The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Bush takes tax plan to the states, Dems react to speech, Greenspan testifies today, Clinton waives executive privilege, Supremes uphold Clean Air Act, candidates raise cash, Davis sees crisis end, Torricelli task force shuts down:

• President Bush presented his $1.9 trillion budget to a nationally televised joint session of Congress Tuesday night, saying he was asking for a $1.6 trillion tax cut on behalf of "the people of America" who "have been overcharged," the San Antonio Express-News reports. NationalJournal.com has issue-by-issue excerpts from the speech as well as the prepared text.
• The speech focused on tax cuts and education reforms. "Certain other high-profile issues from the election campaign, including Social Security, Medicare and creation of a Medicare prescription drug benefit" were put on the back burner, the Detroit News reports.
• Bush's speech "gave the sharpest definition yet of his political principles," the Boston Globe reports. "The president signaled that he was seeking to find not only a common ground but also a middle ground." Salon.com reports that most of the speech "was straight out of the Democratic Leadership Council play book."
• House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle gave the Democratic response to the speech, saying "the president's budget proposals would threaten the nation's financial security, but they pledged to work with Bush as he brought new proposals to Congress," CNN.com reports. The Washington Post has a transcript of the Democratic response.
• Five Democrats, "angered by Commerce Secretary Don Evans' decision to strip the Census Bureau of the authority to decide whether to adjust figures statistically in the latest census," did not attend Bush's speech last night," Reuters reports.
• As part of the tradition that one member of the Cabinet does not attend the president's yearly speech, Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi stayed home, AP reports.
• "Bush was judged a hit by most network commentators," the Dallas Morning News reports.
• Now Bush begins a two-day, multi-state tour to sell his economic plan. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports on Control Concepts, a family-owned company in Vanport, Pa., that will host Bush this morning. The Des Moines Register reports he will also visit Nebraska and Iowa.
• The Bush administration is "considering limits on carbon dioxide emissions" to combat pollution and global warming, AP reports.

• Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will testify before Congress this morning, and it is uncertain whether he will cut interest rates, CNNfn.com reports.
• On Tuesday, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., "introduced a constitutional amendment to ban presidents from using the pardon authority for the period starting one month prior to a presidential election through Inauguration Day," CNN.com reports.
• Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., said Tuesday "he would hold hearings in response to Secretary of State Colin Powell's announcement that he would focus the sanctions" on Iraq "more directly on military items," UPI reports.
• Former President Carter spoke out Tuesday against drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which was proposed as part of an energy bill introduced in Congress on Monday, AP reports.
• A panel of experts told the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday that "the United States is rapidly losing its influence over global trade policy," the Des Moines Register reports.

• Marc Rich on Tuesday refused to testify before the House Government Reform Committee about his pardon, the Washington Times reports.
• Also yesterday, former President Clinton agreed "to turn over a list of donors to his planned library" to the committee, and he waived "executive privilege to allow three former White House aides to testify at a hearing" on Thursday, the Washington Post reports.
• Hugh Rodham may have to pay $230,000 in federal income taxes "on the money he took -- and then returned -- for lobbying President Bill Clinton to pardon two felons," the New York Post reports.
• Today's New York Observer ran a front-page editorial asking Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., to resign because of the pardons scandal, the New York Daily News reports. (See Pundits for that editorial and other commentary from today.)
• Speaking to a "media business conference at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City" on Tuesday, Clinton said he "wants to 'get out of the news' and 'have a life,'" ABCNews.com reports.

• On Tuesday, U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Dennis V. McGinn "defended the performance" of last week's bombings on Iraq, "saying an inaccurate weather forecast prevented the munition from making a late-course correction and directly hitting all targets," the Washington Times reports.
• Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday "that the United States was prepared to allow Serbian soldiers back into a three-mile-wide buffer zone along the Kosovo border," the New York Times reports.
• At least 13 people died in a train crash in England this morning, BBCNews.com reports.
• In Borneo on Tuesday, 118 people were killed by "headhunters waging a war of 'ethnic cleansing,'" the Los Angeles Times reports.

