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To: carranza2 who wrote (16138)	11/14/2003 12:07:37 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793622

Hi, C2! Here is a great idea from Murdock of "National Review." Bush needs to do this to shake loose the Senate and light a good fire for the next election. ________________________________ The Real Nuclear Option on Judges President Bush should address Americans — in primetime. While the Republican Senate's 30-hour debate on Democratic obstruction of judicial confirmations was an impressive parliamentary weapon, it's well past time to deploy the biggest gun of all. President Bush should deliver a prime-time address to educate Americans on the Democrats' refusal to vote on a growing number of his judicial appointees. While Bush's appeals-court nominees generally enjoy the support of a majority of senators, the "Just-Say-No Caucus" — led by Democrats Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and New York's Charles Schumer — is filibustering at least seven designees. It takes at least 60 votes to end debate and vote on appointments, a tall order for the GOP's 51 senators. Bush could electrify this static issue by speaking one evening, live from the White House, with his embattled nominees standing immediately behind him. He should tell Americans that: Judges delayed means justice denied. Some appointees have waited for votes since 2001. Miguel Estrada famously withdrew his name from consideration for the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court after 28 months of controversy. Far less famous are those who also wait and wait for their days in court while one quarter of that circuit's seats remain empty. The D.C. Circuit is not unique. The nonpartisan Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has declared "judicial emergencies" in 22 seats — including four whose nominees are being filibustered — that remain vacant as cases pile up. Democrats treat conservative appointees as if they clerked for Benito Mussolini. Texas supreme-court justice Priscilla Owen somehow is "extreme" because she upheld a state law requiring parental notification when minors have abortions. Is that so zany? California supreme court justice Janice Rogers Brown, who is black, won 76-percent approval in her latest judicial election and authored the most majority opinions for the court in 2001-2002. But despite being the daughter of Alabama sharecroppers under Jim Crow, Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) calls Brown a "poster woman for the far right wing" while Kennedy dubs her belief in limited government "despicable." Bush then should invite these victims of Democratic intransigence to approach the podium, identify themselves, and say, roughly: "I am eager to serve the American people as a federal judge, but cannot do so until the Senate approves me or sends me home. Please call your senators and tell them: 'It's time to vote.'" Most radically, Bush should liberate his nominees from the custom that prevents them from speaking publicly to non-senators until they are voted upon. This de facto gag rule allows Bush's opponents to call his nominees the ugliest names around, knowing full well that those their targets cannot respond. Imagine Mississippi federal district judge Charles Pickering's frustration at being called racially insensitive. He cannot reply that Charles Evers, brother of assassinated civil-rights leader Medgar Evers, said Pickering "was standing up for blacks in Mississippi when no other white man would." Pickering testified against KKK Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers in his 1967 trial for allegedly using a firebomb to murder civil-rights activist Vernon Dahmer. True, these designees should not declare how they would rule on controversial cases. But nothing should prevent them from giving print or TV interviews in which they introduce themselves to the American public and discuss their backgrounds, philosophies, and how their hard work got them where they are today. As it is, judicial nominees are much like silent film stars of the 1920s: They are seen everywhere, but never heard. President Bush and his allies on this issue need not debate the hackneyed Democratic complaints about his judicial appointees. If some senators consider Bush's nominees reactionary crackpots, self-hating minorities, or women who wish they were men, they have every right to nurse those superstitions. For that matter, they could throw balled-up sheets of litmus paper at appointees if they think that would promote justice. But what they must not do is refuse to vote on nominations, just as Republicans never should have left some Clinton appointees in suspended animation. Senators should weigh the pros and cons of every potential federal judge. And after that, what they must do would fit perfectly on bumper stickers, lapel pins, and picket signs (hint, hint): Just vote! nationalreview.com

To: carranza2 who wrote (16138)	11/14/2003 12:29:19 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793622

The Tax Free investment programs rear their heads again. They could be a way to get around Congress's refusal to repeal Capital Gains. Bush Is Said to Weigh Changes to the Tax Code By EDMUND L. ANDREWS - NEW YORK TIMES WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 - Senior Bush administration officials said Thursday that they were considering plans to simplify the tax code and to revive earlier ideas for savings plans that would allow people to exclude almost all their investment income from taxes. In a speech before the Tax Foundation, a policy group here that advocates lower taxes, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said his staff was preparing "a number of proposals to simplify the tax code" and resurrected the idea of "lifetime savings accounts" that would allow people to put aside large sums of money and pay no tax on the investment income they receive. First proposed last February, but then made a low priority, the "lifetime savings accounts" would allow a married couple to set aside up to $15,000 a year and avoid any taxes on the dividends or stock profits that accumulate as a result. The plans would also allow people to withdraw money for almost any purpose and at almost any time; existing plans impose big tax penalties when people withdraw money before they retire. A separate "retirement savings account" would allow people to set aside additional thousands of dollars each year. A person would be able to accumulate investment income from the money tax free but would have to wait until the age of 58 before withdrawing money. "They have the unifying idea of raising the limits on individual contributions and removing restrictions on current savings vehicles," Mr. Snow said of the two proposals, though he cautioned that President Bush had not yet decided to include the proposals in his budget plan for next year. Indeed, there were hints Thursday that Mr. Snow may have gotten ahead of himself. White House officials cautioned that Mr. Bush had not yet decided whether to make the new plans a top priority, emphasizing that the president's competing goals include his push to make last year's tax cuts permanent. The savings plans were first proposed as part of the president's budget for the 2004 fiscal year. But the White House immediately ran into objections from Republican allies in Congress, who were working on their own plans to change individual retirement plans. Partly as a result, and partly because Mr. Bush put all his energy into pressing his tax-cutting package last spring, administration officials stopped talking about the proposals almost as suddenly as they had started. But the proposals would fit neatly into other themes that administration officials have been voicing in anticipation of next year's elections. One such theme is to rely much more on "privatization" to address the long-term gap between retirement needs for the baby boom generation and tax revenues accumulating in the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Another theme that Mr. Bush has stressed is the desire to encourage an "ownership society," in part by reducing taxes as much as possible on investment income. Administration officials have long argued that Republicans' strongest political base is the so-called investor class, in which they include the tens of millions of people who own stocks and bonds either directly or through individual retirement accounts, 401(k) plans and other retirement programs. But support for a new and expanded breed of savings plans is far from solid. Many corporations are far more interested in gaining relief from liabilities mounting in their employee pension funds. Many liberal critics, meanwhile, see the new plans as a huge tax break for the wealthy that would offer little benefit to working-class families. "Eighty percent of Americans don't have any savings, and these accounts wouldn't do anything for them," said Edward J. McCaffery, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California and author of books on tax policy. Opponents of such tax plans also argue that they might not increase overall savings but simply encourage people to shift money out of traditional savings accounts and into the new ones. In the short run, the new savings accounts could actually increase tax revenues. That is because many people would have to pay taxes if they decided to shift their money out of an individual retirement account, where contributions are only taxed when money is withdrawn. But over the long run, the new savings accounts could be highly costly. The Tax Policy Center, a research venture run by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, estimated that the Treasury could lose as much as $300 billion over the next decade and more after that. nytimes.com