Nation & World

Posted 5/15/05

President to Highway Bill: I Can't Get There From Here

This week the Senate is expected to pass a $295 billion highway bill so chock full of goodies that it may finally force President Bush's veto pen into action. Things have been so cozy between the White House and the GOP-led Congress that the president has not had to veto a single piece of legislation in 4 1/2 years. But Bush, concerned about booming budget deficits, is threatening to veto this bill because it contains $11.2 billion more in spending than he can stomach. A bridge here, an overpass there, and pretty soon you're talking about a real parting of the ways between the White House and Congress.

One Justice May Be Justice Enough

Despite rumors that at least two U.S. Supreme Court justices will leave the court this year, senior White House officials are planning for only one opening, probably that of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. White House sources said that while they have no direct word from any justice of retirement plans, court officials have indicated that only one judge will retire. What's more, the White House really has the gumption for only one nomination fight, such as that which would occur if President Bush nominated, say, either Justice Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas to be the chief.

Bush Either Wins Bolton or Loses Big

No less a congressional insider than GOP pollster Frank Luntz warns that the White House needs to win the battle over John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Luntz, who has long worked with Republicans on the Hill, says that President Bush could lose much of his effectiveness if Bolton is defeated. "If he loses, he loses because Republicans go against him," Luntz says. This would embolden the Democrats and moderate Republican senators to challenge Bush on all manner of other issues. One irony: Based on his polling and focus groups, Luntz believes that everyday Americans are not following the Bolton donnybrook, considering it inside-Washington baseball.

Everyone Knows It's Nicer to Share

Figuring out how to actually manage the sprawling, 15-agency intelligence community is at the top of the list for new Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte. Among the tools he's settled on: ICD s--intelligence community directives--that he will issue to deal with everything from personnel and budgets to classification levels. A top priority is improving information sharing among the often turf-warring agencies. To that end, Negroponte plans to reissue as one of his first ICD s a notice on info sharing sent out by former CIA chief George Tenet just before he left. Negroponte's managers are already bullish on the subject. At a forum last week for the tech industry, William Dawson, Negroponte's deputy chief information officer, pointed to huge increases in sharing that have already occurred since 9/11, including over 10,000 websites and data repositories at top classification levels and 125 databases that are now accessible communitywide. The total amount of shared data, he said, totals some 6 terabytes; that's roughly equal to 6,000 bound copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

White House Moment: 10:29 a.m., May 12, Dirksen Senate Office Building

Democratic Sens. Joseph Biden, Paul Sarbanes, and Christopher Dodd had a lot to whisper about last week as their Senate Committee on Foreign Relations debated President Bush's controversial nomination of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. The committee eventually sent the nomination to the full Senate.

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With Terence Samuel, Paul Bedard, Kenneth T. Walsh and David E. Kaplan Terence Samuel, Paul Bedard, Kenneth T. Walsh and David E. Kaplan Terence Samuel, Paul Bedard, Kenneth T. Walsh and David E. Kaplan Terence Samuel, Paul Bedard, Kenneth T. Walsh and David E. Kaplan Terence Samuel, Paul Bedard, Kenneth T. Walsh and David E. Kaplan