Prometheus 6   

Stolen from the NY Times

What Washington Did While the War Was on TV
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON � While Humvees sped toward Baghdad, the machinery of the federal government plodded along at home, churning out laws, executive orders and court decisions that passed relatively unnoticed by a public fixated on the war.

It might come as news that Congress, in creating a national kidnapping alert system, altered how federal criminal sentences are handed down. Or that the House voted anew for Arctic oil drilling. The Supreme Court issued an important decision on liability limits; the Environmental Protection Agency made a decision environmentalists liked. And nine Democratic presidential candidates held their first cattle call.

Congress purposefully kept at its business, driven by Republicans determined to have domestic issues in the ready room when the war ended. To that end, Republicans in the House and Senate pushed through a tax-cutting budget that sparked an intraparty feud with the potential to complicate their work for the rest of the year. The actual shape of the tax cut will be determined in the coming weeks.

House members, meanwhile, in establishing a national Amber Alert system to sound a public alarm after a child is abducted, persuaded the Senate to support a broader bill that added controversial new limits on judges' discretion over sentencing in cases involving children and sex crimes. Sponsors said the limits would deter kidnappings by making tough penalties more consistent, but Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and many federal judges expressed concern about rigidity in widely varying cases and about further crowding of the nation's prisons. Democrats railed against the changes but wanted to support the politically popular Amber Alerts, and the measure passed overwhelmingly in both the House and the Senate.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in the challenge to the University of Michigan's use of affirmative action criteria in admissions, and college students, many from minority groups, camped outside the court building the night before. Who won won't be known for a while. But the court did hand down an important ruling limiting punitive damages in lawsuits, a decision that may encourage Congressional Republicans eager to rein in awards in medical malpractice disputes and other cases.

At the E.P.A., regulators drew rare praise from environmentalists for a proposal intended to reduce pollution from heavy construction equipment, tractors and other diesel-powered vehicles not made for use on roads. Analysts said the new rules, requiring cleaner fuel and better emissions control, would save both lives and billions of dollars in health-care costs.

Environmentalists were unhappy, however, when the House passed an industry-friendly energy bill that would initiate oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Though the Senate voted against that idea a month ago in another bill, House advocates hope to reopen the drilling debate this summer.

The energy plan was a central concern for President Bush before his administration was consumed by foreign policy matters. Another prewar goal, enabling faith-based organizations to get more government aid for social services, got a slight push in Senate legislation, but it was so watered down that even determined opponents didn't blink.

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld proposed a transformation in the military personnel system, extending the tenure of senior officers and transferring 300,000 military jobs to the civilian ranks. He also wants to reduce what the Pentagon must report to Congress. Congress might be expected to object, but Mr. Rumsfeld has a lot of friends there these days.

After a bit of a tussle, Congress approved a plan to allay some health workers' concerns about side effects from the smallpox vaccine. The administration wants emergency personnel to volunteer for inoculation, but some who had heart conditions have died after receiving it. The final deal provides up to $262,000 in compensation for disability or death due to a bad reaction to the vaccine.

Though Mr. Bush came out of the war strengthened, Democrats were still volunteering to take him on in 2004. The contenders lined up, literally, for the first time in a forum sponsored by the Children's Defense Fund on April 9, the very evening the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad was toppled in a scene that quickly became symbolic of American victory. No one broke free of the pack. And in the Senate, Peter G. Fitzgerald, an Illinois Republican, set Democratic ambitions for more Senate seats stirring by announcing he would not seek a second term next year.

On April 14, new federal rules to protect the privacy of medical records went into effect. Consumers will notice the new privacy information they must read and sign.

One man's fate was completely unchanged prewar to postwar. Miguel Estrada, the Washington lawyer who is the president's pick for an important federal appeals court, is still not a judge. His nomination remains frozen in a filibuster launched by Senate Democrats who contend he has not been forthcoming about his judicial views. Gridlock, it seems, endures in war and peace.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/20/2003 10:10:11 AM |