us/politics/bipartisan-filibuster-deal-is-reached-in-the-senate.html

Senator Unveils Bill to Limit Semiautomatic Arms

January 24, 2013
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

WASHINGTON — During a lengthy and at times emotionally wrenching news conference, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California on Thursday announced legislation that would ban the sale and manufacture of 157 types of semiautomatic weapons, as well as magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

The bill, which Ms. Feinstein introduced in the Senate later in the afternoon, would exempt firearms used for hunting and would grandfather in certain guns and magazines. The goal of the bill, she said, is “to dry up the supply of these weapons over time.”

Surrounded by victims of gun violence, colleagues in the Senate and House and several law enforcement officials, and standing near pegboards with several large guns attached, Ms. Feinstein acknowledged the difficulty in pursuing such legislation, even when harnessing the shock and grief over the shooting of 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., last month. “This is really an uphill road,” Ms. Feinstein said.

Since the expiration of a ban on assault weapons in 2004, lawmakers have been deeply reluctant to revisit the issue. They cite both a lack of evidence that the ban was effective and a fear of the gun lobby, which has made significant inroads at the state and federal levels over the past decade in increasing gun rights.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, recently said that he was skeptical about the bill. Ms. Feinstein immediately called him to express her displeasure with his remarks.

Many lawmakers, including some Democrats, prefer more modest measures to curb gun violence, like enhanced background checks of gun buyers or better enforcement of existing laws.

One such measure has been introduced by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who will begin hearings next week on gun violence. Among the witnesses will be Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association.

“Senator Feinstein has been trying to ban guns from law-abiding citizens for decades,” said Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for Mr. LaPierre. “It’s disappointing but not surprising that she is once again focused on curtailing the Constitution instead of prosecuting criminals or fixing our broken mental health system.”

More legislation is expected to arise over the next week or two, and some of it will have bipartisan support. Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, and Senator Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois, have agreed to work together on gun trafficking legislation that would seek to crack down on illegal guns. Currently, federal law does not define gun trafficking as a crime.

Mr. Kirk is also working on a background check proposal with Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, who is considered somewhat of a bellwether among Democrats with strong gun-rights records.

Mr. Leahy’s bill would give law enforcement officials more tools to investigate so-called straw purchasing of guns, in which people buy a firearm for others who are prohibited from obtaining one on their own.

Ms. Feinstein was joined on Thursday by several other lawmakers, including Representative Carolyn McCarthy of New York, who will introduce companion legislation in the House, and Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who emotionally recalled the day when the children and adults were gunned down in Newtown. “I will never forget the sight and the sounds of parents that day,” he said. Several gun violence victims, relatives of those killed and others gave brief statements of support for the bill.

Ms. Feinstein’s bill — which, unlike the 1994 assault weapons ban, would not expire after being enacted — would also ban certain characteristics of guns that make them more lethal. More than 900 models of guns would be exempt for hunting and sporting.

Such a measure is vehemently opposed by the N.R.A. and many Republican lawmakers, as well as some Democrats. “I don’t think you should have restrictions on clips,” said Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who has said he welcomes a Senate debate on guns. “The Second Amendment wasn’t written so you can go hunting, it was to create a force to balance a tyrannical force here.”

Proponents of the ban argue that in spite of claims to the contrary, the 1994 measure, of which Ms. Feinstein was a chief sponsor, helped curb gun violence. “The original bill, though flawed, had a definite impact on the number of these weapons faced by the police on streets and used in crimes,” said Adam Eisgrau, who helped write the 1994 ban while serving as Judiciary Committee counsel to Ms. Feinstein. The new bill, with more explicit language on the types of features on banned weapons, “is far more respectful of firearms for recreation uses,” he said.

Bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines were among the proposals unveiled by President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. last week. Mr. Biden took the campaign for tougher gun laws to the Internet on Thursday in an online video chat that was part of an effort by the White House to build public support for its guns package. Mr. Biden, who developed the plans embraced by Mr. Obama, will host a round-table event in Richmond, Va., on Friday, and officials have said that Mr. Obama will travel at some point to promote the package.

