Bush set to veto Senate stem cell vote

WASHINGTON - George W. Bush has vowed to cast the first veto of his Presidency later this week if the Senate, as expected, follows the House of Representatives and passes a bill to boost federal funding of stem cell research.

The key vote was due last night when the Senate delivered its verdict on three separate bills, the most controversial of which would do away with the limits the President imposed on stem cell funding in summer 2001, a month before the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

At that time, Mr Bush made clear his fundamental opposition to stem cell research - thus aligning himself with social conservatives who regard the practice as abortion by another name.

However polls now show that Americans back wider stem cell research by a two to one margin, and speculation had grown that he was ready to change his mind.

But on Monday, the White House issued a written statement re-iterating its opposition to a bill that "uses taxpayers' money to pay for research that relies on the intentional destruction of human embryos," and which "overturns the President's policy that funds research without promoting such ongoing destruction."

Mr Bush's failure to use the veto even once over five and a half years in the White House is remarkable.

In just a single term, his father issued 44, while Bill Clinton vetoed 38 pieces of legislation while he was in office between 1993 and 2001.

But special factors have applied.

Not only have his own Republicans have controlled both chambers of Congress since 2003, but the continuing 'war on terror' has made the party less willing than otherwise to confront Mr Bush.

But that long spell of subservience may be drawing to an end, with the approach of November's mid-term elections and the slide in the President's approval ratings to below 40 per cent.

That however has not deterred Mr Bush from resorting to the previously little used practice of signing a bill - for example the amendment outlawing torture attached to the 2006 Pentagon budget - but adding a so-called "signing statement" saying how he would interpret the new law.

Though at least 60 Senators were expected to back the stem cell measure, it seemed unlikely to gather the two thirds majority of 67 votes needed to override a veto.

The same goes for the House, which in 2005 passed the measure by 238-194, more than 50 votes short of the required super majority of 290.

But the legislation has struck a powerful chord.

It boasts several high profile supporters, including Nancy Reagan, the widow of former President Ronald Reagan, who died in 2004 of Alzheimer's disease, considered a prime candidate for stem cell treatment.

Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader and heart surgeon likely to seek the Republican presidential nomination, is also a supporter of the bill, while stem cell research is shaping up as an issue in the November election.

Speaking on the Senate floor this week, Arlen Specter, another senior Republican who chairs the Judiciary Committee, compared Mr Bush to opponents of Columbus and Galileo, and people who at first rejected electricity, vaccines and rail travel.

Such attitudes "in retrospect look foolish, look absolutely ridiculous," Mr Specter said.

But the Kansas Republican Sam Brownback, the Senate's leading religious conservative, delivered an impassioned plea for the bill to be rejected.

It was "immoral to destroy the youngest of human lives for research purposes," Mr Brownback said, appearing with three children who were once embryos in an in vitro fertilisation clinic.

"Do you allow the stronger to take advantage of the weaker?" he asked.

"We have regretted doing it in the past. We will regret this, too."

- INDEPENDENT