Word: domenici
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...local governance and part-time legislators (if you are a fan) or the social miseries of the 1920s and pollution of the 1970s (if you are not). Said Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster: ``This is the opening debate over the radical Republican agenda.'' Senate Budget Committee chairman Pete Domenici's analysis was simultaneously more sanguine and more portentous: it might mark a change in ``how we define the role of the Federal Government in the next century...
...sometimes local economics frustrate change. The park service's attempts to remove a luncheonette and gift shop in New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns have ignited protests from the state's congressional delegation, though the contract has expired. Babbitt ventured up to Capitol Hill to tell Senator Pete Domenici his decision was final, only to watch Representative Joseph Skeen slip through an amendment in an appropriations bill, depriving the park service of the money to tear down the structure. Conservationists call such meddling "park barrel," alluding to the politicians' talent for stuffing budgets with pork for voters back home...
Some other proposed changes seem more promising, at least on paper. Last year Republican Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico introduced a bill to shorten the ordeal. It would require the President to submit a two-year spending plan, instead of the current annual one, and to substitute a joint budget committee for the present House and Senate units, which often disagree. Most important, it would convert the budget outline Congress is supposed to produce in April to a joint resolution requiring the President's signature. That would foster serious early bargaining between the White House and Capitol Hill...
Each year the Treasury Department spends $318 million to shred worn-out dollar bills and replace them with fresh ones. New Mexico Republican Senator Pete Domenici thinks he has a better, if not new, idea. He has introduced a bill to create a dollar coin, stamped mainly out of copper (which, not coincidentally, is plentiful in his state). He predicts the coins will drive paper dollars out of circulation because they can be used so readily in vending machines. Moreover, they will last 20 years, vs. a life-span of only 18 months for paper bills...
...wait, wasn't the Susan B. Anthony dollar such a flop that it is no longer minted? Sure, concedes Domenici, but that was because people confused it with a quarter. His buck will be gold-colored, not silver. Says Domenici, whose proposal has 28 Senate co-sponsors: "Susan B. Anthony need not hold us hostage forever...