The Web's Best Political News Summary: Feb. 7: Let's Get Workable:

ByABC News
February 8, 2002, 7:54 AM

W A S H I N G T O N, Feb. 7 -- Our twin leads from yesterday campaign finance reform and the budget carry on into today, but absent President Bush, who will be occupied with other matters, and possibly distracted by humming TVs all over Beltwayville showing the Enron hearings.

Click here, and we'll let you know when the note is ready each day.

News Summary

Later this afternoon, Bush will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Sharon. The Washington Post writes that Sharon is expected to urge Bush to pay more attention to Iran, while another Washington Post story reports that "Iran has begun funneling money and weapons to one of Afghanistan's most unpredictable warlords, a move that could further destabilize a country where order remains fragile at best, according to government authorities here in the Afghan capital."( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35510-2002Feb6.html ) and( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36183-2002Feb6.html )

And every major paper curtain-raises the expected testimony of former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, backed up by a doo-wop parade of other former execs expected to plead the 5th today before the House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee. We don't see any clear preview of what Skilling has told investigators in advance, or what he plans to say today in tone or substance.

Cut to Vice President Cheney stopping in Louisville, KY this morning to appear at a fundraiser for Rep. Anne Northup, who regularly tops Democratic target lists and regularly wins re-election, albeit by narrow margins because of the competitiveness of her district. Northup's Democratic opponent yesterday called on her to support campaign finance reform.

Cut to your generic Capitol Hill backroom, where the House Republican leadership, including a now actively engaged Speaker Hastert, will be plotting and lobbying to either kill the Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform bill, or make it more "workable" a popular buzzword among GOPers that, best we can tell, seems to be a euphemism for "politically advantageous" while House Democratic Leader Gephardt and his colleagues Shays and Meehan, with a little help from Senators McCain and Feingold, lobby from the other side.

Even with the Enron three-ring circus in full swing, it's not too early for the media to focus (as the activists and whips on both sides are) on the handful of moderate Republicans who are going to decide how this stage of the drama comes out. They are about to come in for an intense period of home-state and national editorials, leadership arm-twisting, the lobbying charms of the clean law firm of McCain, Feingold, Shays & Meehan, and some real soul searching. A few Democrats will get the same treatment.

There's a ton of legislative strategizing going on behind the scenes, leveraging off of the House rules, some of which we'll get into further below. The New York Times fingers what our sources say is one of the keys right now: "Supporters of the bill were considering changing its effective date until after the 2002 elections to get more votes for Democrats who fear their party will no longer be able to compete if soft money is abolished." ( http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/07/politics/07DONA.html )

To dwell on the past for a brief moment (but segue-ing, we promise, into today), we do wonder whether the White House realized the president would face such enormous pressure during his travels yesterday to reaffirm with a blood oath his commitment to find $20 billion for rebuilding New York.

First came the headlines in the New York newspapers slamming White House budget director Daniels for his ill-timed "money-grubbing comment" though only his most uncharitable critics compared it to Pat Buchanan's references to "Bob Rubin and the New York bankers."

Then there was Daniels' walkback one day later, and a White House commitment to expend $20 billion on top of victim's compensation.

The president was quite clear yesterday: "I told the people of New York that we will work to provide at least $20 billion to help New York rebuild herself. And that includes money apart from the Victims Compensation Fund. And when I say $20 billion, I mean $20 billion."

So far, about $11 billion has been earmarked for the city. The New York Times ' Nagourney gets Senators Schumer and Clinton to tentatively offer "they might once and for all end concern that New York would end up not getting the money." ( http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/07/politics/07BU.S.H.html )

The New York Post praised "Dubya's Pledge." ( http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/40912.htm )

And the Daily News offered this one-sided give-and-take between the president and his budget director: "While the president declined to say whether Daniels was mistaken or if the White House made a sudden about-face, he assured New Yorkers that he and his budget director were on the same page. 'Mitch understands my pledge,' Bush said. 'He understands what I said.'" ( http://www.nydailynews.com/today/News_and_Views/City_Beat/a-140617.asp )

It may well be to Daniels' endless frustration that his institutional, and probably personal instinct to restrain spending is countermanded by the significant political benefits of, well, spending.

Which leads us, as promised, to today. Consider the barbed letter Rep. Bill Young (R-Appropriations Party) sent to Daniels yesterday, in which he reminded the OMB chief that appropriating is Congress' prerogative Congress' constitutional prerogative. "Unless the Constitution is amended, Congress will continue to exercise its discretion over federal funds and will earmark those funds for purposes we deem appropriate." Which means: more shipbuilding in Mississippi, more statues, more highway construction funds, more museums, more earmarks, more pork.