Peter Baker contributed reporting.

    Senator Unveils Bill to Limit Semiautomatic Arms, NYT, 24.1.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/us/politics/senator-unveils-bill-to-limit-semiautomatic-arms.html

Obama Tells Senate That It’s Time to Confirm A.T.F. Director

January 16, 2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

WASHINGTON — President Obama indicated on Wednesday that along with asking Congress to pass measures like an assault weapons ban, he would be increasing pressure on lawmakers to do something they have refused to do for the past six years: confirm a permanent director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

At a news conference, the president unveiled a series of executive actions and legislative proposals to help reduce gun violence, and he said he would nominate the agency’s acting director, B. Todd Jones, to be its permanent leader.

“Congress needs to help, rather than hinder, law enforcement as it does its job,” Mr. Obama said on Wednesday.

Mr. Jones, 55, a former Marine who is also the United States attorney in Minnesota, has led the beleaguered agency since August 2011, when he was appointed by the administration to take over in the aftermath of the scandal surrounding the bungled gun trafficking investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious, in which agents lost track of firearms they were allowing to pass into Mexico.

Until 2006, the president had the power to install a director of the firearms bureau without Congressional approval. But under pressure from gun lobbyists, Congress changed the law that year to require Senate confirmation. Since then, the Senate has failed to confirm any nominee by either President George W. Bush or Mr. Obama as senators who support gun rights have used their powers to delay nomination votes; Mr. Jones is the bureau’s fifth acting director since 2006.

One of the more vocal critics of the Justice Department and the firearms agency, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said Wednesday that he agreed with the president that it was time for the Senate to confirm a permanent director of the agency, but he raised questions about Mr. Jones’s credibility.

“The new nominee, B. Todd Jones, is a familiar face to the committee, but his ties to the Fast and Furious scandal raise serious questions,” Mr. Grassley said.

“In any case, he’ll receive a thorough and fair vetting by the Judiciary Committee,” said Mr. Grassley, the committee’s senior Republican.

For years, the A.T.F. has been battered by scandals and has had its authority undercut by gun lobbyists, who have pushed to limit its power and cut its funding. The bureau most recently came under scrutiny in 2011 for its handling of Fast and Furious after; two of the firearms used in the investigation were found at the scene of a shootout in which a United States Border Patrol agent was killed in Arizona.

Mr. Jones said in a meeting with reporters in September that during his tenure the agency had refocused its efforts on fighting violent crime and was “recalibrating” how it did business by revamping its policies and procedures.

“We are well on our way to tightening up our unity of effort and our communications,” Mr. Jones said, adding that senior officials in Washington now had more oversight over the agency’s field offices.

Mr. Jones said that some procedures had not been updated in 15 to 20 years.

“We are back to the basics, and that is what I have been working very hard at, the fundamentals,” he said, “and the fundamentals for us is protecting the American public from violent crime.”

Mr. Jones has told the agency’s offices to work closely with police departments in large cities to combat sudden increases in crime and “to focus on cases that will have the greatest impact,” a senior agency official said in a recent interview.

This year, A.T.F. agents have been part of so-called surges of law enforcement officers in the country’s most violent cities, including Oakland, Calif., and Philadelphia, working to make arrests and seize guns.

    Obama Tells Senate That It’s Time to Confirm A.T.F. Director, NYT, 16.1.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/us/politics/obama-urges-senate-to-confirm-todd-jones-as-atf-director.html

Congress Passes a $9.7 Billion Storm Relief Measure

January 4, 2013
The New York Times
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

WASHINGTON — Under intense pressure from New York and New Jersey, Congress adopted legislation on Friday that would provide $9.7 billion to cover insurance claims filed by people whose homes were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Sandy.

The measure is the first, and least controversial, portion of a much larger aid package sought by the affected states to help homeowners and local governments recover costs associated with the storm. The House has pledged to take up the balance of the aid package on Jan. 15.

