NYT:Stem Cell Bill, Once Seen as a Sure Thing, Is Now Mired in Uncertainty

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Stem Cell Bill, Once Seen as a Sure Thing, Is Now Mired in Uncertainty
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: July 23, 2005


WASHINGTON, July 22 - A measure to expand federal financing for human embryonic stem cell research, passed by the House and once considered a shoo-in for adoption by the Senate, is tangled up in a procedural dispute that will probably delay a vote until fall - and could wind up killing the bill, its chief Republican backer said.

"The bill is in some danger," said Representative Michael N. Castle, Republican of Delaware and the measure's leading sponsor in the House.

Mr. Castle accused the White House, which has threatened to veto the measure, and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, of "doing everything in their power to deflect votes away from it or keep it from coming up for a vote at all."

But a spokeswoman for Mr. Frist, Amy Call, said he had "worked tirelessly over the past few weeks" to get an agreement from other senators to bring the House bill up for a vote. Ms. Call said that if Mr. Frist could not broker a deal by the end of next week, when Congress leaves for its August recess, he intended to try again in September.

At the very least, the delay plunges the measure into an uncertain future. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and the chief backer of the Senate bill, said that if the bill did not come up for a vote, he would attach it to a measure appropriating money to the National Institutes of Health, a measure whose fate he controls because he is chairman of the subcommittee that governs the institutes' spending....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/23/politics/23stem.html?