An historic Senate debate over Bush’s war policy is set to begin today, “but it’s not clear whether there will be a vote.” Conservatives are threatening to use a filibuster to block a vote on an anti-escalation resolution. “It may be the only way for Bush supporters to prevent a bipartisan vote of no confidence,” USA Today reports.
Lawmakers expressed “sticker shock” over President Bush’s proposed 2008 budget, which estimates $300 billion in new Iraq spending and $100 billion in cuts for Medicare and Medicaid. The budget also would “provide insufficient extra cash to maintain coverage for poor children currently enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Program.”
“After years of stockpiling findings and allegations,” House oversight chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) will “unleash four days of hearings this week aimed at exposing an array of ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ in government.” The first hearing, tomorrow, will feature former Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, who says he will present a “5,000- to 6,000-word treatise” explaining corruption during his tenure.
Apartment rents are set to rise by 5 percent this year, marking the third straight year of increases. “The discrepancy between the rise in apartment rentals and wages means workers will have to devote even more of their paychecks to housing.”
Three U.S. officials “familiar with unpublished intel” tell Newsweek that evidence of official Iranian involvement in Iraq is “ambiguous.” Meanwhile, the New York Times reports, the “many setbacks and outright failures of Tehran’s experimental program suggest that its bluster may outstrip its technical expertise.”
“Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government,” as “spending on federal contracts has soared during the Bush administration, to about $400 billion last year from $207 billion in 2000.”
1,000: Number of people that the Iraqi Interior Ministry estimates to have been killed this past week, “due to gunbattles, drive-by shootings and bomb attacks.” This announcement follows an attack killing 130 people on Sunday, the second-deadliest attack since the U.S. invasion in 2003.
The poor in developing countries “will suffer the most, even though they are the least responsible for global warming,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today. According to a World Bank report, “the annual costs of climate change impacts in exposed developing countries could range from several percent to tens of percent of gross domestic product.”
And finally: “When Sen. John E. Sununu (R-N.H.) saw reporters approaching him last week, he took off in a sprint, determined to say as little as possible about a nonbinding resolution opposing President Bush’s troop-escalation plan, which is expected to come before the Senate today. ‘You know where I stand,’ the senator…said repeatedly as he fled down stairways at the Capitol. ‘I’m still looking.’”
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