Congress Wraps Up Mixed-Bag Session

[Rose Siding]

With passage of the Medicare drug bill, the Republican-led Congress wrote a triumphant finale this week to a session of mixed results, unusually rancorous partisanship and deadlock over some of President Bush's other legislative priorities.

In what was almost a metaphor for the session's spotty record, a bill to expand domestic energy production -- another big White House goal -- was pronounced dead for the year just as Congress was passing the Medicare legislation and preparing to wrap up most of its work for 2003.

There was a similar tangle of wins, losses and delays on a range of other issues. Congress gave Bush his third tax cut in three years along with spending bills totaling $166 billion for military and reconstruction operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, all of it contributing to record-high budget deficits. It also approved the first legislation to ban a specific abortion procedure, which its critics call "partial birth" abortion.

But lawmakers thwarted or postponed other major GOP priorities, including limits on lawsuits, further tax cuts and a bigger role for religious groups in government-financed programs. Important welfare, highway and pension bills were delayed until next year, the second half of the 108th Congress, when campaign pressures could complicate passage.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17456-2003Nov27?language=printer

A generally depressing screed, but worth a run through for a reminder of some of the little known successes and even a couple to be proud of. Considering the absolutely coercive machine that runs the repubs, it's nothing to sneeze at.

*Novak writes in this article of the pressure and personal threats used to secure the medicare votes in the House-

http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak27.html

We have nothing to compare with that kind of leverage. It's probably a victory that the Dem party is still in tact at all.