"The first part of the plan includes approximately $1.2 trillion of deficit reduction through the establishment of ten-year discretionary caps. In the first two years, there would be a firewall separating security and non-security spending. Total discretionary spending in Fiscal Year 2012 and 2013 will be limited to $1.043 trillion and $1.047 trillion, respectively, about $7 billion and $3 billion below Fiscal Year 2011. The security savings would represent roughly $5 billion of the total $10 billion in reductions over this two year period.

The plan provides for debt ceiling increases in two stages. The President may request a $900 billion increase now, of which $400 billion is immediately available. This $900 billion is subject to a resolution of disapproval in both the House and Senate. The disapproval measure would be subject to Presidential Veto. Once the debt comes within $100 billion of the debt ceiling, the President may ask for at least an additional $1.2 trillion, which could rise to $1.5 trillion if a Balanced Budget Amendment is sent to the states or the Joint Committee process described below enacts more than $1.5 trillion in savings. This increase is also subject to a resolution of disapproval.

The legislation creates a Joint Committee tasked with achieving $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction. A joint, bipartisan committee, made up of 12 members (6 from each Chamber, equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, and appointed by the Majority and Minority Leaders in each Chamber), will be tasked with developing legislation to achieve at least $1.5 trillion in future deficit reduction by Thanksgiving. The committee's legislation, which can include entitlements and revenues, will be guaranteed an up-or-down vote in both chambers, without amendments, by December 23.

If the Committee's recommendations achieve at least $1.5 trillion and are enacted by Congress, the debt ceiling will be raised by $1.5 trillion. If the committee's bill is enacted and produces between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion, the debt limit will be raised dollar-for-dollar. If the committee fails to produce a bill, its bill is not enacted, or it produces less than $1.2 trillion, the debt limit will increase by $1.2 trillion. Regardless of the amount of the debt limit increase, it would be subject to a disapproval vote which would, in turn, be subject to a Presidential Veto. If the Joint Committee fails to come to a majority agreement on recommendations that achieve at least $1.2 trillion, or Congress fails to enact recommendations that produce at least that amount, sequestration is triggered, forcing across-the-board spending cuts. 50 percent of those cuts forced by sequestration would apply to defense spending in function 050. The other 50 percent would come from non-defense discretionary and mandatory spending with exemptions for many programs.

Social security, Medicaid, veterans' benefits, and other essential benefits are exempt from cuts. Medicare savings are not totally exempt, but would be capped at 2% and are limited to Medicare providers only – the sequester would not cut benefits. Finally, as part of this legislation, both the House and Senate will vote on a balanced budget constitutional amendment before the end of the year. The plan does not make the debt limit increase contingent on passage of the amendment. Nor does it prevent a vote on an alternative version of the balanced budget amendment."

This is a very different presentation than the powerpoint presentation Boehner gave the GOP caucus. His presentation is available here.

Even if the Boehner bill passes the House, it will go nowhere in the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said today that the Senate will vote tonight (Thursday night) on the bill. In a move that is likely to anger House Republicans, the vote will be on a motion to table Boehner's plan. Such a vote will allow Reid to quickly dismiss the Boehner measure, as it requires a simple majority to circumvent the hours of debate generally demanded by Senate rules to move something through the chamber. All 53 Senate Democrats and 2 Independents have vowed to oppose the bill, but in order to move his own legislation Reid needs 60 votes.

So the net likely outcome late this evening is another stand-off. Who will blink first?

Earlier this spring, the House and Senate passed drastically different versions of the reauthorization bill for the FAA. The Senate measure provided $34.5 billion over two years, while the House provided $59 billion over four years. Now GOP senators refuse to let go of an anti-union provision amending the National Mediation Board's union voting rules and a provision eliminating $16.5 million in air service subsidies for 13 rural airports that Democrats say are unacceptable measures in the House passed bill and House Speaker John Boehner will not call a conference to resolve the differences between the House and Senate bills.

All indications point to a prolonged shutdown of the FAA. Rep. John Mica (R-FL) chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said there are no negotiations between the House and Senate to resolve the dispute, and House Republican leaders are determined to hold their position. "I have no idea when we'll open the FAA again," he said.

Long-term authority for the FAA expired in 2007. Unable to agree on long-term funding legislation for the agency, Congress has kept the FAA operating through a series of 20 short-term extension bills. But it seems that the 21st extension is a step too far.

Fundamentally, the Republican position in the debt ceiling debate (spending cuts only) is not just out of step with voters, but even with self-identified Republicans.

Several polls show that Americans want their leaders to compromise on the debt ceiling and focus on the real issues facing families.  For example, a CBS poll found that by more than 5:1, voters nationwide would prefer a compromise that they don't fully support (76%) to not reaching an agreement and having the U.S. default on its debts (14%). Support for a compromise spans party affiliation, as overwhelming majorities of Democrats (80%), Republicans (78%), and Independents (72%) prefer even an unsatisfying compromise to government default. Even 64% of self-identified Tea Party supporters would rather see a compromise they don't fully support, compared to only 28% who prefer no compromise and a government default.

A new Washington Post / ABC News poll shows that the majority of American think both President Obama and congressional Republicans are not willing enough to compromise in their budget negotiations. However the poll also suggests that Republicans will receive the brunt of voter anger if a deal is not reached.  President Obama is seen as operating in good faith while Republicans are not. Gallup shows that 60% of Americans feel the President is trying to find a solution, while a similar 62% believe Congressional Republicans are not.

The re-emergence of a bipartisan plan for a budget deal from the so-called "Gang of Six" seems to have buoyed the President this week.  And a WSJ / NBC News poll finds that the public is in favour of this debt-cap compromise.

"Mrs. Ford was very clear about what she wanted me to say," Roberts said. "She wanted me to talk about Washington the way it used to be. She knew there were people back then who were wildly partisan, but not as many as today.

"They were friends and that was what made government possible," said Roberts, adding that the topic seems particularly appropriate this week when the two parties are divided over dealing with the national debt ceiling.

Sigh. It does make you long for the good old days.

"It's crazy to think the speaker was considering a trillion [dollars] in tax increases. After all, we're the anti-tax party," said one Republican. "Cantor brought him, the economy and our party back from the abyss. Cantor is strengthened, clearly. And it's another example of the speaker almost slipping beyond the will of the GOP conference."

But while the President today made effective use of his bully pulpit to highlight the recalcitrance of Republicans, it remains to be seen if he will be the victor in this power play.

Budget meetings are set to continue on Monday afternoon, with the President and House and Senate leadership at the table. Republicans now want to revert to the smaller $2.4 trillion package that was being worked on by the group headed by Vice President Biden, but neither Republicans nor Democrats have endorsed this, and it is understood that there is bipartisan agreement on only about $1.4 trillion of the package. This would involve more than $1 trillion in cuts to government agencies, about $200 billion in reductions to Medicare and Medicaid and another $200 billion from other direct payment programs such as farm subsidies and federal employee pensions. There was no agreement on the revenue measure proposed by Obama which included elimination of a raft of corporate tax breaks benefitting people like hedge fund managers and corporate jet owners – those were the measures that Cantor objected to.

Time is running out to reach a deal on raising the nation's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling before an Aug. 2 deadline. On Sunday both Treasury head Timothy Geithner and IMF head Christine Lagarde warned of the consequences for the international economy if this is deadline is not met.

But Republican presidential candidates are pledging that they will not vote to raise the debt limit.

Meanwhile in the south, from Arizona to Florida to New Mexico, many cities and counties are banning fireworks because of the risk of wildfires. Parts of nearly a dozen states are in a severe drought and wildfires have charred thousands of square miles in recent months. During May, there were 6,625 fires which burned approximately 1.1 million acres. This is the most acres burned during the month of May on record, and the year-to-date acreage burned is also the largest in the 12-year period of record. Many of these fires are still burning.

Ronald Reagan's 1984 campaign obviously thought that the Bruce Springsteen's hit "Born in the USA" was a patriotic anthem, but the song was widely seen as a condemnation of American society from the viewpoint of a Vietnam war veteran. And Springsteen did not take kindly to Reagan trading on the song's popularity, or on Springsteen's kudos with America's youth.

Here's what Washington Post readers suggested for the current crop of presidential candidates.

However for those who care about history, there is more cause for sorrow than glee at Bachmann's failings – she is not very different from many Americans.

The results of nationwide testing released earlier this month show that American students are less proficient in their nation's history than in any other subject, with less than one –quarter of students performing at the proficiency level.

In fact only 12 percent of high schoolers demonstrated proficiency in the test. Most fourth graders were unable to say why Abraham Lincoln was an important figure. Thirty-seven percent of eighth graders (junior high school) has not studied anything about the history of the post World War II period.

One commentator call this as political Kabuki that "seems to benefit no one at all."

So today, in his initial attempt to break the impasse, President Obama is scheduled to hold separate meetings with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Republican Senator Mitch McConnell. Yesterday McConnell indicated that he will take the Cantor line on taxes and revenue raising, and that he also expects that a prerequisite for a debt limit vote for many Republicans in both chambers will be a vote on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

Meanwhile, as if to signal to GOP leaders that votes for a deficit deal will tough, the newest candidate to join the GOP 2012 presidential nominees, Michele Bachmann, said in an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation," that she has "no intention" of voting for a hike to the limit, and argued that lawmakers should be focused on cutting spending rather than incurring more debt. "It isn't true that the government would default on its debt. Because, very simply, the Treasury Secretary can pay the interest on the debt first, and then, from there, we have to just prioritize our spending."

Will Boehner heed the advice LBJ always offered his golfing partners - "One lesson you'd better learn if you want to be in politics is you never get out on a golf course and beat the president" - and dutifully tank his own game? Not likely. He has already used the 'golf summit' as a chance to score a few political points off Obama, dissing his golf handicap and saying "Mr. President, you can have all the strokes you want. It'll just cost you a trillion dollars per stroke."

A president has never played a round of golf with the leader of the opposing party who was also considered a near-lock to win the match. So it's been suggested that the President deserves to be spotted a few free strokes for sporting courage.

The President only took up golf after he came to office. Since then his more than 70 rounds have been played almost exclusively with a tight circle of White House aides and close friends from Chicago or Hawaii, usually on one of Andrews Air Force Base's three championship-level courses. Despite some criticisms (a bit of a double standard given the frequency with which Boehner plays, often with lobbyist to raise funds), he has played less often than some presidents (Clinton and Eisenhower), although more frequently than others (both the Bushes).

Beginning with William Howard Taft, 15 of the past 18 presidents have played golf. The three who did not play were one-term presidents.

Golf Digest has rated them:

1 John F. Kennedy - Despite chronic back pain, averaged 80.

2 Dwight D. Eisenhower - Had a green outside the Oval Office.

3 Gerald R. Ford - Clumsy, but was a legitimate 80s-shooter.

4 Franklin D. Roosevelt - At 39, polio robbed him of a powerful golf swing.

5 George H.W. Bush - Once got his handicap down to 11.

6 George W. Bush – A capable 15-handicapper.

7 Bill Clinton - Can break 90, especially using his "Billigans."

8 Barack Obama - The lefty plays more hoops than golf.

9 Ronald Reagan - Didn't play often or well (best was low 90s).

10 Warren G. Harding - Struggled to break 95.

11 William Howard Taft - As hapless a golfer as he was a chief executive.

12 Woodrow Wilson - Played more than Ike but almost never broke 100.

13 Richard M. Nixon - He shot 79 once and quit the game.

14 Lyndon B. Johnson - Played with senators to secure votes for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

15 Calvin Coolidge - When he vacated the White House, he left his clubs behind.

Only a few sitting House Members have ever been regarded as serious contenders – Richard Gephardt (D) in 1988 and 2004, Jack Kemp (R) in 1988, John Anderson (initially ran as a Republican but then became an Independent) in 1980, Morris Udall (D) in 1976, John Nance Garner (D) in 1932. The less likely candidates in recent times include long shots like Denis Kucinich and Ron Paul.

The explanations given for the preponderance of Governors and Senators over House Members includes the fact that by the time someone has reached the position of Speaker or Minority Leader in the House, they are so invested on legislative leadership that running for president is not a primary consideration, and the fact that House members are less well known and have to fight hard to stand out against 434 other Members. It's also been suggested that there's a "stature gap", with the House seen as a lower rung on the political ladder.

So what does this mean for Michele Bachmann's putative run? She certainly has no problem getting on Fox News. We'll have to see about the stature gap.

And Gingrich getting out of the race could encourage Texas Governor Rick Perry to get in.

• 48% of voters see Obama as hurting the economy; 41% say he has helped the economy. However 47% of voters blame George Bush for the current economic woes, compared to 42% who blame Obama.
• 65% of people think the country is on the wrong track.
• 31% feel more pride in the US than they did four years ago, 36% feel less pride, and 32% feel about the same level of pride.

CNN/ Opinion Research Corporation poll

• 58% don't approve of Obama's performance on the economy and 64% don't approve of his performance on the federal budget deficit.
• 54% approve of Obama's handling of the situation in Iraq and 55% approve of his management of the war in Afghanistan. 65% approve of his management of terrorism issues.
• 48% prefer Obama's approach to Medicare; only 39% prefer the Republicans. 58% oppose the Republican plan to change Medicare.

Public Policy Polling poll of Iowa GOP voters

• Favourable ratings among Iowa Republicans: Sarah Palin 59%; Michelle Bachmann 53%; Mitt Romney 51%; Jeb Bush 51; Rudy Guilani 49%; Tim Pawlenty 48%; Ron Paul 42%; Chris Christie 42%; Newt Gingrich 39%; Herman Cain 38%; Donald Trump 28%.
• How Iowa Republican view the field ( number s in brackets refer to results without Sarah Palin in the race): Romney 21% (26%); Palin 15%; Cain 15% (16%); Gingrich 12% (15%); Bachmann 11% (14%); Pawlenty 10% (10%); Paul 8%. In the absence of Sara Palin, Huntsman gets 1% of the vote.

A second Public Policy Polling poll finds House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan taking a beating in his home state of Wisconsin, where his favourability rating is down 13 points over the last five months.

Washington Post – ABC News poll

• 66% think that things in the U.S. are "off on the wrong track"
• 47% approve of the way Obama is handling his job, compared to 49% who disapprove. Only 40% approve his handling of the economy (59% disapprove) and 31% approve his handling of the deficit (61% disapprove).
• 73% think that the U.S. should withdraw combat troops from Afghanistan this summer; although 54% think that the war in Afghanistan has been worth fighting.
• When Republicans and GOP-leaning independents were asked who they would vote for if a primary or a caucus were held today in their state, Romney topped the list at 21%, followed by Palin at 17% and Guiliani at 8%.
• In head-to-head matchups with Obama, there is a dead heat with Romney (attributed to Romney's good standing with independents), but Obama pulls well ahead of everyone else – 17 points ahead of Palin; 10 points ahead of Gingrich and Huntsman; 11 points ahead of Pawlenty; 13 points ahead of Bachmann.

Others are pondering what the fiddle-playing, freedom-loving third president – who loved to dance himself – would have made of all this. Dancing, Jefferson wrote, "is a healthy exercise, elegant and very attractive for young people."

Perhaps more importantly – in a school where there are 11% more boys than girls and getting their attention has been difficult – there has been a 10% increase in reading and mathematics scores and the number of students with poor cardiovascular health has declined from 36% to 21 %.

The school has just been awarded a $25,000 grant to build a three-lane, one-fifth-mile track in its hilly back yard.

There might be something here that's relevant to Australia's efforts to improve children's health too

Bugles Across America now has over 7500 bugler volunteers located in all 50 states and growing number oversea, and they are recruiting and training more as the Department of Veterans Affairs is expecting more than 500,000 veterans to die every year for the next seven years.

As most areas in the U.S. continue to struggle economically, the costs of cleaning up and rebuilding after the damage this spring will be huge. The tornado that devastated Joplin may have caused up to $3 billion in insured losses, according to an estimate from a catastrophe risk modeling firm released on Tuesday. In a city with an estimated 25,000 buildings, up to 2,500 buildings were destroyed and up to 10,000 were damaged.

Insurance costs are bound to rise as a consequence. International estimates done in April, before the deadly May tornadoes, were that tornado damage in the southern U.S. could cost the insurance industry up to $6 billion.

While conventional wisdom and recent public opinion polling has suggested that dramatic changes in Medicare would be politically unpopular, the poll findings illustrate that major alterations to Medicaid also could strike a negative chord with many Americans.

A Kaiser Health Tracking Poll this month found that 60 percent of people say they want to keep Medicaid as it is, with minimum standards set by the federal government. Only 13 percent said they would support major reductions in Medicaid spending. The poll calls into question the conventional wisdom that cuts to the program will be more easily accepted than cuts to Medicare. Fifty-three percent of respondents said they favored "no reductions" to Medicaid, while 59 percent said the same of Medicare. And Kaiser's research shows a much larger majority oppose the House-passed plan for Medicaid than Medicare.

Support for maintaining the current program may be due at least in part to the public's personal connections to Medicaid and a strong sense of the program's importance. About half of Americans say they or a friend or family member has received Medicaid assistance at some point, and a similar share say the program is important to their family and one in five adults has received Medicaid benefits over time.

Still, in defiance of these warnings and fueled by Tea Party anti-debt dogma, Republican leaders have taken the debt ceiling - and thus the entire global economy - hostage, refusing to raise the ceiling unless they are allowed to enact their partisan agenda of radical spending cuts. Many conservative lawmakers have said they will not vote to raise the limit under any circumstance, while others have demanded extraordinary concessions.

The debt ceiling is an entirely arbitrary cap Congress sets on the amount of money the federal government can borrow. There is no real reason for having a statutory debt ceiling, which has only existed since 1917. For decades, despite plenty of grandstanding, Congress has routinely acted to raise the debt ceiling, increasing the limit 100 times since 1940. The limit was raised seven times under President Bush, with no significant opposition from Republicans.

Republican leaders Boehner and McConnell have made it clear they understand the consequences of not raising the debt limit and have said publicly that the limit must be raised. But they have also threatened to vote against any increase in the debt limit if their budget cut demands aren't met.  Boehner has warned of "financial disaster, not only for our country but for the worldwide economy." But at the same time he said "We should be talking about cuts of trillions, not just billions" and has taken tax increases off the table.

Tea Party freshmen downplay the threat of hitting the debt limit or defaulting. "The case has not been made that this is an absolute necessity," Congressman Bill Huizenga (R-MI) said last week.  But even President Reagan recognized that it does matter. Arguing for raising the ceiling in 1983, Reagan said, "the risks, the costs, the disruptions, and the incalculable damage " of not doing so demanded the ceiling be increased.  

Here's an example of the headlines:

Paul Ryan swipes at Gingrich: 'With allies like that, who needs the left?' The Hill

House GOP fires back at Newt Gingrich. Politico

Newt 'Is Done,' Says Krauthammer. Fox News

Iowan to Gingrich: Get out now before you make a bigger fool of yourself. Des Moines Register

Rush Limbaugh on Newt Gingrich's attack on Paul Ryan: 'I'm as befuddled as anyone else'.  Los Angeles Times

Not surprisingly, Gingrich was in damage control mode on Monday morning, posting a video on his website in which he declares he is "completely opposed to the Obamacare mandate on individuals. I fought it for two and half years at the Center for Health Transformation. You can see all the things we did to stop it at HealthTransformation.net. I am for the repeal of Obamacare and I am against any effort to impose a federal mandate on anyone because it is fundamentally wrong and I believe unconstitutional."

Here's what Fox News commentator Brit Hume has to say about Gingrich's Medicare comments.

"The former speaker's Sunday comments about the Ryan budget plan as regards healthcare were simply politically inexplicable — he attacked the Ryan plan as you heard as 'radical' and is, 'right wing social engineering.' That last phrase is about as harsh a criticism as one could level at a fellow Republican. And never mind that a couple of weeks ago, Gingrich told Time magazine he would have voted for the Ryan plan.

"Now he has not only disparaged a man who's a hero to many Republicans, he has handed Democrats a potent weapon against Ryan and the Republicans at the very moment they stand accused by Democrats of trying to destroy Medicare.

"Today, of course, Gingrich is trying to undo it all, claiming he's against such a mandate and he's a great admirer of Paul Ryan and so on.

"Republicans must wonder what he will say next and why he said what he already did," Hume added. "In fact, though, this is all vintage Gingrich who is what he has always been, a provocative thinker but a promiscuous talker."

The GOP freshmen are critical to this debate because they're the symbolic leaders on every major legislative issue — and because Republican leaders have to take their pulse before moving ahead on anything. As more of a third of the GOP conference, the freshmen are able to place real pressure on their senior colleagues or provide crucial support. But now that they're on the business end of the attacks over Medicare, freshmen are trying to turn the debate back to substantive solutions

Meanwhile some conservatives are so nervous the party will abandon its commitment to cutting Medicare that they've taken aim at House Speaker John Boehner's handling of the matter because he hasn't conditioned a debt-limit increase on entitlement reform – something he's unlikely to get anyway.

"John Boehner's statements have been murky at best," said Mark Meckler of the Tea Party Patriots. "I can't tell what his position is ... People want to see that Republicans and all government officials are serious about entitlement reform."

Reform proponents say that's not good enough. At a meeting last week with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Obama got pressed on the issue. And at a White House meeting with business, political, law enforcement, religious and civil rights figures, this was also a key issue.

Many top Hispanic activists say Obama's commitment to a bill is welcome, but they'd rather he looked at what he can do without legislation – for example using his executive powers to slow the deportations of illegal immigrants such as college students.

Democratic lawmakers, labor unions and immigrant advocacy groups are pressing Obama to halt deportations of young illegal immigrants who would qualify to stay under the DREAM Act. They also want to expand waivers for illegal immigrants who are immediate relatives of U.S. citizens to give them legal status. The Hispanic immigrant community has seen a record number of deportations (nearly 800,000) in the past two years, more than under the Bush administration.

