Lott says something stupid and gets whacked. Kennedy kills someone and keeps getting elected. Only in Mass-ass-chustetts.
Posted on 01/12/2003 7:00:39 AM PST by Gothmog
Kennedy and Kerry battle GOP agenda
Two huge roadblocks made in Massachusetts - Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry - stand in the way of President Bush's ambitious agenda for 2003.
With Bush's Republicans now in control of the White House and both houses of Congress, the president proposes some bold and controversial action.
It includes outright elimination of the tax on dividends; a speedup, not a suspension, of the next round of multiyear tax cuts that Bush pushed through in 2001; drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; and a partial privatization of Medicare.
Plus, in a particularly egregious in-your-face slap to liberal Democrats and other civil-rights advocates, the president has renominated controversial Mississippian Charles Pickering (a favorite of disgraced former Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi) for a seat on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Kennedy and Kerry plan to challenge the president on all those issues and others, in order to advance their own causes - and in Kerry's case, his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004.
Since one of them is running for president and the other is the nation's most powerful liberal, both will be among the highest-profile Democrats waging guerrilla warfare against the president.
And their odds to block many of Bush's plans are better than you might think.
The Republicans' grip on the Senate is by only a tenuous 51-49. It takes 60 votes to cut off a filibuster in the Senate. And with Bush's agenda threatening so many core Democratic constituencies, it's going to be mighty hard to find enough Democrats to shut off extended debate on issues ranging from the Bush tax cut to plans to drill for oil in Alaska - an issue on which Kerry is passionate and would command national attention from environmentalists.
The GOP majority in the House is only slightly larger. And the Democratic Party, after sleepwalking through campaign 2002, seems about to wake up. Teddy is ringing the alarm.
``When everybody was crying in their milk (about lost chairmanships and the like) after the elections, Sen. Kennedy was energized,'' said his press secretary Stephanie Cutter. ``He said, `Now, we can really fight 'em.' ''
Kennedy is banging Bush left and right now, on education, the economy, health care, civil rights. He's rallying his party with high-profile events. Kennedy's annual speech on the state of the union as he sees it is set for Jan. 21. And he and Senate minority leader Tom Daschle will hold a forum on civil rights on Friday, just days before Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Kerry is spoiling for a battle, too; in fact he needs a few fights to emerge in the public eye as the strongest Democrat to take on the president next year. Last week, he bitingly said Bush ``doesn't understand'' the needs of the working class and is giving way too much tax relief to the rich.
In a speech in Cleveland last month, Kerry pointedly noted that during Democratic President Bill Clinton's time, the country achieved ``the greatest growth ever, the lowest unemployment, the lowest inflation, the most jobs created'' and a budget surplus. Now, under Bush's tax plans, ``We have deficits as far as the eye can see,'' he said.
Kennedy seems to thrive as much or more in the minority as in the majority in the Senate. After 40 years in the Senate, he knows when to filibuster blisteringly and when to cut deals or work together for legislation with sympathetic Republicans.
In fact, both Kennedy and Kerry have expressed hope they can work compatibly on health issues with Sen. William Frist (R-Tenn.), the former heart-transplant surgeon who succeeded the deposed Lott as majority leader. Both have co-authored bills with Frist in the past.
Kennedy also teamed up with Bush for a landmark achievement on education. On Jan. 8, 2002, they held a lovefest at Boston Latin School, saluting each other for their joint work for passage of the ``No Child Left Behind Law'' - a centerpiece of Bush's campaign and a longtime Kennedy cause.
``You're a good man,'' Bush told Kennedy. And on Air Force One, the president gave the senator a rawhide bone for Kennedy's dog Splash, signed, ``Great job on education. From Barney (Bush's dog) and G.W.''
But what a difference a year makes. By Kennedy's lights, a bone is about all Bush's new budget is providing ($7 billion less than last year) to implement that education reform bill. The president wants to mess with Medicare, a health-care benefit that Kennedy and others labored for decades to achieve. And Kennedy is outraged that Bush is giving Pickering a second chance for a vital judgeship.
Here's some of what Kennedy has said now that he's in a fighting mood:
Mississippi Judge Pickering's record on the bench back home ``reflects a hostility to civil rights.'' The Senate Judiciary Committee rejected him last year, said Kennedy, ``and we will use every tool in our arsenal to ensure that his nomination is rejected again this year.''
Ouch. That could mean a filibuster, and nobody's better than Kennedy at stem-winding floor speeches on civil rights. Do Bush's Republicans really want a reprise of the type of segregationist accusations that haunted them during the Lott controversy?
Alarmed by reports that Bush will oppose new prescription drug benefits for seniors unless Medicare is made more like private insurance, Kennedy wrote a fiery letter to the president. Prescription drug coverage should be passed posthaste, not held hostage, he said. ``Passage of Medicare drug coverage through the front door must not be a Trojan horse for forcing senior citizens into the hands of HMOs and private insurers through the back door.''
Kennedy chastised Bush for reneging on providing sufficient money to improve performance of schools and pupils found wanting in testing authorized by education reform.
``It's a tin-cup budget,'' Kennedy said, compared to Bush's proposed $670 billion in tax cuts. Congress had authorized $18.5 billion in educational assistance for children from low-income homes this year. The president proposed that only $12 billion be appropriated. Kennedy will battle for more.
Still, don't expect Kennedy and Kerry to always be on the warpath. Kennedy has worked with Republicans before - notably committee chairmen Orrin Hatch of Utah, Charles Grassley of Iowa and John McCain of Arizona - to advance his health insurance agenda.
And both Kerry and Kennedy were cheered by new GOP majority leader Frist's remarks last Thursday about health care.
Frist urged more funding to combat the spread of AIDS in Africa (he and Kerry were partners on that in 2002). And Frist said, ``We've got to face and we've got to elevate'' attention to glaring racial disparities in health care. Kennedy surely will address that in his civil rights forum Friday. He'll welcome Frist's help.
Yet, Boston attorney Nick Littlefield, former chief of staff for Kennedy on the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee, warned, ``The question is whether Frist has the courage to follow his own impulses or whether he'll become handcuffed by his party's ideologues on the right.''
Count on Kerry and Kennedy to try to pick the lock on those cuffs.
Fat lot of good it did cozying up to Kennedy on education.
No!!!!!!!! Say it ain't so!
Lott says something stupid and gets whacked. Kennedy kills someone and keeps getting elected. Only in Mass-ass-chustetts.
I might be wrong but the method I prefer, which conforms to my definition of conservatism, is to give everyone access to the "seeds of success" and then get the hell out of the way and let them do with the seeds what they will.
Doctors are accustomed to their direct actions having an immediate impact on life and death...hence success. But if they carry over this notion to government...well...it's not a big leap from this point to the mantra of the liberals who enslave their constituents from cradle to grave because liberals TRULY believe they know what's best for their constituents.
I hope to hell Frist proves me wrong. The good thing about it though is this . . . Free Republic has shown me that WE THE PEOPLE can make a difference. If Frist proves to be Teddy Kennedy in disguise, or any variant thereof, us FReepers will see to it that he has a short reign.
Lo and behold!
Two huge roadblocks made in Massachusetts - Sens. Edward M. Kennedy...
Education and other things too. I suppose there's a rationale for dancing with the devil, but I just don't see it. The GOP (Bush) invariably gets stabbed in the back.
That man is God's gift to gravity.
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