Here's what newspapers around the nation are saying:
The Washington Post
LOBBY REFORM: In the middle of all the strife over a shutdown government, House Republicans took a little time out to hold two closed-door meetings to decide what they should do about lobbying reform and banning gifts to members. By all accounts, the meetings were hardly a relief from the turmoil. The members argued fiercely over whether the voters really cared all that much about these reform issues and the rights and wrongs of gift-taking. It will be ironic if Republicans, who rightly criticized the old Democratic majority for rigging votes through "closed rules" and the like, themselves resort to such tactics to prevent a real test on these most basic reform issues. A substantial number . . . are fighting to preserve what they can of the current gift system.
The New York Times
KEY ELEMENT: A key element in the Republican Medicare reforms, the misguided medical savings accounts, has been knocked out of the comprehensive-budget bill on a technicality. But there are plans to revive it. That would be a disservice. The accounts would be costly and benefit only the healthy and the wealthy. Republicans buttress their claim the accounts would be affordable and attractive to Medicare enrollees by citing a study from a respected actuarial firm. But the study, by Millman & Robertson, is irrelevant. It analyzes a plan very different from the bills the Senate and House passed. The wiser course would be for Congress to scrape the savings accounts and reconfigure Medicare so it harnesses market forces on behalf of all retirees, not just the privileged few.
The Miami Herald
ATTACKED? Jack Kemp. Dick Cheney. William Weld. Jim Baker. And now Colin Powell: Distinguished conservative-to-moderate Republicans who might have made excellent presidential candidates but chose not to try. By the standards of the party's rank-and-file, all are in the mainstream. . . . But they don't suit the GOP . . . lately hijacked by the Christian Coalition and its acolytes. In a typically gracious speech, Powell ended talk of his possible presidential bid without ever saying the attacks of the ultraconservatives drove him out of the race. But he referred several times to the "incivility" of the debate surrounding his possible candidacy. His family already had had a taste of what such a campaign would bring. Culminating in a vicious televised meeting last week, the GOP's right flank had aimed a barrage of muck at the general, attempting to smear his career, his integrity, even his wife.
The Boston Globe
TWO VICTORIES: Tobacco companies, often portrayed as pariahs on the brink of banishment from polite society, have won two regrettable victories. In New York, CBS News, under heavy pressure from lawyers, decided to delete a damaging interview with a former tobacco company executive from "60 Minutes." In Boston (Republican Gov. William) Weld raided the state's anti-smoking fund of $60 million . . . to help finance a proposed $500 million income tax cut. The CBS officials were afraid not of libel but that they might be sued for encouraging the former official to violate a no-tell agreement he had given his company. Weld showed no ethical soul-searching in his revenue grab. The state's voters decided in 1992 to add 25 cents per pack to the state cigarette tax, with proceeds specifically for an anti-smoking educational campaign, (and) tobacco sales have gone down 15 percent. But Weld, without asking . . . the 1,429,641 who voted for the campaign . . . proposes . . . an idea that deserves to be snuffed out.