States such as Arizona and Indiana have been taking immigration enforcement into their own hands. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer announced on Monday that she plans to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling barring some of the more controversial aspects of her state's new immigration law.

However it is clear that the conservative demands for mass deportation would cost U.S. taxpayers and the national economy hundreds of billions of dollars every year. A 2010 report from the Center for American Progress (CAP) found that the Department of Homeland Security would have to spend $285 billion, or $23,148 per person, to arrest, detain and deport all of the unauthorized immigrants in the country, resorting to tactics that by any measure would be profoundly un-American.

In contrast, comprehensive immigration reform could be very beneficial to the economy. CAP's analysis of the economic benefits of legalizing undocumented immigrants now working here suggests $1.5 trillion gained in cumulative GDP growth over ten years. Arizona alone would see an increase of $1.68 billion in tax revenue if the state's undocumented workers were legalized as opposed to a 10 percent loss in state income if they all had to leave the state. Today the Obama staff cited a different study that they say supports immigration reform as smart business. The study estimated that reform could bring in $12 billion annually by turning those in an underground economy into on-the-books taxpayers. .

Advocates for reform that includes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants have been pointing to a recent Pew Research Center poll that showed 72 percent of those surveyed favoured such a path.

According to Pew, Americans of all political persuasions - with the exception of staunch conservatives - favoured the notion that illegal immigrants who "pass background checks, pay fines and have jobs" be given an opportunity to work toward citizenship. Staunch conservatives were sharply divided, with 49 percent endorsing a path and 49 percent opposed. The same Pew poll also showed overwhelming support for stronger enforcement of immigration laws, even among those surveyed whom Pew identified as "solid liberals."

The election is emerging as an early issues laboratory for the 2012 election cycle, with both parties testing out the potency of national themes that are likely to shape the contours of the developing campaign season. Hochul has been successfully attacking Corwin over her support for the Ryan budget proposal and its attack on Medicare, and polling suggests that this is an opportunity to win over the district's many seniors.

Meanwhile as the backlash against House GOP plans for Medicare spreads, Republican presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty is refusing to endorse the Ryan plan. Expect this issue to come up in tonight's GOP debate in South Carolina.

"If Republicans don't start campaigning soon they will have no one to blame but themselves when they lose the election," one GOP operative said. Another party strategist was more blunt, saying the 2012 field was "afraid to debate." "The candidates are scared of giving their opponents a 'gotcha quote' or providing them with a 'deer in headlights' moment," the strategist said. "They are going to avoid putting themselves in a position to do that as long as they possibly can."

In an interview with Fox News yesterday, S.C. Governor Nikki Haley said that "anyone that discounts South Carolina is making a huge mistake" and the state GOP chairwoman Karen Floyd said that "there's an arrogance that's abounding right now with some of these candidates."

Although candidates are cool to the event, state party activists are not. The S.C. GOP says that the event is "at capacity."

My personal experience is that young Americans are much more galvanised by this than older Americans, despite the fact that many were barely out of elementary school when OBL orchestrated his attack on the World Trade Center. The search for the terrorist leader went on for nearly half these students' loves – perhaps that explains their rejoicing.

It also seems possible that we might finally move on to a more thoughtful and more committed Republican approach to the 2012 presidential elections. Questioning Obama's judgment, and even his patriotism, had become a common theme amongst the current Republican pseudo candidates. According to some of them, this was a president who apologised to America's enemies instead of hunting down terrorists. Now it seems that the party's 2012 candidate must be someone who didn't indulge in the fearmongering.

The biggest loser is likely Donald Trump. The ultimate metaphor for the sudden deflation of the Donald Trump balloon came on Sunday night, when NBC abruptly cut away from his reality show, "Celebrity Apprentice," to air President Barack Obama's announcement that the U.S. had killed Osama bin Laden. With that, Trump was pushed almost totally out of the political frame — and his prospects for reentry look dim.

The events of the last 24 hours slapped America back to adultland," said GOP consultant Mike Murphy. "It's time for the circus to leave town, and Trump will be on one of the wagons."

As I walked home last night, there were hawkers on the streets selling T-shirts that that read "It took Obama to catch Osama," above a caricature of Obama confronting bin Laden outside a cave with his hands raised. Only $10.

From a Pew poll in March other actions voters support to with respect to energy include:

• Increasing federal funding for research on wind, solar, and hydrogen technology (74% favor / 21% oppose)
• Spending more on subway, rail, and bus systems (61% favor / 31% oppose)
• Providing incentives for those who buy hybrid or electric vehicles (58% favor / 35% oppose)
• Allowing more offshore drilling (57% favor / 37% oppose)

Meanwhile it will surprise no-one that the oil companies are profiting. Exxon is the latest oil company to report expanding first- quarter profits. Royal Dutch Shell said net income rose 30% to $6.3 billion, Occidental Pretroleum Corp said first-quarter profit increased 46% to $1.56 billion, and ConocoPhillips has reported a 44% profit gain.

The DCCC has also released a video that highlights campaign pledges made by some new conservative members of the House such as Rep. Dan Benishek of Michigan and Rep. Joe Heck of Nevada to leave Medicare alone. (Indeed, many of those Republicans ran accusing Democrats and President Obama of damaging Medicare through their healthcare overhaul initiative.)

Meanwhile, Americans United for Change, a progressive advocacy group that made its mark pushing back against George W. Bush's plan to partially privatize Social Security in 2005, has thrown up TV ads Ryan's Wisconsin district where Ryan's plan got a rude reception at a town hall event last week.

The man Republicans have derided as the "rationer-in-chief" charges that Republicans' own budget proposals would end up rationing care to millions of Americans on Medicare and Medicaid. "It is paradoxical really that with all this talk of rationing, the proposal we hear about how to fix American health care is to take it away from people. That's from the very people who are crying rationing," Don Berwick, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, said. 

"If you look at the proposed withdrawals of support to Medicare beneficiaries and Medicaid, it's withholding care from the people who need the care. You tell me what that is?". In particular, he said the idea of block-granting Medicaid - an idea endorsed by most of the likely Republican presidential nominees - has short- term attraction as governors deal with crushing budgets but is "unsound" in the long-term. "Block grants are throwing the states out on their own," Berwick said. "If we block grant and the next immense influenza epidemic arrives or a major recession comes back, what do we say? 'Sorry states, you're on your own?'"

A recent study by the Tax Policy Center finds that a median-income family of four has paid less in federal income taxes for the past two years than at any time since 1955.

The average American family paid a federal income tax rate of 4.68% in 2010, compared to rates of 11% or more from 1980-1982. While the marginal federal income tax rate for such a family is 15%, deductions like the earned income tax credit, child care tax credits, and the "Making Work Pay" tax credits included in President Obama's 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act have cut the real burden of a typical middle class family by almost 70%.

The economic recession also plays a role in this phenomenon, as unemployment and falling wages can drive families into lower tax brackets.

When taxpayers file their 2011 taxes next year, they will no longer receive the Making Work Pay credit. Instead, Congress has replaced Making Work Pay with a payroll tax reduction in 2011 of two percentage points. Most taxpayers will receive more from this payroll tax cut than they did from the Making Work Pay credit, with those who are better off receiving more. For example, a couple with $50,000 in wages will receive $1,000 instead of $800, but a full-time, minimum wage worker will receive $300, compared to $400 from Making Work Pay.

The wealthiest Americans are paying substantially less in taxes than they did twenty years ago

IRS data from the last year with such information available (2007) reveals that the top four hundred earners, with an average income of $345million, paid a federal income tax rate of 17%. This 17% rate is down more than one-third from the 26% rate the top four hundred were paying in 1992.

Roughly ten thousand Americans who earned over $200,000 in 2007 paid no federal income taxes at all.  In many cases this is also true for state income taxes.

Many of the wealthiest US corporations pay little or no federal taxes

Some of the top twenty-five US corporations, including Exxon, Citigroup, General Electric and Bank of America, paid no federal taxes in 2010.  Others like Ford and Chevron paid 1-2% of their pretax income in U.S. income taxes. The ability of these international companies to utilize low-tax foreign countries places American-based companies at a fundamental competitive disadvantage. For example, CVS pharmacies (with $100 billion in domestic sales) pay a full 35% federal income tax rate, as they have no overseas operations to lower their overall rate.

Senator Bernie Sanders has compiled his own list of the most egregious corporate income tax evaders.

No escape on taxes for the President

Last week the the President released his 2010 federal income and gift tax returns. He and the First Lady filed their income tax return jointly and reported an adjusted gross income of $1,728,096. The vast majority of the family's income is the proceeds from the sale of the President's books. The Obamas paid $453,770 in total federal taxes and $51,568 in state income taxes.

The Tea Party is Taxed Enough Already – but the public don't necessarily agree.

The Tea Party movement is the best example of the sentiment that Americans are taxed too much. But however successful the elites of the Tea Party have been in driving their message through the media, the American public has not embraced their view of federal tax policy.

In polling released this week, Gallup shows that the 50% who say the federal income tax is "too high" (43% "about right") is well in line with polling over the last several decades. In fact the 50% who currently say taxes are too high is less than the 52-53% share in the last two years of the Bush administration.

More fundamentally, 57% of Americans believe the income tax they pay is "fair". This number has hovered in the high 50s / low 60s for the last decade, and is twelve points higher than the 45% "fair" number from 1999.

However a sizable majority feel "upper-income people" and "corporations" should be shouldering more of the tax burden; 67% feel corporations pay "too little" in federal taxes and 59% feel upper-income people pay too little.

One woman complained in the New York Times: "I went to hear two rabbis discussing the quinoa situation at my synagogue last week. They had basically the same information, but they came to opposite conclusions. Typical."

To settle the matter, a rabbi from a kashrut (kosher dietary law) certification group will need to inspect quinoa operations in Bolivia, but that's easier said than done. It will require a rabbi from a kosher supervision service to make a four-day trek into the wilderness. In the meantime, at least some rabbis say that it's okay to use Ancient Harvest and Trader Joe's, two brands sourced from Bolivian farms that exclusively handle quinoa.

The agency still lacks the needed technical expertise to oversee the off-shore drilling industry, along with the resources, enforcement rule, regulations and legislation it needs to do its job. Getting these will not be easy because there is an ongoing fight between the Obama administration, which is looking to establish a more robust regulatory scheme that can minimize the risks to worker and the environment will allowing exploration offshore, and the oil industry executives and their congressional allies who believe that the new agency 's fundamental mission is the promotion of the nation's offshore oil and gas resources.

The Republican House is considering several bills that would force the agency to move more quickly on drilling permits, to open vast new areas along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to drilling, to reopen lease sales that were cancelled after the Gulf spill, and to ease environmental rules for drilling off the shores of Alaska. Much of the lobbying on behalf of these bills is led by the National Oceans Industry Association , which is headed by Randall Luthi, a former aide to Dick Cheney who was once head of the agency when it was the Minerals Management Service. The debate is framed by political unrest in the oil producing regions of the Middle East and the fact that this week the average price of petrol is $3.88 / gallon.

Democratic Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, who made single-payer health care a centerpiece of his gubernatorial campaign last year, said the reforms would make Vermont "the first state in the country to make the first substantive step to deliver a health care system where health care will be a right and not a privilege, where health care will follow the individual, not be a requirement of the employer, and where we'll have an affordable system that contains costs."

There are some major differences between the plans in the two states. Vermont decouples insurance from employment; insurance is based on residency in Vermont. The single-payer system is also unique and is one way Vermont achieves significant savings. Both states see fee-for-service as a barrier to cost controls and quality, and look to pay for health outcomes achieved rather than health services delivered. In both Massachusetts  and Vermont  costs remain an open question, but both states look set to build upon the payment and delivery reforms in the Affordable Care Act.

Here's how the savings are achieved:

• Non-security discretionary spending is cut by $770 billion.
• Growth in security spending is held below inflation, saving $400 billion.
• Health care savings of $480 billion by building on the delivery and cost containment reforms in the Affordable Care Act. These include strengthening the Independent Payment Advisory Board, charged with keeping health costs in check; providing states with greater flexibility to manage Medicaid; reducing costly medical errors and hospitals readmissions; and using Medicare's clout to save more money on prescription drugs.
• Savings of $360 billion in other mandatory spending such as agricultural subsidies, but programs that serve low-income families are protected.
• Income from taxes is increased by allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to lapse, closing corporate tax loopholes to increase the amount of taxes paid by companies that hide profits offshore.

Like Ryan, the president gives a pass to Social Security, although Obama said that the long-term challenges Social Security faces as a result of an aging population and a Social Security wage base that is declining as a share of overall earnings should be addressed through bipartisan efforts. Similar language was included in his February 2012 budget.

A key part of the president's plan is a "debt fail-safe" trigger that would initiate across-the-board spending reductions if, by 2014, the projected ratio of debt-to-GDP is not stabilized and declining toward the end of the decade. The aim is that deficits average no more than 2.8 percent of GDP in the second half of this decade. The trigger would not be applied to Social Security payments, Medicare benefits or low-income programs.

Republicans were quick to criticize the president's call for raising taxes, and Chairman Ryan criticized the president for being "excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate and hopelessly inadequate" in trying to reduce the nation's $14 trillion in debt." 

 But the fact is that if the Bush tax cuts to those earning more than $250,000 are allowed to expire on December 31 in 2012 (just after the next presidential election) and taxes return to the rates of the Clinton era, this would, by itself, solve about 75 percent of the deficit problem over the next five years.

It will be interesting to see how the President's new proposals are received.

Meanwhile the Republicans have reason for nervousness. A new poll finds that, after a little more than 3 months in charge, House Republicans have fallen so far out of favor with the American public that it's entirely possible Democrats could take control of the House back next year.

43% of voters think that House Republicans are doing a worse job now than the Democrats did, compared to only 36% who think the GOP has brought an improvement and 19% who think things are about the same.

62% of voters thinking that the Republicans have either made things worse or brought no improvement to an already unpopular Congress does not bode particularly well for the party.

46% of voters say that if there was an election for Congress today they would vote Democratic, compared to only 41% who would vote Republican.

Independents now say they'd vote Democratic for the House by a 42-33 margin if there was an election today, representing a 28 point reversal in a span of just five months.

When asked whether they had more faith in Obama or Congressional Republicans to lead the country in the right direction, 48% of voters picked Obama to only 42% who went with Congressional Republicans.

Over the weekend, Republicans reiterated that the short-term funding negotiations were only a dress rehearsal for the looming fight over an increase in the debt ceiling. Boehner insisted on Saturday that there is "not a chance" that President Obama will get "a clean bill" to raise the debt ceiling "without something really, really big attached to it." 

Failing to raise the debt ceiling on schedule could have immediate and dire consequences for government services and the global economy.  It would force an immediate cut of around 40% to all activities of the federal government, erode confidence in U.S. Treasury bonds, cause interest rates to spike and possibly destabilize global financial markets. This has not prevented many GOP lawmakers from threatening to vote down an increase in the debt limit if their partisan demands are not met.

Later this week, the White House will unveil their plans to reduce the nation's debt. Senior Advisor David Plouffe has said that this will include a rollback of the Bush tax cuts for the rich and spending reductions, including savings in Medicare and Medicaid.

While Republican congressional leaders repeatedly insist "There's not one Republican talking about government shutdown" this simply isn't true. Numerous Republicans  - especially those backed by the Tea Party movement - have called for a shutdown if Democrats don't concede to virtually everything they want.  Boehner does appear averse to a shutdown, he is clearly nervous about a large proportion of his caucus and where they stand on the issue. He has told his GOP colleagues that "We will lose if there is a shutdown".  But then this morning on ABC's Good Morning America, just moments after calling a shutdown "irresponsible", Boehner said, "There's no daylight between the Tea Party and me."

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds that 68 percent of self-identified tea partiers and 56 percent of self-identified Republicans want the GOP to refuse to compromise on budget talks, even if it shuts down the government. Only 28 percent of tea partiers advised GOP leaders to compromise, compared to 66 percent of independents.

The House and Senate are due to report back tot he President this evening.  It's very late int he day for Obama to start banging heads together to get some final decisions.  The HOuse is expected to pass the CR and send it to the Senate later today, leavign that dead car on the Senate Democrats doorstep.

Meanwhile Hill staffers and government employees are starting to get their furlough notices. Many are beside themselves at a suggestion that they may also have to shut down office Web-based e-mail and power off their BlackBerrys.

In 2009 Speaker John Boehner said: "Democrats are peddling talking points that are directly contradicted by their actual legislation. They are holding a press conference to pat themselves on the back for 'protecting' Medicare, even though their government takeover of health care bill would cut seniors' Medicare benefits by $500 billion. Are you kidding me?"

However while the part of Ryan's budget that's going to get the most attention is his proposal to privatise and voucherise Medicare, arguably the most worrisome part is his effort to slash Medicaid. Under the Ryan plan, Medicaid - the federal-state health care program - would cease to be an entitlement. Instead, the program would become block grants to state governments, and would increase by consumer inflation, with population adjustments adding or subtracting to the block grants, depending on population shifts. That would save $750 billion over 10 years, primarily because health care costs are rising significantly faster than the consumer price index.

Ryan lists Medicaid under "welfare reform," reflecting the widespread belief that Medicaid is a program for the poor. That belief is wrong, or at least incomplete. A full two-thirds of Medicaid's spending goes to seniors in residential care and people with disabilities - even though seniors and the disabled are only a quarter of Medicaid enrollees.

Meanwhile a real disaster looms even closer than the issues over the GOP 2012 budget. Republicans and Democrats must reach agreement on a deal on the 2011 budget to fund the government by tonight if it is to work its way through both chambers and reach President Obama's desk before Friday. In a sure sign that he still does not have control of the process, Speaker Boehner has floated a proposal for a one-week continuation of funding, provided that Democrats agree to fund the Pentagon for the rest of the year.

And the poll showed that blacks and whites had starkly different assessments about how African Americans are faring in America today when it comes to the racial equality championed by Dr King. Nineteen percent (19%) of African Americans felt that their people had achieved racial equality and 33% thought his would happen "soon". But 34% felt it would not happen in their lifetime. In contrast 47 percent of white felt that blacks had achieved racial equality and 27% felt that it would happen soon. Only 16% felt that racial equality would not be achieved in their lifetime.

Senate Democrats countered by noting that the amount of cuts they have offered is roughly the same as the amount that House Republican leaders had sought earlier this year, before conservatives in the party pushed the number higher.

"Now that Democrats have offered Republicans a deal at roughly the same levels that they endorsed last month, will Republicans take yes for an answer?" Senate Democrats asked in a news release. "Or will they bow to Tea Party demands again?"

Under the new rules of the House for the 112th Congress, every piece of legislation is required to have a Constitutional Authority Statement. The Constitutional Authority Statement for this bill says that the portion of the measure that would declare H.R. 1 law without a vote of the Senate "is enacted pursuant to the rulemaking powers provided in clause 2 of section 5 of article I of the United States Constitution in furtherance of the appropriation power provided in clause 7 of section 9 of article I of the Constitution and spending power provided in clause 1 of section 8 of article I of the Constitution."

Article I, Section 5, Clause 2 of the Constitution states that:

"Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member."

Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 states:

"No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time."

And Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 reads:

"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States."

Essentially, all this means that in order for H.R. 1255 -- the measure stating that H.R. 1 can become law through only a vote of the House -- to become law, H.R. 1255 would have to pass both the House and the Senate and be signed by the President!

"It was huge," Gruber said, to have the Massachusetts plan to point to.

While there was extensive debate in Massachusetts about the individual mandate its inclusion was ultimately Romney's decision, and the former governor was the plan's biggest "champion." Gruber is also skeptical of the argument Romney now makes, that the Massachusetts reform is different because it is a state-controlled plan. Gruber said  that it is incorrect to say, "Massachusetts did it on its own," since it received significant federal funding ($980 million) to implement the proposal.

Romney's health care reform, and in particular the individual mandate, has lead to health insurance coverage for 98% of Massachusetts residents, while adding only 1% to the state's budget.  It is enthusiastically championed by the current governor, Democrat Deval Patrick, who is moving now to address the one serious flaw in RomneyCare (that is not echoes in Obama's law) - the failure to have programs and policies to control costs.

However in an amusing moment earlier this week, Donald Trump found himself in the same situation as the President. He produced what he said was his own birth certificate, saying, "It took me one hour to get my birth certificate. It's inconceivable that, after four years of questioning, the President still hasn't produced his birth certificate."

However what he produced was not an official document but merely a record of his birth provided by the Jamaica Hospital in Queens.

A poll by Public Policy Polling in February found that the majority of Republicans do not believe Obama was born in America - a necessary condition to be President. 51% say they don't think Barack Obama was born in the United States to just 28% who firmly believe that he was and 21% who are unsure.

For his part, Obama continues to dismiss the concerns over his birth, often making it the butt of jokes. In May 2010, he told the White House Correspondents' Dinner that "there are few things in life that are harder to find and more important to keep, than love... Well, love and a birth certificate."

Boehner is reported as being willing to pass a compromise bill that will appeal to most Republicans and attract some Democrats, but this would divide his caucus as the conservative members want all the policy riders (like defunding health care reform) included.

Back home in his Ohio district Boehner is facing even tougher Tea Party pressures. They say they are preparing to call 1,000 of Boehner's donors to complain that he isn't doing enough. They say that Republicans are "timidly passing mediocre spending reforms."

A significant new White House proposal to double the $11 billion offer on the table was being reviewed by Senate Democrats over the weekend in hopes that an agreement can still be reached with Boehner on a top-line number. But the harsh rhetoric last week suggests GOP leaders still fear a tea party rebellion. And the continued absence of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) from the talks makes it harder to predict a final deal before the next shutdown deadline of April 8.

Defence cuts remain under discussion among a bipartisan group of six senators who have been meeting privately for months. They are trying to develop a comprehensive deficit-reduction plan for Congress to consider, possibly when lawmakers vote to raise the debt limit as early as this month.