The House passed the insurance measure 354 to 67; it then cleared the Senate by unanimous consent. President Obama is expected to sign the measure into law.

In the House, all of the votes against the aid came from Republicans, who have objected that no cuts in other programs had been identified to pay for the measure despite the nation’s long-term deficit problem. The 67 Republicans who voted against the measure included 17 freshman lawmakers, suggesting that the new class will provide support to the sizable group of anti-spending conservatives already in the House.

Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, brought the bill to the House floor after he drew criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike for adjourning the previous Congress earlier this week without taking up a $60.4 billion aid bill that the Senate had passed to finance recovery efforts in the hurricane-battered states. Among those most critical of Mr. Boehner were several leading Republicans, including Representative Peter T. King of Long Island, who is a senior member of Congress, and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who is a possible presidential contender in 2016.

The bill adopted on Friday would give the National Flood Insurance Program the authority to borrow $9.7 billion to fill claims stemming from damage caused by Hurricane Sandy and other disasters. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which administers the flood insurance program, recently notified Congress that it would run out of money within the next week to cover claims filed by individuals.

“The administration is pleased that Congress has taken action to ensure that FEMA continues to have the funds to cover flood insurance claims, including over 100,000 claims from Hurricane Sandy the agency has already received,” Clark Stevens, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. “We continue to urge Congress to take up and pass the full supplemental request submitted last year to ensure affected communities have the support they need for longer term recovery.”

Congress’s action did not fully mollify lawmakers from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and other states struck by the storm. Some officials continued to criticize the chamber’s leadership for failing to act more quickly on the larger aid package, saying it provided the necessary financing to help the region rebuild.

“I am optimistic and worried,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. “Optimistic because there is pressure on the House to produce. Worried because I know how difficult it is to get things through the Congress.”

Mr. Christie and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, a Democrat, issued a similarly cautious statement.

“Today’s action by the House was a necessary and critical first step towards delivering aid to the people of New Jersey and New York,” they said. “While we are pleased with this progress, today was just a down payment, and it is now time to go even further and pass the final and more complete, clean disaster aid bill.”

The overall measure would provide money to help homeowners and small-business owners rebuild; to repair bridges, tunnels and transportation systems; to reimburse local governments for overtime costs of police, fire and other emergency services; and to replenish shorelines. It also would finance an assortment of longer-term projects that would help the region prepare for future storms.

Some Republicans have been critical of the size of the proposed aid package, and have suggested that it includes unnecessary spending on items that are not directly related to the hurricane, like $150 million for fisheries in Alaska and $2 million for museum roofs in Washington. Representative Frank A. LoBiondo, Republican of New Jersey, said Friday that the measure going before the House later this month would “strip out the extraneous spending directed to states not affected by the storm.”

“Today’s vote is a key step in getting critical federal assistance to the residents, businesses and communities devastated by Hurricane Sandy,” Mr. LoBiondo said in a statement. “I hope my colleagues recognize politics has no place when dealing with a disaster and that the overwhelming bipartisan support demonstrated today is present as the remaining federal aid is considered.”

In the House debate leading up to the vote on Friday, several lawmakers said it had taken too long for Congress to provide federal aid to the region and urged the speaker to make good on his pledge to bring the $51 billion aid package to the floor later this month.

“We have been waiting for 11 weeks,” said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a Democrat from New York City. “It is long overdue.”

    Congress Passes a $9.7 Billion Storm Relief Measure, NYT, 4.1.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/05/nyregion/house-passes-9-7-billion-in-relief-for-hurricane-sandy-victims.html

Day of Records and Firsts as 113th Congress Opens

January 3, 2013
The New York Times
By ASHLEY PARKER

WASHINGTON — As the 113th Congress opens, the Senate and the House are starting to look a little bit more like the people they represent.

The new Congress includes a record number of women (101 across both chambers, counting three nonvoting members), as well as various firsts for the numbers of Latinos and Asians as well as Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. But it was the rise of the female legislator — 20 in the Senate and 81 in the House — that had the Capitol thrumming with excited potential on Thursday.

