The Earlybird: Today's Headlines

One-day CFR debate, defense spending, patients' rights, gay politics, sluggish economy, Gephardt's Iowa visit, Mfume's potential bid, Jeffords' new job:

• This week's campaign finance debate in the House will be limited to one day, the Washington Post reports.
• House passage of a campaign reform bill is in doubt as "the bill's sponsors said they were uncertain whether they could hold together a fragile coalition to pass a total ban on" soft money, the New York Times reports.
• "Republicans and Democrats alike have been collecting campaign contributions at record-setting levels this year," the Washington Post reports.
• The National Republican Senatorial Committee "raised a record $24.6 million in the first six months of this year," the Washington Times reports.

• "The Pentagon is preparing to ask Congress for money to build a missile defense test site in Alaska that could also become the command center for a working antimissile system as early as 2004," the New York Times reports.
• "The Senate neared approval Monday of legislation providing $6.5 billion for defense and widely varying other programs," the Dallas Morning News reports, as the bill "has become a prop in the partisan battle over the shrinking federal surplus."
• President Bush's "proposed defense spending increase... could be scaled back sharply to fund health, education and other programs," the Los Angeles Times reports.
• White House Budget Director Mitch Daniels "is tempering President Bush's vow to slash 'pork' from the federal budget and now says that spending bills larded with home-district projects are 'an acceptable cost of doing business,'" USA Today reports.

• Bush on Monday named patients' rights legislation as one of his top three priorities for July, Reuters reports. Education reform and faith-based charities rounded out the list.
• "The American Medical Association yesterday joined President Bush's call for swift House passage of health care reform legislation," the Washington Times reports, "but it will be lobbying for a version the president has threatened to veto."
• "Blue Cross of California... is scrapping an incentive program in its HMO that rewards doctors for controlling medical costs," the Los Angeles Times reports.
• "Too much federal paperwork and low reimbursements for serving some needier patients are among the issues dogging the Medicare HMO program," AP reports.

• "The Bush administration is working with the nation's largest charity, the Salvation Army, to make it easier for government-funded religious groups to practice hiring discrimination against gay people," the Washington Post reports.
• Much of the sharp growth in gay households shown by the 2000 census can be attributed to reporting anomalies in 1990, USA Today reports. In that census, officials "decided to reclassify householders who said they had same-sex spouses because same-sex marriages were not legally possible."

• "As Congress begins debate this week on President Bush's proposal for expanded oil drilling here on Alaska's North Slope, concerns about safety are intensifying," the Wall Street Journal reports.
• "Government costs for cleaning up toxic waste sites under the Superfund program are expected to far outstrip money available," AP reports.
• "The Bush administration... warned Monday that it would not join a pact to curtail the global flow of illegal small arms if it infringes on the American right to own guns," New York Times News Service reports.
• "The Bush administration views China's decision to allow two U.S. warships to make port calls in Hong Kong as a positive development," CNN.com reports.

• Growth in consumer borrowing slowed to 4.9 percent in May, the New York Times reports. That is down from a 10.5 percent rate in April, and the slowest growth rate since October 1999.
• The shift is "a sign that Americans may have become more reluctant to take on debt," the Wall Street Journal reports.
• The Bush administration sees the current economic turmoil in the developing world "largely as a series of coincidental national crises," the Wall Street Journal reports. Officials "don't believe investors are so jittery as to threaten the global financial system by fleeing emerging markets en masse."

• House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., will travel to Iowa July 20 "to raise campaign funds for" Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, the Des Moines Register reports. Gephardt "also recently traveled to New Hampshire."
• AP reports that Gephardt is "renewing speculation about his presidential ambitions."

• Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Earley received $350,000 from national Republicans "last month to push his June fundraising total past that of rival Mark R. Warner (D), who still enjoys a 3-to-1 cash advantage," the Washington Post reports.
• Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan (R) "has received at least one phone call from President Bush, twice was called to meetings with... Karl Rove, and has received a petition urging him to challenge" California Gov. Gray Davis (D) next year, the Washington Times reports.
• Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes (D) has "nearly 80 times more money than his closest" 2002 challenger, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
• Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) said that "he's not interested" in challenging Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., in 2002, but "he won't rule out changing his mind later," the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.
• In an interview with the Baltimore Sun, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume "cautiously expressed an interest" in running for either Maryland governor or senator.

• Two of late Democratic Rep. Joe Moakley's (D) "closest aides" said that state Sen. Brian Joyce (D), who is running for Moakley's seat, secured his "bulging war chest... by 'disrespectfully' dialing for cash as... Moakley lay on his deathbed," the Boston Herald reports.
• "Joyce is well ahead of his foes" in the special election, "raising more than twice the campaign dollars collected by his nearest foe," state Sen. Stephen Lynch (D), CongressDailyAM reports.

• Bush will be in New York for the first time as president on Tuesday, AP reports. At Ellis Island, Bush will announce "that he intends to accelerate the citizenship process." Then at St. Patrick's Cathedral he will present the Congressional Gold Medal to the late Cardinal John O'Connor.
• California Gov. Gray Davis on Monday "switched on the largest licensed power plant to come online this year in California," the AP reports.
• "Officials said that as many as 3,000 homes were damaged by water or mudslides" as floodwaters hit West Virginia, AP reports.

• Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., said Monday night "that the congressman would provide the police with any information or material they seek, including DNA evidence," as the search continues for missing intern Chandra Levy, the New York Times reports.
• Lowell "sidestepped the main demand from Levy's parents: that Condit take a polygraph test," the New York Daily News reports.
• The "once solid support" Condit "cultivated in California's Farm Belt seems to be slipping," AP reports.

• Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., is expected to officially become chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee today. Reuters reports that Jeffords will be "the first chairman of a standing Senate committee in 68 years who is not a member of a major political party."
• Walter Isaacson, "a highly respected journalist who has been editorial director of all Time Inc. magazines," was named chairman and CEO of the CNN News Group, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
• "A judge yesterday ordered Roger Clinton to stand trial next month on drunken-driving charges," the New York Post reports.