Roll Call adds, in a story about how the move to repeal earmarks ticked off members: ""I don't feel that we're going to repeal any earmarks," said Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. 'There's no way we're going to do that.' Regula said he had received a number of calls from fellow Republicans who were worried that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has already begun to use the issue to stir up trouble in their districts."( http://www.rollcall.com/pages/news/00/2002/02/news0207f.html )

Pork, of course, is bad in the abstract but politically necessary in the particular, particularly if you're a vulnerable member of Congress up for re-election. ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37487-2002Feb7.html )

And speaking of local projects, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader concludes that the new budget doesn't contain as much money for a key water project as local officials had hoped. ( http://www.argusleader.com/news/Thursdayarticle1.shtml )

All the big legislative decisions made during the rest of this year will be seen by the leadership of both parties starkly through the prism of how it might help their own candidates in the fall elections, and how it might help or hurt the candidates of the other party.

Cynics like to turn that into "everything is so cynical and political in Washington," but we prefer to see it as: in a democracy, it isn't so terrible for elected officials to consider what the voters want in deciding what legislation to consider and vote for.

So on the shattered stimulus bill, the New York Times says, "The fate of the benefit extension now rests with the Republican-controlled House. Republican aides said there was some division within the party about whether to try to package some tax cuts with the extension of the unemployment benefits or pass the extension as a stand-alone bill." ( http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/07/politics/07STIM.html )

And the Los Angeles Times' Hook writes: "Some House Republicans are suggesting that the party attempt to add tax cuts or other provisions to the unemployment bill, which could slow its progress. Others want to simply go along with the popular bill rather than give Democrats the opportunity to say Bush and the GOP are unconcerned about the plight of the unemployed. 'The politics are pretty simple: You just do it,' a top House leadership aide said."( http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-000009628feb07.story )?coll=la%2Dnews%2Da%5Fsection )

The Washington Times notes, "when Senate Democrats killed the stimulus bill yesterday, White House advisers were forced to re-evaluate the administration's political and economic strategy for the year, in which the Democrats are only six seats away from regaining the House and could strengthen their tenuous hold on the Senate." The paper got an interview with Larry Lindsey, but he doesn't make much news. "'I've long said that we'll have a recovery starting early this year, and I still believe that. What I'm concerned about is its strength,' Mr. Lindsey said."( http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020207-1489015.htm )

All of which overshadowed what has the potential to be the more enduring political story: President Bush's re-engagement in direct, overt, pre-planned campaign fundraising. Bush raised $2 million at two fundraisers last night and praised Gov. George Pataki's good sense.

USA Today notes (despite Ari's refusal to confirm numbers yesterday), "Except for a Washington fundraiser he attended last month for his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the events were the first of 100 fundraisers Bush and Vice President Cheney will attend this year on behalf of Republicans running in the November elections and his first avowedly political appearances since the Sept. 11 attacks."( http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2002/02/07/usat-bush.htm

From the ABCNEWS London Bureau: The manhunt continues across Pakistan for those responsible for the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reports that three Afghan civilians were killed by a missile fired by remote control from a pilotless CIA aircraft in the southeast of the country. Last night, U.S. officials in Washington said they believed an al Qaeda leader had been killed in the missile strike, but the private AIP news agency said the missile hit a group of young men in the Zawar Khili area, 20 miles southwest of Khost town and 10 miles from the Pakistani border on Tuesday night.

Reuters reports that U.S. aircraft have launched bombing raids over parts of eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border where remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda are believed to be hiding. U.S. aircraft bombed the Mafazatoo area of Gorboz district, about 12 miles to the south of the town of Khost, on Tuesday and late on Wednesday Dozens of Palestinian gunmen, shooting and throwing homemade bombs, stormed a Palestinian police post in the northern West Bank on Thursday and freed six militants detained there. The gunmen overpowered police in the city of Jenin and freed members of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant movements for fear Israel would target the Post in response to a Palestinian attack on a Jewish settlement on Wednesday Overnight Israeli warplanes attacked a Palestinian Authority building early on Thursday in the West Bank city of Nablus, wounding 11 people, after the Palestinian attack on Hamra settlement.

Budget Politics

Republicans obviously have not given up on their efforts to demonize Daschle, even though every indication is that no one outside zip codes starting with "200" (and his constituents) have ever heard of the guy. And the press overall continues to give him mostly a pass on his willingness to use Senate rules to thwart the will of the majority on some issues.