GOP congressional agenda stalls (Scripps Howard News Service)

[highplainsdem]

http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=BUSH-AGENDA-10-10-05&cat=WW


GOP congressional agenda stalls
By MARGARET TALEV
McClatchy Newspapers
October 10, 2005

WASHINGTON - President Bush and the Republicans who control Congress were counting on their partisan strength this year to overhaul Social Security, reshape immigration policy, bring spending under control, make permanent various tax cuts, drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and push a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

Some also were pushing for more or less embryonic stem-cell research, a fund for people with asbestos-related illnesses, private pension fund protections and anti-abortion bills including one telling women that fetuses can feel pain.

<snip>

With so many pressing obstacles and intra-party fractures, it's clear to the players, including the president, that much of the Republican agenda simply may not get done. Not this year, with Thanksgiving the target time for wrapping up business on Capitol Hill - and not next year, either, in cases in which votes are too volatile for the one-third of the Senate, and all of the House members, facing elections.

Some Republicans now say they will consider the year a success if the Senate can confirm Harriet Miers, the president's second high-court nominee, and if the House and Senate can agree on the basics: hurricane-related legislation, appropriations bills and a budget reconciliation that includes billions of dollars in spending and tax cuts.

<snip>


The story goes on to quote Trent Lott saying, "You've got to deal with the realities of life in your schedule."

But Joe Biden may have a better take on it. He's quoted as saying, "Ideology has run into reality, and they don't have a Plan B."

[rodeodance]

1. "Ideology has run into reality, and they don't have a Plan B." good one.

.....But Joe Biden may have a better take on it. He's quoted as saying, "Ideology has run into reality, and they don't have a Plan B."

[sam sarrha]

2. the Road to Utopia is so curmbly and littered with war dead.. its hard

to get there....