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Politics

Bush gives Congress a December to-do list

WASHINGTON - President Bush has a lengthy to-do list for lawmakers when they return this week from their Thanksgiving vacation, including spending bills, intelligence legislation and tax law changes.

"The clock will be ticking because they have only a few weeks to get their work done before leaving again for Christmas," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address.

Among the unfinished priorities for the president are approval of money to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and agreement on new rules for government eavesdropping.

He urged Congress to complete the annual government spending bills - but not in "one monstrous piece of legislation" filled with money for special interests. In addition, he wants Congress to send him legislation that keeps middle-class people from being hit by a tax originally aimed at a small number of wealthy people, the alternative minimum tax.

After more failed attempts to pass legislation ordering troops home from Iraq, Democrats have said they plan to sit on Bush's $196-billion request for war spending until next year.

Pentagon officials said that if the money is not approved soon, the military will have to take cost-cutting measures. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., who returned Saturday from a trip to Iraq, called the threat of layoffs "gamesmanship" on the part of the Defense Department.

On the intelligence legislation, Bush wants Congress to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Lawmakers changed the law over the summer to allow the government to eavesdrop inside the United States without court permission, so long as one end of the conversation was reasonably believed to be located outside the United States.

"This new law expires on Feb. 1 while the threat from our terrorist enemies does not," Bush said.

The most contentious issue is whether to shield telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits for allegedly giving the government access to people's private e-mails and phone calls without a FISA court order between 2001 and 2007.

[Last modified December 2, 2007, 01:02:49]