Word: vetoes
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Last Wednesday morning Bush convened a war council of top aides in the Oval Office. For weeks he had hinted at the possibility of a veto if Congress sent him Kennedy's version of the patients' bill of rights. Now Bush decided to make the threat explicit the next day--in a three-page document from his Office of Management and Budget that laid out a stinging indictment of the measure. In legislative warfare, this was the equivalent...
...lived through one. Says McCain: "Too many Americans have had life-altering medical decisions micromanaged by businesspeople rather than medical professionals." Bush, who has seen his poll numbers slip because of voter concern that he's too sympathetic to Big Business, doesn't want to carry out his veto threat. G.O.P. Senators up for re-election in 2002 don't want to be labeled obstructionists. "We're going to pass a patients' bill of rights that is balanced," says Frist...
Karen Hughes didn't like what she was hearing. Sitting in the Roosevelt Room of the West Wing on the morning of June 21, she listened with pursed lips as Nick Calio, the White House legislative director, insisted that President Bush should threaten to veto the patients' bill of rights--legislation aimed at protecting people from the bureaucratic whims of profit-driven HMOs. The bill is badly flawed, Calio argued, and the V word is the only way to force Congress to make it more to Bush's liking. Hughes jumped into the fray. "Once we say veto," she replied...
...Hughes is the adviser closest to Bush--she has been at his side since he first ran for Texas Governor in 1994--but she doesn't always prevail. She lost the battle with Calio, and the President issued his veto threat the next day. That evening, Hughes got a call from her deputy, Dan Bartlett, who had surveyed the networks' coverage of Bush's statement. "Just like we predicted," he said, sighing. "We got killed tonight...
...House alternative giving patients a limited right to sue HMOs in state court--something he had long opposed. "This legislation...will make a difference in people's lives," he enthused at a photo op staged by Hughes. By Friday night, when the Senate passed its bill 59-36, the veto threat was still the official position, but White House aides were signaling that Bush was willing to compromise further. "He really wants to sign something and take it off the table," said one. "And when he does, the American people will give him a lot of the credit...