EU-Digest: - Democratic majority in US Congress and Senate vote on measures to block further abuse of Bush Presidential Powers

A special EU-Digest report on the internal US political turmoil and the embattled US Presidency

Democratic majority in US Congress and Senate vote on measures to block further abuse of Bush Presidential powers

"Showing a direct defiance to President Bush, the Senate has passed a war-spending bill that will require the start of troop withdrawal from Iraq in four months and complete the withdrawal by March next year in spite of Bush's threat to veto the bill. The senate passed it by a margin of 51-47, allotting a $122 billion spending package for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Democrats in the senate said that withdrawal was the wish of people following the midterm elections in which Republicans lost control of both the houses.

The bill will now go to the President's table for approval, with the House already passing a similar bill. However, Bush has stated that he will be vetoing any bill that sets a time limit for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. The approval of the bill by both the houses points to Bush's falling stock regarding the war on terror.

In another development, the House of Representatives by a vote of 329-78 on March 26 followed the Senate and stripped Bush of his authority to appoint U.S. attorneys on an interim basis, ending the ability of the Bush administration to do an end run around the Senate in putting controversial U.S. attorneys in office. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), places a 120-day limit to the term of a United States attorney appointed on an interim basis. Democrats allege that Bush's authority to appoint interim U.S. attorneys on an unlimited basis, inserted stealthily into the 2006 reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, was used as a loophole to insert Bush administration political loyalists into office.

The Bush administration's firings of eight federal prosecutors has created a controversy that continues to fester. As a result most Democrats and many Republicans feel that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should be fired. As the Democratic party controlled Congress starts to exert more and more of its investigatory powers into every area of the administration's domain, even Bush's own political Guru Rove is not exempt. There are very few options left for the US Administration to stage a come-back - even a confrontation with Iran could badly backfire.