Congress U S

Concern about bioterrorism mounted Wednesday as early tests showed that 31 staff members at the Capitol have been exposed to anthrax and that spores mailed to the publisher of supermarket tabloids in Florida and to NBC News in New York were the same strain. And in an unprecedented move, the House of Representatives was closed to allow what Speaker Dennis Hastert called an "environmental sweep" of the chamber.

Senior State Department officials came under tough questioning from lawmakers Wednesday over the Obama administration's reluctance to call for Syrian President Bashar Assad's departure. Despite the Assad government's bloody crackdown on demonstrators, U.S. officials have shied away from calling directly for his ouster. They worry that the United States would end up looking weak if Assad managed to hang on in the face of popular pressure. And with American leverage limited in Syria, they also have been reluctant to raise expectations about what the administration might be prepared to do to unseat the regime.

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan said Tuesday that he believes the economy is poised for recovery beginning in the spring, but he assured Congress that the Fed stands ready to cut interest rates further if that is necessary to provide "additional insurance" against a lingering recession.

Robert Carlyle Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who was often called the conscience of the Senate for his devotion to the system of constitutional checks and balances and the prerogatives of power, died early Monday. He was 92. Byrd, who served longer and cast more congressional votes than any other member of Congress in U.S. history since taking office in January 1959, died at Inova Hospital in Fairfax, Va., a family spokesman said. He was admitted to the hospital late last week with what was believed to be heat exhaustion and severe dehydration as a result of the high temperatures in the capital.

The 105th Congress, now getting down to business, may not look like America in terms of class, race or gender. But when it comes to religion, members are fairly representative of the nation, according to a new survey of congressional religious affiliations.

Momentum built quickly in Congress on Thursday for lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia-Herzegovina, with many lawmakers calling on President Clinton to break with the United Nations and take unilateral steps to arm the embattled forces of the Bosnian government. During an impassioned daylong debate in the Senate, major divisions emerged between lawmakers who want Clinton to lift the U.N.

Accepting the argument by Secretary of State Warren Christopher that the issue is now "an acid test of American leadership" in the world, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and other congressional Republicans on Thursday reluctantly endorsed President Clinton's planned deployment of 20,000 troops to enforce the peace agreement in Bosnia. Although he does not agree with Clinton, Dole told the Senate that "we have one President at a time. He's the commander in chief. He made the decision."

The Democratic-controlled Congress, closing ranks behind President Bush at a crucial moment in American history, voted Saturday to authorize U.S. troops to attack Iraq as early as Wednesday. Bush's victory was decisive and bipartisan, even though the authorization was strongly opposed by the Democratic leadership and most aspirants for the Democratic presidential nomination. Many Democrats abandoned their party leaders, and Republicans were nearly unanimous in support of the President.

Most Saturdays in the late 1970s, college student Hilda Solis would take her younger sisters to study with her in the library at Cal Poly Pomona. When they pulled away from the family's La Puente home in her aging Volkswagen Beetle, their devoutly Catholic mother would make the sign of the cross. As the little forest green car shuddered and struggled up steep Kellogg Hill en route to the campus, the young passengers wondered whether they would make it. They always did.

As he ran for the White House, John F. Kennedy assured skeptical Americans that he was "not the Catholic candidate for president," but rather a "candidate for president who happens also to be Catholic." In 1961, the year he took office, Catholics accounted for 18.8% of Congress. On Tuesday, when the 111th Congress is sworn in, about 30% of its membership will be Catholic, according to a recent analysis by Congressional Quarterly and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Robert Carlyle Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who was often called the conscience of the Senate for his devotion to the system of constitutional checks and balances and the prerogatives of power, died early Monday. He was 92. Byrd, who served longer and cast more congressional votes than any other member of Congress in U.S. history since taking office in January 1959, died at Inova Hospital in Fairfax, Va., a family spokesman said. He was admitted to the hospital late last week with what was believed to be heat exhaustion and severe dehydration as a result of the high temperatures in the capital.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday urged Congress to take dramatic action to stop climate change, but the political difficulties were evident as Republicans boycotted a Senate committee meeting on a global warming bill. "We cannot afford missing the objectives in climate protection," Merkel said at a joint session of Congress. "The world will look to us, to the Europeans and to the Americans." Just before Merkel's speech, Republicans shunned the meeting of the Environment and Public Works Committee to protest the refusal of Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.

Congress passed a bill Tuesday that would make widows and widowers of U.S. citizens eligible for green cards even if their spouses died before their applications were approved. The measure, part of the more than $40-billion Homeland Security appropriations bill, ends the "widow penalty," which required couples to be married for two years before the surviving spouse would be eligible to apply for residency. Now, surviving spouses can apply for a green card for themselves and their children regardless of when the U.S. citizen died or how long they were married.

After months of keeping a low profile on healthcare, there was Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on the Don Imus radio show this week, warning that Democrats better not take his vote for granted. Sen. Roland W. Burris, the scandal-plagued freshman Democrat from Illinois, blasted out a news release declaring that he had "emerged as a key player in the healthcare debate." Even Sen. Ben Nelson, the centrist Democrat from Nebraska who has enjoyed months of White House wooing, made a point of reminding a scrum of reporters in the Capitol that he was still uncommitted.

Lawmakers honored the Dalai Lama with a human rights award Tuesday as President Obama faced criticism for delaying a meeting with the exiled Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader. The Dalai Lama and the president will not meet until after Obama visits Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing in November. China reviles the Dalai Lama as a separatist and pressures foreign governments not to meet with him. The administration, which needs Chinese support for crucial foreign policy, economic and environmental goals, wants to establish friendly ties between Hu and Obama.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that anyone using harsh rhetoric to raise fears about the healthcare overhaul should apologize and get on with writing policy but that there's no reason to single out a Florida Democrat who said Republicans want sick Americans to "die quickly." "If anybody's going to apologize, everybody should apologize," she said when asked Thursday about Rep. Alan Grayson's comments on the House floor this week. Pelosi's response reflects what Democratic aides have said privately since Grayson's remarks sparked an uproar: that Republicans have routinely said with impunity that Democrats want to "pull the plug on Grandma" or create "death panels" to decide who deserves care and who doesn't -- even though no such provisions are in any version of the healthcare legislation.

A measure to authorize the use of military force against Iraq won final congressional approval early today, giving President Bush a strong bipartisan mandate and broad power to challenge an adversary who has bedeviled the United States for more than a decade. Ending a somber debate that pushed past midnight, the Senate voted, 77 to 23, for the resolution. The action came hours after the House gave its approval on a 296-133 vote.

President Obama's appointment of "czars," or policy coordinators, is drawing new fire from lawmakers in both parties. They complain that Obama's naming of the czars circumvents the Senate's role in confirming important nominations to the president's administration. In a letter to the president this week, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and five other Republican lawmakers accused the administration of encroaching on Congress' authority in establishing what they said were too many far-reaching czars.

Trying to dodge a growing conservative firestorm, the House and Senate made clear Thursday that the community-based nonprofit organization ACORN was persona non grata on Capitol Hill. House Republicans took over a debate about a sweeping student loan bill to propose a measure that would bar the Assn. of Community Organizers for Reform Now from receiving federal funds. It passed 345 to 75, with 172 Democrats joining all of the chamber's Republicans in support. In the Senate, an amendment that would prohibit ACORN from receiving funding from an Interior Department spending bill passed by an 85-11 vote.