Whitehouse: Press the Iraqi Parliament

US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse says President Bush should turn his focus from fighting partisan battles with Congressional Democrats to increasing pressure on the Iraqi Parliament to take greater responsibility for that country's future. Whitehouse offered the view during an appearance on WPRI-WNAC TV's Newsmakers, which will be broadcast Sunday at 5:30 am on Channel 12 (CBS) and at 10 am on Fox 64.

Whitehouse parted company with his Democratic colleague Jack Reed in voting against the recent war-funding bill. Asked how Democrats like himself, who campaigned on a platform of ending the war, can act more forcefully to bring that about, he said they should continue to seek more votes, in part because of growing Republican skepticism about the course of the war.

The senator, who has earned good reviews thus far, in part for his involvement in Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the Bush administration's US attorneys fiasco, says even some GOP holdovers from John Ashcroft's tenure as attorney general, are troubled by the situation.

Whitehouse sounded encouraging notes on the outlook for tackling global warming and improving access to health care. In the case of the latter, union officials like Andy Stern, the head of the Service Employees International Union, and the chief of Wal-Mart, now speak with a unified voice on the need for reform, he says, because of growing business costs for health-care. The situation has gotten so bad, Whitehouse says, that companies like Caterpillar face proportionally greater costs for health-care than for raw materials in making their products.