{"id":789,"date":"2003-10-24T09:57:05","date_gmt":"2003-10-24T14:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/789.html"},"modified":"2003-10-24T09:57:05","modified_gmt":"2003-10-24T14:57:05","slug":"fresh-evidence-that-congress-is-no-longer-afraid-of-bush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/fresh-evidence-that-congress-is-no-longer-afraid-of-bush\/","title":{"rendered":"Fresh evidence that Congress is no longer afraid of Bush"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Bush’s approval ratings reached the high 70s and stayed there for a while, Congress pretty much gave up on deliberations. Whatever the White House asked for, it got. Republican lawmakers, in particular, rallied behind their once-popular leader.<\/p>\n

Recently, however, as Bush’s poll numbers have fallen to around 50 percent, Republicans have suddenly realized that standing with a divisive president may no longer be necessary.<\/p>\n

Over the summer, for example, the Bush administration pushed Congress to adjust overtime compensation regulations. It was a controversial move that some estimated would make as many as 8 million U.S. workers ineligible for overtime pay that they can currently receive. Despite Bush’s insistence on the change, 21 House Republicans defied the White House’s demands<\/a> and voted with Democrats against the plan.<\/p>\n

More recently, when Congress took up Bush’s request for $87 billion in war costs, many conservative GOP lawmakers ignored White House threats and voted to make some of the expenditure a “loan” to Iraq, despite Bush’s promise to veto the bill if it included the provision.<\/p>\n

And yesterday, Congress was even more direct about showing their independence from Bush, voting to ease travel restrictions<\/a> on U.S. visits to Cuba.<\/p>\n

Less than two weeks ago, Bush, under political pressure from allies in South Florida, announced his intentions to push aggressively for tighter travel restrictions to Cuba<\/a>, including a renewed effort to identify and punish U.S. citizens who travel to the island. Bush concluded that travel only serves to “prop up” Castro’s dictatorship.<\/p>\n

The fact that Congress, with support from both parties, would turn around so quickly to do the opposite can only be seen as a sharp rebuke of the White House.
\n
\nIndeed, 19 Republican senators — more than a third of the whole GOP Senate caucus — voted to prohibit use of federal funds to enforse Bush’s new crackdown on Cuban travel.<\/p>\n

I’m not positive about this, but I can’t remember the last time 19 Senate Republicans defied Bush on a foreign policy matter. I suspect this is first time it’s happened in his presidency. In fact, I don’t know if 19 Republican Senators have defied Bush on any<\/i> matter that the White House explicitly requested.<\/p>\n

Naturally, Bush is once against using his veto threat. That’s to be expected, but the fact that Congress is indifferent to his threat further demonstrates that Bush lacks the power he had less than a year ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Bush’s approval ratings reached the high 70s and stayed there for a while, Congress pretty much gave up on deliberations. Whatever the White House asked for, it got. Republican lawmakers, in particular, rallied behind their once-popular leader. Recently, however, as Bush’s poll numbers have fallen to around 50 percent, Republicans have suddenly realized that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}