From AP (boldface mine):

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush (news - web sites) summoned GOP congressional leaders Friday to press for swift passage of his proposed Department of Homeland Security, trying to erase doubts by incoming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott that this month's "lame-duck" session can accomplish anything.



The president also was keeping an eye on the U.N. Security Council, which he expected to vote on a compromise resolution insisting that Iraq disarm or face "serious consequences."

Bush demanded Thursday that the postelection congressional session beginning Tuesday approve the new department. The Democratic-run Senate had refused to embrace the proposal because of concerns over union protections for the new agency's workers.

"They got a few days to get some big things done, and the most important thing to get done, I want to emphasize, is to get a Department of Homeland Security finished," Bush said at a news conference. "It doesn't matter how long it takes, they need to get it done."

Lott said Thursday he is "not an advocate of lame-duck sessions." He is eager to end the session within a few days. "I've never seen one that served the American people well, and I've been through a lot of them," Lott said.

The remarks irritated the White House, which is eager to prove it can govern in a bipartisan fashion following Tuesday's sweeping Republican gains. Bush was likely to give Lott an earful on the matter, a senior administration official said.

Lott said after Bush's remarks Thursday that if he has any power during the lame-duck, "it would be a big leap, but I'll make a huge effort to get it done." Lott doesn't take over as majority leader until the next Congress, in January.

Bush, holding his first formal news conference in four months, made clear he has two other priorities: passage of the 11 remaining spending bills; and approval of government-backed terrorism insurance for businesses, which the administration says will create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

He also renewed his call that lawmakers make key elements of last year's tax cuts permanent. They are scheduled to expire after 10 years.

Bush sidestepped questions about a new round of tax cuts. The administration is studying an economic package that would cut taxes on dividends and capital gains, increase the amount of stock-market losses that individuals can deduct from one year's taxable income and speed up increases in the amounts people can contribute to their 401(k) retirement accounts.

Bush steered clear of other specific plans once the GOP-led Senate clears the backlog left by Democrats. "There's going to be a huge laundry list of things people want to get done, and my job is to set priorities and get them done," he said.

He didn't address a question about whether he would press for legislation restricting abortions, as conservatives hope he will.

Nor did he say whether he would renominate conservative judges blocked by Democrats in the Senate, though he went out of his way to say those nominees would not have to be renominated during the lame-duck session. A senior administration official said the rejected nominees have been made aware of that situation.

Bush insisted that although Republicans will control both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, he would not be beholden to conservatives. "I don't take cues from anybody, I just do what I think is right," Bush said.

Bush took pains to give credit for the GOP's advances Tuesday to Republican candidates. He made no direct mention of the record-breaking $180 million campaign he and Vice President Dick Cheney quarterbacked in some 140 fund-raisers around the country this year.

"I think candidates win elections because they're good candidates, not because they may happen to have the president as a friend, or a foe for that matter," Bush said.

Bush did not repeat his assertion a day earlier that candidates won by "changing the tone" of their campaigns. The Democratic National Committee ridiculed the statement Thursday, calling many campaigns "the most vitriolic and personal in history," and citing a litany of examples of what it called below-the-belt GOP tactics.

Bush repeatedly expressed confidence that the U.S.-drafted resolution would pass the U.N. Security Council on Friday, though his aides were much more cautious.

"When this resolution passes, I will be able to say that the United Nations has recognized the threat and now we're going to work together to disarm" Saddam Hussein, Bush said.



Sounds good to me. Heavy on national security and the economy, light on the right-wing social issues. Once again, and not for the first time since Bush was elected, I think Lott should be replaced.