The Week

We hear a new bar is opening down the street from the White House. It’s called the “Modified Limited Hangout.”

Shortly after 1 A.M. on Saturday, March 26, the Senate passed President Clinton’s “Goals 2000” education bill, a top priority for both the Administration and its chief sponsor, Senator Ted Kennedy. The Washington Post’s front-page story on the legislation was subtitled “Democrats in Congress Give Clinton a Victory After GOP Filibuster.” Not true. Lameduck Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell could come up with only 53 votes to end the filibuster led by Jesse Helms. (Senator Helms was protesting the dropping of his voluntary-school-prayer provision, which had previously passed the Senate 75 to 22.) So nine Republican senators (Bond, Chafee, Danforth, Domenici, Durenberger, Gorton, Hatfield, Jeffords, and Specter) rushed to the rescue of a bill which Senator Moynihan had earlier described as “evidence of a dysfunction in the political world far more portentous than in our high schools.” The vote is also evidence of dysfunction in the Republican Party. “Goals 2000” represents a colossal waste of money, but thanks to liberal Republicans, President Clinton will soon preside over a Rose Garden signing ceremony, symbolizing the end of gridlock and a refusal to be distracted by Whitewater.

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We hear a new bar is opening down the street from the White House. It’s called the “Modified Limited Hangout.”

Shortly after 1 A.M. on Saturday, March 26, the Senate passed President Clinton’s “Goals 2000” education bill, a top priority for both the Administration and its chief sponsor, Senator Ted Kennedy. The Washington Post’s front-page story on the legislation was subtitled “Democrats in Congress Give Clinton a Victory After GOP Filibuster.” Not true. Lameduck Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell could come up with only 53 votes to end the filibuster led by Jesse Helms. (Senator Helms was protesting the dropping of his voluntary-school-prayer provision, which had previously passed the Senate 75 to 22.) So nine Republican senators (Bond, Chafee, Danforth, Domenici, Durenberger, Gorton, Hatfield, Jeffords, and Specter) rushed to the rescue of a bill which Senator Moynihan had earlier described as “evidence of a dysfunction in the political world far more portentous than in our high schools.” The vote is also evidence of dysfunction in the Republican Party. “Goals 2000” represents a colossal waste of money, but thanks to liberal Republicans, President Clinton will soon preside over a Rose Garden signing ceremony, symbolizing the end of gridlock and a refusal to be distracted by Whitewater.