The first serious display of XX-chromosome strength occurred well before noon, when the female members of the House Democratic Caucus gathered on the Capitol steps for a group photo.

With many of the women dressed in vibrant hues, they assembled in the chilly January air, waving to old friends and greeting the new. They laughed and joked, inviting Representative Barney Frank, the Democrat from Massachusetts who retired this week, to hop in the picture. (He politely demurred.) A young aide to Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic minority leader from California, scurried to grab some of the members’ coats, juggling the fur and wool in his left hand while trying to snap iPhone photos with his right.

“Here comes Rosa! Here comes Rosa!” the women cheered, referring to Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, who came jogging up from the left side moments before the photo was taken.

“I think women bring a slightly different perspective,” said Representative Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, who is one of the first female combat veterans elected to Congress, as is Representative Tulsi Gabbard, Democrat of Hawaii. “The women, I think, are going to reach across the aisle a lot more. We’re a lot more pragmatic, but we do come from all different backgrounds.”

This Congress promises to be more diverse than its predecessors in several ways. On hand at the Capitol were Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin, the first openly gay senator; the first Hindu representative, Ms. Gabbard; and Mazie Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii, the first Buddhist senator. Representative Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona. also became the first openly bisexual member to serve in Congress.

Although the number of black legislators remained at 43, Tim Scott, previously a Republican House member from South Carolina, became the first black senator from his state, as well as the first black Republican in the Senate since 1979.

After she was sworn in for her second term, Senator Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat, said women were making progress in the Senate. “I don’t think we should be satisfied until we have the same number of women in the Senate that represent the percentage of the population that are women, so we still have a long way to go,” she said.

The day began on a touching note, when Senator Mark Steven Kirk, the Illinois Republican who was returning to Congress after a stroke last January, climbed the steps to the Senate chamber with the help of a cane and the moral support of his colleagues. He was met by the Illinois delegation, most of the Senate, and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who greeted him with a hug. Mr. Kirk may also have some explaining to do to Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican and vice-presidential rival to Mr. Biden, after Mr. Kirk told the vice president, “It was a good debate. I was rooting for you.”

When Mr. Kirk, his face contorted in concentration, slowed near the top of the steps, his colleagues called out “Almost there!” and “A few more!” and then erupted in applause when he reached the landing, triumphant.

On the House side, the first day was filled with familiar ritual — the children romping in the well of the House, the speaker’s roll call vote — but there were also some sweet notes.

Representative Dave Camp, the Michigan Republican who is recovering from treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, sat in the chamber with his children beside him. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington wandered the aisles with her daughter on her hip.

The opening of the 113th Congress had a decidedly first day of school feeling, with many of the members flanked by proud parents, as well as children of their own. Some freshman members wandered around, half awe-struck and half bewildered, and many aides did not yet have business cards.

“We just moved in,” they said apologetically, over and over.

As the afternoon darkened to evening, House members lined up to have their mock swearing-in picture taken with John A. Boehner of Ohio, narrowly and newly re-elected speaker of the House. Representative Andy Barr, a freshman Republican from Kentucky, stood with his wife, Carol, and their 21-month-old daughter, Eleanor, whom Mr. Boehner kissed on the cheek. Eleanor promptly wiped it away.

“Oh, she’s a big fan of the speaker,” Mr. Barr said later. “She just hasn’t had a nap today!”

Representative Joe Kennedy III, a Massachusetts Democrat and the newest elected member of the Kennedy clan, was fending off rumors that he had higher office on his mind on his first day in the House. After Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who will vacate his Senate seat if he is confirmed as President Obama’s next secretary of state, pulled Mr. Kennedy aside for a chat, a reporter jokingly asked if Mr. Kennedy was considering a run for Mr. Kerry’s seat.

“I’m definitely not, so let’s get that as the very first thing,” Mr. Kennedy replied, with a laugh. “I’m very happy where I am right now.”

