Kennedy chalks up another victory

By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- Senator Edward M. Kennedy has spent years -- in some cases, decades -- trying to pass a slew of legislation on healthcare, labor, human rights, and other issues. In many cases, the liberal Massachusetts lawmaker has been thwarted by politics, with partisan differences or a GOP president holding up legislation Kennedy pushed.

But in just the third week of the Obama administration, the ailing Kennedy has won major victories on several issues. President Obama -- whose campaign Kennedy greatly boosted with an early endorsement of the former first-term senator -- gave Kennedy his most recent victory this afternoon when he signed legislation expanding SCHIP, a children's health program Kennedy and Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, authored in 1997.

Kennedy has been pushing for years to broaden the program, which helps low-income families obtain health insurance for children. But former President Bush twice vetoed that effort, arguing that the expansion would benefit families that were not truly low-income.

The law Obama signed yesterday will cost $32.8 billion, to be raised by taxes on tobacco products, and will cover an estimated 4 million more children.

Kennedy, battling a malignant brain tumor and recuperating in Florida, was not able to attend the signing ceremony in the ornate East Room of the White House. He has been on and off Capitol Hill since returning to the Senate last month. He was ordered by his doctors to get some rest after suffering a seizure -- a common side effect of Kennedy's condition -- at a luncheon on inauguration day.

But determined to take advantage of the fact that his party now controls both chambers of Congress and the White House, Kennedy can count two other accomplishments as well. In his first week, the new president signed a ban on torture -- a year and a half after Kennedy sought, unsuccessfully, to get his Torture Prevention and Effective Interrogation Act made into law.

And last week, Obama made the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act the first bill he signed into law. The measure, which gives plaintiffs more time to prove pay disparity cases, mirrors the 2007 Fair Pay Restoration Act Kennedy introduced in the summer of 2007.

"Americans demanded change at the voting booth last November and in the first ten days of the Obama administration we've seen what change can do,'' Kennedy' said in a statement. "We've passed legislation that will dramatically improve the lives of children, institute pay equity where there was none, and worked toward ending torture abroad. I'm hopeful that the days to come will be just as productive."