Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 59, No. 37, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 15, 2005 Page: 4 of 24
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TJP V59-37 09-15-05 p01-04 9/13/05 6:03 PM Page 4
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Texas Jewish Post
In Our 59th Year September 15,2005
Washington Watch
Mixed signals on post-
Katrina budget
As the bills start coming in for
rescue, recovery and rebuilding in
New Orleans and along the Gulf
Coast, Congress is grappling with a
whole new set of budget realities.
A final price tag that is expected
to run in the hundreds of billions
will produce enormous pressure to
deepen expected program cuts,
including cuts in critical
services such as Medicaid
that serve many in the
Jewish community
But there will be strong
political counter pressure
to avoid slashing programs
while images of Katrina's
human costs are fresh in
the minds of voters.
Those conflicting pres-
sures will complicate the job of
lawmakers when they take up a
budget "reconciliation" measure and
critical appropriations bills in the
next few weeks, said Marshall
Wittmann, a senior fellow at the
Democratic Leadership Council.
"My anticipation is that between
the demands of Katrina relief and the
(Iraq) war, the budget is just going to
expand, expand expand," he said.
Even Republican lawmakers who
have pressed for big tax cuts to starve
government agencies they dislike
will find it politically awkward to cut
programs in the face of the suffering
caused by Katrina, he said.
"At the end of the day, I don't see
the president and Congress putting
on their green eye shades and cut-
ting these programs," he said.
That's the good news for count-
less Jewish agencies that depend on
government money to provide an
array of services. The bad news: "It
means we're going even more deeply
in debt, that we will be relying even
more on foreign investors to bail us
out," Wittmann said.
And that will make the inevitable
day of reckoning all the more trau-
matic, he said, threatening almost
every critical human service program.
Ai official with a major Jewish
group wasn't so confident short-
term cuts could be avoided.
"We're dealing with an incredibly
volatile political climate right now
and an impossible budget climate,"
this activist said. "They may end up
increasing some programs that
seem related to what happened in
New Orleans — but quietly cutting
many others. The fact is, there
wasn't enough money to go around
before Katrina, and there's less now."
Capitol Hill sources say the
Republican leadership will probably
put off their plans for $70 billion in
new tax cuts, but may offer smaller,
selective tax cuts later in the session.
One Jewish group has drawn a
different lesson from Katrina.
This week National Council of
Jewish Women (NCJW) president
Phyllis Snyder called on the president
and Congress to "realign" priorities.
"We must prioritize funding to
address human needs over tax cuts
that disproportionately benefit the
wealthy and drain vital budgetary
resources," she said. "We
must act to address the ves-
tiges of racism that linger in
our society. And we must act
to ensure that the communi-
ties that rise from the rubble
embody a new vision of
equality and social justice."
By James D. Besser
Jews weigh
in on Roberts
The continuing human drama
and political controversy sur-
rounding Hurricane Katrina took
some of the luster from this week's
confirmation hearings for Judge
John Roberts — now on track to
become the next Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court. But that didn't stop
Jewish activists from weighing in on
Roberts both inside and outside the
hearing chamber.
Days before confirmation hear-
ings began, a group of politically
conservative Jews started an Internet
blog devoted to supporting Roberts.
The catchy Web address: jew
dicious.blogspot.com.
The Jewdicious blog was created
by the conservative Center for Jewish
Values, which worries that "the con-
firmation process itself has become
grotesque — a 'high-tech lynching,'
in the words of Clarence Thomas."
The Center, founded by Jewish
activist Jeffrey Ballabon, urged the
Senate Ju diciary Committee not to ask
questions about Roberts' Catholic faith.
On Tuesday, Sen. Arlen Specter
(R-Pa.), the panel's chair, did just
that, asking Roberts if he agreed
with former President John E
Kennedy's statement during the
1960 campaign that he did not
speak for his church and that the
church did not speak for him.
"I agree with that, senator," Roberts
said. "There's nothing in my personal
views based on faith or other sources
that would prevent me from applying
the precedent of the court faithfully
under the principles of stare decisis."
Only one official of a Jewish organi-
zation was on the witness list. Rabbi Dale
Polakoff, President of the Rabbinical
Council of America, an Orthodox
group, was scheduled to testify on
Thursday, the final day of hearings.
