Fashioning a New Legacy
SCHORR, DANIEL
Washington Notebook By Daniel Schorr Fashioning a New Legacy "The first order of business is to build multilateral institutions." "America always prefers to work with allies at our...
...In the dark of night, someone added an amendment that would allow committee chairmen and their staffs to inspect any income tax returns they chose to see—until now, an exclusive power of the IRS...
...Democratic Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a West Point graduate, has been more emphatic...
...said of the corporate giveaway bill, "The worst example of the influence of special interests that I have ever seen...
...An Annenberg Foundation survey indicates that most draft-age Americans don't believe him...
...The flap has drawn attention to what Senator McCain called a "bizarre situation" in which hundreds of billions of dollars are appropriated without any elected person seeing the provisions...
...Canada was only a preliminary to what appeared to be a plan for active fence mending with allies and friends—perhaps one should say former friends...
...One of the last unpleasant chores that Powell performed was a 24-hour trip to Beijing to reassure the Chinese government that the United States was not supporting independence for Taiwan, no matter what the Pentagon was saying...
...Then there was intelligence reform, stalled by Republican leaders, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, despite the telephone pleas of President Bush...
...First, a row developed over the elevation of Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania to the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee...
...A skeleton Selective Service organization and local draft boards still exist, with registration required for 18-year-old males...
...Dropped, too, was a tax break for employers designed to help National Guard members getjobs...
...He joked that for Canada, being the neighbor of a superpower like the United States must be like sleeping next to an elephant...
...Or urban sewer systems...
...To the cheers of the multitude, President Reagan said the Soviet Union was no longer an Evil Empire...
...This will be remembered as the Congress where the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, was admonished three times by the House Ethics Committee for various improprieties, such as appearing to linkpolitical contributions to voting right on measures DeLay was pushing...
...Iraq, though, was not the whole story...
...President Abraham Lincoln instituted the draft without constitutional authority and it was widely evaded by those who couldbuy their way out...
...Ronald Reagan, in his first term, attacked the Soviet Union as "the Evil Empire...
...He cracked down on Western European countries that wanted to build a gas pipeline to Siberia, eventually killing the project—to the great distress of both the Soviet Union and our West European friends...
...Specter of the Draft Our two most recent Presidents came of draft age during the Vietnam War, but managed to escape the draft...
...When Representative Charles B. Rangel (D.-N...
...According to the New York Times, a panel named by the Pentagon reported that U. S. forces might not be able to handle a new emergency if one arose...
...But serving as secretary of state in the Bush-Dick Cheney-Rumsfeld Administration was clearly not a happy experience for Powell, and whatever he does next, it is likely to be in the private sector...
...It also did not pass most of the money bills that finance the government...
...But in his second term, Reagan talked with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev about the possibility of abolishing all nuclear weapons...
...The lawmakers were embarrassed by the revelation, if not the fact...
...One of the reasons he stayed was to get the United States to focus on the atrocities in Sudan...
...At last the government could stop subsisting on stopgap appropriations (or continuing resolutions, as they are called...
...But in the end, what left Powell "bitter and frustrated"—as he was described by someone close to him—was the Iraq war, which he thought should not have been fought without America's traditional allies...
...He said he discussed resigning at various times with the President, but he never planned to stay longer than one term...
...Powell's Frustrations In the revamping of the Bush Cabinet Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld stays, and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell goes...
...Invasion Averted The tax amendment episode took me back some 30 years...
...Instead, he remained the soldier, serving country, not party...
...Apparently, an unelected staff member could legislate in the 108th Congress...
...It is hard to guess precisely when Powell decided to quit, but it was not recently...
...Soon after his inauguration in January the President plans to visit several European countries...
...In 1972, my income tax returns were audited by the IRS for the first and only time in my life...
...In Moscow's Red Square in 1988,1 watched the two acting like warm buddies amid a friendly crowd...
...One can differ about what those gains were, but that will probably not hinder a second-term President bent on fashioning a legacy of peace and friendship...
...I mention this without animus as one who was called to service in the citizens' Army during World War II...
...It did not pass legislation to finance community health centers...
...So on December 6 Congress returned for an unprecedented (I think) second lame duck session to repeal the spending bill and pass it a second time without the sneaky amendment...
...Specter finally made it, but only after giving ironclad pledges not to refuse confirmation to judicial nominees who oppose abortion...
...The Senate went along the following day...
...Having failed to complete its business prior to November 2, Congress returned for a lame duck session and failed again to complete its business...
...Money and votes—the connection becomes more solid with each passing year...
...Behind the scenes, the Pentagon opposed a bill that would give a national intelligence director some of the budgetary authority enjoyed by the Defense Department...
...The latest example is Bush 43...
...Immediately Senators who had voted for the bill without reading it said they were "shocked, shocked," and began to search for the villain...
...It was typical of Colin Powell, who enlisted for a four-year hitch, to serve out that time and then allow his resignation to be disclosed without much White House fuss...
