Word: hastert
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...scope of the calamity in New Orleans was beginning to become apparent last week, Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House, stepped back for a moment and thought the unthinkable--out loud. In a very unguarded comment to the editorial board of the Daily Herald, a suburban-Chicago newspaper, the most powerful Republican in the House said, "It doesn't make sense to me" to rebuild the city because its position below sea level would make it vulnerable to another floodwater catastrophe. Talking about what the Federal Government should do, he said, "We help replace, we help relieve disaster...
...mildly, what the people of New Orleans--or of most other parts of the U.S.--were expecting to hear. "That's like saying we should shut down Los Angeles because it's built in an earthquake zone," said former Louisiana Democratic Senator John Breaux. Before the day was out, Hastert's office had issued a statement insisting that he had meant to say only that when the city is rebuilt, it will be important "to consider the safety of the citizens first." In contrast, President George W. Bush, in his televised address the day before, assured the nation that...
...House Tuesday Group. For months, they had been looking for an opportunity to get around the House's rigid procedures and force it to take up the measure, which probably could never have got to the floor through the usual process of committee deliberation. When House Speaker Dennis Hastert needed their votes in what turned out to be a squeaker on the budget last month, the lawmakers, led by Castle, extracted a guarantee that the Speaker would bring the stem-cell measure to a vote. That concession marked one of the few instances in which the tightly disciplined House leadership...
...pressure its members on the bill, having deemed it a matter of conscience. But majority leader Tom DeLay had been quietly looking for ways to stall it or complicate its progress through the legislative machinery. House sources say he stepped back from that effort after moderate Republicans reminded Speaker Hastert that he had promised them a clean shot at passage. Meanwhile, an alternative strategy is being discussed that would give House members the opportunity to also vote on an additional piece of stem-cell legislation, possibly a bill by Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey that would establish a national...
...Republicans are so eager to change the storyline that House Speaker Dennis Hastert got a standing ovation when he announced, at a private meeting with House Republicans in the Capitol basement last week, that he was ready to sound a retreat on changes in House ethics rules that he engineered last December. Democrats on the House ethics committee, which is the only one where they hold as many seats as Republicans, had shut it down to protest a rule change that required the support of a majority of committee members before any investigation could proceed. They charged that...