But defence cuts will not be easy, even in these tough times. Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), a member of the deficit group, has fought Pentagon plans to halt production of F-22 jet fighters assembled at a Lockheed Martin plant in his state. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), another member, has said there was "no rational basis" for closing Norfolk's Joint Forces Command. Both senators still say, in terms of the deficit talks, nothing is off the table.

And there are more fights to come. Congress must resolve two other fiscal issues in coming months:

The 2012 budget. Debate on next year's budget will begin in early April, as House Republicans release their blueprint. GOP leaders say they will propose significant reductions to entitlement spending. That may help them shore up support from conservatives who feel spending cuts in the 2011 budget are insufficient.

The debt ceiling. The government is expected to reach its legal borrowing limit between April 15 and May 31. The Treasury warns of "catastrophic" results if the U.S. cannot borrow additional funds or pay interest to investors. Some conservatives say a higher debt limit must be accompanied by a serious deficit-reduction plan.

For instance, on the eve of passage now-House Speaker John Boehner said that passage of reform would result in "Armageddon"  because the law will "ruin our country." Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) predicted "there will be non insurance industry left in three years" and announced that seniors would "die soon", Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) went further and warned  that seniors would be "put to death" by the government, while Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) stated that "no new health insurance policies can be written once this federal plan comes into effect." Fox News pundit Sean Hannity said , "If we get nationalized health care, it's ovetr; this is socialism" and Glenn Beck predicted "the end of America as you know it."

So far none of these predictions have come true, even as the number of Americans in need of health insurance has grown over the past year. Politifact has conducted more than 400 separate fact-checks on health care since 2007, including more than 150 since the law was signed.

Despite the House Republican majority's grand pronouncements, the prospect for repeal – or even a defunding of various provisions – is doubtful at best. With the exception of a more-or-less-ceremonial vote at the beginning of this congressional session, the GOP has been carping on the sidelines. This may play out badly for them and their new allies among tea party voters and activists.

One threat to action came this week from Representative Tom Price (R-GA), chair of the House Republican Policy Committee and the fifth-ranking Republican in the House leadership, who told reporters that the fight to defund implementation of the health care reform law will spill over into the debt ceiling fight. "Our budget I think will once again define a strong support for non-funding of the legislation," Price said. "It is a work in progress, and my suspicion is the debt ceiling may include the same kind of legislation."

The long-term spending bill passed by the House does include defunding of reform implementation, but this bill is going nowhere in its current form. So far, short-term spending bills have prevented the government from shutting down, while keeping a brawl over health care implementation funds off the front burner. Price's suggestion that Republicans will use the debt ceiling as leverage to force the defunding of reform implementation will probably make the conservatives who want to talk about implementation happy, but it also makes the possibility of a government shutdown more likely.

Meanwhile, it may be uphill for Democrats to hold the Senate in 2012, but they're eyeing an opportunity on the health care law. Senate Democrats argue that independent voters don't want the law repealed or defunded and that Republican candidates in battleground states could be pushed into competitive primaries that will require them to make hard-line promises to repeal or defund the law.

They're eyeing the Massachusetts Senate race in particular, where Republican Scott Brown will have to defend his seat. But they also believe the GOP primaries could be a factor in states such as Nevada, Missouri, Virginia, Florida and New Mexico.

"Bloody primaries across the country are forcing Republican Senate candidates to talk only about repeal and defunding - not a message that appeals to general election voters," said a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "Republican Senate candidates are so fearful of leaving any space on their right that they are going to have to out-demagogue the other guy on health care for the next 18 months, rather than focus on jobs and the economy."

The Senate Democratic candidates will be able to use an arsenal of state-specific facts about the benefits their states have already received from the law. They include the number of seniors who have gotten help with their Medicare prescription drug coverage (4 million) and the small businesses that have received tax credits to help them buy health coverage (4 million small businesses have access to $40 billion in tax credits).

Republicans also blamed Democrats for failing to approve a budget last year, and said that failure means they have no right to complain about GOP budget proposals. "They left the American people and this country with this pile of crap, they should not complain about how we try to clean this up," Representative Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) said.

But Democrats rejected these arguments and said Republicans need to restart negotiations with the Senate and abandon the earlier House-passed bill, H.R. 1, as a starting point.

"Their ideological and rigid loyalty to H.R. 1 is what is holding up these negotiations," said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.). Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) added that Republicans are effectively saying, "Take it or leave it."

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who warned last week that this is the last continuing resolution he would support, stressed that temporary spending bills are not good governance. "This is a lousy way to run a railroad," Hoyer said. "We are trying to run the largest enterprise in the world in two-week segments. This ought to be the last of this type."

For Bachmann, who leads the House Tea Party caucus and champions a return to the Constitution, to get such basic facts wrong about the country's birth is revealing. Her comment wasn't just an off-hand reference that she inserted in her remarks. At a fundraiser Friday night on the New Hampshire Seacoast, Bachmann said almost the exact same thing,

Bachmann's geographic mix-up prompted derision among some New Hampshire Republicans. One prominent Republican asked: "Seriously, the real question is whether she knows she (got it wrong), I suspect not."

The latest gaffe may not hurt her with those grass-roots activists who are attracted to her for her attacks against the Obama administration, but it could hamper her efforts to be taken seriously among the broader swath of Republicans she'd need to win the nomination.

"She makes Sarah Palin look like Count Metternich," said a GOP consultant on Twitter after reading about the Concord confusion.

Meanwhile Bachmann's arch rival Sarah Palin is annoying some of the most influential conservative commentators and intellectuals. They say her politics of grievance and group identity is a betrayal of conservative principles. It's been a standard line of the right that liberals cynically promote victimhood to achieve their goals and that they practice the politics of identity — race, sex and class—over ideas.

Among those taking aim at Palin recently are George Will, the elder statesman of conservative columnists. Matt Labash, a longtime writer for the Weekly Standard, said that because of Palin's frequent appeals to victimhood and group grievance, "She's becoming Al Sharpton, , Alaska edition."

The conservative intelligentsia don't like Palin – they fear that her rise would represent the triumph of an intellectually empty brand of populism and the death of ideas as an engine of the right. Asked if the GOP would remain the party of ideas if Palin captures the nomination, Will said: "The answer is emphatically no." Other conservatives have found different ways to call Sarah Palin out for her rhetoric.

Columnist Charles Krauthammer, without talking about Palin specifically, noted that "there's healthy and unhealthy populism," and there is concern about the rise of the latter. "When populism becomes purely anti-intellectual, it can become unhealthy and destructive," said Krauthammer.

Does Palin care about what conservative commentators say about her? So far, the answer would appear to be no.

The current budget debate – the focus of which has now moved to the Senate - pits Obama's approach (cut intelligently, invest in the future) against the Republicans' (slash and burn, let the private sector take care of jobs). It is interesting to note that the Senate Republicans want no bar of the FY 2011 budget bill passed by their colleagues in the House: they clearly recognize it for the poison chalice that it is. Still, as usual, the GOP has little of its own to put on the table. The Congress is moving inexorably towards a massive budget showdown, possibly even a government shutdown.

In the last century, America's growth and prosperity were the consequences of major public investments made in infrastructure, public education and science and technology. All that has now eroded or disappeared, along with the Reagan optimism The Prime Minister referred to.

Her own optimism in the US is undimmed. "I firmly believe you are the same people who amazed me when I was a small girl by landing on the moon," she said. "On that great day, I believed Americans could do anything. I believe that still. You can do anything today."

Americans must ask their politicians: where are today's investments that will create the next generation of growth for our children and grandchildren and sustain Julia Gillard's belief that Americans can do anything.

The measures in New Hampshire are among dozens of voting-related bills being pushed by newly empowered Republican state lawmakers across the country – prompting partisan clashes similar to those already occurring in states such as Wisconsin and Ohio over GOP moves to curb union power. There are also initiatives in states such as North Carolina and Texas to strengthen voter ID laws that discriminate against low-income people who have neither a driver's licence or a passport. The real goal of all these initiatives is clearly to deflate the power of core Democratic voting blocs – young people, public servants, and minorities.

The issue about college students is not new. It was also an issue for Republicans in the 2008 presidential campaign as they saw how effectively the Obama campaign's voter registration drives were on student campuses. Student-registration controversies have been a recurring problem since 1971, when the 26st Amendment lowered the voting age to 18 from 21, and despite a 1979 ruling by the Supreme Court that students have the right to register at their college address.

According to the 2010 Report on the Health of Colorado's Forests, pine beetles have torn through a 180-mile-by-140-mile swath of lodgepole pines. An estimated 100,000 dead trees fall in the pine beetle zone every day.

All those dead trees are an increased fire risk. And the shortage of whitebark seeds in winter is depriving grizzly bears of an important food source, forcing them to head for lower altitudes with an increase risk of encountering humans.

The US ski industry views global warming as a long-term concern and is taking action to protect its livelihood, through partnerships with environmental groups and state governments, and individual actions.

Vail Resorts has offset 100 percent of energy use by purchasing wind-power credits. These five resorts, in Colorado and California, still receive power from the electrical grid at regular rates, but they are also paying a premium to renewable energy retailers to purchase 152,000 megawatt hours of wind energy.

Individual ski resorts in Colorado offer free lift tickets to employees and guests if they purchase wind power energy for their residence, or free parking at the slopes if they drive a hybrid vehicle.

So far this winter Colorado has seen good early snow falls and bitterly cold temperatures in January. When we were here last month it was -25 degrees Fahrenheit one morning! The good snow continues, although we all remember 2009 which started out like this and by March it was spring skiing conditions on the slopes, and it was too dangerous to skate on the lake at Keystone Resort.

Will we see the death of the ski industry within 50 years, or does the weather over the past decade reflect nothing more than the cyclical vagaries of the local weather?

For the moment, those of us who remember when spring skiing extended into June and even to July 4 at nearby Arapahoe Basin are simply hoping that the great snow continues. And we can even put up with a few days when it's too cold to ski if there are enough of them to kill off the relentless march of the pine beetles.

Conversely, many Americans underestimate the size of the larger budget items such as defenc. According to the Gallup poll (above), only 58% of Americans realize that the US spends more on national defense than any other country (it spends 7x more than China, the nation with the second largest defense spending). A Pew survey found that only 39% of Americans knew that the US spends more on defence than on education, Medicare, or interest from the national debt.

The public does not put their trust in one single person or organization to resolve issues with the deficit and budget. According to the CBS poll cited above, 42% of Americans trust President Obama to lower the deficit, the same number as trust Republicans in Congress.

The polls also show deep divisions within the GOP on budget and deficit issues. A recent Pew poll finds that the spending preferences of Republicans and GOP leaners who do not agree with the Tea Party are far more in sync with Democrats than with Republican supporters of the Tea Party. Republican intra-party divisions are particularly sharp over funding for education, Social Security and environmental protection. A third (33%) of Republicans and GOP leaners who agree with the Tea Party favor decreasing federal education spending, compared with just 4% of non-Tea Party Republicans. Instead, 64% of non-Tea Party Republicans want increased education spending, as do 78% of Democrats and Democratic leaners.

And finally, perhaps the polls show that the public don't really see cutting the budget deficit as a priority.

A January CBS News/New York Times poll found 43% of Americans think the most important thing for Congress to focus on is job creation; only 14 percent said the budget deficit. A recent Gallup poll found that 29 percent of Americans think unemployment is the nation's most important problem and another 26 percent think the economy generally is; only 12 percent told Gallup the deficit is the most important problem (although this is the highest ranking the deficit has had in over a decade).

"I'm confident we can get Social Security done in the same way that Ronald Reagan and [late Speaker] Tip O'Neill were able to get it done, by parties coming together, making some modest adjustments," Obama said. "I think we can avoid slashing benefits, and I think we can make it stable and stronger for not only this generation but for the next generation."

That might be viewed as simply "kicking the can down the road" - to use the phrase of the moment.

Take for example the state of Texas' budget  .

All across Texas, school superintendents are bracing for the largest cuts to public education since World War II. About $4.8 billion will disappear from the education budget over the next two years. And Texas is not alone. Schools across the country are in trouble as billions in emergency stimulus grants from the federal government have run out, and state and federal lawmakers have interpreted the victory of fiscal hawks in November's midterm elections to mean that tax increases are out of the question. Governor Rick Perry, who was easily re-elected in November, made it clear in his annual State of the State speech  last week that he regarded raising revenue for schools as out of the question, and he has also refused to consider using $9.4 billion in a reserve fund to bail out the schools.

Every year about 85,000 new students arrive in Texas, but there will be no new funds to cover this. As many as 100,000 school employees will have to be laid off. In one school district alone the superintendent and school board have agreed to shut down a recently built grade school and to cut a 10th of the staff, among them a principal, 2 assistant principals, 4 librarians and 38 teachers.

Not only are the proposed cuts to school aid draconian, but in addition the Legislature in 2006 put strict limits on how much districts can raise local property taxes. That means local school boards find themselves trapped amid rising enrollment, double-digit drops in state aid and frozen local taxes. Texas got about $3.3 billion in federal aid under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that helped plug the funding gap for the past two years but this year that aid has disappeared.

Elsewhere in the Texas budget $16.1 billion (25%) has been cut from health and human services spending and Medicaid provider rates - what doctors and hospitals and others are paid - will be cut by 10 %. Lawmakers are looking at slashing dialysis services, hospice care and aged care even as health bureaucrats predict that this will place increased pressure on public hospitals. Governor Perry's budget would consolidate eight state agencies into others and eliminate four more, putting at risk the jobs of 70,000 people.

Perhaps as a distraction, Governor Perry is keeping the Texas legislature busy with bills on abortion and increased identification requirements for voters.

And here's watch Fox News said:  "If CPAC is a primary for self-confidence, Donald Trump won hands down. The real-estate mogul with a genius for self-promotion gave the most-acclaimed - and most colorful - speech at the conservative gathering this afternoon, from the moment he took the stage to the song "Money, Money, Money." With no visible sense of irony, he slammed libertarian Ron Paul as a losing hopeful who can't capture the brass ring and got booed by some for it, said our current president came 'out of nowhere," and quoted a business magazine's story about what a terrific entrepreneur he himself is. Yet he was by far the best-received speaker and the audience lapped up his act."

Sarah Palin is making sure that she is not missing from the news spotlight, even though she has chosen for the fourth consecutive years to skip CPAC. It seems that CPAC attendees love Sarah but don't see her as a presidential candidate.  I loved this comment from one of them: "Where's Sarah Palin? Probably on a reality show," said Brian Jencunas of New Jersey, shrugging his shoulders. "Instead, we got Sarah Palin lite – Michele Bachmann. They've got the same hair, the same voice, the same issues."

Judge for yourselves; video of Bachmann's speech is here.

It's Sarah's 47th birthday today. She celebrated by getting in some jabs at the GOP establishment. "Tea party Americans and I thank God that tea party Americans were elected into this new Congress to kind of show some new ways to the old guard, if you will, to let them see that what happened in this last election, I believe, was a big wake-up call for some of the old guard," she said on Fox Business Network last night. "I think with all due respect to those who have served honorably for many years, but perhaps, I've gotten a little bit off track in terms of spending too much money that we do not have."

Many of the 93 freshmen members of the House still don't know the difference between an authorization and an appropriation or how outlays differ from budget authority. There have been no hearings, no requests for testimony, and no opportunity for staff charged with proposing the cuts to do agency-by-agency analyses of the possible negative consequences. So next week many new members of the House will be required to vote on the package without fundamental knowledge of how major budget changes in literally thousands of federal programs will impact the country in general or their own constituents in particular.

The House GOP leaders should take nothing for granted here – not even the votes of their own colleagues. Not once but twice in the past two days, the new Republican team in charge has fumbled on what should have been easy passage of bills that had overwhelming support.

The back-to-back embarrassments - on an extension of the Patriot Act and on a bill to compel the United Nations to return $179 million to the U.S. Treasury – suggests that the Boehner, Cantor , and McCarthy team has yet to find its groove. Or that it has yet to heed the most basic rule of legislating: Don't take a bill to the floor unless you know how many votes you have.

While many Hispanics are too young to vote or are not yet citizens, this represents some real voter clout that in the current political environment plays to the Democrats' advantage. In 2008, Obama won Nevada and Florida largely because the Hispanic voters were a large enough segment to make a difference in an otherwise close election. The same can be said for Senator Reid's re-election in Nevada last November. While it may be a while before Democratic–leaning Hispanics can do this in the deep Red state of Texas, they can tip the balance more immediately in some of the rest of the Sunbelt in states such as Arizona.

Well, she's still playing a key role. Last November she announced that she will invite the leading 2012 GOP presidential hopefuls to a debate - an audition of sorts - at the Ronald Reagan presidential library in spring 2011. "Ronnie would be thrilled that the road to the White House will begin at his presidential library," Mrs. Reagan said in a statement .

It will be interesting to see who is there.

At University Medical Center, where the most seriously injured victims were treated, the hospital's chief financial officer, said she did not anticipate any problems recovering costs. "It is my expectation that the bills will be paid and the hospital will be appropriately compensated," she said. However she did acknowledge that some patients lacked insurance cover.

There will be some state and federal victim-compensation money and some private charitable efforts to aid victims and their families.

Congresswoman Giffords probably has the best insurance, a Congressional plan known for its comprehensive coverage that was held out as a model during last year's debate over the health care overhaul. This has left some of those who are following Ms. Giffords's treatment, including her speedy transfer from Tucson to a top rehabilitation facility in Houston, wishing that their health plans were as responsive.

For example, Monique Pomerleau, a mother of three from Northern California, suffered a traumatic brain injury in a traffic accident last February but has not yet undergone rehabilitation because her insurer, Health Net of California, said it lacked such services within their network. Her family has hired a lawyer to press the matter and recently received word that a 30-day rehabilitation program had been approved.

And here's another – different – story about why the U.S. needs health care reform:

Vietnam vet Ronald Flanagan has been battling cancer for more than two years. Two weeks ago, Flanagan was getting prepped for a bone biopsy at the local Exempla Rock Creek Medical Center. But at the last minute, his wife Frances called the hospital and told them to stop the procedure because she had just received notice that they no longer have insurance. The reason why? The couple had accidentally underpaid their insurer by two pennies and it had decided to drop them from their plan.

It transpired that when Frances Flanagan was paying their monthly health insurance premium online last November, she swapped a 7 for a 9, leaving their $328.69 payment two cents short. In a media statement the couple's insurer, Ceridian Cobra Services, explained, "Since the payment was not full, it fit into the definition in the regulations of an 'insufficient payment." Under the ensuing publicity glare, the insurance company has managed to reinstate the Flanagan's cover.

He also referenced the "opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America," which spoke directly to Tea Party activists.

Vinson ruled that, "[i]f Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain." However, as Ian Milhiser at the Center for American Progress' writes, "there is a long line of Supreme Court decisions holding that Congress has broad power to enact laws that substantially affect prices, marketplaces, or other economic transactions. Because health care comprises approximately 17 percent of the national economy, it is impossible to argue that a bill regulating the national health care market does not fit within Congress's power to regulate commerce. The Supreme Court has long held that Congress can exercise its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce to regulate insurance, which the Court has stated "touches the home, the family, and the occupation or the business of almost every person in the United States."

After finding the law unconstitutional, Vinson did not issue an injunction to halt the law's implementation, but wrote that "the federal government should adhere to his declaratory judgment as the functional equivalent of an injunction." This is quite confusing. Does this mean that the three million seniors who have already received cheques to help make prescription drugs more affordable should immediately surrender their benefits because of Vinson's ruling?

Although Vinson's reasoning seems to be faulty, there is potential for further rulings that would reinforce his view. The Department of Justice will appeal Vinson's ruling, but the case will likely head to the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta, "considered one of the country's most conservative appellate benches." This issue is almost certain to reach the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, research from the Pew Foundation shows that there continues to be little consensus from the public over health care reform, although slowly opinions are becoming more favourable. Far more voters (55%) want the legislation either expanded (35%) or left as is (20%) than favor its repeal (37%). There is very little partisan difference in opinions about the importance of revising the health care legislation passed last year, but Republicans and Democrats have very different ideas about how to revise it. More than six-in-ten (64%) Republicans support repealing health care legislation while roughly half (51%) of Democrats support expanding it. Independents are divided -- 38% would repeal the legislation and 37% would expand it. Notably, the option of leaving the legislation as it is wins only modest support across the board.

But other Republicans have offered a swift rebuke of the plans, and raised the spectre that the savings may not be realised.

"I'm not happy," the new Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Howard (Buck) McKeon, said."This is a dramatic shift for a nation at war and a dangerous signal from the Commander in Chief."

"Gates has announced the continued dismantling of the greatest military the world has ever known," said Representative Randy Forbes, a Republican lawmaker.

On the other hand, some Tea Party-backed lawmakers favour deeper cuts. This week, Senator Rand Paul proposed a $500 billion cut in the overall federal budget, including $16 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gates has said however that calls for deeper cuts would be "risky at best and potentially calamitous," citing global tensions that require a strong, modern U.S. military.

Yesterday Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn told the new GOP-controlled House Armed Services Committee that the proposed level of cuts of $78 billion "strikes the right balance for these difficult times."

"I will not support any measures that stress our forces and jeopardize the lives of our men and women in uniform," Chairman McKeon retorted. "I will also oppose any plans that have the potential to damage or jeopardize our national security."

Specifically, several committee members expressed concern about Gates' plan to cancel the $12 billion Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, the cost of which has risen from $5 million apiece to $17 million. Gates has said that money will be used to buy additional ships, F-18 jets and new electronic jammers. But lawmakers complained that they were not privy to the decision-making process and questioned whether it was dictated by the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

So far, few Tea Party-backed members on the House Armed Services Committee have said specifically where they would cut military spending. In fact, in public remarks at the hearing on Wednesday, several spoke up in favor of favorite military programs or of protecting military installations at home, illustrating the difficulty of balancing their overarching philosophy and goals with the immediate concerns of their districts.

Representative Vicky Hartzler, a freshman Republican from Missouri who was backed by Sarah Palin and who defeated former Representative Ike Skelton, the longtime Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said that "now is not the time to talk about defense cuts while we are engaged in two theaters with men and women in harm's way." Her district has two large military bases, so that clearly governs her response: "I will be a staunch defender of military installations in my district and across the country."

At the end of yesterday's hearing, Chairman McKeon said members of the panel were frustrated with a lack of communication from the Pentagon. "We don't want to be confrontational," he said. "But we get the feeling decisions are a fait accompli." In a rare concession about Congress, the chairman said there are "big egos up here."

So it looks like egos and home district issues will override any drive to tackle the budget deficit.

But if Democrats and Republicans are facing tough decisions and some pointed philosophical disagreements over the budget and the deficit, there is an even greater divide looming within the GOP, as exemplified by the SOTU response from Representative Michele Bachmann, a Congressional Tea Party leader. Ms. Bachmann assured her audience that she didn't intend to "compete" with the official Republican response, but she certainly clashed with both the President and Congressman Ryan and dispensed with even the illusion of comity.

She didn't bring a "prom date" to the State of the Union address – she chose to sit with other Republicans – and she didn't wear the wear the black and white ribbon in honor of Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of the Tucson assassination attempt like so many of her colleagues, and then she gate-crashed the official Republican response. In her "Tea Party Response" she defied Democratic and Republican leaders who had scripted a night of unity, courtesy and (almost) common purpose, and instead delivered a blast of Tea Partisan fury.

It's a sign of how powerful she and her Congressional faction have become. It is also a warning sign to the President and House and Senate Leaders of both parties about just how difficult their political decision-making is about to become.

The calls from the Right for cuts in government spending are growing, with little attention to the consequences. For example, in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial,  Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe from FreedomWorks propose eliminating the departments of Commerce and Housing and Urban Development and the Small Business Administration (saves $564 billion); ending urban mass transit grants, privatizing Amtrak and ending rail subsidies (saves $83 billion); and privatizing air traffic control (saves $38 billion). The Tea Party wants to eliminate the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency and much of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Interior.

Of course doing all that would save quite a lot of money – although not enough to balance the budget and pay off the national debt. But what would it mean for unemployment rates around the country, for the Patent and Trademark Office, for public housing, airline safety and infrastructure updates? When federal funds are no longer flowing for health care, education and hazardous waste clean-up, does that mean that these activities will be funded by the states, or (as Bachmann proposes) thrown to the private sector? Is it OK for states to raise taxes to pay for these public necessities even as federal lawmakers commit to lowering tax rates?

It is very clear that there are hard budget decisions coming for lawmakers, and both sides (or is it all three sides?) need to get serious about them and put some specific, detailed proposals on the table. Hiding how difficult grappling with federal budget deficits is going to be, leading the public to believe that there are relatively easy ways out, only raises the political liability.

And a closing note: don't be too deceived by all that civility in the chamber of the House last night. The civility show didn't last long - actually, it never really started. Even as Republican lawmakers were earning an "A" in deportment while the teacher was in the room, their offices were releasing a flurry of statements that showed the partisan warfare  was lurking right below the surface. As the spoke, Boehner's office released a torrent of rapid-response e-mails countering central parts of the speech. Representative Paul Broun (R-GA), was blunt in his Twitter feed: "Mr. President, you don't believe in the Constitution. You believe in socialism." Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) issued a critical statement embargoed for release the moment the State of the Union ended.

It was a final irony that he recognised that: "All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin." He was to serve barely one thousand days in office.

And we should note the passing this week of John Kennedy's brother–in-law, a legend in his own right, Sargent Shriver.  He founded the Peace Corps in 1961, and was the architect of President's Johnston's War on Poverty. He leaves a long and admirable record of public service.

The GOP also faces a stark comparison. Previous Republican efforts at health care reform are projected to leave 52 million Americans uninsured,  and Republican lawmakers have not indicated how – or even if - they plan to expand coverage.

The plans they have proposed don't stand up to tough scrutiny, or are sophisticated versions of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Deregulating insurance could make health insurance more expensive for sick Americans, even if it were more affordable for healthy people, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Budget analysts also estimated that the quality of the coverage that many Americans had could erode as insurers offered fewer benefits.

GOP leaders have demonstrated they could craft less costly health legislation that does not require new taxes or cuts in Medicare spending. Their 2009 bill included just $61 billion in new spending over 10 years, compared with more than $900 billion for the health law Obama signed. But Republicans offered little help for low- and moderate-income Americans who are struggling to pay their premiums. Premium subsidies are the single largest expense in the law that Obama signed.

So far, senior House Republicans are remaining tight-lipped about how or when they will deliver their vision of something better.

Not so former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who caused a stir during the construction of health care reform when he said he'd vote for the bill (no wonder he's the former Senate Majority leader!). Frist said it was important to consider the bill the "law of the land" and move on from there.

"It is not the bill that [Republicans] would have written," said the Tennessee Republican, "It is not the bill that I would have drafted. But it is the law of the land and it is the platform, the fundamental platform, upon which all future efforts to make that system better, for that patient, for that family, will be based. And that is a fact. I know the discussion of Washington is repeal and I'm sure we will come back to that discussion..."

"[The bill] has many strong elements," Frist added later. "And those elements, whatever happens, need to be preserved, need to be cuddled, need to be snuggled, need to be promoted and need to be implemented. But how do you do it? How do you do a lot of what is in this law?"

In the context of how his fellow Republican lawmakers have demonized the legislation, Frist seemed to be reading off an entirely different script. At one point, he insisted that the bill was "beautiful on paper" and that Republicans should "love" the fact it adopts a "federalism" approach to health care.

That said, his prescriptions for changing the bill were decidedly conservative in mindset. He predicted that there would be "public private partnerships in ways that were never envisioned." "You have no choice but to bring in the private sector, and the private sector know that it's time to play," he said. "And there will be financial resources there." Still, it's important to note that Frist is invested, literally, in the law. He has made a fortune as a result of stock ownership from the family-founded Hospital Corporation of America, the for-profit hospital chain.

Meanwhile, in the absence of any real chance of Senate approval of the repeal measure, Eric Cantor has said House Republicans "will do everything we can to delay and defund the health care bill." That, too, would require approval by the Senate and a presidential signature, unlikely events that suggest a protracted struggle over the bill that Democrats passed a year ago.

In his acceptance speech for his Nobel prize he linked racial and economic injustice. In 1964, before the Voting Rights Act had passed, he observed in his Nobel Prize speech, "Just as nonviolence exposed the ugliness of racial injustice, so must the infection and sickness of poverty be exposed and healed--not only its symptoms but its basic causes." And he attributed racial injustice, poverty and war to a "poverty of the spirit" that saw society in monologue rather than dialogue.

Many Americans are not aware that the occasion for Dr King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech was officially known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom [emphasis added]. The march called for a 'massive Federal Public Works program to provide jobs for all the unemployed,' and spoke of the 'twin evils of discrimination and economic deprivation.'

Dr King would surely be appalled at the state of the nation today. The statistics tell the story.

• More than one quarter of all African Americans live below the poverty level (less than $30,000 a year for a family of four) and 12% live in deep poverty (less than $10.000 a year for a family).
• 35% of all black children are poor.
• 37% of African Americans live in neighbourhoods with poor conditions – defined as lacking sidewalks, parks and playgrounds, recreation of community centres and a library.
• More than one-half of the nearly 50 million people without health insurance are people of colour.

In many major cities – New York, Detroit, Chicago – the levels of segregation are the same today as they were 30 years ago.  This residential segregation arguably is the cornerstone on which black / white health disparities have been built.

These include:

• Lack of access to affordable fresh foods.
• Infant mortality rates twice the national average (the infant mortality rate for black babies is 12.3 deaths / 100,000 live births – that's considerably worse than the rate of Australian Indigenous babies which is 10).
• Maternal mortality rates almost three times the national average (35 deaths / 100,000 live births compared to 13.5)
• African Americans (who make up 13.3 % of the population) account for approximately 50% of HIV/AIDS cases and 66% of the cases of HIV in children.
• Black Americans have higher death rates from cardiovascular disease, cancer and asthma.

Indeed there is still much to fight for and much to overcome as many of these disparities are widening over time.

And this week thousands of health care investors gathered in San Francisco for the J.P Morgan Health Care Conference onhow to capitalize on health reform's new business opportunities. Investors say they're increasingly optimistic on health insurers' future for two crucial reasons: regulations released this year have been relatively industry-friendly, increasing stability, and the health reform's new business opportunities are beginning to look more tangible. An estimated 32 million Americans will gain health insurance by 2019 if the law stands, and for health insurers, that represents a potential boon for both their individual market business as well as in the Medicaid market, where states regularly contract with private insurers to manage care.

So why is the bill not more popular? Why do almost half of respondents in most polls say they want to repeal the measure, even though the number drops dramatically once people learn what's actually in the bill? A Quinnipiac poll released today finds that that piece of legislation is both the most popular and unpopular accomplishment of Obama's presidency.

In the poll, health care reform was by far the top answer to two open ended questions that asked respondents to name the best and the worst thing Obama has done as president. Twenty-six percent of respondents said health care was the best thing Obama has done, while 27 percent said it was the worst thing he's done in office.

Part of the reason for this continuing divide over health care reform is the emotional, apocalyptic rhetoric some conservatives and Republicans have used to describe it. They've been blatantly dishonest about what the Affordable care Act does, arguing that the bill will kill jobs, impose socialism, bring on tyranny, and create death panels to deny care to people deemed less worthwhile. The Republican base has been whipped into a frenzy over the issues. And that frenzy, amplified through the right-wing noise machine, has in turn helped to prop up the repeal movement.

Once theis legislative gamemanship is up, the House must necessarily turn to the difficult task of the budget and the deficit.  The we will see what the true abilities and priorities of the new House leadership.

What really drove Jarod Lee Loughner to commit his shooting spree is at this stage unknown, but it probably owes as much to the state of mental health care services as it does to extremist rhetoric.

Threats against Members of Congress, especially those who have supported health care reform, were up by 300% in the second half of 2010. Congresswoman Giffords has become a target of Tea Party activists for her support of health care reform, immigration reform, and other issues. When health care reform passed in March, she was one of ten Democrats who reported deaths threats, incidents of harassment and vandalism at their district offices. 

A number of the people making those threats have a history of mental illness – but there is something about the current state of American that has been causing far more disturbed people to act out their illness and their alienation by threatening or actually engaging in political violence. As Bill Clinton noted, with reference to the Oklahoma City bombings, "The words we use really do matter. There's this vast echo chamber, and they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike."  "

We can't let the debate veer so far into hatred that we lose focus of our common humanity," President Clinton said. "It's really important. We can't ever fudge the fact that there's a basic line dividing criticism from violence or its advocacy, and that the closer you get to the line and the more responsibility you have, you have to think about the echo chamber in which your words resonate."

For the moment at least, there is great civility on Capitol Hill and temporarily, the strident rhetoric is muted. It's not clear if this will last and for how long. The House GOP leadership has pulled the vote on the repeal of health care reform, and it's not clear when this will next come up. The earliest opportunity is January 25, the day the President gives his State of the Union address. Could the GOP really consider such an in-you-face vote on that day?

An end note:

Gallop polls have asked this basic gun control question regularly: "In general, do you feel that the laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict, less strict, or kept as they are now?" In October (the last time this question was asked) 44% said the laws should be made more strict, 12% said they should be less strict, and 42% should they should remain the same. In the fall of 1990, 78%favoured stricter gun laws, and in May 2000, 62 % said that gun laws should be stricter. Support for gun control has steadily fallen, even in the face of the Columbine High School massacre, and the shootings at Virginia Tech and Fort Hood.

The amendments seek to preserve:

• The elimination of lifetime limits on care;
• The requirement that insurance plans allow young people up to age 26 to remain on their parents' healthcare policies;
• The ban on discrimination against people with preexisting conditions; and
• The provision of free preventive care for seniors.

However Republican leaders have indicated they won't allow the amendments.

Meanwhile today's news highlights why health care reforms are needed.

• A second person denied transplant coverage by Arizona under a state budget cut has died, and hospital officials said this death "most likely" resulted from the coverage reduction.
• New data show that total national health spending grew by only 4 percent in 2009, the slowest rate of increase in 50 years, as people lost their jobs, lost health insurance and deferred medical care. Partly offsetting the slowdown in private health spending was a rapid increase in Medicaid spending, driven by the addition of 3.5 million people to the rolls as more Americans live below the poverty level. Even so, the nation spent $2.5 trillion on health care in 2009, for an average of $8,086 a person.
• Blue Shield of California has stunned individual policyholders by seeking huge rate hikes of as much as 59% for tens of thousands of customers. This despite the fact that spending on health care by private insurance companies grew a modest 1.3 percent in 2009.

Blue Shield seems to want it all – this morning the company issued the following statement:

Statement by Blue Shield of California
The rate increases reported today cover a period of more than one year and have almost nothing to do with the federal health reform law. These rates reflect trends that were building long before health reform. Our individual market medical costs are rising rapidly due to higher provider prices, increased utilization, and the fact that healthier people are dropping coverage during a bad economy. Health reform will help slow down this trend by expanding coverage, which will keep healthier people in the system, and through quality and cost containment initiatives such as the Independent Payment Advisory Board, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and other incentives for prevention and coordinated health care.

Even with these rate increases, Blue Shield of California expects to lose tens of millions of dollars on its individual healthcare business in both 2010 and 2011. These new rates meet the federal requirement that 80 percent of premiums are spent on healthcare expenses.

Tom Epstein
Vice President, Public Affairs
Blue Shield of California
50 Beale Street
San Francisco, CA 94105

Ironically, the move by House Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act could turn out to be the best thing that has happened for improving the public perceptions of the health care reform law. Democrats and the President have struggled to get people to focus on what is in the law and how they will benefit from these provisions in the face of much factual distortion and obfuscation from Republicans and other opponents. Now, as seniors and families realize what they are about to lose, people are concerned for their individual finances if not for the national debt.

On November 9, 1860 the United States Flag was taken down at all the batteries in Charleston Harbor and the South Carolina state flag was raised. On Christmas night, Major Anderson , who commanded the federal force at Fort Moultrie, abandoned that fort, and removed all his command to Fort Sumter, on an island in the harbor that would be easier to defend.

The news was broken to President Buchanan by Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, who could not resist a concluding slap: "Mr. President, you are surrounded by blood and dishonor on all sides.''

You can read what Buchanan and his Cabinet did next here. There was an attempt to send reinforcements to Fort Sumter by ship, by artillery fire forced the ship, the Star of the West, to withdraw when only a mile and a half from Fort Sumter. In just a few short months the civil war would begin.

Against this historical background, the threats of the Tea Party don't look so bad, and nasty as things are, there is little to support the contention of former President Jimmy Carter that the U.S. is more polarized now than in 1861. Still, there has been some pretty tough language directed at both major parties.

Mark Meckler, a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, said of the Democrats and the successful lame duck session: "We sent them a message that we expect them to go home and come back newly constituted and do something different. For them to legislate when they've collectively lost their mandate just shows the arrogance of the ruling elite. I can't imagine being repudiated in the way they were and then coming back and saying 'Now that we've been repudiated, let's go pass some legislation.' But he did not reserve his criticism just for Democrats. "The Republicans, frankly, have been a disaster," Mr. Meckler said. "They stood strong on some things, but the only reason they stood strong is because we stood behind them with a big stick."

So we move forward into 2011. When things get too horrible in the Congress in the year ahead, we can look back and gain some perspective through the lens of 1861.

 The rules provide that this submission "shall be considered as the completion of congressional action on a concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2011." In other words, in the absence of a budget resolution agreement between the House and the Senate, it appears that Rep. Ryan (presumably with the concurrence of the Republican leadership) will be allowed to set enforceable spending and revenue limits, with any departure from those limits subject to being ruled "out of order."

Again, as the CBPP outlines , this rule change means that the House could effectively adopt a budget resolution and limits for appropriations bills that it has never even seen, much less debated and had an opportunity to amend. (There is no requirement for Representative Ryan to make his proposed spending and revenue limits available to Members or the public before the vote on the new rules.)

In a symbolic flourish to satisfy the emboldened and watchful Tea Party base, the new rules provide that the House will spend a full day reading the Constitution aloud, and every new bill introduced will require a statement from its sponsor outlining where in the Constitution the Congress is empowered to enact such legislation. Given the current legal debates over the constitutionality of the health care reform law, this should provide for some partisan arguments.

Perhaps this is a way to keep down the numbers of bills introduced (over 6500 in the House and 4000 in the Senate in the 111th Congress .  Or perhaps the Republicans don't realize that House Rules have always required that every report on a bill passed out of committee (and that means every bill that will see congressional action) must have a statement "citing the specific powers granted to the Congress in the Constitution to enact the law proposed by the bill or joint resolution".

In the states the incoming legislatures and governors are also playing this game. I particularly liked the story in today's Wall Street Journal about how Michigan governor-elect Rick Snyder isn't interested in moving into the governor's mansion. Well of course he doesn't want to move – the mansion, in Lansing, is only 8,700 square feet, compared to his own home in the much more attractive city of Ann Arbor, which is 10,600 square feet, with indoor pool, movie theatre and wine cellar!

Obama has also expressed interest in pursuing tax reform, a cornerstone of his fiscal commission's recommendations, with Congress next year, and there will also be an education reauthorizing bill. There will be plenty of opportunity for bipartisan action. It will be interesting to see what results.

It's true that the law does significantly increase government regulation of health insurers. But it is, at its heart, a system that relies on private companies, private doctors and the free market.

PolitiFact sought to count how often the phrase was used in 2010 but found an accurate tally was not feasible because it had been repeated so frequently in so many places. However here are a few numbers:

The phrase appears more than 90 times on Boehner's website, GOPLeader.gov.

It was mentioned eight times in the 48-page Republican campaign platform "A Pledge to America"  as part of their plan to "repeal and replace the government takeover of health care."

The Republican National Committee's website mentions a government takeover of health care more than 200 times.

Many Republicans are now also threatening to obstruct and oppose the omnibus spending bill (which provides the money to keep the government running) - despite inserting hundreds of their own earmarks into the legislation.

GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell has asked for $4 million for marijuana eradication efforts by the Kentucky National Guard, $1 million for construction of the Kentucky Blood Center Building; and $650,000 for Advanced Genetic Technologies, a DNA research center at the University of Kentucky

Republican Senators John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota held a press conference yesterday where they blasted the bill, yet the two of them have requested a combined 71 earmarks in the bill. Reporters pelted them with questions about these earmarks, to which they deflected that they would vote no on the bill anyway. "I support those projects, but I don't support this bill," Thune said.

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) has requested over $16 million in defense-related earmarks. When he appeared on Fox News,  host Bill Hemmer confronted Cornyn with this. Cornyn fumbled and tried to change the subject, but after being pressed, he defended the merits of his earmarks, trying to exculpate himself by saying he requested the money "earlier on in the year":

HEMMER: You yourself have asked for earmarks too. ... Can you defend that senator?

CORNYN: Well, I believe I can. But I'm not going to. Because I'm going to vote against this bill. ... I think we need an earmark moratorium, which I voted for two years, till we fix this broken system, because it's become a symbol of wasteful Washington spending.

HEMMER: I get it, but I'm confused then, then why is there $16 million in requests from you? Is that not true?

CORNYN: Earlier on in the year, I did request earmarks that I think are individually defensible. And if we had a debate on the floor, I think I could show how they help our men and women in uniform fight two different wars.

So Cornyn, Thune and others will pander to the Tea Party movement and rely on the more responsible members of Congress to pass the bills that will keep the government functioning – and give them their earmarks, which they will surely be quick to claim.

And don't for one moment think that these are men of principle. Even the one-year continuing resolution that eliminates all earmarks and limits spending that the House passed last week got is getting a decidedly cold reception from Senate Republicans. "I am not going to vote for the omnibus, and, from what I hear about the CR, I don't think it looks very good either," said Mitch McConnell.

"Supporters of the Affordable Care Act should take a great deal of comfort from Judge Henry Hudson's decision today.

Yes, Judge Hudson did strike down one provision of the landmark health care law, and in doing so breathed new life into the almost moribund repeal movement, but his opinion is so poorly reasoned, so bereft of legal analysis and so inconsistent with precedent that it has no chance of convincing the Supreme Court to strike down this law. If this is the best that opponents of health reform have to offer, than the Act's supporters have nothing to fear.

Indeed, Judge Hudson's decision striking down just one small part of the Affordable Care Act -- the requirement that nearly all Americans either carry insurance or pay slightly more income taxes -- places him on a collision course with the views of one of the Supreme Court's most conservative members: Justice Antonin Scalia.

The Constitution doesn't just give Congress sweeping authority to regulate the national economy, it also empowers Congress to "[t]o make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution" its authority to enact economic regulation. As Justice Scalia explains, this means that "where Congress has the authority to enact a regulation of interstate commerce, it possesses every power needed to make that regulation effective.""

The ACA ban on the abhorrent practice of denying coverage to patients with preexisting conditions cannot work if people are free to enter and exit the insurance market at will, purchasing cover only when they get sick.

States that have enacted insurance reforms banning insurance companies from denying coverage but not included the shared responsibility provision have seen premiums sky rocket. In New Jersey, premiums increased by more than 350 percent for some insurance policies over a five year period once insurance companies were required to offer coverage to all applicants. Some states, including Washington, New Hampshire and Kentucky, ultimately repealed or watered-down their insurance reforms because of similar cost increases, allowing insurance companies to once again pick and choose who they cover.

In contrast, Massachusetts' experience demonstrates the power of the shared responsibility requirement. In 2006 Massachusetts enacted a requirement similar to the shared responsibility provision of the Affordable Care Act, on top of the insurance reforms they already had in place. Between late 2006 and mid-2009, the average individual premium fell by 40 percent.

It already costs every insured family $1,000 a year in higher premiums to help pay the medical bills of the uninsured – an invisible tax worth more than $60 billion a year. MIT professor Jonathan Gruber estimated repealing the minimum coverage provision would increase the average premium by 27 percent in 2019.

1) Please use the term "government-run health insurance" or, when brevity is a concern, "government option," whenever possible.

2) When it is necessary to use the term "public option" (which is, after all, firmly ensconced in the nation's lexicon), use the qualifier "so-called," as in "the so-called public option."

3) Here's another way to phrase it: "The public option, which is the government-run plan."

The only exception to this guidance was when newsmakers used "public option": "There's not a lot we can do about it, since quotes are of course sacrosanct."

The memos were obtained by the liberal advocacy group Media Matters. The significance of the marching orders is that they were issued to the news division, which aims to be fair and balanced and is run separately from the opinion side, populated by Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and others.

Sammon's message was received and obeyed immediately. That same day the Fox News website led with a headline that said "Government insurance plan will dominate market, Senate Republicans warn" . That evening Special Report, the Washington newscast anchored by Bret Baier, began with a teaser "a look at the fight over government-run health insurance in the Senate reform bill." Chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle referred to "a government insurance plan, the so-called public option." This is in contrast to the previous night's program, when Baier had repeatedly referred to the "public option," as did conservative panelist Charles Krauthammer.

Sammons own biases were evident some months earlier, in August 2009 when he incorrectly claimed on Fox News' America's Newsroom that "people are saying they don't want the public option, as that poll [a recent Ipsos/McClatchy poll] demonstrates." However, the poll had specifically asked respondents if they believed "it is necessary to create a public health insurance plan", and 52 percent of respondents agreed. Numerous other polls at that time also showed that a majority of Americans supported a public option.

The issue has led to a fierce political battle, with Democrats condemning the reductions as "Brewercare," after Arizona's Governor. The Republican governor has in turn blamed "Obamacare," (federal health care reform ) for the transplant cuts even though the Arizona vote came in March, before the federal reform bill was signed into law.

Army leaders unveiled the new approach this week. It's the first substantial change to the Army's basic fitness training in decades. While the most visible changes will be in mess halls, the program extends beyond food to overall health and fitness. A "soldier athlete" initiative is designed to prepare new recruits with training methods similar to those of elite athletes – including greater use of professional trainers, physical therapists, and strength and conditioning coaches. There is also more attention on injury prevention, flexibility and mobility, coordination and aerobic endurance. Bayonet drills are being eliminated in favor of core strength workouts more commonly practiced in the aerobics studio.

Military officials have emphasised the need to respond to trends in diet and health and related issues that come into the military from the civilian world. For example, more than 60 percent of recruits require immediate dental care before they can enter combat training, and female recruits report high levels of iron deficiency.

Up to 9 million Americans ages 17 to 24, nearly 27 percent of the prime military recruiting age demographic, are too fat to serve in the military, according to a study from Mission: Readiness, a non-profit group composed of senior retired military officials. The report cited obesity as the leading medical reason for candidates being deferred from the service, calling the epidemic "a potential threat to our national security."

Barton needs to receive a waiver from the GOP leadership in order to serve as chairman, since he has served one term as chairman previously, followed by two terms as ranking member, and House Republican Conference rules do not permit anyone to serve more than three consecutive terms in either top position..

Barton has worked to portray himself as the establishment's answer to the Tea Party, calling himself "Tea Party when Tea Party wasn't cool." Last week, a 22-page letter – apparently prepared by minority staff of the committee at Barton's request - was circulated highlighting this fact and analyzing Upton's voting record, especially in regards to abortion rights and stem cell research.

Upton has often broken ranks with the GOP. His votes in favor of TARP and against extending the Bush tax cuts in 2009 are among his more criticized. But it is his record on abortion and stem cell research that has garnered the most criticism from conservatives.

Right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh cited Upton's promotion of eco-friendly light bulbs evidence that he shouldn't take the Energy and Commerce gavel.  "This would be a tone-deaf disaster if the Republican leadership lets Fred Upton ascend to the chairmanship of the House energy committee," Limbaugh said this week. "This is exactly the kind of nannyism, statism, what have you, that was voted against and was defeated last week. No Republican complicit in nannyism, statism, can be rewarded this way."

The FreedomWorks website  is also railing against Upton and has a petition to members of the House Republican Steering Committee opposing Upton for Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

This week Barton is emailing a slide presentation to colleagues, pledging to do for the administration what General George Patton and company did for Germany. The first slides are standard campaign material, with Barton asking to be elected by the new House Republican majority to be chairman of the committee. The final slide is titled: "What's in Store for the Obama Administration," with photos of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Generals Omar Bradley and George Patton in uniform. "Speaker Boehner is our Dwight Eisenhower in the battle against the Obama Administration. Majority Leader Cantor is our Omar Bradley. I want to be George Patton - put anything in my scope and I will shoot it."

The problem with this war analogy is that it presents the Democrats and Obama as Nazis. Billboards attacking the Obama administration as Nazis and signs depicting the President as Hitler have materialized occasionally around the country since last year's tense health care reform debate.

The insinuations are ugly and it's not a good start to a bipartisan approach to government.

While tax cuts for the rich provide very little economic stimulus, the unemployment benefits they are obstructing have provided a vital economic boost to struggling families and businesses, and will continue to do so. Families on unemployment insurance spend all that money, thus generating more economic activity. It has been estimated that stopping unemployment benefits will pull $65 billion out of the economy, cause the loss of 900,000 full-time-equivalent jobs, and decrease GDP growth by about $130 billion over 2011.

The dissonance between the GOP mantra on jobs and the economy and its antipathy towards the unemployed can only be explained by politics. Republicans were more than eager to pass measures to provide unemployment benefits under President Bush. Their actions now are driven by their stated desire to obstruct any aspect of President Obama's agenda.

This week Republican Senator Mark Kirk (IL) exemplified this GOP approach, calling for a tax cut extension "no matter what" while deeming an unpaid-for unemployment extension "misguided."

The Republicans have not taken long to break their post-election commitments to the American people. House Speaker elect John Boehner has said "Republicans have made a pledge to America, and our pledge is to listen to the American people and to focus on their priorities."  It is now clear that means ignoring the 59 percent of Americans who favor ending the tax cuts for the rich and the 72 percent of registered voters who say that congressional Republicans should work with their Democratic counterparts and the President to get things done.

Both Boehner and Senator McConnell laid down their markers even before arriving at the White House this morning, making clear that they saw the election mandate differently than the President does.

"Republicans heard the voters loud and clear," the two leaders wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post today. "They want us to focus on preventing a tax hike on every taxpayer, reining in Washington spending and making it easier for employers to start hiring again." They added that "voters did not signal they wanted more cooperation on the Democrats' big-government policies that most Americans oppose."

So now it's back to business as usual – nothing has changed. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are reportedly determined to bring on the vote on unemployment benefits and use getting that as the trade-off for continuation of the Bush tax cuts.

That is highlighted by reports of how busy food pantries and other nonprofit food-distribution agencies are at this time of the year. This week the Washington Post looked at how such agencies in this well-to-do part of the nation are struggling to meet record-breaking demand as the holidays approach. In Loudon County Virginia - just across the Potomac River from the imperial city, and the nation's wealthiest county as measured by median income - the food pantry is distributing its first-ever Thanksgiving meal, giving food to 2,000 families In north east Washington DC the operator of one food bank said that this year is the most difficult in the organization's 30-year history. The food bank will distribute a record-breaking 30 million pounds of food, up from 27 million last year.

And while for many Thanksgiving is a time for all Americans to come together, others clearly are reluctant to take a holiday from argument. In these fractious times, even the meaning of Thanksgiving is subject to political debate.

Forget what you learned about the first Thanksgiving being a celebration of a bountiful harvest, or an expression of gratitude to the Indians who helped the Pilgrims through thee harsh first months in an unfamiliar land. The Tea Party has a different view. According to people like Glenn Beck, the first settlers were actually early socialists. They realized the error of their collectivist ways and embraced capitalism, producing a bumper year, upon which they decided that it was only right to celebrate the glory of the free market and private property.

To end on a more appropriate and upbeat note for a Thanksgiving blog, here's a link to Art Buchwald's column on Le Jour de Merci Donnant which runs every year – because it never fails to provoke a laugh.

And you also need to know that today President Obama continued a decades-old White House tradition, by issuing pardons to a gobbler named "Apple" and its alternate, "Cider.' The President said that it "feels pretty good to stop at least one shellacking this November."

Watch it here.

"House Republicans have spent the past year campaigning against the Affordable Care Act – spending hundreds of millions of dollars to vilify legislation that will positively and significantly impact the lives of 30 million Americans," said Congressman Tim Ryan. "Now that the campaign is over, Republicans are showing their true colors – insisting that they receive immediate access to the health care system that they were so quick to deny the average citizen. This is clearly a case of Pot v. Kettle, and the American people deserve better."

Meanwhile Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), a strong advocate of the health care reform law, is daring Republicans on repeal. He has vowed to introduce a series of bills next week that would repeal some of the most popular provisions of the law. Ackerman said the legislation will give Republicans a chance to "put up, or sit down" on their campaign promise to repeal the eight-month-old law.

"This will be the big chance for Republicans to do what they've vowed to do," the 13-term member said. "These bills will be their chance to at long last restore liberty and repeal the evil monster they've dubbed 'Obamacare'."

Titled the HIPA-CRIT (Health Insurance Protects America - Can't Repeal IT), the measures would overturn six (popular) consumer protections in the new law that:

Ackerman has begun circulating a letter to fellow lawmakers asking them to "Go ahead, make my day. Become a cosponsor. The Affordable Care Act contains these and many other foolish protections for our constituents. So, join other Members of Congress who want to deprive their constituents of these silly safeguards from the big insurance companies. You can cast your courageous vote on a series of SIX bills to do it. Feel free to call it the HIPA-CRIT Act when you explain your vote."

And there's another cudgel that Democrats might choose to use. If the incoming Republican Congress is so concerned about the use of taxpayer funds, it could start by foregoing taxpayer-funded health care. How much money that would save is impossible to estimate accurately, but the Los Angeles Times has tried, and come up with the figure of $2.4 million ($700 X 12 months X 289 members) as the cost to the government to insure all GOP members of the House and Senate for a year.

Of course that will hardly make a dent in the budget, but then chump change always seems to be at the heart of the most provocative political battles. During the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain made a big issue over the fact that $1 million was being appropriated for a Woodstock museum in upstate New York.

You can watch it here.

A ThinkProgress analysis finds that 50 percent of the incoming freshman GOP class deny the existence of manmade climate change, and a shocking 86 percent are opposed to any legislation to address climate change that increases government revenue. Meanwhile, all of the Republicans vying to chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which handles climate and energy issues, in the new Congress are climate change deniers. They include Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), who infamously apologised to BP shortly after the company's catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico this summer.

Earlier today, flanked by Republican and Democratic former Secretaries of State, Defense Secretaries, and members of his administration, President Obama made a full court press from the Roosevelt Room of the White House for ratification of the New START treaty before the end of the year, casting it as a national security imperative that cannot be jeopardized nor gambled with.

"There is no higher national security priority for the lame-duck session of Congress. The stakes for American national security are clear, and they are high," Obama said. "This is not about politics. It's about national security."

Richard Burt, former negotiator, U.S. Arms Control said on the PBS News Hour that " I think it's potentially a very serious setback. And I think the danger is that, if the treaty is pushed into the new Congress, that it will take potentially several months and maybe longer to be ratified. It could be indefinitely postponed. And I think there -- it becomes then a hostage to events. So, I think that -- that the lame-duck session is the best opportunity to get this treaty ratified, with the least amount of political damage to the U.S.-Russia relationship and the credibility of the United States worldwide."

In saying that the time is not right to ratify the START Treaty during the lame duck session, Senator Jon Kyl and his collegeauges are being very disingenuous. Kyl has focused on nuclear modernization, claiming that the US is not spending enough to keep the national nuclear weapons complex to keep it safe, reliable, secure, and effective. He fails to mention that any erosion in the budget and upkeep of the nuclear weapons complex happened over the life of the Bush Administration, and the Obama Administration has committed $84 billion over 10 years to ensure that the nuclear weapons labs and the country's infrastructure is capable of maintaining our nuclear stockpile.

In his PBS interview Mr Burt stated that he thought the issue was being politicized because this is first time a Democratic administration has sought to get ratification for a strategic arms treaty. He said, "It's hard for Republicans to oppose a Republican administration's treaty, particularly in the current hyper-partisan and polarized atmosphere in Washington. I think it's much easier for Republicans to oppose this administration."

In a stunning rebuke to members of his own caucus, Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking Republican Richard Lugar (R-IN) said on Wednesday that the GOP is intentionally trying to put off a vote on the New START treaty with Russia, and avoiding a serious discussion about the treaty within the caucus. Lugar wants the Democratic Senate leadership to cut off negotiations immediately and force a vote on New START now, to compel senators to get off the fence and to end the endless stalling coming from his own side of the aisle.

One approach is for the Senate leadership to call the Republicans' bluff and just bring START up for a vote (67 votes are needed for ratification). If the vote is lost, then the President and the US both lose face, but it would align the Republicans with the North Koreans and the Iranians.

And what is it that the Republicans will be so busy doing that's there no time to bring up the START Treaty? They've declared that climate change and net neutrality are non-issues, Senator John McCain won't deal with the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", and we can expect similar pronouncements soon on why immigration reform can't be tackled.

The fact is that many conservatives see a lame-duck session packed with substantive legislation as a product of Democratic skullduggery, not as an example of the Congress in action.

Dear Senator McConnell and Representative Boehner:

We were surprised to read in today's article "GOP frosh: Where's My Health Care?" in Politico that some of your incoming members are unhappy with the health benefits they are eligible to purchase under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) – particularly the fact that there is a delay before benefits take effect. Ironically, this is the same predicament millions of Americans currently find themselves in.

It is amazing that your members would complain about not having health care coverage for a few weeks, even after campaigning to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which will help provide coverage to millions of Americans who find themselves without health insurance for months or even years. We also find it interesting that members of the Republican conference would have no problem taking away health coverage from hard-working Americans, but expect expanded coverage for themselves and their families.

The system set up by the Affordable Care Act will allow Americans to choose the plan that works best for them from a variety of private insurance plans, just like the FEHB program that members of Congress are now able to access. The uninsured, small-business employees, and the self-employed will now be able to benefit from this same choice and competition. It begs the question: how many members of the Republican conference will be forgoing the employer-subsidized FEHBP coverage and experiencing what so many Americans find themselves forced to face?

If your conference wants to deny millions of Americans affordable health care, your members should walk that walk. You cannot enroll in the very kind of coverage that you want for yourselves, and then turn around and deny it to Americans who don't happen to be Members of Congress. It is worth noting that in 2011, the Federal government will pay $10,503.48 of the premiums for each member of Congress with a family policy under the commonly-selected Blue Cross standard plan.

It is important for the American people to know whether the members of Congress and members-elect who have called for the repeal of health insurance reform are going to stand by their opposition by opting out of the care available to them at the expense of hard-working taxpayers.

We look forward to your response in the coming days about exactly how many of the members in the Republican conference will be declining their taxpayer-supported health benefits.

- Joseph Crowley Member of Congress

- Linda T. Sánchez Member of Congress

- Donna F. Edwards Member of Congress

- Tim Ryan Member of Congress

And here's what the media is saying:

GOP legislator frets over 28 days without insurance -- but what about 30 million he'd leave uninsured? Ezra Klein in the Washington Post

Not For Thee, But For Me Andrew Sullivan in The Atlantic

Welcome to Washington, Mr. Congressman! Kate Pickert in Time Magazine

Benefits question by Hopkins doctor surprises fellow freshmen Paul West in the Baltimore Sun

Conservative GOP Freshman Wants His Government Health Care-Now! Rick Ungar in Forbes

Study: Most Workers Have To Wait Longer For Health Insurance Than Congress Talking Points Memo by Brian Beutler

One reason premiums and profits continue rising is that insurers keep reducing the percentage of premiums they spend on actual health care by denying people care. In 1993, the leading health insurers spent about 95 cents for every premium dollar on health care. These days the average is below 80 cents. Beginning next year, the new health care reform law will require insurance companies to spend up to 85% of premiums on medical services and to publicly defend their premium hikes.

At the same time, while American families and employers are struggling with skyrocketing health insurance costs and the worst economy since the Great Depression, the chief executives of the 10 largest for-profit health insurance companies collected pay of $228.1 million in 2009, up from $85.5 million in 2008. The CEOs collectively gave themselves a 167 percent raise (not counting tens of millions more dollars in exercised stock options), while Americans saw their average wages increase by about 2 percent.

Senate Republicans are salivating over the planned Capital Hill appearance later this week of Donald Berwick, who will testifying before the Senate Finance Committee – something that for him will be rather akin to a matador waving a red cape at an angry bull.

Berwick's nomination to run the Center for Medicare and Medicare Services drew harsh criticism from Republicans. They seized on his professed admiration for Britain's National Health Service, deriding the Harvard professor as an ominous "rationer in chief." The condemnations reached a fever pitch in July, when President Barack Obama used a recess appointment to install Berwick as CMS administrator.

"Dr. Berwick was recess appointed before he had even a nomination hearing before the committee of jurisdiction," Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Finance Committee's ranking member, said. "The public doesn't have any insight into his thinking on anything. The hearing will offer a chance to shed some light on what CMS is doing to prepare for some of the biggest changes in the history of modern health care. It's overdue, and it should be the first of many."

"The Affordable Care Act does not prescribe a 'one size fits all' approach to health care because health care is first and foremost about caring for unique individuals," Berwick says in his written testimony which has already been made publicly available.

The real issue for the White House is whether the President can use the recommendations from the co-chairs of the deficit reduction commission (or the commission's report if indeed it gets the necessary endorsement ) to drive bipartisan agreements on budget cuts. It's a unique – and very difficult – opportunity for the President to show leadership in the face of certain opposition from both the right and the left, with neither of the extremes willing to tackle the hard choices.

On the tax side, the plan presents three options for reform - two of which would consolidate the income tax code into three rates, lower corporate rates, and modify or repeal many tax expenditures. The third option would leave tax reform to Congressional committees, but with a trigger to ensure changes would be enacted by 2013.

In what is described as "mandatory actions to reduce health costs" the proposal tackles the so-called "Doc Fix" which no-one else has been willing to touch. (For years Congress has refused to address cuts in the Sustainable Growth Rate which governs Medicare reimbursement to doctors; if Congress fails to act by January 1, Medicare reimbursements will be cut by 23%.)

The cost of the Doc Fix (which could be as much as $276 billion) would be fully offset by asking doctors and other health providers, lawyers, and individuals to take responsibility for slowing health care cost growth. Offsets include:

• Pay doctors and other providers less, improve efficiency, and reward quality by speeding up payment reforms and increasing drug rebates
• Pay lawyers less and reduce the cost of defensive medicine by adopting comprehensive tort reform
• Expand cost-sharing in Medicare to promote informed consumer health choices and spending
• Expand successful cost containment demonstrations
• Strengthen the Independent Payment Advisory Board
• Recommend additional health savings of $200 billion ($400 billion worth of.illustrative examples are provided).

What's interesting about this list is the recognition that the new ways to pay for health care services outlined in the health care reform legislation will produce real savings – something that opponents of health care reform consistently deny. This approach is obviously in conflict with that of conservatives who want to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

However from the perspective of a health policy wonk, there are a number of provisions here that are problematic, including capped Medicaid payments for long-term care, increased Medicaid copayments, and cuts in federal spending on graduate medical education.

As co-chair Alan Simpson, a former GOP senator known for his humour, put it: "We have harpooned every whale in the ocean and some of the minnows."

White House spokesman Bill Burton offers this response to the recommendations: "The President will wait until the bipartisan fiscal commission finishes its work before commenting. He respects the challenging task that the Co-Chairs and the Commissioners are undertaking and wants to give them space to work on it. These ideas, however, are only a step in the process towards coming up with a set of recommendations and the President looks forward to reviewing their final product early next month."

These recommendations only become official if a supermajority of the panel (14 of the 18 members) support them.  Voting is expected later this month or early in December.  Otherwise they just become yet another list of good intentions.

I'm pretty sure I won't be watching this TV show!

One TV show I never watch is "Dancing with the Stars" – this season featuring Bristol Palin. I gather that somehow, despite not being a particularly good dancer, she has managed to make it to the semi-finals. There are claims that the voting is rigged.

Meanwhile, back in Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski appears to be winning a write-in campaign to keep her seat. If victorious, she would be the first US senator elected by write-in vote since Strom Thurmond in South Carolina 1954.

The final ballot counting could take weeks. Officials must verify how many of the write-in votes were cast for Murkowski, who opted to fight for her seat after losing to tea party favorite Joe Miller, (endorsed by Sarah Palin) in the Republican primary.

But with 99 percent of precincts reporting, Miller has captured only 34 percent of the vote. Write-in ballots account for 41 percent of the vote, and Democrat Scott McAdams received 24 percent.

But her Republican challenger Joe Miller isn't ready to give up the fight just yet.

Alaska state officials said earlier this week that they plan to proceed with the count of write-in ballots in the Senate contest despite the fact that Miller has sued the state's lieutenant governor and Division of Elections in federal court to try stop the state's plan for counting write-in ballots that misspell the name of his rival Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

With a potential legal battle brewing, both sides are amassing their resources.

And of course the Palin family have their own dog in this fight. Earlier this week, an angry email from Palin's husband, Todd, was leaked to a liberal Alaska blog. The email questioned why Jow Miller hasn't been willing to endorse Palin for president in 2012 (the run she says she will only make if no-one else does), after her backing helped him to a win the primary against Murkowski.

The New York Enquirer said "...Lincoln is elected president, and the principle of intimidation, so persistently and wickedly brought to bear on this election by Southern extremists and their allied the Northern Democratic panic makers, has signally failed...".

The Kansas Chief was more ebullient "Whoop-ee. We have glorious tidings to proclaim...."

But in the south, the newspapers foretold what was to come.

The Richmond Dispatch said of Lincoln's election "The event is the most deplorable one that has happened in the history of the country."

The Courier in New Orleans was much worse; "The election of Abraham Lincoln to the chief magistry of the country by the hordes of fanatics and negrophilists who have been flocking to his standards ... has awakened throughout the South a spirit of stubborn resistance which it will be found is impossible to quell...".

Fifty –four days later, on December 20 1860, with President Buchanan still in office, South Carolina seceded and thousands paraded in the streets of Charleston to celebrate.

Emboldened by South Carolina's actions, other states of the deep south declare themselves independent throughout January 1861, and the confederacy was formed in February, with Jefferson Davis declared president. Davis gave his inaugural address in Montgomery, Alabama on February 18, before Lincoln was even sworn in.

After a triumphant trip from Illinois to Baltimore, repeated in part by Barack Obama in 2008, Lincoln was forced to sneak into Washington DC in disguise because of information that an attempt would be made on his life. When he was finally sworn in on March 4, on the steps of the unfinished US Capital, it was a tense ceremony flanked by a military guard provided by Virginian General Winfield Scott, and with sharp shooters on the rooftops. The first shots of the Civil War were fired in April 12.

Meanwhile the hate mail flowed in, like this letter. "Mr Lincoln – May the hand of the devil strike you down before long you are destroying the country. Damn you – every breathe you take."

In an essay in the Washington Post this past weekend by Philip Kennicot, culture critic at the paper, claims that "the Civil War legitimized something essential, and dark, that remains with us. Ultimately the South was fighting for the right to be wrong, for the right to retain (and expand) something ugly and indefensible. It lost the war, and slavery was abolished. But the right to be wrong, the right to resist the progress of freedom, the right to say 'no, thank you' to modernity, to leave the fences in disrepair and retreat into a world of private conviction, remains as much a part of the American character as the blood spilled to preserve the Union."

McConnell has publicly allowed that he frets over how to control expectations among Tea Party members and their supporters, who will demand that that bigger GOP numbers in Congress produce big things without acknowledging how these will be achieved. For example, they want a massive u-turn on federal spending but refuse to tackle the most costly areas of the budget, including Social Security and Medicare, and to identify how real savings could be made.

The other important area for negotiation is with the White House, and after two years of using the 60-vote filibuster to stall the Obama agenda, Senate Republicans must now look to securing 67 votes – the number needed to over-ride a presidential veto.

McConnell and Boehner, who appear not to have presidential ambitions for themselves, will look to pursue an agenda that any future GOP nominee can embrace in 2012. "Our single biggest political goal is to give our nominee for president the maximum opportunity to be successful," McConnell says. "We need to work smarter than we did [in 1995], and not become the foil off which [President Obama] pivots."

And here are my election night awards:

• Prize to the best voter comment goes to the voter from Nevada who said "President Obama's been in for a long time now and nothing has changed."
• Prize for the best crocodile tears goes to Speaker elect John Boehner who apparently thinks he's the only person who grew up without much money and who dreamed of better things.
• Prize for the most disingenuous comment of the evening goes to Eric Cantor who tried to argue that the Bush tax cuts were not tax cuts – and therefore he didn't need to explain how they would be paid for – but that letting them expire would be a tax increase.
• Prize for the most confused concession speech goes to Christine O'Donnell declaring after her loss to Chris Coons, "we have won".
• Prizes for the biggest waste of money go to Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina and Linda McMahon, who between them spent some $200 million of their own money on their election campaigns – and all of whom lost.
• No prizes to the networks and cable for their coverage – they just can't do it with the same flair, commentary and graphics as Australian TV

Only 3 percent of registered voters told an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll that they would use their vote to tell Congress they support health care. Another 3 percent said their message would be they oppose it.

The poll results:

Focus more on improving the economy and creating jobs ..........21

Return to the principles of the U.S. Constitution..............................14

Work with the other party to get things done.....................................13

Balance the federal budget ................................................................. 8

Look out for the interests of working people .....................................8

Support President Obama's agenda ..................................................8

Stop outsourcing jobs.........................................................................    7

Show opposition to President Obama's health care legislation ....3

Show support to President Obama's health care legislation..........3

Conservatives are likely to do very well in today's elections, and that means they are also likely to make all kinds of fallacious claims about what the election results mean. We are certain to hear a lot about a supposed mandate to repeal health care reform. But claiming a mandate doesn't make it so, as the results from two recent polls show.

A mid-October AP-GfK poll asked respondents what they would prefer Congress to do about the new health care law. Contrary to the conservative story line, 57 percent wanted to either leave the law as is (18 percent) or change it so it does more to change the health care system (39 percent). Only 32 percent wanted the law completely repealed.

In a late October CBS News/New York Times poll respondents were first asked if they favored repeal of health care reform: 45 percent said no and 41 percent said yes. Those favoring repeal were then asked whether they would still support repeal if that meant insurance companies were no longer required to cover people with existing medical conditions or prior illnesses. That query reduced the pro-repeal contingent to just 25 percent. That's not exactly a mandate for repeal, but this reality is unlikely to get in the way of conservative policy.

If the voting today is closer than the pundits are predicting and more in line with what I hope is happening, then tonight's election returns might start to look quite Australian as they count and recount every vote in some very tight races. It's time to open that bottle of Penfolds Bin 389 we've been saving and hunker down for a long night.

My prediction is that the gridlock will begin early, in the lame duck session, when the parties will try to reach agreement over extending (and paying for) the Bush tax cuts that are due to expire on December 31, and the Republicans will almost certainly move to block additional unemployment aid.

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnelll said recently "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

House Minority Leader John Boehner, who would likely become Speaker in a GOP-controlled House, has made it clear that Republicans are not in the mood for compromising on the repeal of health care reform.

"This is not a time for compromise, and I can tell you that we will not compromise on our principles," Boehner said during an appearance on Sean Hannity's radio show.  In another interview he said "We're going to do everything - and I mean everything we can do - to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can."

Some pundits point to the fact that President Clinton had to deal with the Republicans for the last six years of his presidency, and even attribute this success to his ability to use veto politics and manipulate congressional blame-game politics to his advantage. But times are different now – and the results of the election are not yet in.

If political rallies and dressing up are not for you, then there is always World Series baseball – played only in America! Last night's World Series Game 2 saw the Texas Rangers bullpen implode again and gives the San Francisco Giants a 2-0 lead in the series.

The big baseball news is that Giants first baseman Aubrey Huff (he's 6'4", 234 pounds ) has a secret weapon for the 2010 World Series – he wears a glittery sequined red thong (as in ladies' underwear, not footwear). The thong manufacturer found out about this and sent three huge dress-size boxes filled with thong underwear in every color of the rainbow to Huff. Now the Giants and their fans wave thongs. Fortunately, there are no pictures to accompany this tidbit!

• 73% of people polled say they will definitely vote, 18% will probably vote, and 4% had already voted.
• 42% are paying a lot of attention to these elections and 41% are paying some attention.
• 80% of people polled think that it's time for new people in Congress, and only 9% think that current congressional members deserve to be re-elected. They are a little kinder to their own congressional representatives - 59% think it's time for a new local member.
• For 26% of people will vote to put the Republicans in and 27% will vote to keep the Democrats in. 45% will vote about something else. This year's vote is seen as a vote for Obama by 24%, a vote against Obama by 29% and for 42% Obama is not a factor in how they cast their vote.
• 45% of voters say they are willing to take a chance and vote for someone from a different political party than they usually support, but 49% are not.
• Only 18% are willing to take a chance and vote for someone whose views on major issues they disagree with, although 28% are willing to vote for someone whose views are more extreme than theirs.
• 57% are willing to vote for someone with little political experience.
• 42% think that Obama has made progress on improving the economy, and 51% think that the current economic situation is about where they thought it would be at this point in Obama's term, 11% think it is better than they imagined it would be when he was inaugurated, and 36% think it is worse. 28% think that the economic downturn is permanent and the economy won't recover. Voters apportion blame for the economic problems to Bush (30%); the Obama Administration (8%); Wall Street and financial institutions (22%) and Congress (13%).
• On healthcare, 47% think that Obama has made a lot or some progress on health care affordability for all Americans. While 41% of voters want to see the repeal of healthcare reforms, a growing number (45%) now oppose this. 77% think that the Republicans will attempt to repeal healthcare reform.
• 48% think that letting the Bush tax cuts expire for households earning over $250,000 a year is a good idea, and 43% think it is a bad idea.
• 66% think that Obama had made progress in the war in Iraq and 50% think he has made progress in the war in Afghanistan.
• 46% strongly favour allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military and only 19% are strongly opposed to this.
• In terms of favourable opinions from voters, no-one scores very high – Democrats (46%); Republicans (41%); Michelle Obama (41%); President Obama (40%); Tea Party (24%); Nancy Pelosi (15%); John Boehner (7%).
• Only 21% trust the government to do what's right always or most of the time.
• When voters were asked about the Republican Pledge to America, 8% have heard or read about it a lot, 24% some, 29% not much and 35% have heard or read nothing about it.
• 86% think it is very important or important to limit the amount of money raised and spent in political campaigns and 92% think it is important to know where that money comes from.
• 41% think that Republicans in Congress have treated Obama harder than they have treated other Democratic presidents.
• And – amazingly - 56% are optimistic about the next two years with Obama as president, and 37% are pessimistic.

• In 2009, 51 percent of U.S. patents were awarded to non-U.S. companies.
• China has replaced the U.S. as the world's number one high-technology exporter and is now second in the world in publication of biomedical research articles.
• Between 1996 and 1999, 157 new drugs were approved in the United States. In a corresponding period 10 years later, the number dropped to 74.
• Almost one-third of U.S. manufacturing companies responding to a recent survey say they are suffering from some level of skills shortage.

Five years ago these same experts responded to a request from a bipartisan group of senators to the National Academies for ten recommended actions the federal government could take to enhance science and technology. Their first report, Rising Above the Gathering Strom: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, found that US advantages in the marketplace and in science and technology had begun to erode.

The report led to the America Competes Act of 2007 which increased funding for basic science research, but most of the other recommendations like improving K-12 science education were not addressed in this legislation and went unfunded until the stimulus package – the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act - was passed early in 2009. This legislation, endlessly unpopular with conservatives, increased total federal funding for K-12 education, provided scholarships for future math and science teachers, and funded the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, which is dedicated to supporting transformational basic research on energy.

However, the America Competes Act is set to expire this year, and the stimulus package is a one-time initiative that is also nearing expiration. The report's authors acknowledge the difficulty of carrying out the Gathering Storm recommendations, such as doubling the research budget, in the current fiscal environment. But such investments will need to be made if the nation is to maintain the economic strength to provide health care, social security, national security, and other basic services to its citizens.

The First Lady reminded the crowd that it was Pelosi who has shown the country "what it means to be a powerful woman" with "strength and compassion and that signature steely resolve." She said she would never forget the sight of Pelosi "wielding that gavel" as the first female speaker.

Nancy, with her deep California cash connections, and Michelle, who has raised millions at Democratic National Committee functions, are a fundraising dream team. But their presence on the same stage also illustrated one of the enduring truths of American gender politics: High-profile women are most popular when they eschew partisan combat for a more traditional, less threatening role.

There's no question that this whole election is as much a referendum on Nancy Pelosi as it is on President Obama, and to see these two women together, reminding other women what’s at stake for them in this election, definitely sends a clear message.

NPR is not the first media outlet to take this stand on inappropriate racially-based remarks.  CNN host Rick Sanchez was fired and White House correspondentHelen Thomas  forced to resign for insensitive and irresponsible remarks about non-Muslims. But as Fox News endlessly proves, anti-Muslim remarks are ruled perfectly acceptable – are even promoted – on this network. It’s dog-whistle media.

Conservative pundits and politicians have whipped themselves in to apoplectic rages over NPR's announcement.  Former presidential candidate and Fox News host Mike Huckabee called on the government to "start making cuts to federal spending" by defunding NPR. Several more Republicans jumped on the defund bandwagon, including Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, John Boehner and Karl Rove.

Sarah Palin tweeted: “NPR & LSM: you’re shocked at public outrage over your censorship of Juan? This is what happens when our Constitution starts shaking her fist.” (LSM stands for “lame stream media”, Sarah Palin’s take on the mainstream media.)

House Minority Leader John Boehner said, "I think it's reasonable to ask why Congress is spending taxpayers' money to support a left-wing radio network -- and in the wake of Juan Williams' firing, it's clearer than ever that's what NPR is." 

Last night, O'Reilly announced that Sen. Jim DeMint, who sees himself as a leader in the Tea Party movement, will introduce legislation  to defund NPR. 

The good news?  Last week billionaire liberal icon George Soros donated $1.8 million to hire 100 new reporters at 50 of NPR’s radio stations.  Of course that part of the right that is happy to take funding from Rupert Murdoch thinks that this donation isbuying political reporting at NPR and was contingent on NPR firing Williams.

"These are constitutional conservatives," she said, running through a list of her approved candidates for Congress nationwide before the crowd in the parking lot of a vacant shopping mall. The list included Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle – who was conspicuously absent from the event. "Politicians, some of you who are in office today, need to man up and spend some political capital supporting these Tea Party candidates," she said. 

Palin and her enthusiastic supporters present a particular challenge to Republican candidates in Nevada - be seen alongside them and risk alienating independent voters who may see the Tea Party as a circus act; don't and risk being branded as unworthy of the conservative stamp.

All of which presumably explains the one thing noticeably absent at her stump events -- the candidates themselves. The last time Palin actually appeared alongside a candidate was back on September 6, when she spoke at a fundraiser for Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul.

Last week she made a three-day tour of California to rally Republicans, hopping from San Diego to Sacramento in a schedule packed with speeches and rallies. But neither Carly Fiorina, the GOP Senate candidate Palin endorsed, or gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman attended the events.

Palin's "mama grizzlies" are not the only ones absent from her side. Even Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller, whose primary victory was fuelled by Palin's endorsement and the Tea Party Express, hasn't campaigned once with Palin.

There's another reason for the lack of enthusiasm. While Palin is helpful to rally the base, her support among independents remains weak. And independent voters will be crucial to candidates like Fiorina and Angle in the next two weeks.

An ABC News / Washington Post poll released today reflects that view. Sarah Palin is seen as more interested in political division than in cooperation by 56-34 percent, and the Tea Party political movement gets a very similar 56-31 percent.

And a final point: I haven't been able to establish if Christine O'Donnell – who shocked debate audiences with her failure to understand that the principle of the separation of church and state (if not the exact words) is outlined in the first amendment - was on Palin's list of "constitutional conservatives". Probably yes, given that she was reportedly prepped for the debate by Palin staffers.

The O’Donnell template is pure Palin. It was Palin’s endorsement that put O’Donnell on the map, and it’s Palin’s script that O’Donnell is assiduously following, right down to the lies and gaffes.

Now she is calling out the Republican establishment in Washington for not helping her underdog campaign.  In an interview on ABC's "This Week"  that aired last Sunday, she said she has asked the National Republican Senatorial Committee for help but that the group is standing on the sidelines even though her Democratic rival, Chris Coons, is getting a boost from his party.

A spokesman for the Republican committee said that the group gave O'Donnell the maximum direct contribution of $42,000 and is working with her campaign, but that the  committee is not spending heavily on ads as it is in closer races elsewhere.

So O’Donnell is resorting to scare tactics.  Apparently she told a GOP strategy meeting  last week: "I've got Sean Hannity in my back pocket, and I can go on his show and raise money by attacking you guys."  And that was precisely what she was doing on the radio over the weekend.  

However despite Hannity’s glowing endorsement, it’s not just the official party that is staying away. O'Donnell isn't getting support from Karl Rove's American Crossroads.  Rove has said that O’Donnell has said “nutty things” and has ruined the party’s chances of winning the seat.

In order to end on a cheerful note, it’s fascinating to look at the race for the House seat in Delaware  (the state has only one seat in the House of Representatives).  Like Mike Castle, moderate Republican Michele Rollins lost her primary for the open House seat to conservative businessman Glen Urquhart. Urquhart however is currently lagging well behind the Democratic candidate, Lieutenant Governor John Carney.  The most recent polls show Carney with a lead of 9 points or more.

But this year, when Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., spent months negotiating bipartisan cap-and-trade legislation, he could not attract any Republican co-sponsors -- not even McCain. (A recent New Yorker article is very enlightening on this matter.)  Now virtually all of the  2010 GOP challengers have moved beyond opposing cap-and-trade to dismissing the scientific evidence that global warming is even occurring.

The Koch brothers – oil billionaires - have pumped more than $1 million into the campaign accounts of congressional candidates, 87% to Republicans, and have contributed $ 1million to the Proposition 23 campaign to kill California's AB32 climate legislation. But their main influence is through Americans for Prosperity, which has spent $650,000 in attack ads while organizing a massive get-out-the-vote effort for the Tea Party movement.

If Republicans take back the House, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), who apologised to BP , and who demonises climate scientists, which under current Chairman Henry Waxman passed the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act in 2009.

 As the New York Timespointed out  , one anecdote from Diamond's career underscores the absurdity of Shelby's objection: "In 1979, a 25-year-old economics student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology named Ben S. Bernanke turned in his doctoral dissertation. In his acknowledgments, he thanked a faculty member, Peter A. Diamond, as one of four professors who 'gave generously of their time, reading and discussing my work.'" Now Diamond's former student has been the Chairman of the Fed since 2006, while Diamond awaits Shelby's approval for a lower post.

Unfortunately, Diamond is not alone. Today, there are at least 205 Obama appointees awaiting confirmation, some of whom have been waiting for months, or even over a year to start their jobs. The absence of these would-be ambassadors, judges, administrators, and national security officials hinder the government's ability to function properly at a critical time for the country.

The Senate's labyrinthine rules are ruthlessly exploited by the Republicans, and also occasionally by Democrats looking to leverage personal political gain. Last month, Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) who is in a tight re-election race, announced that she would block the nomination of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Jack Lew until the Obama administration lifted its moratorium on deep water oil drilling. OMB's former director Peter Orszag had left in August, leaving the critically important budget-writing office without permanent leadership.  The Senate budget committee approved Lew’s nomination 22-1, but Landrieu single-handedly prevented the confirmation from proceeding.

 Yesterday, the administration lifted the moratorium, but Landrieu did not lift her hold.  Inventing a entirely new condition for her obstruction, Landrieu said she would not allow Lew to do his job until she had a chance to "evaluate" if the end of the moratorium was "actually putting people back to work." Her goal seems to be making sure the local oil industry is happy, as she demanded the administration "continue to accelerate the granting of permits in shallow and deep water, and provide greater certainty about the rules and regulations industry must meet."

 Landrieu has never questioned Lew's qualifications - his previous tenure in the exact same job under President Clinton has been widely praised by both sides.  Ironically, in defending her obstructionist hold, Landrieu evoked the Biblical struggle of Moses, reciting  the biblical refrain, "Let my people go. Let them go. Let them get back to work."  

But it's the president's "people" that she and her colleagues need to let go to work.

•  The average woman in the individual market pays up to 48% more in premiums than a man the same age. Gender rating is limited or prohibited in just 12 states.
•  Just 12% of individual market plans include comprehensive maternity coverage. The vast majority of individual market health insurance policies do not cover maternity care at all.  Only 14 states require maternity coverage in policies sold on the individual market.
• In eight states and D.C., insurance companies can deny coverage to victims of domestic violence.

Brown reported $22.6 million in campaign cash as he heads into the final month of the race against Whitman. He has raised about $33.5 million since forming an exploratory committee last year and has benefited from independent spending by unions.

Five of the biggest union-funded independent expenditure groups, including California Working Families, Working Californians to Support Jerry Brown and Level the Playing Field, spent about $13 million through the end of September running ads and campaigning against Whitman.

Money is talking in the California Senate race, too, although the numbers are lower than in the gubernatorial competition. Campaign finance records show that Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, spent $6.7 million (including $5.5 million from her own fortune) to win the GOP primary. This week, after recent polls showed Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer with a six point lead, the National Republican Senatorial Committee put $2 million to a statewide television ad campaign for Fiorina.

Across the US, billions of dollars are being poured into hotly contested midterm elections, putting them on course to become the most expensive in American history and raising questions about the link between politics and special interests seeking influence.

This week two groups conceived of by Republican strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie announced a huge $4.2 million advertising buy in eight contested Senate races. The most recent media buy by the Crossroads groups is targeting Senate races in Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Washington.

To date, the two groups – American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS – have spent about $18 million on campaigns, most of it on ads, and more is likely to come. Rove and Gillespie set a goal of raising $50 million – between both groups – by the election

It's not just the spending that is gaining attention, but the way the groups are doing it, and now two nonpartisan campaign-finance watchdog groups, Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center – have challenged the legality of this spending and asked the IRS to investigate Crossroads GPS.

While American Crossroads does have to disclose who its donors are, Crossroads GPS is set up as a 501(c)(4) organization, which means it doesn't have to disclose where donations come from. This promise of anonymity enables it to raise much larger sums of money. Under IRS rules, 501(c)(4) groups are considered tax-exempt "social welfare" groups, that are allowed to spend on campaigns as long as they limit it to less than half of their total spending and their primary purpose is "the promotion of social welfare" – a distinction that is anything but clear.

The most recent media buy by the Crossroads groups is targeting Senate races in Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Washington. And more is likely to come. Rove and Gillespie set a goal of raising $50 million – between both groups – by the election.

As I have previously written, other outside groups are also spending big.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce alone is expected to spend about $75 million; historically, the lion's share of chamber spending promotes conservative Republicans. The conservative Americans for Prosperity, linked to billionaire David Koch, is likely to spend $45 million, while the Commission on Hope, Growth and Opportunity, run by GOP strategist Scott Reed, plans to spend about $25 million.

Democratic-aligned groups are trying zealously to catch up. In August, the AFL-CIO said it would join with the Service Employees International Union and United Food and Commercial Workers for a political effort estimated to cost at least $94 million. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees intends to spend at least $50 million and America Votes, a coalition of some 400 liberal groups, plans to spend $8.5 million.

The average cost of winning a House race in 2008 was nearly $1.1 million, and the cost of a Senate seat averaged almost $6.5 million.

There's some interesting reading and statistics here.  

The Democratic National Committee will report over $16 million in revenues from last month when it files its required monthly report with the Federal Election Commission later this month. The DNC has donated $20 million so far to the party's House and Senate campaign committees, and will look to pour cash into competitive campaigns over the next month in an attempt to stave off Republican victories and hold control of the House and Senate.

Meanwhile, although Democratic fundraising is ahead of Republican, the GOP is benefiting from a huge increase in spending by interest groups.

Outside spending on this midterm election is up fivefold over that in 2006, and stands at $80 million, much of this from undisclosed sources. The Supreme Court cleared the way for unlimited spending by corporations, unions and other interest groups on election advertising in its 5 to 4 decision earlier this year in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission. Many interest groups are organized as non-profits and are not required to disclose their financial backing.

The bulk of this money is being spent by conservatives, who have outspent their Democratic-aligned competition by 7 to 1. The increase in conservative spending has come from both established and new groups. Many of their ads are inaccurate or highly misleading, but as the head of one such group – the 60 Plus Association that bills itself as the conservative alternative to the AARP seniors group - said when PolitiFact.com called their ads highly misleading, "We are in unprecedented times, which calls for unprecedented measures."

Conservatives do seem to have a real facility to make up their own facts. Last weekend Washington post columnist Dana Milbank laid out just how Glen Beck bends the truth – with impunity. If you can stand to read more about this horrible man, then the New York Times magazine also had an article about him – I just haven't been able to read beyond the first page. Beck's scurrilous anti-Obama advertising conducted via the Fox News channel is, in effect, paid for by Rupert Murdoch.

In recent weeks, however, the GOP has denounced Democrats for abdicating central governing responsibilities by not passing a budget resolution and not extending expiring tax cuts before the election – not that they did anything to help here. In a speech onThursday, House GOP Leader John Boehner (Ohio) said the Democratic-run House was in "a state of emergency." "The institution does not function, does not deliberate and seems incapable of acting on the will of the people," Boehner said.

(Sometimes I feel that Tony Abbott and John Boehner share the same speechwriter and run according to the same set of political ethics – bemoan the lack of bipartisanship and cooperation and then do everything to ensure that such comity is impossible.)

The Democratic caucus is reportedly optimistic about the up-coming election results, even while the Republicans are measuring their offices and planning their takeover of both the House and the Senate.  Time will tell if this optimism is justified.

In fact, the "Republican Agenda" ignores some of the most essential challenges facing the United States. Global warming is nowhere to be found. There is no mention of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of the national security approach is devoted to keeping people out of America.

There are serious consequences for the nation's deficit. Repealing the ACA will add $143 billion to the deficit over ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office , as the cost containment measures and revenue increases in the bill also disappear. Retaining the entirety of the Bush tax cuts will cost $4 trillion, $830 billion over the President's proposal. Cutting overall government spending back to the 2008 levels would mean 21 percent reductions in discretionary programs according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities . Such cuts would be draconian, but would still not come close to eliminating the deficit. Moreover, when directly asked, many House Republicans can't name a single program they would like to cut.

There are also serious consequences for jobs. Since the private sector currently isn't hiring, a public sector job freeze and embargoing unspent funds from last year's stimulus bill will only make the current situation worse.

The Washington Post editorialized about the "Pledge to America" under the heading "profiles in pandering". The New York Times went further, stating that "It's breathless mimicry of the Declaration of Independence ... would be ludicrous if these were not destructively polarized times." "The best way to understand the pledge is as a bid to co-opt the Tea Party by a Republican leadership that wants to sound insurrectionist but is the same old Washington elite." The best the Wall Street Journal could manage was "Weaknesses aside, Republicans give voters a clear choice."

Arguably the Republicans have done just that – and shown voters clearly that they have nothing to offer.

A ban on discriminating against children with pre-existing conditions. Up to 72,000 uninsured children are expected to gain coverage under this provision and coverage for up to 90,000 children will no longer exclude benefits because of a pre-existing condition.    In 2014, no one seeking coverage can be discriminated against because of a preexisting condition.

 A ban on insurance companies dropping coverage when people get sick. Currently around 10,700 people’s coverage is dropped each year because they get sick or make a technical mistake on their application. 

A ban on insurance companies limiting coverage. Every year around 20,400 people – those with cancer and serious health problems - hit their lifetime limits on the dollar amount that can be spent on coverage, and nearly  102 million people have policies with lifetime limits.  The use of annual dollar limits is now restricted, and in 2014 will be banned completely.   

A ban on insurance companies limiting choice of doctors.  Up to 88 million people will benefit from the provision that protects primary care provider choice. 

 A ban on insurance companies restricting emergency room care.  Before reform, insurance companies could limit which emergency room people went to or charge more if you went ‘out of network’.  Up to 88 million people will benefit from this provision. 

A guaranteed right to appeal.  Policy holders are now guaranteed the right to appeal insurance company decisions to an independent third party. 

Young adults can be covered on their parent’s plan. Young adults will now be allowed to remain on their parent’s plan until their 26^th birthday, unless they are offered coverage at work. Up to 2.4 million young adults, up to 1.8 million who are uninsured and nearly 600,000 who currently purchase coverage in the expensive individual market, could gain coverage through their parents.

Coverage of preventive care with no out-of-pocket costs.  Approved preventive services like mammograms, colonoscopies, immunizations, pre-natal and new baby care will be covered and insurance companies will be prohibited from charging deductibles, co-payments or co-insurance. Up to 88 million people will have access to preventive care with no out of pocket costs.

In addition to implementing the Patient’s Bill of Rights, the Obama Administration has delivered a range of other health care reforms in the past six months.

• The Affordable Care Act includes critical new resources and authorities to crack down on unjustified rate hikes.  In a number of states (California, Massachusetts, Maine) regulators have already reviewed and rejected proposed increases. The Administration has also been working on rules that require insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars on health care instead of overhead, salaries or administrative expenses, in 2011. If they fail to do so, they will be required to provide rebates to consumers.
• Some 4 million small businesses have been notified that they are potentially eligible for a small business tax credit to help them purchase health coverage this year.  There is a total of $40 billion in relief for small firms over the next 10 years.
• More than 1 million older Americans on Medicare who have fallen into the prescription drug coverage gap known as the ‘donut hole’ have received $250 rebate checks. The checks are the first step toward closing the donut hole in 2020.
• On July 1, the Administration announced the establishment of the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Program to provide coverage for eligible Americans who have been uninsured for six months because of a pre-existing condition. Coverage started in 47 states by August, and will be provided in all states by the end of September.  This provision will last until 2014, when it will be illegal for insurance plans to exclude people on the basis of pre-existing conditions.
• On August 31, the Administration announced that over 2,000 employers and unions across all fifty states had been approved to receive help to pay for their early retirees’ health care through the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program.  This program is designed to help older Americans, who are not yet eligible for Medicare, continue to have quality affordable coverage through their employer. 

You can see more about what has been done on the implementation of health care reform at http://www.WhiteHouse.gov/HealthReform. This website includes information state-by-state reports on the Affordable Care Act.

He went on to say that the President “is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president.”  “I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating — none of which was true,” Mr. Gingrich was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile the President and the Democrats are moving forward with an important legislative agenda that is surely designed to highlight party political differences – and to appeal to Hispanic voters.

This week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced that he will move a defense authorization bill next week that includes the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, along with a measure that begins the process of repealing the military's Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) policy.

The DREAM Act is an immigration bill that would put undocumented youth who were brought to the U.S. as children on a path to citizenship through completion of higher education or military service.  The Congressional Hispanic Caucus - which, while consistently supportive of the DREAM Act, has long argues that it must be part of a comprehensive immigration bill – has announced its support.

The latest version of the DREAM Act was a bipartisan piece of legislation introduced in 2009 by Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Richard Lugar (R-IN). It would accomplish two major goals: 1) Allow certain undocumented immigrant youth who were brought to the US by their parents at a young age to eventually obtain legal permanent status and 2) Eliminate a federal provision that penalizes states that provide in-state tuition without regard to immigration status.

A June 2010 national poll shows that 70 percent of voters support the DREAM Act, across party lines. And the DREAM Act is also supported by the Department of Defense , largely because it would significantly increase the pool of qualified recruits in the Latino population, which comprises the majority of undocumented immigrants and is more likely to enlist and serve in the military than any other group.

Of course the Republicans are balking at Reid’s proposal.  The most hypocritical opposition has come from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) who co-sponsored the DREAM Act in 2005, 2006, and 2007 and has since flip-flopped on the immigration issue and vowed to block the DREAM Act in 2010.

Adrian Fenty, the youngest mayor in four decades of home rule, and an incumbent with a $5 million war chest, lost the DC mayoral primary to DC Council Chairman Vincent Gray. During the decade in which he shot to the top of the city's political pyramid, Fenty relied on his unrelenting energy and gut instincts to navigate the treacherous complexities of running Washington DC. However in this election he misread an electorate he was sure he knew better than anyone, and ignored advisers' early warnings that key constituencies were abandoning him an the basis that he was arrogant and did not listen.

3. Rangel wins despite ethics charges

Despite facing ethics charges on 13 counts of violating House rules, the ousted Ways and Means chairman Charlie Rangel ran an aggressive campaign for the Democratic nomination against a crowded field, betting that the people who have known him longest – the voters of Harlem - would send him back to Capitol Hill with a political victory before the House ethics committee tries him later this year or early next year. Rangel won over 50% of the vote; his most aggressive challenger, state Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV, had 24%. Now in his 20th term, Rangel is a near-certain victor in the general election. The heavily liberal district has been represented by just two congressmen since 1945, both historic African American political figures: Rangel, since 1970; and the man he defeated, Powell's father, Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

4. Senate Republicans unveil a plan to make Bush tax cuts permanent

Even as they hammer Democrats for running up record budget deficits, Senate Republicans are rolling out a plan to permanently extend an array of expiring tax breaks that would deprive the Treasury of more than $4 trillion over the next decade, nearly doubling projected deficits over that period unless dramatic spending cuts are made. "We have a spending problem. We spend too much. We don't have a taxing problem. We don't tax too little," McConnell told reporters Tuesday. "And if we want to begin to get ourselves out of this economic trough that we're in, the only way to do that is to grow the private sector."

I liked Ezra Klein's comment on this: "It's good to see American politicians so deeply concerned with inequality, though rare to see that concern focus mainly on the treatment of the very rich."

5. Senate advances legislation to aid small businesses

After month's of Republican oppositions, Senate Democrats, aided by two Republicans, have advanced a measure creating a $30 billion fund to invest in independent community banks with the aim of increasing lending to small businesses. Two Republican senators, George Voinovich of Ohio and George LeMieux of Florida, joined Democrats in clearing a procedural hurdle for the bill by a vote of 61 to 37 — all but guaranteeing that the Senate will approve the bill later this week. Republicans criticized the legislation as another government bailout.

6. At least one Republican loves President Obama

In an interview with the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Rep. Joseph Cao (R-La.) makes an odd statement for a Republican. Cao said, "I love the president, and I believe he truly likes me." Cao said he's visited the White House about 10 times - not counting the Superbowl party that he missed because of snow - and earned an audience in the Oval Office during the health care debate's end stages. He said he appreciated that Obama never asked him to betray his conscience on abortion, just to "revisit the language" and see whether he could support the measure.

Of course, Cao is a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic district and some say he's the most vulnerable Republican incumbent. He might also get the prize for the one who does the most to support his Louisiana constituents. He was the only Republican to vote for the House's original health-care bill (though he voted against the final legislation), and he's also backed financial reform and a repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell."

On Sunday there was an interesting crack in the Republican façade of "Just Say No", when House Republican Leader John Boehner surprised the Washington talk shows by stating that he could agree to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class set to expire at the end of the year while allowing tax cuts for the rich to expire, if that were the only choice he had. However top Republicans are not embracing his position and indeed appear somewhat disconcerted by it.

For the past week, the White House has worked to elevate Boehner as the face of the Republican Party. In a speech on the economy in Boehner's home state of Ohio, Obama mentioned the would-be Speaker eight times; the president also hit Boehner hard at a press conference on Friday. This effort was helped by a front page story in Sunday's New York Times  highlighting Boehner's strong financial links to lobbyists.

However as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has demonstrated, the economic downturn, together with the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years (see Figure 1).

Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) has taken the tax absurdity to new heights, claiming that extending the Bush tax cuts is free, but President Obama’s latest proposal to cut business taxes by permanently extending the research and development tax credit may cost too much money.  Alexander is saying that we have to wait and see “if we have money” for $100 billion in research and development, but should be spending $830 billion on the very richest Americans without a second thought.

The GOP claim that these high income earners (individuals earning over $200,000 a year and families earning over $250,000 a year) are in fact small business owners is laughable, as the average income of a small business owner is $31,246.

If the injunction holds, the only way federal funding of ESC research could continue is if Congress passes legislation overriding the Dickey-Wicker Amendment. Representative Diana DeGette (D-CO), cosponsor of a bill to codify the Obama stem cell policy, issued a statement calling the ruling "deeply disappointing" and saying that "we must pass common-sense embryonic stem cell research legislation." As an alternative to a standalone bill, Congress could add a rider to an existing bill ending the Dickey-Wicker rule.

But it's uncertain whether lawmakers will want to take up stem cell legislation during the "craziness" of a midterm election year when many Democrats and moderate Republicans are vulnerable.

The federal government has vowed a quick appeal of the temporary court order.

A much more egregious case against science has received much less attention.

The attorney general of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli, is a disturbingly right-wing politician.  He’s been waging a war on science – and on President Obama’s health care reforms – and spending the Virginia budget to do so.

In April Mr. Cuccinelli issued a civil investigative demand asking the prestigious University of Virginia for a broad range of documents involving Professor Michael Mann, who was an assistant professor at the university from 1999 to 2005 and who is now a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University.

Professor Mann is known as creator of the “hockey stick graph” which shows global temperature trends over the last thousand years with a sharp increase in the past few decades.  Cucinelli disagrees with this work, which was supported mostly by federal funds, and his suit against the University of Virginia claimed that Professor Mann had committed fraud by misusing state funds.

Last month a federal judge dismissed Cuccinelli’s lawsuit against the University of Virginia, but Cuccinelli has already announced that he will appeal the decision. This battle threatens not just climate researchers, but any scientist working in the state of Virginia.

Cucinelli demanded that the University release all documents related to Professor Mann’s work, including all emails, laboratory notes, and any other correspondence since 1999. The judge who dismissed the case pointed out that Cucinelli’s suit was so vague it didn’t even specify how it was that Professor Mann committed the supposed fraud.

This kind of political threat is reminiscent of the era when Soviet Union scientists only dared to publish findings that met with the approval of the political regime. Political threats are a recipe for bad science – in any country.

He described the GOP as the party of "No We Can't," contrasting that with his campaign slogan from 2008, "Yes We Can." He said Republicans disagree with anything he says. "If I said the sky is blue, they'd say no," Obama said. "If I said fish live in the sea, they'd say no."

"It would be one thing, Milwaukee, if Republicans in Washington had some new ideas, if they said . . . 'You know, we've learned from our mistakes. We'll do things differently this time.' But that's not what they're doing," he added.

The president's challenge is a paradox: What swept him into office two years ago - a hunger for change rooted in economic anxiety - is now imperiling his party's political prospects. In Wisconsin 155,200 jobs have vanished since the end of 2007.

Without mentioning him by name, the President attacked House Minority Leader Boehner for voting against a bill to help states keep teachers, police officers and firefighters employed.

The President will give another speech on the economy on Wednesday in Cleveland, and the White House has already billed it as an attack on Boehner's economic speech that the Ohio Republican gave there last month.

I hear that tomorrow President Obama will call Prime Minister Gillard to offer his congratulations and extend an invitation to visit Washington soon.

In an article in the Australian Financial Review on Tuesday (August 17), my former colleague Silvana Anthony makes the case for the establishment of an independent Parliamentary Budget Office, modeled on the Congressional Budget Office in the U.S.

She makes the case that a PBO would model alternative budgets, provide economic advice to the Parliament, prepare 10-year pre-budget forecasts and cost policies for all political parties. She writes, “The CBO approach to fiscal and budget reform would strengthen this capacity [to provide independent budget estimates or macro forecasts] and open the door to robust fiscal and economic analysis within the Federal Parliament that is accessible by all parties and all people. It would render the Charter of Budget Honesty legislation unnecessary – and spare voters the mind-numbing accusations about costing inaccuracies and budget black holes.”

It seems Joe Hockey reads the AFR. Today he is quoted in The Australian as saying that the Coalition would establish a new parliamentary budget office “akin to the highly-regarded US Congressional Budget Office”.

Still, we can’t be sure that is really his intent, as he would allocate only $2 million a year in funding. Let’s see where this interesting idea goes after the election.

News Corp. says the money went to the GOP because the company’s political action committee felt Republicans would create a more favorable corporate landscape.

But there is one political outcome in the offing that the Republican Governors Association is particularly well-positioned to influence – redistricting of congressional districts, the line-drawing that can help make or break a congressional majority. Governors play a unique and powerful role in the process out in the states, and the primary driver for governors’ association contributions is the upcoming redistricting battle based on the 2010 census.

The Bloomberg article theorises that the RGA contribution may have been directly motivated by business interests, since News Corp. opposes proposed federal rule changes that could weaken Fox’s position in negotiations with cable companies. There are examples where governors have stepped in on such matters, such as when New York Governor, David Paterson, called for binding arbitration in a dispute over feeds between Cablevision and ABC.

“Looking at the quotes from News Corp, they seem pretty open and comfortable with what they are doing,” said Amy Mitchell, the deputy director of Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. “I don’t think News Corp is trying to deny or step away from what these actions suggest. I think the most important thing is, we don’t know why they are doing it.”

His 13-year reign as Ways and Means chairman was a time of great power for the committee; at one point Rostenkowski boasted to a group of reporters and editors, “I am the House.” He played a key role in huge policy shifts like the 1983 rescue of the Social Security system, the 1990 budget deal and the 1986 overhaul of the federal tax code – which took two years of debate and negotiation.

He was also part of a remarkable chapter in health care policy-making, or, as it turned out, unmaking. The aptly named Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act (a bill I worked on as a congressional staffer) was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in July 1989 after bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. The measure provided seniors on Medicare with protection against catastrophic medical expenses and coverage of prescription drug costs. The benefits were to be paid for exclusively by the elderly receiving them, with high-income seniors paying an extra premium surtax.

However after it was enacted, false stories circulated that implied every Medicare recipient would pay the full premium surtax. There is an iconic video clip  that shows a group of seniors chasing him down the hill and attacking him in his car. It has served ever since as a warning to lawmakers about the way seemingly good intentions in Washington can go very bad back home

Indeed, faced with a massive revolt that inspired a New Republic magazine cover story on "greedy geezers," Congress repealed the law three months later.

The woman who lay on Rostenkowski’s car with her protest sign decided later – too late - that the catastrophic health care bill was a good idea.

My own recent paper highlights that every dollar a state spends on Medicaid - whether from state or from federal sources - doesn’t just help keep people with Medicaid coverage healthy. It also brings additional economic benefits and new jobs to everyone in that state. The increased spending provided will deliver $17 billion in business activity, 171,000 new jobs and $6 billion in wages and salaries.

Last Thursday the Senate also voted to confirm President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Only five Republicans break ranks to vote for her.

Still, the one bright legislative spot that immediately after the Kagan vote the Senate finally voted – on the voices – to approved the reauthorization of national child nutrition programs that are set to expire in September. The legislation will expand the number of low-income children who are eligible for free or reduced-price school meals, largely by streamlining the paperwork required to receive the meals. And it will expand a program to provide after-school meals to at-risk children.

Food sold in schools will be required to meet new nutrition guidelines, whether sold in the school lunch lines or in vending machines. Schools still may be allowed to sell pizza and other favorites, though they may have to substitute healthier ingredients to qualify.

School vending machines and à la carte lines, however, may be prohibited from selling candy bars and high-sugar sodas that have long provided revenue for extracurricular programs.

To help schools cover the costs of healthier foods, the bill provides for the first non-inflationary increase in the reimbursement rate for federal-sponsored school meals - the amount local districts are repaid by the federal government - since 1973. The increase amounts to an additional 6 cents for every meal.

First Lady Michelle Obama, who has pushed for the bill’s passage as part of her “Let’s Move” agenda for children, applauded the Senate’s action.

“While childhood obesity cannot be solved overnight, with everyone working together, there’s no question that it can be solved — and today’s vote moves us one step closer to reaching that goal,” the first lady said in a statement released by the White House.

However on other issues, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has officially given up hope of passing legislation responding to the BP oil disaster and the looming threat of climate change. Everything that is enacted these days must be filibuster proof and so a super majority is needed.

On the House side, Republicans recently defeated a bill that would have provided up to $7.4 billion in aid to those sickened by toxins resulting from the 9/11 attacks. This set off a host of fiery speeches and denunciations from their Democratic colleagues and produced a YouTube moment from Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y), whose district includes many of those affected by the World Trade Centre disaster.

When George Washington turned 50 in February 1782, Philadelphia, then the capitol, awoke to the sound of bells ringing and artillery firing. Schools were out, servants were given the day off, and the militia paraded through the streets in their uniforms.

The Republicans, always party poopers, gave their supporters and array of electronic birthday cards to send to the President which take taking aim at his policies.