Over at the member photo check-in table, aides were offering lessons in Congress 101: Remember, they warned, when you go before cameras to have your picture taken with Mr. Boehner, be careful what you say.

The microphones will pick everything up, and members would be well advised to avoid a gaffe on opening day. There will be plenty of time for that later.

Emmarie Huetteman, Ashley Southall and Jonathan Weisman contributed reporting.

    Day of Records and Firsts as 113th Congress Opens, NYT, 3.1.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/us/first-day-of-113th-congress-brings-more-women-to-capitol.html

Tax Deal Shows Possible Path Around House G.O.P.

in Fiscal Fights to Come

January 2, 2013
The New York Times
By JONATHAN WEISMAN

WASHINGTON — With the contentious 112th Congress coming to a close, the talks between the White House, Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats that secured a path around a looming fiscal crisis on Tuesday may point the way forward for President Obama as he tries to navigate his second term around House Republicans intent on blocking his agenda in the 113th.

For two years, the president has seen House Republican leaders as the key to legislative progress, and he has pursued direct talks with Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader. That avenue of negotiation proved fruitless, in large part because House Republicans were deeply divided about any compromise that Mr. Obama would accept. The failure led Mr. Boehner to tell his colleagues this week that he would not be engaging in any more one-on-one negotiations with the president.

But negotiations over the fiscal impasse pointed to a new and unlikely path as more fiscal deadlines approach. In this case, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader and a veteran legislative dealmaker, initiated negotiations with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., which instigated talks between them and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada. That produced sweeping tax legislation that averted large tax increases for most Americans and across-the-board spending cuts.

Then both Senate leaders worked hard to deliver the votes of a vast majority of their reluctant members, isolating House Republican leaders, who found themselves with no way forward other than to put the bill before the House and let Democrats push it over the finish line.

“I think this is the fourth time that we’ve seen this play out, where Boehner finally relents and lets the House consider a measure, and Democrats provide the votes to pass it,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat. “When they reach the point where their hand is forced, where there’s no other place to turn, they’ll do the right thing.”

That realization may lead to a more formalized process to begin bipartisan negotiations in the Senate to put pressure on the House. The deal that passed on Tuesday lifted the threat of tax increases that could have crippled the economy, but in other ways it compounded near-term fiscal threats. The government reached its statutory borrowing limit on Monday, giving Congress at best two to three months to raise the debt ceiling or risk a debilitating default on federal debt.

Around the same time, a two-month delay in the institution of across-the-board military and domestic spending cuts will lapse. Then, by the end of March, the current stopgap spending law financing the federal government will end, raising the specter of another government shutdown.

If House Republicans believe they can use those deadlines to extract concessions from the president on spending cuts, the White House may go elsewhere for a deal, Democrats say.

An official knowledgeable about the last negotiations said on Wednesday that the president would use such a strategy only if he was convinced that House Republican leaders would not or could not compromise. But in meeting with Senate Democrats on Monday and House Democrats on Tuesday, Mr. Biden labored to convince lawmakers that the White House had a way forward that would avoid last-minute theatrics and would not entail a stream of compromises on party principles, according to lawmakers who were there.

“One of the main concerns is, where do we go from here?” said Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, adding that Democrats feared that compromises on tax increases for the rich in the deal approved on Tuesday would lead to cuts in Social Security and Medicare in the next round of talks. “He has a game plan for that.”

A senior Democrat said that game plan would start in the coming weeks, when Mr. Obama addresses his agenda in his State of the Union address and lays out his budget for the 2014 fiscal year, due in early February.

That opening bid should restart talks with Congress on an overarching agreement that would lock in deficit reduction through additional revenue, changes to entitlement programs and more spending cuts, to be worked out by the relevant committees in Congress. But this time, those talks might start in the Senate.

House Republican aides said the past few weeks were unique and not indicative of anything going forward. The president won re-election on a pledge to raise taxes on income over $250,000. His mandate does not extend beyond that, one aide said. Besides, officials in both parties warn, neither Mr. Reid nor Mr. McConnell will want to lead on the difficult issues now in view. Mr. Reid was reluctant, at best, about joining the Biden-McConnell talks.