• "Suspected spy Robert Philip Hanssen may have provided Russia with top-secret information about how and where the United States has planted its most sophisticated overseas eavesdropping devices," the Los Angeles Times reports.
• "Federal agents discovered a 25-foot dirt tunnel that was apparently being used to smuggle drugs across the Mexican border, and seized 840 pounds of cocaine from the Arizona house at one end of the passage," AP reports.

• The Supreme Court on Tuesday "upheld the way the government sets air-quality standards under the Clean Air Act" when it "rejected industry arguments that the Environmental Protection Agency must consider financial cost as well as health benefits in writing standards," AP reports.
• Today the Supreme Court will hear a case to decide whether student religious groups can hold meetings at public schools, FoxNews.com reports.
• A federal appeals court has upheld former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker's (D) "1996 convictions on Whitewater-related mail fraud and conspiracy charges," the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.
• One of the federal appeals judges hearing Microsoft's appeal said Tuesday that Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson -- the original judge of the case -- had "no right to" talk about the case and his opinions of it to the media, CBSNews.com reports.

• Sixteen Democrats filed "to run in the special election to replace the late Rep. Julian Dixon, D-Calif., in the state's 32nd District by the close of filing Monday." Early front-runners include former state Sen. Diane Watson, who served as ambassador to Micronesia under President Clinton; state Sen. Kevin Murray and Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden," CongressDailyAM reports.
• New York gubernatorial candidate H. Carl McCall (D), who "said he will need to raise $30 million for" his 2002 bid, said "he favors campaign finance reform, but only if the law levels the playing field for all candidates and provides them with state funds to make up for private donations they might be forced to forgo," the Albany Times Union reports.
• A "crowd of about 1,500" attended a fund-raiser last night for New Jersey acting Gov. Donald DiFrancesco (R), "the establishment favorite for the party's gubernatorial nomination June 5." Meanwhile, Bret Schundler, "DiFrancesco's only rival for the nomination," held a fund-raiser of his own at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, the Newark Star-Ledger reports.
• Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) tried "to kill a potential opponent with kindness" as he praised the work done by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, the Houston Chronicle reports.
• Vermont state Treasurer James Douglas (R) has the backing of the state House Republican caucus in a potential gubernatorial bid, AP reports.
• Rhode Island state Rep. Tony Pires (D) "is an intriguing prospect for the Democratic nod" for a gubernatorial bid, but he "sees a 'very steep hill,'" the Providence Journal-Bulletin reports. Pires held a fund-raiser last night.
• Sen. Tim Hutchinson, R-Ark., "was expected to take in $100,000 Tuesday night at a fund-raiser held on his behalf at the offices of the National Republican Senatorial Committee," the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports. "Hutchinson, a first-term senator, is expected to be one of the national Democratic Party's top targets in 2002."

• A new poll shows that while Florida voters believe that Bush won the presidential race, state residents are "ready to pay $200 million to make sure there's never another electoral breakdown as they had last year," the Tallahassee Democrat reports.
• California Gov. Gray Davis (D) said the state's energy crisis will last no more than another two weeks to a month, the Sacramento Bee reports.
• Fat Tuesday celebrations in Philadelphia turned "into a violent, drunken frenzy early this morning," with people "looting at least five stores, hurling bottles at police, overturning barricades and brawling in the streets," the Philadelphia Daily News reports. And in Seattle, officials "at the King County Jail reported receiving about 30 people" after Mardi Gras riots, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports.
• In Maryland, "a House of Delegates committee voted yesterday to impose a stricter standard for determining when a motorist is considered drunk," the Baltimore Sun reports. State legislators in Nebraska also voted to lower the legal blood-alcohol driving limit to .08, the Lincoln Journal Star reports.

• Connecticut Gov. John Rowland (R) "has been elected vice chairman of the Republican Governors Association," the Hartford Courant reports.
• The task force that has been investigating the 1996 campaign of Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., "is closing up shop... and will transfer most of its remaining matters to the jurisdiction of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York," the Newark Star-Ledger reports.