Bush's First Defeat by Jacob Weisberg

[kentuck]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2115141/

<snip>
George W. Bush's plan to remake the Social Security system is kaput. This is not a value judgment. It's a statement of political fact. In the months since the president first presented the idea as his top domestic priority, Democrats in Congress have unexpectedly unified in opposition to any reform based on private accounts. Several Republican senators whose votes would be needed for passage are resisting private accounts as well. And public opinion, which has never favored any form of privatization, is trending even more strongly against Bush's scheme. At this point, there's just no way that the president can finagle enough votes to win.

This means that Bush is about to suffer—and is actually in the midst of suffering—his first major political defeat. After passing all his most important first-term domestic priorities (a tax cut, an education-reform bill, domestic security legislation, another tax cut), Bush faces a second term that is beginning with a gigantic rebuke: A Congress solidly controlled by his own party is repudiating his top goal. It's precisely what happened to Bill Clinton, when Congress rejected his health-care reform proposal in 1993. As the Clinton example shows, such a setback doesn't doom an administration. But how Bush handles the defeat is likely to be a decisive factor in determining whether he accomplishes any of the other big-ticket items on his agenda.

....more

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. If it hadn't been for 9/11, this would have simply been chimp's

latest defeat. All bush "victories" have been tied to the exploitation of the tragic 9/11 event.

[Nederland]

2. Not true

The tax cut and education bill were both pre-9/11

[The_Casual_Observer]

7. No Child Left Behind was signed into law on January 8, 2002

There were 2 "tax cut" bills after 9/11, The rational for them was 9/11's impact on the economy. The rational for the first one was the looming recession that bush had been promoting since late 2000.

[Nederland]

10. You're distorting the bill's history

The bill was passed by the House and the Senate long before 9/11. Yes, it wasn't signed by Bush until January, but that is merely because the bill sat in conference for an extraordinary length of time (probably because 9/11 pushed it onto the back burner).

Bill History:

3/22/2001 Introduced/originated in House
5/14/2001 Reported (Amended) by the Committee on Education and the Workforce. H. Rept. 107-63, Part I.
5/15/2001 Committee on Judiciary discharged.
5/23/2001 Passed/agreed to in House: On passage Passed by recorded vote: 384 - 45
6/14/2001 Passed/agreed to in Senate: Passed Senate in lieu of S. 1 with an amendment by Yea-Nay Vote. 91 - 8.
12/13/2001 Conference report H. Rept. 107-334 filed.
12/13/2001 Conference report agreed to in House: On agreeing to the conference report Agreed to by recorded vote: 381 - 41
12/18/2001 Conference report agreed to in Senate: Senate agreed to conference report by Yea-Nay Vote. 87 - 10.
1/8/2002 Signed by President.
1/8/2002 Became Public Law No: 107-110

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:HR00001:@@@R

[ClintonTyree]

3. I can tell you how he'll handle it...............

kicking, screaming, crying, blaming everybody else but the one person responsible, himself. He won't handle it well. He does not like to be told, NO. I'm guessing he didn't hear a lot of it as a child either, hence his child-like actions now.

What form of revenge he takes, and to what measure, remains to be seen. But be certain, that there WILL BE retribution and that the boy-king will make an even bigger ass of himself in the process.

[tsuki]

6. You forgot threatening...he likes to threaten.

[Robbien]

8. He will treat it in the same way as his claims of WMD, he will ignore

his push for privatization ever existed. He will just stop pushing and the corporate media will let it drop. Poof, never happened.

[kentuck]

9. He's like a hummingbird....

flitting from one flower to another. The only difference is that Bush leaves a disaster behind each time he flits...

[illflem]

4. opps wrong thread

[Cha]

5. Don't like to count any chickens..

even though they are seemingly Hatched..but this "news" is the ultimate "Victory" for me personally because I got into politics in 2000 because I wanted to work on making sure it was there for me and everyone else.

It's the only retirement money I will have and I thought the least I could do was join in the activism. Well, it's gone way beyond SS..but to have bush with the toady press "defeated"..at this juncture is an encouraging sign for the future(however tenuous it may be).