Lawmakers open to Bush domestic agenda

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - Without signing on to his solutions, lawmakers on Wednesday welcomed President Bush's appeal to take up problems in energy, health insurance and immigration, seeing a prospect for common ground starkly missing when it comes to the Iraq war.

Bush tended his new domestic proposals in a trip to Delaware promoting research into ethanol production and put the government on a stricter energy diet by signing an executive order requiring federal vehicles and buildings to use more alternative fuels.

In Washington, senators subjected his plan for a troop buildup in Iraq to harsh scrutiny as members of the Foreign Relations Committee debated a nonbinding resolution opposing the deployment — a striking rebuke for a wartime president.

"There is no strategy," Sen. Chuck Hagel (news, bio, voting record) of Nebraska, the only Republican on the committee to back the resolution, declared in a fierce attack on the Bush administration's war management. "This is a pingpong game with American lives."

Bush appealed to Congress in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night to give his Iraq strategy a chance to work, running into a wall of skepticism, especially from Democrats who control the House and Senate.

That response carried over into the morning talk shows, where Democratic presidential aspirants Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) and Bill Richardson voiced firm opposition to Bush's troop escalation. "He has not made the case," said Obama, an Illinois senator.

Two Republican presidential hopefuls — Arizona Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — countered that there is no choice but to give Bush's plan a chance to succeed. "It's the only game in town," McCain said.

Bush also urged lawmakers in his speech Tuesday night to send him legislation helping more Americans afford health insurance, reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil, overhaul immigration laws and improve his signature No Child Left Behind education program. He declared climate change a "serious challenge" but did not endorse proposals for mandatory reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.

In Congress and in the campaign, his domestic proposals won a more respectful hearing at first blush than his war policy.

"The idea of climate change finally passed his lips," Obama said. "That's long overdue."

McCain also welcomed Bush's acknowledgment, while saying "of course" the U.S. needs to go farther than Bush has proposed on the issue. "We've got to start reducing these greenhouse gas emissions before our planet is unalterably heated, and the consequences of that are catastrophic," he said on CNN.

Richardson, the New Mexico governor, predicted Bush and the Democratic Congress will be able to work together on a comprehensive plan to control illegal immigration. McCain agreed: "We can come together on that issue."

In Wilmington, Del., Bush plugged his energy proposals at a DuPont Co. facility where scientists conduct research on biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol, made from wood chips, switchgrass and parts of the corn plant other than the kernels used in traditional ethanol.

But Democrats kept the spotlight on the war, as senators took up the nonbinding measure that rejects Bush's planned troop increase as "not in the national interest."

In power for the first time in a dozen years, Democrats have talked optimistically of finding common ground with the president and Republican lawmakers on immigration, education and other areas.

But they voiced concern with his proposal to subject a portion of some taxpayers' employer-provided health insurance to taxes, and were unenthusiastic about his proposals on energy.

"For me, the president's speech was more notable for what he didn't say on global warming than what he did say," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record). The California Democrat advocates steps to halt the gradual rise in the earth's temperature.

The president called for greater domestic oil production as well as an effort to more than quadruple the nation's production of alternative fuels over the next decade. The war is an issue apart — a conflict that helped Democrats win control of Congress in last fall's elections, and that leaves Republicans torn between a president of their party on the one hand and public opinion on the other.

Democrats chose Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia to deliver the party's formal televised response to the speech, and the former Republican Navy secretary and Vietnam veteran responded with a blistering attack on the president, the war and the consequences. "The president took us into this war recklessly," said Webb.

"We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable — and predicted — disarray that has followed," he said.

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source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070124/ap_on_go_pr_wh/state_of_union [link]