Word: hatchings
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...maverick since he left his law practice in Pennsylvania, moved to Utah and later, in 1976, in his first try for elective office, beat an incumbent Senator, Hatch is accustomed to hearing complaints about himself from his more partisan colleagues. He has a 92% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, but nonetheless warns, "Anybody who tells me I've got to conform to their ideological point of view is going to be disappointed." Just last month Hatch, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, pushed through one of President Clinton's nominees to the federal bench despite objections from doctrinaire conservatives...
...wonder Senate majority leader Trent Lott was so furious. Instead of working with his leadership to produce a Republican proposal, Hatch devised a bipartisan bill with Kennedy that Republicans will be hard pressed to oppose. Rather than create a Washington-run program, the bill gives block grants to the states to subsidize private insurance for uninsured children, pays for itself by raising taxes on cigarettes and then diverts $10 billion of the five-year proceeds to cutting the deficit. "It's good for children, it will reduce teenage smoking, and it will lower the deficit," Hatch says...
Easily enough, if you're Lott, who publicly derided the proposal as a "big-government program" that would never become law on his watch. And although Hatch quickly gathered seven G.O.P. co-sponsors, other Republicans whispered contemptuously about what they described as his sanctimonious air. "Hatch is not a team player," a Senate Republican grumbled. In a more public backlash, the conservative National Review recently dubbed Hatch a "Latter-Day Liberal," a play on his Mormon religion that Hatch found offensive. As the fray mounted, one of the bill's co-sponsors, Robert Bennett of Utah, dropped...
...surprisingly, this latest Hatch-Kennedy effort is not dividing lawmakers along classic ideological lines: tobacco-state Senators like Kentucky Democrat Wendell Ford are certain to oppose the bill, while G.O.P. moderates like James Jeffords and Olympia Snowe have signed up as sponsors. It's got a fair shot at passing if only because, unlike Clinton's sweeping health plan, the Hatch-Kennedy proposal takes modest steps: it would cover only half of the 10 million children who lack health insurance. Conservative opponents say a better way to insure them would be to expand tax-sheltered "medical savings accounts...
...course, in Washington there's no such thing as a pure motive. Hatch is savvy enough to know that co-opting such issues as children's health care and teen smoking from Clinton is good politics. And he knows that some people think he has his eye on the White House; on prominent display in his office is a letter from Muhammad Ali that reads, "To the man who should be President." Hatch says that during the last election cycle, he was approached about running. But he declined and belatedly endorsed Bob Dole...