Inside Politics

Democrats blocked

Congress has refused to halt spending on a decade-old investigation of former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros despite a Democratic senator’s attempt to stop it.

A Senate provision that would have ended spending on the probe next month was killed during closed-door negotiations on a broader bill paying for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan, North Dakota Democrat.

The bill for the Cisneros investigation had reached nearly $21 million at the end of September.

“Even waste has a constituency,” said Mr. Dorgan, who sponsored the measure to end the spending.

Independent Counsel David Barrett was not immediately available for comment yesterday, the Associated Press reports.

Mr. Cisneros admitted in 1999 that, when being considered for a Cabinet post, he lied to the FBI about how much he paid a former mistress. Mr. Cisneros, housing secretary from 1993 to 1996, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was fined $10,000.

President Clinton pardoned him in January 2001.

In an editorial last month, the Wall Street Journal criticized Mr. Dorgan’s efforts, saying he was trying to squelch the probe because it had shifted from Mr. Cisneros to an investigation of a possible cover-up by the Clinton administration that involved the Internal Revenue Service.

Mr. Dorgan denied that in a letter to the newspaper also signed by Sens. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, and Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, who co-sponsored the measure on halting spending.

Weighing her options

Jeanine Pirro, the district attorney in Westchester County, N.Y., said yesterday she will seek statewide office in 2006, possibly by running for the U.S. Senate against Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mrs. Pirro told the Associated Press she has not decided which office to seek, but mentioned three possibilities: state attorney general, the Senate and governor, the latter if Republican George E. Pataki decides against seeking another term.

Asked if she thought she could beat Mrs. Clinton, Mrs. Pirro refused to answer directly, but said: “I have never been afraid of challenges, no matter how daunting.”

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