And Mr. McConnell has made it clear that future deficit deals should be done through “regular order” — Congressional committees, Senate and House debates and open negotiations, not private talks. Officials in both parties worry that as his 2014 re-election campaign gets closer, Mr. McConnell will be increasingly reluctant to have his fingerprints on deals with the president.

Even if a Senate route can be institutionalized, Mr. Durbin said he doubted that it would smooth the passage of bipartisan deals, given the difficulties Mr. Boehner has getting his troops in line. “His anguish has a timetable. It goes through phases and places that I don’t understand,” Mr. Durbin said of the speaker. “And I am afraid every scary chapter has to play out every step of the way before anything is resolved.”

Michael Steel, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner, said the last-minute crunch that produced the tax accord was necessary only because the Senate refused to act earlier. The House passed legislation months ago to extend all the expiring Bush-era tax cuts and to stop automatic military cuts by shifting them to domestic programs.

    Tax Deal Shows Possible Path Around House G.O.P. in Fiscal Fights to Come, NYT, 2.1.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/us/politics/tax-deal-shows-possible-path-around-house-gop-in-fiscal-fights.html

Senate Passes Legislation to Allow Taxes on Affluent to Rise

January 1, 2013
The New York Times
By JONATHAN WEISMAN

WASHINGTON – The Senate, in a pre-dawn vote two hours after the deadline passed to avert automatic tax increases, overwhelmingly approved legislation Tuesday that would allow tax rates to rise only on affluent Americans while temporarily suspending sweeping, across-the-board spending cuts.

The deal, worked out in furious negotiations between Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, passed 89-8, with just three Democrats and five Republicans voting no. Although it lost the support of some of the Senate’s most conservative members, the broad coalition that pushed the accord across the finish line could portend swift House passage as early as New Year’s Day.

Quick passage before the markets reopen Wednesday would likely negate any economic damage from Tuesday’s breach of the so-called “fiscal cliff” and largely spare the nation’s economy from the one-two punch of large tax increases and across-the-board military and domestic spending cuts in the New Year.

“This shouldn’t be the model for how to do things around here,” Senator McConnell said just after 1:30 a.m. “But I think we can say we’ve done some good for the country.”

“You surely shouldn’t predict how the House is going to vote,” Mr. Biden said late New Year’s Eve after meeting with leery Senate Democrats to sell the accord. “But I feel very, very good.”

The eight senators who voted no included Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida and a potential presidential candidate in 2016, two of the Senate’s most ardent small-government Republicans, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, and Senator Charles E. Grassley, who as a former Finance Committee chairman helped secure passage of the Bush-era tax cuts, then opposed making almost all of them permanent on Tuesday. Two moderate Democrats, Tom Carper of Delaware and Michael Bennet of Colorado, also voted no, as did the liberal Democrat Tom Harkin, who said the White House had given away too much in the compromise. Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, also voted no.

The House Speaker, John A. Boehner, and the Republican House leadership said the House would “honor its commitment to consider the Senate agreement.” But, they added, “decisions about whether the House will seek to accept or promptly amend the measure will not be made until House members – and the American people – have been able to review the legislation.”

Even with that cautious assessment, Republican House aides said a vote Tuesday is possible.



Under the agreement, tax rates would jump to 39.6 percent from 35 percent for individual incomes over $400,000 and couples over $450,000, while tax deductions and credits would start phasing out on incomes as low as $250,000, a clear victory for President Obama, who ran for re-election vowing to impose taxes on the wealthy.

“Just last month Republicans in Congress said they would never agree to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans,” Mr. Obama said before the vote at a hastily arranged news briefing Monday, with middle-income onlookers cheering behind him. “Obviously, the agreement that’s currently being discussed would raise those rates and raise them permanently.”

