Bush Touts Proposal to Cut Back on Gas

President Bush tours the control room of the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Athens, Ala. Thursday, June 21, 2007. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) (Gerald Herbert - AP)

MOBILE, Ala. -- It must take a lot for President Bush to cancel out on raising campaign cash for a fellow Republican.

GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions is a leading spoiler of the president's chances for getting his top domestic priority through Congress, but that apparently wasn't enough to get Sessions booted off Bush's schedule.

Sessions even rated a ride on Air Force One to and from Alabama for Thursday's $1,000-a-ticket reception in a downtown convention center, which shoveled $900,000 into his campaign account.

All this for a senator who may not need the money nearly as much as some. The conservative senator from a conservative state is considered safe for a third term, and already had over $2 million for his re-election effort before Bush's visit.

This is likely due to the fact that Bush and Sessions have more uniting than dividing them. Sessions' outspoken opposition to a sweeping, Bush-backed immigration overhaul aside, the two politicians have been allies on pretty much everything else.

"They are friends and they are colleagues and they are elected leaders representing the American people," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. The fundraiser was planned months earlier and Bush wasn't about to back out.

Still, conservatives like Sessions and others are doing their best to derail a fragile bipartisan compromise on immigration that Bush wants to be the premier accomplishment of his second term. The "grand bargain" on immigration, as it is known, would tighten border security as conservatives want. But it also would grant as many as 12 million illegal immigrants lawful status, and many in the Republican Party believe passionately they cannot accept what they see as amnesty.

Sessions' chief of staff Rick Dearborn said the plane ride featured animated discussions on the topic between Bush and Sessions, who alternately ribbed and lobbied each other. Neither plans to change his mind, though, so the two just "agree to disagree," he said.

The president showed no hard feelings in public, making an unconditional appeal for Sessions to be returned to the Senate.

Sessions didn't bring up their differences in his introduction of Bush. Perhaps recognizing that his support for the bill puts him in the minority in this part of the country, though, the president did _ and got a big laugh in return.

"We occasionally have our differences," he began coyly, prompting an eruption from the crowd of 850 supporters. "I mean, take the immigration bill."

Bush then quoted a friend from the other side in Texas who told him once "if we agree 100 percent of the time, one of us wouldn't be necessary."