The RCA is affiliated with the
Orthodox Union, which has not for-
mally endorsed Roberts, but recently
wrote to members of the Judiciary
Committee refuting charges that
Roberts' views on church-state separa-
tion were out of the legal mainstream.
The only Jewish group openly
opposing Roberts did not testify. The
National Council of Jewish Women
■: NCJW) didn't make it on to one of
the witness panels, largely because the
minority Democrats had fewer slots
available to distribute to opponents.
NCJW Washington director
Sammie Moshenberg said the first
two days of hearings did nothing to
relieve her group's concerns.
"He steadily refused to answer
questions about critical cases, even
ones his predecessors in confirmation
hearings were willing to address," she
said, "including Roe v. Wade."
Five of the 18 members of the Judi-
ciary Committee are Jewish —including
the chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.)
and Roberts' toughest questioner, Sen.
Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
Bush on the move, Jewishly
President George W. Bush will be
a highly visible figure on the J ewish
circuit in the coming days.
This week, he was scheduled to
appear at a gala dinner marking 350
years of Jewish history in America,
where he will be honored along with
former New York Mayor Ed Koch.
That lineup has irked some
Jewish Democrats.
"You'd think they would be con-
spicuously bi-partisan at an event
like this," grumbled one. "Instead,
they get a Republican president and
a Democratic ex-mayor who sup-
ported him in the last election. It's
hard to see how that's bi-partisan."
The dinner is being co-sponsored
by the American Jewish Historical
Society, the U.S. Archives, the
Library of Congress and the Amer-
ican Jewish Committee.
There's no political controversy
about the President's second
appearance; next week, he is sched-
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uled to address the Republican
Jewish Coalition at a luncheon hon-
oring the group's twentieth
anniversary.
Bush, administration sources say,
will make a major policy address to
the group, although they would not
reveal the topic.
RJC director Matt Brooks says the
group has a lot to celebrate,
including over 20,000 members and
40 local chapters.
The event, he said, "will be the
largest gathering of Jewish Republi-
cans ever." Simultaneous dinners
will take place around the country
and in Israel, with a video to the
Washington gala.
Alarm about Ukraine
Jewish leaders are watching the
political upheavals in Ukraine — a
country with 250,000 Jews — with
growing concern.
The reason: churning political
chaos, while anti-Semitic forces —
with encouragement from an Amer-
ican bigot — are on the rise.
Last week President Viktor
Yushchenko fired his entire cabinet,
including Prime Minister Yulia
Tymoshenko, who has created an
opposition bloc that will challenge
the president in elections in March.
Tymoshenko accused
Yushchenko of not living up to the
promises of last year's Orange Rev-
olution against political corruption
in the country.
The danger is that the growing
political turmoil will hamstring
efforts at political and economic
reform, according to NCSJ, a Soviet
Jewry group. And that could boost
those Ukrainian factions that blame
the Jews for the nation's woes.
"People had high hopes for
Yushchenko," said NCSJ president
Robert Meth. "But this is a very
divided country; the Orange Revo-
lution didn't really unite it."
Meth pointed to major institu-
tions that promote overt
anti-Semitism, including the Inter-
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regional Academy of Personnel
Management (MAUP), a private
school that claims 50,000 students
in branches around the country and
includes many of Ukraine's political
elite as "associate faculty."
In June, the school sponsored a
conference on "Zionism As the
Biggest Threat to Modern Civiliza-
tion." The speakers included the
ambassador of the Palestinian
Authority — and former KKK
leader David Duke, who was given a
doctoral degree by the private uni-
versity after submitting a
dissertation.
"By the end of the meeting, they
were calling for the deportation of
all Jews from Ukraine," Meth said.
MAUP is also forming a political
party.
NCJS has been working with State
Department officials to keep the
plight of Ukraine's big Jewish popu-
lation on the diplomatic agenda.
Washington has considerable
leverage, said NCSJ director Mark
Levin, because Ukraine desperately
wants U.S and European Union
political and economic support.
And groups like NCSJ have
leverage, he said, because Ukraine's
leaders see American Jews as the
political key to ensuring U.S. support.
Texas Jewish Post
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Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 59, No. 37, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 15, 2005, newspaper, September 15, 2005; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth188097/m1/4/: accessed May 8, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .