House Democrats yesterday failed to muster enough support to override the President's veto of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Noting the 273-156 House tally, 13 short of the needed two-thirds majority, the New York Times says "supporters of the bill were unable to convert a single House Republican who voted against the bill last month." On the House floor, "Democrats told Republicans they would pay a political price for their opposition." The Los Angeles Times notes "a total of 44 Republicans voted to override, one fewer than the 45 who voted to pass the legislation two weeks ago. ... Many GOP lawmakers echoed Bush's concern that the bill would go too far in giving states the option to also help some middle-class families."
The White House and some Republicans yesterday called for talks aimed at crafting a compromise, but media coverage suggests Democrats are in no mood to cede ground on what they view as a potent political issue for them. In fact, some reports suggest the GOP's eagerness to reach a deal with Democrats may be an acknowledgement of their weakened position on what could become a key campaign issue next year. After the vote, says the Washington Post, "a subdued GOP quickly talked of compromise." House Minority Leader John Boehner said, "Americans are tired of the rhetoric. They're tired of the political games, and they want us to find a way to work together." The Politico notes that four lawmakers, "all of whom would be likely to vote to override," missed Thursday's vote, which means Democrats "are really only searching for nine more GOP votes, which is why they see no need for a major compromise." The Wall Street Journal reports House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "vowed to have a revised children's health-insurance bill on President Bush's desk in two weeks."
The Hill says Republicans, "sensing the political dangers of further opposition to renewing the program," quickly "stepped forward to offer warnings of excessive partisanship and proposals to end the standoff." McClatchy reports "a group of moderate Republicans" led by New Mexico Rep. Heather Wilson, who is running for Senate, sent a letter to Pelosi "outlining a possible compromise." Her suggestion "calls for states to first enroll children from families who make less than twice the poverty level, to phase out adults from the program and to limit the number of higher-earning families who take their children out of private insurance plans to enroll them in the cheaper SCHIP program."
The Washington Times notes Pelosi "refused to say whether or how Democrats would compromise with Republicans on a new bill." The Washington Post says "the new version will probably give Republicans some face-saving alterations but no substantive change." Democratic leaders "suggested that they could add language clarifying that the program would not cover families with incomes above 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or about an annual income of about $60,000 for a family of four. And they would tighten language to ensure that the children of illegal immigrants would not receive benefits."
All three network newscasts ran brief reports on the House vote. ABC World News reported Bush vetoed the bill "because he said it was being expanded to cover children who aren't really disadvantaged. And he said it would cause too many middle class families to turn away from private health insurance in favor of the government's plan." The CBS Evening News said, "Six million poor children receive health insurance under" SCHIP. The vetoed bill "would have added four million more, including some from middle-income families." NBC Nightly News noted "the bill had bipartisan support."
Bush Asserting His Power Through Veto. The New York Times reports that "for now, the insurance vote stands as the latest example of how Mr. Bush can still get his way on Capitol Hill. Through artful use of veto threats and his veto pen, Mr. Bush has fended off attempts to force a change of course in Iraq -- a feat Democrats would never have imagined when they pushed Republicans out of power a year ago." He has "twisted Democrats into knots over domestic surveillance, and forced them to rethink a resolution condemning as genocide a century-old massacre of Armenians." The "outcome on Thursday, reminding Democrats of the limits of their power, came as Congress and the president prepared to square off over a dozen spending bills needed to finance the government in the new fiscal year."
The Wall Street Journal says that "disunity among congressional Democrats appears to be moving the White House toward another victory: this time, on granting telecommunications companies retroactive immunity for their help in a contentious National Security Agency surveillance program." Despite "a backlash from some House and Senate Democrats," the Senate Intelligence Committee "yesterday approved what lawmakers described as a delicate compromise with the White House" to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The compromise legislation "would extend for six years some of the expanded surveillance powers afforded the president under a temporary measure passed in August just before summer recess."
But the committee's vote does not guarantee the bill will be approved. The New York Times says in "an interview after the closed session," Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden said he "had succeeded, by a vote of 9 to 6, in adding an amendment that would offer additional protections by requiring that the government get a warrant whenever it wanted to wiretap an American outside the country." Wyden said the White House "vigorously opposed that measure and was threatening to veto any final bill if it is included." The Washington Post reports White House spokesman Tony Fratto said of the amendment, "We have strong concerns about that amendment. We certainly could not accept it." Meanwhile, USA Today reports Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd, a presidential hopeful, "said he will use his senatorial 'hold' power" to keep the fill Senate from taking up the bill, which "would effectively stall" it.
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Attorney General-designate Michael Mukasey "declined Thursday to say if he considered harsh interrogation techniques like waterboarding, which simulates drowning, to constitute torture or to be illegal if used on terrorism suspects," the New York Times reports. He suggested the Bush Administration's "program of eavesdropping without warrants and its use of 'enhanced' interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects, including waterboarding, might be acceptable under the Constitution even if they went beyond what the law technically allowed." The Washington Post said Mukasey "struck a different tone on the second and final day of his confirmation hearing, after earlier pleasing lawmakers from both parties by promising new administrative policies at the Justice Department and by declaring that the president could not override constitutional and legal bans on torture or inhumane treatment of prisoners." McClatchy says his comments "left open the possibility that he would endorse the same policies that critics accused his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, of authorizing or sanctioning."
California Democratic Rep. Pete Stark "accused Republicans Thursday of sending troops to Iraq to 'get their heads blown off for the President's amusement,'" the AP reports, leading to swift condemnation from Republicans. The comment by Stark, who is "known for his liberal views and volatile temperament," came during the House debate on the SCHIP health coverage extension. Stark refused to apologize and instead "issued a statement saying Republicans should apologize for voting against" SCHIP. The Politico reports Texas GOP Rep. Joe Barton "rose to protest the remark and asked that Stark's words be taken down, a formal procedure to punish a member of Congress for breaching the House's standards of decorum," but the "chair later ruled that Stark's comment did not refer to any specific House member and thus were appropriate." The Washington Times says Democratic leaders "didn't disavow the vitriol from Mr. Stark."
