It's recess, but no rest for pols

BY J. JIONI PALMER
WASHINGTON BUREAU

April 30, 2006

WASHINGTON - The meeting with Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus had officially concluded, but Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Jamaica Estates) had one more item on his agenda.

As the meeting broke up and the participants shook each other's hands, Ackerman presented Klaus with an envelope that had a 1940s Czechoslovakian stamp.

"Everyone knows of my stamp collecting," Ackerman noted, as if he couldn't help himself. "It wasn't the only reason I met with him."

With Congress out of town for two weeks earlier this month, lawmakers have found ways to keep themselves busy, from handling routine constituent concerns to hosting town hall meetings on Long Island and Queens to traveling to far-flung locales such as Baghdad, Vienna and Doha, Qatar.



Talks on the war

Ackerman, who sits on the House International Relations Committee, traveled to Europe with other legislators to attend a meeting of U.S. and European parliamentarians in Austria.

The conclave, he said, serves as an opportunity to discuss a host of issues, from trade to the war with Iraq and the burgeoning nuclear crisis with Iran.

"They were pretty united in their belief at the outset that we should not have done the Iraq thing," said Ackerman, who later traveled to Prague. "And now they are sure they are right and they are trying not to rub our noses in it."

Two years after first traveling to Iraq, Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington) returned to the combat zone to assess how the war is prosecuted. But after a day of meetings with U.S. military personnel in Balad, Israel said it was tough to gauge precisely what the situation is.

"I'll have be honest with you, they keep us in a self-contained environment," Israel said. "I spent the whole day at a U.S. military base. I might have been in a basement in the United States."

Nonetheless, he said it appeared that the troops were better equipped than they were on his previous visit.

"The last time I was there, when you asked them what they wanted, they said more armor for Humvees and Kevlar for vests," he said.

"This time, they wanted iPods, MP3 players and Nathan's hot dogs. My sense is that force protection over the past years has improved."

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-Far Rockaway) spoke on a panel in Doha, where the topic was democracy and terrorism. Meeks said he met with numerous American troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan who were in Qatar on leave.

"A number of them said they couldn't wait to retire," he said.

Meeks said many of them were concerned that the unpopularity of the war would mean resentment toward them.

"I told them absolutely not, we all appreciate what they're doing," said Meeks, who voted against the war.

The immigration issue

While domestic issues didn't come up during his discussions with the troops, Meeks said, stateside, the war and immigration reform were by far the most talked-about issues.

"They get more emotional and passionate about immigration," said Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola). "Those are the kinds of issues where people kind of lose it."

Rep. Joe Crowley (D-Jackson Heights) said he wasn't sure what to expect before appearing at a town hall meeting on immigration that had been scheduled months before.

Immigration is a routine subject at community forums Tim Bishop has hosted since he was elected to the 1st Congressional District, which includes Farmingville.

"One [side] is a little louder. The one that's most expressed most passionately [is], 'They are criminals, round them up,'" said Bishop (D-Southampton). "I'm not able to say that based on the people I've interacted with this week, there is a clear demand either way."

However, Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) said that if phone calls, e-mail and letters to his offices are any indication, the public's mind is already made up.

"99 to 1 on my side," said the House Homeland Security Committee chairman, who is co-sponsor of a border security bill that has sparked outrage from immigration rights advocates for appearing to criminalize assistance to illegal immigrants. "What has struck me is that most of the phone calls that have come in are from emotionally grounded people who do feel very strongly about their position."

Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.