Patriot Act Extension Is Reduced To a Month

Despite the confused and discordant conclusion to this year's session of Congress, acting House Majority Leader Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) struck a positive note, rattling off the House's accomplishments.

The House passed and sent to Bush yesterday a $460 billion defense spending bill that includes $50 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, $29 billion in new hurricane aid, $3.8 billion for bird flu preparedness and a 1 percent, government-wide spending cut, which excludes veterans programs.

Congress also completed work this week on a defense policy bill that asserts congressional will in matters of war almost for the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks. The measure would ban cruel and degrading interrogation methods and would limit the legal rights of detainees in military facilities.

Other achievements cited by Blunt include revising the nation's bankruptcy laws; approving the largest highway and public works bill in history; passing an energy bill that had been sought by Bush for four years; approving the Central American Free Trade Agreement; winning House passage of a budget measure that would slow spending on entitlement programs such as Medicaid; and approving new, get-tough legislation on illegal immigration.

"When you look at what we set out for ourselves at the first of the year, even with Katrina and everything that had to be added after August, it's hard not to say the House finished the year hitting all of our objectives," Blunt said.

But congressional experts and former Republican lawmakers say that, despite those accomplishments, the year will be remembered more for the indictment of former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) in September and the ensuing leadership discord, the growing stain of embattled Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and the chaotic conclusion that kept Congress in active legislative session longer than in any year since 1987.

In the final weeks of the legislative session, Republican leaders had to deal with conservatives rebelling over hurricane aid spending, GOP moderates balking at oil drilling and cuts to anti-poverty programs, and civil libertarians from both parties objecting to key provisions of the Patriot Act compromise.

"If you look at the whole, they didn't have a bad year," said former representative Vin Weber (R-Minn.), who remains influential with congressional Republicans. "But, unfortunately, what matters politically is not the whole, but the end. And the end didn't end very well."

Some Republican political strategists were sanguine yesterday about the coming year, when midterm elections will loom large but fortunes may improve, especially in Iraq. Former representative Bill Paxon (R-N.Y.), an influential political tactician, said the president's approval ratings are rising and voter perceptions of the economy are steadily improving.

Others are not so positive. Former DeLay aide Michael Scanlon has already agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors looking into Abramoff's relationships with members of Congress. Now Abramoff himself is nearing a plea agreement that could turn him against at least a dozen lawmakers and congressional aides. Weber said House leaders should view the investigation with "paramount seriousness."

"It's the cumulative effect of all of this, whether it is scandal, or failure to get an agenda enacted or questions in the paper every day about unauthorized wiretaps and the failure of Congress to get involved," fretted another former Republican congressman, Mickey Edwards (Okla.). "It's all adding up to a pretty serious situation."

Staff writer Charles Babington contributed to this report.