New York's two senators -- presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chief Charles Schumer -- had hoped for a $1 million earmark for a museum to mark the 1969 Woodstock music festival, the AP reports, but Sens. Tom Coburn and Jon Kyl successfully stripped the earmark from a health and education spending bill on a 52-42 vote "seeping with presidential politics." The Politico says Schumer, "as lonely as Charlie Brown, was the only senator to speak on Woodstock's behalf." Clinton "attached her name to the federal spending request, but Schumer was reportedly the main proponent." USA Today notes that the museum's main backer "is a registered Republican who recently became a major contributor to the Schumer-led" DSCC, as well as to Clinton's presidential campaign.
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Sam Brownback, a conservative Kansas Senator, is expected to end his struggling presidential campaign today. As is often the case with long shots, his announcement that he is exiting the race generated more news coverage than anything else he has done while in the contest. ABC World News, NBC Nightly News and the CBS Evening News briefly noted the story yesterday.
The Kansas City Star reports, "Anti-abortion. Tight with money. Anti-cloning. Distance from the White House on the war. Proud man of faith." That "all translated into a formidable political presence in Kansas, but not on the presidential campaign trail. With 77 days before the first votes are cast in Iowa, Brownback aides acknowledged that the two-term senator formally will end his campaign today in Topeka." McClatchy adds, "Brownback's campaign flameout was a death foretold back in August when he finished third behind Huckabee in the Iowa straw poll, an early weeding-out test of the Republican primary field." This isn't the end of the line for Brownback, though. The AP reports "it's widely anticipated Brownback will run for Kansas governor in 2010, when his term -- his second -- expires. He had promised in his first Senate campaign to serve no more than two terms."
The Washington Post reports on its front page this morning, "For months, Republican presidential candidates such as Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and John McCain have courted evangelical Christians, meeting with religious leaders throughout the Midwest and the South." Beginning today, "thousands of Christian conservatives will gather in Washington to confront the fact that none of the candidates has won them over." For Romney and Fred Thompson "the conference will be an opportunity to do what months of private meetings have failed to accomplish: become the consensus candidate for the evangelical movement, a key constituency of the Republican Party."
USA Today reports, "Somebody's got to win the presidential straw poll this weekend at a gathering of Christian conservative luminaries and activists. The question is whether it will be 'undecided' or an actual candidate." USA Today adds, "Grumbling, ambivalence and talk of bolting to a third party have marked the weeks leading up to today's 'values voter' conference sponsored by the Family Research Council."
The New York Times reports, "Several influential Christian conservative leaders said it was unlikely, even after the conference, that they would be able to coalesce around a single candidate as they had once hoped to do." That "raises anew the prospect that the movement's ability to shape the outcome of the primaries could be seriously diminished."
Meanwhile, a prominent liberal evangelical is arguing that the Christian vote is "up for grabs" in 2008. The CBS Evening News reported that the GOP presidential "contenders will be campaigning for the votes of evangelical Christians at what's called The Values Voter Summit opening tonight in Washington. Time was Republicans could count on those votes, but that was then and this is now. It's a new kind of political holy war for the hearts and minds of the roughly 50 million evangelical Christians in this country. Do you believe that evangelical Christians are still the domain of the GOP?" Jim Wallis, founder of the liberal religious group Sojourners: "No. I think things are changing dramatically. They're up for grabs. Their votes are in play."
Clinton Up By Smaller Margin A new Strategic Vision poll of 600 likely voters from each party taken October 12-14 shows Mitt Romney with a double-digit lead among likely Iowa GOP caucus-goers, while Hillary Clinton holds a narrow lead over Barack Obama. On the GOP side, Romney is backed by 27 percent of respondents, followed by Rudy Giuliani, 13 percent; Mike Huckabee, 12 percent; and Fred Thompson, 10 percent. John McCain has fallen behind the leaders, and now pulls just 5 percent. The rest of the field is at 4 percent or less. On the Democratic side, Clinton leads with 28 percent, followed by Obama, 23 percent; John Edwards, 20 percent; Bill Richardson, 9 percent; Joe Biden, 6 percent; and the rest of the field at 1 percent or less.
The Raleigh News & Observer reports that the Civitas Institute's monthly DecisionMaker poll showed Hillary Clinton opening a broad lead in John Edwards's home state. Clinton takes 31 percent in the Democratic primary, followed by Edwards and Barack Obama, each with 18 percent. On the GOP side, Rudy Giuliani leads with 21 percent, followed by Fred Thompson with 19 percent and Mitt Romney with 16 percent. The poll surveyed 800 likely voters from October 9-14.
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Jay Leno: "We have 500 people here tonight. We have straight people. We have gay people. We have white people. We have black people. It's like a Dick Cheney family reunion."
Jay Leno: "The Dalai Lama told President Bush that he had seen evil firsthand. And President Bush said, 'Great, you got to meet Vice President Cheney.'"
David Letterman: "Now Lynne Cheney, Dick Cheney's wife, is getting all wound up. She says she would be uncomfortable with Hillary Clinton running the country. Lynne is uncomfortable with Hillary? And Bill said, 'Join the club.'"
Conan O'Brien: "Earlier this week -- this is a weird story -- Vice President Cheney's wife said that Vice President Cheney is actually a distant cousin of Barack Obama. ... At first, Obama was skeptical. Then he remembered that his great-great grandmother once had a demon out of wedlock."
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