WASHINGTON, May 14 (UPI) -- Capital Comment -- Daily news notes, political rumors, and important events that shape politics and public policy in Washington and the world from United Press International.
High road or low ...
The House Transportation Committee, led by U.S. Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, is pushing for a hike in the federal excise tax on gasoline -- or for it to be indexed to inflation -- as a way to raise revenue in support of new highway construction.
To get their way, they are first going to have to get past U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo.
The freshman House member is asking her colleagues to sign on to a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., committing them to "oppose any and all efforts to raise or index the gasoline tax." So far 17 of her colleagues have joined her effort including U.S. Reps. John Shadegg and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.; Chris Cannon, R-Utah; Pat Toomey, R-Pa.; and Tom Feeney, R-Fla. But, as one senior House Republican aide advises, Musgrave and her allies still have a rough road ahead of them. "Don Young isn't going to be satisfied until all roads lead to Nome," the aide says.
I say it's spinach ...
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., is praising the Bush administration for challenging the illegal trade barriers the European Union has erected to keep out U.S. agricultural products. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman and U.S. Trade Representative Bob Zoellick briefed lawmakers in a closed-door meeting about efforts to get the World Trade Organization to address the EU ban on genetically modified food imports.
Several months ago Hastert and other lawmakers wrote the president urging him to take the issue to the WTO, saying, "We simply cannot allow the free trade of our fine products and services to be rendered meaningless if they are short-circuited by the EU's unfair and unjust trade barriers cloaked in fear and conjecture -- not sound science."
After the meeting, Hastert said he congratulates "President Bush and Ambassador Zoellick for putting American farmers and sound science first by challenging this illegal trade ban on genetically modified foods before the WTO. There's no question in my mind that the European Union's protectionist, discriminatory trade policies are costing American agriculture and our nation's economy hundreds of millions of dollars each and every year. In fact, the current EU baseless trade moratorium has translated into an annual loss of over $300 million in corn exports alone."
Busy signal ...
The Children's Defense Fund, a liberal special interest pressure group, is claiming credit for what they say is a strong burst of public opposition to the Bush jobs and economic growth package on Capitol Hill. "Hundreds of thousands of callers have jammed the Capitol switchboard for the past six hours to stop the Bush administration's tax and budget war on poor children that singles out millionaires for massive new tax breaks," the group asserted in a release issued Wednesday afternoon. "The Bush tax cut leaves no millionaire behind ... just millions of children. We hope the Senate will reject the irresponsible Bush tax and budget plan that will force government to abandon children, forget families and ignore communities," CDF spokesman Toby Chaudhuri said.
Turnabout is fair play ...
Folks on the right are still harping about the many instances in which media celebrities have been caught uttering statements suggesting they approve of violence against political figures of whom they disapprove. Now the shoe seems to be, for the moment at least, in the other mouth. The occasion: a recent appearance on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews," radio talk show host Michael Graham, a former stand-up comic and the author of "Red Neck Nation: How the South Really Won the War."
In a discussion of whether a Boston Globe sports writer crossed the line when he suggested an NBA player's wife needed to be smacked, Graham said, "As a human being, I found the line a joke. It was a joke. It was just an off-the-cuff comment."
He then added, "Anyone listening to Hillary Rodham in her speech last week about patriotism, that screaming, screeching fingernail, I wanted to bludgeon her with a tire iron. That's what I wanted to do."
The suggestion that anyone might want to clobber the former first lady and current New York senator with a heavy object has raised a hue and cry on the left. Buzzflash, a liberal Web site that tracks the media, is calling Graham and commentators like him, "a danger to the republic and to our public health and safety."
Budget gap ...
The fact that no decision has yet been made about who will replace Mitch Daniels as the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget is a bad omen for presidential aide Clay Johnson, say some administration insiders. Johnson, currently the head of presidential personnel, is a longtime Bush friend and was thought by many to be the No. 1 choice for the job when a vacancy opened up.
Since Daniels announced he would be leaving, insiders say, Johnson star has fallen a bit. The newest name being floated is John Cogan, a former OMB official in the Reagan and Bush administrations, who is now a senior fellow of the prestigious Hoover Institution in California but is thought by some to be unwilling to come back to Washington from the warmer climes of the West Coast.
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