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2000s


Kennedy had an easy time with his re-election to the Senate in 2000, as Republican lawyer and entrepreneur Jack E. Robinson III was sufficiently damaged by his past personal record that Republican state party officials refused to endorse him.[171] Kennedy got 73 percent of the general election vote, with Robinson splitting the rest with Libertarian Carla Howell.

During the long, disputed post-presidential election battle in Florida in 2000, Kennedy supported Vice President Al Gore's legal actions.[172] After the bitter contest was over, many Democrats in Congress did not want to work with incoming President George W. Bush.[67] Kennedy, however, saw Bush as genuinely interested in a major overhaul of elementary and secondary education, Bush saw Kennedy as a potential major ally in the Senate, and the two partnered together on the legislation.[67][173] Kennedy accepted provisions governing mandatory student testing and teacher accountability that other Democrats and the National Education Association did not like, in return for increased funding levels for education.[67] The No Child Left Behind Act was passed by Congress in May and June 2001 and signed into law by Bush in January 2002.

Kennedy soon became disenchanted with the implementation of the act, however, saying for 2003 that it was $9 billion short of the $29 billion authorized.[67] Kennedy said, “The tragedy is that these long overdue reforms are finally in place, but the funds are not,”[173] and accused Bush of not living up to his personal word on the matter.[67][136] Other Democrats concluded that Kennedy's penchant for cross-party deals had gotten the better of him.[67] The White House defended its spending levels given the context of two wars going on.[67]

Kennedy was in his Senate offices meeting with First Lady Laura Bush when the September 11, 2001, attacks took place.[169] Two of the airplanes involved had taken off from Boston, and in the following weeks, Kennedy telephoned each of the 177 Massachusetts families who had lost members in the attacks.[169] He pushed through legislation that provided healthcare and grief counseling benefits for the families, and recommended the appointment of his former chief of staff Kenneth Feinberg as Special Master of the government's September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.[169] Kennedy maintained an ongoing bond with the Massachusetts 9/11 families in subsequent years.[169][174]

In reaction to the attacks, Kennedy was a supporter of the American-led 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan. However, Kennedy strongly opposed the Iraq War from the start, and was one of 23 senators voting against the Iraq War Resolution in October 2002.[169] As the Iraqi insurgency grew in subsequent years, Kennedy pronounced that the conflict was "Bush's Vietnam."[169] In response to losses of Massachusetts service personnel to roadside bombs, Kennedy became vocal on the issue of Humvee vulnerability, and co-sponsored enacted 2005 legislation that sped up production and Army procurement of up-armored Humvees.[169]


Kennedy at the 2002 signing of a border security bill, with Senator Dianne Feinstein and President George W. Bush. Despite the strained relationship between Kennedy and Bush over No Child Left Behind spending, the two attempted to work together again on extending Medicare to cover prescription drug benefits.[67]

Kennedy's strategy was again doubted by other Democrats, but he saw the proposed $400 billion program as an opportunity that should not be missed.[67] However, when the final formulation of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act contained provisions to steer seniors towards private plans, Kennedy switched to opposing it.[67] It passed in late 2003, and led Kennedy to again say he had been betrayed by the Bush administration.[67]

In the 2004 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Kennedy campaigned heavily for fellow Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.[169] and lent his chief of staff, Mary Beth Cahill, to the Kerry campaign. Kennedy's appeal was effective among blue collar and minority voters, and helped Kerry stage a come-from-behind win in the Iowa caucuses that propelled him on to the Democratic nomination.[169]

After Bush won a second term in the 2004 general election, Kennedy continued to oppose him on Iraq and many other issues.[67][69] However, Kennedy sought to partner with Republicans again on the matter of immigration reform in the context of the ongoing United States immigration debate.[67] Kennedy was chair of the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Refugees, and in 2005, Kennedy teamed with Republican Senator John McCain on the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act. The "McCain-Kennedy bill" did not reach a Senate vote, but provided a template for further attempts at dealing comprehensively with legalization, guest worker programs, and border enforcement components. Kennedy returned again with the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, which was sponsored by an ideologically diverse, bipartisan group of senators[175] and having strong support from the Bush administration.[67] The bill aroused furious grassroots opposition among talk radio listeners and others as an "amnesty" program,[176] and despite Kennedy's last-minute attempts to salvage it, failed a cloture vote in the Senate.[177] Kennedy was philosophical about the defeat, saying that often took several attempts across multiple Congresses for this type of legislation to build enough momentum for passage.[67]