...The first to be named to the first Bush Cabinet, Powell found he had joined an intensely partisan Administration that did not leave much room for nonpartisan service...
...Stripped from the giveaway to tobacco fanners was a provision that would have permitted the Food and Drug Administration to regulate cigarettes...
...Politicians hardly dare to speak the word...
...The tasks of the 21 st century...
...To name just a few of the lucky beneficiaries: importers of ceiling fans from China, oil and gas producers, shopping mall developers, restaurants, track operators, tobacco farmers...
...During WorldWar I, antiwar protesters went to jail for resisting military service...
...Considering what the 108th Congress did when it did do something, one is almost inclined to settle for do-nothing...
...In the postWatergate days, legislation was enacted to strengthen the privacy provisions of the tax code...
...Would you believe President George W Bush...
...Visiting Canada shortly after his re-election, the President said a new term in office is "an important opportunity to reach out to our friends...
...Capitol Hill Corruption President Harry S. Truman campaigned in 1948 against what he called the "do-nothing" 80th Congress...
...You might think all this was because of ferocious partisan strife, but partisanship had little to do with it...
...I wondered whether it had anything to do with my appearance on the President Richard M. Nixon's "enemies" list...
...cannot be accomplished by a single nation alone...
...Ever since President Reagan brought Powell into the White House as national security adviser, he had played a basically nonpartisan role...
...He could have run for office, including President, and maybe even won...
...Just ask those ordered to stay on active duty beyond the terms of their enlistment...
...He has promised to win the antiterrorism war with an all-volunteer Army...
...Next, there was that long overdue $388 billion omnibus spending bill to run the government...
...It is as though conservative Presidents embarking on "four more years," looking to their legacy and no longer dependent on their core voting base, begin to act like born-again doves...
...It is, as Senator John McCain (R.Ariz...
...Or rural colleges...
...Y.), to force open discussion, introduced a conscription bill, the House leadership raced to sweep it away—bringing it up for a vote without hearings, without debate, without anything...
...The same George W. Bush who once said, "America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country" Something seems to happen when a conservative President wins a second term...
...It did not pass the bill that would enable the Census Bureau to plan the next census...
...If I seem a little strident, it's because there is a lot to be strident about...
...What Congress did pass in that frantic rush for the exit was the corporate tax bill, ladling out $ 140 billion in tax breaks to just about every special interest that has a heavily financed lobby...
...Actually, the Army is not quite "allvolunteer" now...
...Especially rankling was his assignment to tell what turned out to be an untruth to the United Nations Security Council about weapons of mass destruction...
...Features of this massive giveaway bill that were dropped tended to be those that would serve the public interest and lacked the resources to grease the way...
...No one in authority says there is the remotest possibility of a revived draft, but a shudder of apprehension runs through many campuses, fueled by the Internet and late-night talk shows...
...The draft that President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted in 1940, after the war in Europe had started, remained in effect until 1973 whenPresidentNixon abolished it in an effort to allay widespread protests against the Vietnam War...
...The Congressman said he knew nothing about the tax return stipulation...
...He turned out to be an aide to Republican Representative Ernest J. Istook of Oklahoma, chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee that oversees the IRS...
...It's a long time since we heard, "Hell no, I won't go...
...The trouble rested mainly within the ranks of the now strengthened Republican Party...
...Responding to persistent rumors, Bush stated, "We will not have a draft as long as I am President of the United States...
...The word "draft" is being heard anew, mainly from people who claim to be dead set against it...
...It was only after the 3,600-page spending bill was approved and Congress had gone that the mischievous little provision was discovered, and it stirred up a storm...
...You can understand, therefore, why I had more than a casual interest in the new attempt to turn the clock back...
...The Democrats sat by and watched as Republican leaders stiffed their commander in chief...
...An outrage," said Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, "a throwback to the old days when tax information was used against political enemies...
...Who spoke those words...
...Well, you get the idea...
...A White House official said, "Diplomacy is necessary to consolidate the gains of the first term...
...There is clearly a problem of a military stretched too thin...
...Conscription has played an important if sometimes controversial role in American history...
...America always prefers to work with allies at our side...
...Casualty of war" was the way Powell was portrayed by Wil S. Hylton, who interviewed him at great length for an article in GQ magazine...
...Some archconservatives found him insufficiently stalwart on the confirmation of judges who did not pass a litmus test on abortion...
...An easily overlooked couple of lines slipped into the 14-inch-thick spending bill, this legislated attack on privacy was caught by an aide to Democratic Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota...
...We don't have the capability to handle another major contingency," he said...
...Or local park systems...
...On Pearl Harbor Day, public and Presidential pressure also forced House passage of an intelligence reform bill, revised to partially satisfy the Pentagon...
...In rushing to slink away before Election Day, Congress failed to raise the debt ceiling, which the Bush Administration has almost reached...
...In the end, Rangel voted against his own bill, having created the stir that he hoped to create...
Vol. 87 • November 2004 • No. 6
