Copyright 2000 The Washington Post
The Washington
Post
April 17, 2000, Monday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A19; THE FEDERAL PAGE; IN THE
LOOP
LENGTH: 883 words
HEADLINE: Sen. Craig Feels a Draft
BYLINE: Kamen , Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
It looked like Senate Republicans had
finally gotten the goods on the administration's kowtowing to environmental
groups. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee member Larry E. Craig
(R-Idaho) had the paper-trail evidence at a March 30 hearing--and he had Council
on Environmental Quality Chairman George T. Frampton Jr. in the witness chair.
Craig grilled Frampton about a "proposed letter to the Forest Service
Chief Mike Dombeck from President Clinton" that three folks at the Wilderness
Society, after meeting with Frampton, had drafted about roadless
areas in national forests.
"The draft was sent to you at CEQ on
July 9," Craig said. "I have read the letter and I have listened to the
president, and I find it interesting that it is very similar to" Clinton's memo
to Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman when he announced the roadless initiative
on Oct. 14. If a group of enviros meets with the administration and the
administration follows their advice, then, potentially, that could make the
group an advisory committee--remember Hillary Rodham Clinton and those secret
health care reform meetings?--and the meetings should be public and announced.
Frampton's office could get very crowded.
So all these similarities?
"Coincidental?" Craig asked.
No, just the revolving door in overdrive.
The draft letter is but "a redraft . . . of something that I drafted in 1988 and
finalized in 1989," Frampton said, "and used . . . when I went to see . . .
senior management . . . under the Bush administration." This would have been
when he was president of--you guessed it--the Wilderness Society.
So no
problem, Frampton said, the trio at Wilderness was just copying his old material
when he was lobbying Republicans. It's just Frampton advising himself, a
committee of one, so to speak.
Craig had his doubts about Frampton back
in May 1993, when he was confirmed by the committee for an Interior Department
job. Frampton assured the Republicans that his efforts at the Wilderness Society
were one thing, but that being in the administration was a very different thing,
working for a constituency of 200 million people.
"I know the old George
Frampton," Craig said then. "I am very excited about seeing the new George
Frampton. . . . The West depends on a different George Frampton than the old
one."
Well, some folks don't change all that much. "I'm a big fan of
recycling," said Frampton. "Why waste good prose?"
Take 1
Republican and Call Me Tomorrow
It's only a draft, but the House
Commerce Committee's new prescription drug plan that would provide a system for
increased insurance coverage for drugs is already taking heavy fire, this time
from a fellow Republican.
Scott W. Reed, the 1996 Dole campaign chief,
who chairs the Republican Leadership Coalition and is promoting a much different
plan, warns that the committee draft has "several land mines that will cause
this plan to blow up on the GOP, especially in the face of a sustained,
well-funded Democratic attack."
"Seniors don't like change," Reed said
in an April 3 memo to GOP members of Congress, "especially change they don't
understand. The plan is not easy to explain and will cause confusion in the mind
of the voter."
The plan increases premiums, Reed argued, and may
generate fierce and likely fatal opposition from the health insurance industry.
Also, "the plan does not address the dog, Canada and Mexico drug cost issues,"
Reed said. Medrol, an arthritis drug, "costs $ 3.90 for dogs and $ 20.10 for
humans," Reed said, while "drugs bought in Canada and Mexico are often half
price. A plan to give seniors a complicated insurance policy so they can
continue to pay high prices for prescription drugs" will let Democrats accuse
Republicans of "simply protecting the profits of their drug company friends."
Get ready for yet another long drug war.
At Last, the $
19.95 Stamp
Speaking of nasty battles, a new Web site in New
York says Hillary Clinton has been a doormat and so, for $ 19.95, it offers
doormats with her likeness and catchy phrases such as "I've always been a Yankee
fan."
The doormat marketing company--www.hillarydoormat.com--is headed
by Jazz Perazic-Gipe, a former college basketball star. She told the New York
Post that the idea came to her during a pickup basketball game with friends when
someone mentioned the first lady and she remarked, "That woman's a doormat."
The doormat, described as "America's favorite place to wipe its
political feet," offers a selection of "Hillaryisms" that can be ordered on the
doormats, including: "It's all a vast Right Wing Conspiracy!" and "Read my lips,
No New Interns!"
Clinton fans may counter by buying caps, T-shirts and
mugs on www.hillarystuff.com, or they can wait for the inevitable nasty site
someone will put up featuring the "best" of her opponent, New York Mayor Rudolph
W. Giuliani (R).
And it's only April.
A Move Up at
Energy
Natalie Wymer, deputy chief of staff to then-Labor
Secretary Robert B. Reich, communications director for the White House climate
change task force and most recently deputy director of the Energy Department's
public affairs shop, has moved up to the directorship, replacing Brooke
Anderson, who moved to the National Security Council.
LOAD-DATE: April 17, 2000
