09-07-2002

INSIDE WASHINGTON: Inside Washington for Sept. 7, 2002

Always Willing to Help Out a Fellow Party Member


That old saying, "With friends like these, who needs enemies?"
must be on the mind of some Senate candidates. Take the hotly contested
South Dakota race. GOP candidate John Thune, who has bragged about his
clout with President Bush, must have suffered a bad case of heartburn when
Bush recently decided to demonstrate that he's no Washington spendthrift.
Bush told South Dakota's ranchers, who have been clobbered by the drought,
to forget about federal assistance. "Boy, he hurt John," Sen.
Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said in an interview. "I have talked to the
White House about this: You cannot hang Thune out like this."
Meanwhile, during the recent battle over Medicare prescription drug
benefits, Democratic Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle told reporters that
Republican Gordon H. Smith of Oregon was one of two senators who deserved
"a great deal of credit" for their efforts on behalf of seniors.
Daschle's praise could not have put a smiley face on Oregon Democrat Bill
Bradbury, who is battling to unseat Smith.


G'bye, Good Government, Hello, Corporate Ethics


Fresh off the biggest legislative victory in the history of Common
Cause-the passage of this year's campaign finance reform-organization
President Scott Harshbarger is stepping down after three years leading the
"good-government" lobby. Harshbarger, 60, served as the attorney
general in Massachusetts for eight years, and he was the Democratic
gubernatorial candidate there in 1998. He lost that race to GOP Gov. Paul
Cellucci, now the ambassador to Canada. Harshbarger has accepted a new job
with the corporate governance and ethics group at Mercer Delta Consulting.
In a memo to staffers, Harshbarger said that the Common Cause experience
had been "among the most challenging, interesting, and rewarding of
my career," but added that the chance to work in Boston, near his
home, and to earn more money, led him to take the new post.


Budget Rules Might Help Inoculate Seniors


The Senate's inability to pass a budget resolution might actually give a
little boost to chances that a prescription drug benefit bill could pass
later this year. At midsummer, neither the Republican nor the Democratic
drug plan could muster the 60 Senate votes necessary to gain a waiver of
the budget act. But come October 1, the start of a new fiscal year, the
60-vote budget rule will lapse if no budget resolution is in place. That
could enable a bill to slip through with a simple majority. Earlier, the
Democratic plan had gained the most votes-52. Either side in the Senate
could still filibuster the legislation, of course, but that might be
problematic with Election Day looming. Even if the Senate does pass a
bill, however, it will take more than relaxed budget rules to get it
quickly and successfully through a conference committee, thanks to the
very different bill passed by the House.


Emotive in New York, Detached in D.C.?


Washingtonians are often considered a more buttoned-down breed than New
Yorkers, and that extends to the emotions evoked by the terrorist attacks
of September 11. A new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the
People and the Press found that in the Big Apple, 41 percent said they
often felt angry as a result of the 9/11 attacks and 37 percent felt sad.
That compares with only 27 and 23 percent, respectively, of
Washingtonians. Nationwide, 31 percent of the poll's respondents expressed
anger and 24 percent said they felt sad. The attacks also aroused strong
patriotic feelings, but almost uniformly across the country: 61 percent of
New Yorkers said one lasting emotional effect was patriotism, compared
with 60 percent of Beltway denizens and 62 percent of all
Americans.




National Journal