Democrats also secured a full year’s extension of unemployment insurance without strings attached and without offsetting spending cuts, a $30 billion cost. But the two-percentage point cut to the payroll tax that the president secured in late 2010 lapsed at midnight and will not be renewed.

In one final piece of the puzzle, negotiators agreed to put off $110 billion in across-the-board cuts to military and domestic programs for two months while broader deficit reduction talks continue. Those cuts begin to go into force on Wednesday, and that deadline, too, might be missed before Congress approves the legislation.

To secure votes, Mr. Reid also told Democrats the legislation would cancel a pending congressional pay raise — putting opponents in the politically difficult position of supporting a raise — - and extend an expiring dairy policy that would have seen the price of milk double in some parts of the country.

The nature of the deal ensured that the running war between the White House and Congressional Republicans on spending and taxes would continue at least until the spring. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner formally notified Congress that the government reached its statutory borrowing limit on New Year’s Eve. Through some creative accounting tricks, the Treasury Department can put off action for perhaps two months, but Congress must act to keep the government from defaulting just when the “pause” on pending cuts is up. Then in late March, a law financing the government expires.

And the new deal does nothing to address the big issues that Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner hoped to deal with in their failed “grand bargain” talks two weeks ago: booming entitlement spending and a tax code so complex that few defend it anymore.

Though the tentative deal had a chance of success if put to a vote, it landed with a thud on Capitol Hill. Republicans accused the White House of “moving the goal posts” by demanding still more tax increases to help shut off across-the-board spending cuts beyond the two-month pause. Democrats were incredulous that the president had ultimately agreed to around $600 billion in new tax revenue over 10 years when even Mr. Boehner had promised $800 billion. But the White House said it had also won concessions on unemployment insurance and the inheritance tax among other wins.

Still, Democrats openly worried that if Mr. Obama could not drive a harder bargain when he holds most of the cards, he will give up still more Democratic priorities in the coming weeks, when hard deadlines will raise the prospects of a government default first, then a government shutdown. In both instances, conservative Republicans are more willing to breach the deadlines than in this case, when conservatives cringed at the prospects of huge tax increases.

“I just don’t think Obama’s negotiated very well,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa.

With the legislation now headed to the House, Republicans there signaled that enough of them, in combination with Democrats, could most likely pass the legislation, just weeks after Republicans shot down Mr. Boehner’s proposal to raise taxes only on incomes over $1 million.

“I don’t want to say where I am until I read the legislation, but it is certainly better than the alternative,” said Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania.

With the threat of huge cuts agonizingly close, official Washington was prepared for the worst. The Defense Department prepared to notify all 800,000 of its civilian employees that some of them could be forced into unpaid leave without a deal on military cuts. The Internal Revenue Service issued guidance to employers to increase withholding from paychecks beginning Tuesday to match new tax rates at every income level.

“No deal is the worse deal,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, rejecting the assertions of liberal colleagues that no deal would be better than what they would see as a bad deal.

Despite grumbling amongh Republicans and Democrats, it was clear that a deal hashed out through intense talks between Mr. Biden and Mr.McConnell had given both sides provisions to cheer and to jeer.

Under the deal, tax rates on dividends and capital gains would also rise, to 20 percent from 15 percent, on income over $400,000 for single people and $450,000 for couples. The deal would reinstate provisions to tax law, ended by the Bush tax cuts of 2001, that phase out personal exemptions and deductions for the affluent. Those phaseouts, under the agreement, would begin at $250,000 for single people and $300,000 for couples.

The estate tax would also rise, but considerably less than Democrats had wanted. The value of estates over $5 million would be taxed at 40 percent, up from 35 percent. Democrats had wanted a 45 percent rate on inheritances over $3.5 million.

Under the deal, the new rates on income, investment and inheritances would be permanent, as would a provision to stop the alternative minimum tax from hitting middle-class families.

Jennifer Steinhauer and Robert Pear contributed reporting.

    Senate Passes Legislation to Allow Taxes on Affluent to Rise, NYT, 1.1.2013,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/us/politics/senate-tax-deal-fiscal-cliff.html