Catherwood LibraryILR School

In a vote that highlighted the increasing problems President Bush is having pushing his domestic policy plans through Congress (see WIT for March 24, 2003), House Democrats yesterday defeated a White House-backed smallpox inoculation compensation bill they have condemned as inadequate (see WIT for March 6, 2003). Brought to the floor of the House under a legislative mechanism that requires a two-thirds vote for passage, the limited compensation package for health care workers, their families, and patients suffering from side effects of smallpox inoculations failed to garner even majority support. With a growing number of complication-related deaths and illnesses in both the voluntary health care worker inoculation plan the bill was intended to address and the US military's inoculation program, the labor movement and it allies are sticking to demands for more substantial compensation.