Visitors to the Republican birthday card website, redirected from the RNC official website, have a choice of 11 different electronic greetings cards featuring various administration officials and top Democrats, including Vice President Joe Biden, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and even Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who left the Republican party in May in order to avoid losing the Republican Senate primary to former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio. “Just for you, I will officially become a Democrat until its (sic) no longer politically convenient. Now give me a hug,” the Crist card reads.

Despite Medicare’s success, there is still plenty of Republican opposition, and over the years, Republicans proposed numerous schemes to slash funding or privatise Medicare. Republican lawmakers are still regurgitating the claim that Medicare would create a “Soviet style model” of health care. In 1995, under the leadership of then House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), Republicans proposed major cuts in Medicare to ensure that Medicare was “going to whither on the vine” Gingrich explained.

But while Republicans have sought to undermine the program, seniors have benefited from it. Prior to Medicare, about one-half of America’s seniors did not have hospital insurance, More than one in four elderly were estimated to go without medical care due to cost concerns, and one in three seniors were living in poverty. Today nearly all seniors have access to affordable health care and only about 14 percent of seniors live below the poverty line.

In a speech last year Congressman Dingell said, “Medicare is built on a promise: If you work hard and pay your taxes, you will have an insurance program for your medical care that will free you from the threat of poverty in your retirement years. This promise must be kept, and we must guarantee that Medicare is able to adapt to the changing health needs of our seniors.”

But Arizona officials said they have been overrun by illegal immigrants who fueled a spike in the state's crime rate and put a strain on state resources. They said the measure was necessary only because of lax federal government enforcement of the southern US border.

During the hearing, Judge Bolton commented that the Arizona law was ambiguous and awkward in its wording and that she was doubtful it could be duly enforced.

A ruling is expected imminently, and much is at stake. If the law is struck down, it will help diminish state efforts to pass immigration laws. If it isn't, Judge Bolton's decision will unleash more copycat legislation. Twenty-one other states want to follow Arizona's footsteps.

Thousands are expected to march tomorrow in protest. The protest movement has come alive in Arizona, where one third of the 6.6 million population is foreign born and an estimated 460,000 are illegal immigrants. Demonstrators are set to descend on the Arizona state capital without their papers and will dare law enforcement in Phoenix, Arizona, to put the new law to the test. Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaiohas prepared a tent city to house undocumented immigrants as local law enforcement gears up to enforce the law.

The eyes of the entire nation are fixed on this southwestern state, as the issue of immigration has grown in national scope both due to the recent economic downturn and the upcoming November legislative elections.

While most Americans support Arizona's immigration law, they also think its looming implementation increase discrimination against Hispanics while not necessarily making a dent in the immigration problem. Recent opinion polls found more than 60 percent of the US population supporting the Arizona immigration law, and 65 percent of people in Arizona favour the law.

Sixty-nine percent of voters in Arizona want President Obama to send more U.S. troops to their state in an effort to help secure the border. Only six percent believe there are already too many troops in the state. Forty percent believe that the immigration law has had a positive impact on the state’s image while 46 percent believe it’s had a negative impact. Forty-three percent believe the law is good for the state’s economy while 37 percent say it’s bad for the economy.

On Tuesday, a Gallup poll found that 45 percent of Americans believe immigration should decrease in the country, against 17 percent who said it should increase, and 34 percent that it should stay at current levels. This represents a narrowing of Americans' views on the subject since last year, when 50 percent wanted immigration to decrease and 14 percent favored an increase.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer was struggling earlier this year but now holds a commanding lead in the campaign to keep her job. A new Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey now finds Brewer leading Democrat Terry Goddard by a 56% to 37% margin. However, Governor Brewer's star may not shine forever. Arizona public schools are experiencing a drop in enrollments which could account for a drop in millions of dollars of federal funding. Arizona's Office of Tourism is reporting a $12 million loss in canceled hotels and reservations. In the end, embracing the law also carries the risk of permanently alienating the critical Latino vote.

These hot days often culminate in ferocious summer thunderstorms, with lightning and torrential downpours. Such a storm last Sunday killed two people and has left thousands in the Washington area without electricity for days. People in affected Maryland suburbs, with no air conditioning and food rotting in freezers, have decamped to hotels. The lucky ones have a beach house in Delaware.

After the big snow falls earlier this year, it’s enough to make anyone (except a Republican member of Congress) believe in climate change.

Years with hottest June months since 1872.

"I think there's a good reason for a conservative to vote yes, and that's provided in the Constitution itself," Graham told his peers. He then read to them from Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Papers; "The Senate should have a special and strong reason for the denial of confirmation," he read, such as "to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from family connection, from personal attachment and from a view to popularity."

Graham said Kagan had passed all the tests envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. Then he challenged his colleagues: "Are we taking the language of the Constitution that stood the test of time and basically putting a political standard in the place of a constitutional standard? That's for each senator to ask and answer themselves. Seventy-three of the 126 Supreme Court nominations were done without roll-call votes. The words haven't changed in the last 200 years, but certainly the voting patterns have."

He reminded his colleagues that President Obama had won the Presidential election, and he said that "the Constitution in my view puts a requirement on me as a senator to not replace my judgment for his.”

At least Senator in the room, Democrat Senator Richard Durbin, was given cause to rethink his own approach to judicial nominations. “I reflected on some of the things that I have said and how I have voted in the past, and thought that perhaps his statement suggested a better course,” he said.

It will be interesting to see how long it will be before the conservatives come after Lindsey, whose term expires in 2014. Earlier this year he was effectively nobbled by GOP Senate Leaders when he tried to work on a climate change bill with Democrats.

Meanwhile two other Senate Republicans also chose to cast their votes with the Democrats. The Senate voted on Tuesday to proceed to a final vote on an extension of unemployment benefits that had been stuck in the chamber for six weeks, and previously voted down three times by the Republicans.  The 60-33 vote came after Sen. Carte Goodwin was sworn in to replace the late Sen. Robert Byrd, and after GOP Senators Olympia Snow and Susan Collins gave the Democrats the 60 votes they needed to move to a final vote.

The legislation will provide retroactive benefits to more than 2.5 million people whose unemployment insurance expired. The House is expected to approve the measure later this week, but the timing of a vote will depend on when the Senate takes final action. It would then be sent to President Obama, who blasted Senate Republicans on Monday for holding up the legislation.

Republicans’ support for this legislation was contingent on it being fully funded, and on making permanent all the tax cuts enacted under President Bush, including cuts for the richest Americans (Obama has proposed extending the Bush tax cuts for all but the two percent of Americans with incomes of more than $250,000 a year). The jobs support bill would add $33 billion to the deficit; tax cuts for the richest Americans would add $678 billion.

• There are some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies working on programs related to counter-terrorism, homeland security and intelligence in the US.

• In Washington DC and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work have been built or are under construction since September 2001. Together they occupy about 17 million square feet of space.

• There is an enormous amount of waste and redundancy. For example there are 39 government organizations doing intelligence analysis, and 51 bodies, located in 25 government organizations, that are following the flow of money too and from terrorist networks.

• Some 50,000 intelligence reports are published each year – many of which are routinely ignored.

You can read these reports and more at topsecretamerica.com

• Allowing young adults to stay on their parents' coverage until they turn 26. In 2011, an estimated 650,000 young people who would otherwise have been uninsured will gain coverage. Another 600,000 will benefit by switching from individually purchased policies to less costly, more comprehensive employer plans. The number with coverage will grow in 2012 and 2013.

• A health plan for uninsured people with pre-existing health conditions. From 200,000 to 400,000 could benefit in 2011, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Beginning in 2014, insurers will be required to accept all applicants, regardless of medical history.

• Ending lifetime limits on coverage, and restricting annual limits. As many as 20,400 people a year hit lifetime limits. Many more — an estimated 102 million — are in plans that impose such limits and will no longer be able to do so.

• Requiring insurers to cover children with medical problems. An estimated 51,000 uninsured children are expected to gain coverage. Another 90,000 children who have been excluded for coverage for a particular condition - asthma, for example - will also benefit.

• Filling in the ‘donut hole’ – the gap in coverage for prescription drugs – for Medicare beneficiaries.

A new user-friendly website has been unveiled to help explain the provisions in the new law and how they will affect every American.

This website also provides access to the Hospital Compare tool which analyses and compares data about the quality of care at more than 4,700 hospitals across the country. This includes data on 44 quality measures such as how well hospitals handle conditions like heart attacks and diabetes, information about the quality of care patients with suspected heart attacks receive, and data about infection rates following outpatient surgeries.

The full impact of the health-care legislation will not be felt until 2014, when some of the most far-reaching (and controversial) elements take effect. Those include an end to discrimination by insurers based on preexisting conditions and a requirement that everyone carry health insurance.

As the various provisions come into effect, and as President Obama travels the country to highlight them, polls show that health care reform is gaining in popularity and support, despite continuing and concerted attacks from Republicans and the Tea Party Movement. A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll has support for the overhaul at 48 percent - up seven percentage points over the past month. Forty-one percent of people have unfavorable views, down from 44 percent in May.

Democrats and Republicans are now vying for advantage in the November mid-term elections and they have been fighting to shape how the public perceives the historic legislation. Roughly a third of voters say that a candidate who voted for the health reform law will be more likely to get their vote, a third say less likely, and a third say it doesn't really matter. These days the most pressing issues for voters are the economy and jobs.

But health threats from the oil spill may linger unseen, perhaps for more than a generation. And we will not be fully prepared to address the public health problems that arise in the future unless there is an effective and coordinated handover of responsibilities for protecting public health from the emergency response agencies to agencies with the capability and capacity for long-term monitoring and management. Federal agencies have been pulled in as needed in the gulf spill response, but it’s not clear that the Health and Human Services response has been synchronized from the top to ensure effective delivery and coordination.

In short, the spill reiterates why we need to better manage the short- and longterm responses required to address the public health threats such disasters pose whether they are manmade or due to natural causes.

No systematic long-term monitoring and oversight was put in place with the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, and now we wonder what we missed. Several studies following the Prestige oil spill off the coast of Spain in 2002 indicate that some respiratory problems in cleanup workers didn’t show up until years after the spill. Additionally, evidence suggests DNA damage occurred to these workers that could lead to cancers and alterations in hormone status.

The responsibility for both the immediate and long-term responses can only be led by the administration from the highest levels. This is not an appropriate role for corporations, which cannot be trusted to put the long-term interests and needs of the affected communities ahead of their business concerns. The BP oil spill is a clear example of why we cannot allow the very corporation that caused the problem in the first place to be trusted with monitoring its potential health effects. The protection of public health has always been a key responsibility of the federal government, and we have previously called for the federal government to takeover this responsibility with respect to the gulf oil spill.

The gulf oil crisis reminds us that it is essential to have a response plan that is activated early and can continue into the future for as long as needed.

This is not the first time the nation has faced such a crisis, and it won’t be the last. We have faced public health threats from the World Trade Center attack on 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and from infectious agents such as SARS, Avian flu, and H1N1 flu that fortunately did not reach crisis proportions but could have. The responses, while effective, have not been always been well coordinated. The Government Accountability Office in 2008 identified important lessons from the WTC response that could help develop responder health programs in the event of a future disaster, but the GAO recommendations have not been fully addressed.

The gulf oil crisis reminds us that it is essential to have a response plan that is activated early and can continue into the future for as long as needed. We need to establish an architecture complete with clear lines of responsibilities and acknowledged trigger points for action. It should facilitate the involvement of the appropriate federal health agencies in addressing a potential public health emergency— from watchful waiting to emergency response to long-term monitoring and management.

We do not need a new entity to put this system in place. Government has the expertise among the many HHS agencies to handle any given public health emergency, but different players may be called on at different times depending on the event. This transfer of responsibilities will occur mostly between HHS agencies, but it may also involve nonhealth agencies as well. Obviously this is now the case with the gulf oil crisis, but it could occur with other incidents as well. With a large-scale infectious agent attack, for example, medication may need to be delivered to the homes of many affected Americans, and it has been suggested that the U.S. Postal Service could fill this role since they know how to get parcels to nearly every U.S. home.

We propose that a single, high-ranking HHS official be designated to launch and oversee the coordinated response plan implemented whenever a situation arises that can threaten public health. We recommend this leadership role go to the assistant secretary for health, or ASH. The ASH should have responsibility for determining when and how the response to a public health threat moves into the initial emergency phase and when it transitions to a long-term monitoring and management phase. The ASH would have responsibility for ensuring—in conjunction with other federal, state, and local agencies, academics, and the private sector—that needed services are delivered and information is collected, and that data, information, and resources are transferred to the responsible HHS agency or agencies.

This approach does not require new agencies or significant new authorities. But it will require the following:

• Clarification of roles and responsibilities of all agencies and offices involved
• Robust surveillance systems with standardized data that can analyze information collected from a variety of sources
• Sufficient financial resources and the appropriate workforce to develop capacity and maintain long-term monitoring systems
• Mechanisms in place to address ongoing medical needs for individuals affected by the crisis
• A financial infrastructure to assure funding is available for immediate and longer-term health needs

This paper looks at the issues that must be addressed in the immediate (emergency) response situation to facilitate the eventual handover to a long-term monitoring and management system, what that system should incorporate, how to trigger the emergency response and the long-term monitoring phase, and how the different agencies should work together in a seamless fashion. But first, it examines how our current system lacks an overall plan to maximize the contribution of all available agencies and organize the strongest possible public health response.

You can also watch an "Ask the Experts" video on these issues here.

In a remarkable and touching coincidence, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two founding fathers of the United States and the only two men who signed the Declaration of Independence to become President, died on the same day: July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the nation they helped found.

Just in time for this year’s Fourth of July, the Library of Congress has this news: hyperspectral imaging of Thomas Jefferson’s rough draft of the Declaration of Independence has confirmed that he originally wrote the phrase “our fellow subjects,” but then scrawled over it the word “citizens.” The change occurs in that portion of the document that discusses the colonists’ grievances against King George III. This specific sentence was not in the final declaration but the word “citizens” was used elsewhere and reflected a progression of thinking by Jefferson as he tried to make clear that the people of the fledgling United States were no longer subjects of the British but citizens of their own democracy.

As Senator Harry Reid said in his eulogy on Byrd: “A dozen men called the Oval Office his own while Senator Byrd called the Capitol building his office – and he would be the first to remind you that those two branches are equal in the eyes of the Constitution.” http://reid.senate.gov/newsroom/pr_100628_remarksonsenbyrd.cfm

In fact Senator Byrd actually also got quite close to the presidency - as the President pro tempore he was third in the line of presidential succession, following the Vice President and the Speaker of the House.

"In 2003, Ms. Kagan wrote a tribute to Justice Marshall in which she said that, 'in his view, it was the role of the courts in interpreting the Constitution to protect the people who went unprotected by every other organ of government,' " Senator Jon Kyl  (Arizona) complained.

 As the Republicans delivered their anti-Marshall attacks, their staffers circulated details of the late justice's offenses to reporters: "Justice Marshall endorsed 'judicial activism,' supported abortion rights, and believed the death penalty was unconstitutional."

Only Senator Lindsey Graham ( South Carolina) broke the mould and was more thoughtful, saying that there were things about Kagan’s record both as Solicitor General and dean of Harvard Law School that he liked, such as her efforts to hire conservative law professors.  Senator Graham also echoed statements he made in supporting Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation:  that the mere fact that Kagan appears liberal should not be a disqualifying factor.  “Elections have consequences,” he said, indicating that the president has a right to choose high court candidates in line with his views.  And “At end of day, if you think more like Justice Marshall than Justice Rehnquist, so be it,” he said.

Why did Republicans adopt this curious strategy, to go after an iconic civil rights lawyer who successfully argued Brown vs. Board of Education, a landmark case that that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students and denying black children equal educational opportunities unconstitutional?

As Dana Milbank points out:  

Did Republicans think it would help their cause to criticize the first African American on the Supreme Court, a revered figure who has been celebrated with an airport, a postage stamp and a Broadway show? The guy is a saint -- literally. Marshall this spring was added to the Episcopal Church's list of "Holy Women and Holy Men," which the Episcopal Diocese of New York says "is akin to being granted sainthood."

With Kagan's confirmation hearings expected to last most of the week, Republicans may still have time to make cases against Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Gandhi.

I’m no expert on the law, but here’s what Justice Marshall himself had to say about the role of the judiciary:

 "Our central function is to act as neutral arbiters of disputes that arise under the law. To this end, we bind ourselves through our own code of ethics to avoid even the appearance of impropriety or partiality. We must handle the cases that come before us without regard for what result might meet with public approval. We must decide each case in accordance with the law. We must not reach for a result that we, in our arrogance, believe will further some goal not related to the concrete case before us. And we must treat the litigants in every case in an evenhanded manner. It would be as wrong to favor the prosecution in every criminal case as it would be to favor the plaintiff in every tort suit."

 With the mid-term elections looming, it seems that these confirmation hearings will be less about Elena Kagan and more about the dueling rhetoric of Democrats and Republicans over the size and scope of government and the proper role of judges in American society

Justice Marshall’s son summed it up when he said about the GOP diatribe against his father, "I was a little surprised. [My father] would've probably had the same reaction I did: It's time to talk about Elena."

Eventually the Democratic leadership will probably try again to attract GOP support for the measure, which Obama has called critical to avoiding the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of state workers and propping up the nation's still-fragile economic recovery. But after four months of talks, frustrated senior Democrats are likely to delay further action until after the July 4 recess.

Emergency jobless benefits, which provide up to 99 weeks of income support, expired June 2. Since then, more than 1.2 million people have had their checks cut off, according to estimates by the Labor Department. That number is expected to rise to more than 2 million people by the time Congress returns from its weeklong break. Unless Congress acts, the program would phase out entirely by the end of October, at a time when the unemployment rate is 9.7%.

In the real world, this means millions of jobless Americans will lose their already-modest benefits, and hundreds of thousands of state employees will be laid off over the next year, including teachers, police officers, and firefighters.

All of this will happen because it seems that Republicans are more concerned about the deficit - a deficit they created under Bush/Cheney - than the economy. The bill has become a political football.

The bill as presented yesterday would have increased budget deficits by $33 billion over the next decade - the cost of extending jobless benefits through the end of November. Obama's request for $24 billion in state aid was scaled back to $16 billion and its cost would have been covered by unspent funds from last year's economic stimulus package, much of it targeted at the food stamps program.

Other provisions would have been fully paid for, including plans to extend an array of expiring tax breaks that are hugely popular with many of the nation's largest business groups. Among the revenue-raising provisions in the measure are new taxes on investment fund managers and multinational corporations that move jobs overseas.

By ceasing work on the package, Democrats said they hope to prod business groups as well as Republican governors who need additional federal aid to balance their budgets.

However despite this impasse, elsewhere there has been legislative action to finally tackle the financial excesses and lack of oversight that contributed to the near collapse fot he U.S. financial system almost two years ago. Early this morning (Friday), after 20 hours of negotiations, a House-Senate conference committee reached agreement to reconcile competing versions of legislation that would transform financial regulation.

The patient bill of rights includes the phasing out of lifetime dollar limits on coverage, a particular problem for people dealing with cancer and other chronic illnesses. More than 100 million people are enrolled in plans that currently impose such limits. Starting this year, plans can set annual limits no lower than $750,000, rising to $2 million in 2012, and such limits will be completely prohibited in 2014.

Insurance companies are now prohibited from canceling the policies of people who get sick, and health plans will be required to provide consumers with simple and clear information about their choices and rights. Other safeguards to be put in place this year include allowing women to pick an ob-gyn specialist as their primary care doctor and forbidding insurers from denying coverage to children on account of a previous medical problem. Protection against such insurance denials will extend to adults in 2014, when most Americans would be required to have health insurance.

The announcement followed a private meeting between administration officials, several state insurance commissioners, and CEOs of major insurance companies, amid concerns over continued premium hikes. Consumers who buy their policies directly faced increases averaging 20 percent this year, according to a survey released Monday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Although most Americans are covered on the job, about 14 million purchase insurance on the individual market and have the least bargaining power when it comes to costs.

The GOP marked the passage of 90 days since health care reform was signed into law with a glossy brochure full of the same tired old claims  - but no new ideas.  These days the Republicans can't even agree whether they are for 'repeal and replace' or just 'repeal'.

Meanwhile a Gallup poll released yesterday shows that health care reform is slowly gaining the support of the American people. Today 49% of Americans say passage of health care legislation was a good thing while 46% say it was a bad thing. In April 45% said it was good versus 49% who said it was bad.

Public reviews fall starkly on partisan lines. About three-quarters, 76%, of Democrats said passage was a good thing, compared with 17% of Republicans who said the same. Independent voters continue to lean against the overhaul, 51%-43%, largely unchanged from April.

U.S. ratings in Western Europe are overwhelmingly favourable (73% in France, up from 39% in 2007; 65% in the U.K., up from 51% in 2007) and have improved sharply in Russia (57%, up 16 points since 2007 and 13 points since 2009).  U.S. ratings have also risen in China (58%, up from 34% in 2007), Indonesia (66%, up from 29% in 2007); and South Korea (79%, up from 58% in 2007). They remain relatively constant but high in India (66%) and Japan (66%).

In countries with predominantly Muslim populations, the modest levels of confidence and approval observed in 2009 have slipped. U.S. favourability ratings have remained relatively constant but low in Pakistan. Ratings are very low in Turkey (17%) but that’s an improvement on 2007 (9%). Ratings in Egypt slipped to 17%, down from 21% in 2007 and 27% in 2009.

A special follow-up poll taken in Mexico after Arizona enacted a law which provided police with increased powers aimed at dealing with illegal immigrants saw the U.S. favourability rating tumble from 62% to 44%.

Reactions to U.S. policies

Despite signs of economic recovery in many parts of the world, the Pew Survey found that global publics – including Americans – but with the notable exceptions of China, India and Brazil, are depressed about the way things are. In 17 of 22 countries surveyed, less than half the population (240% in the U.S., 20% in the U.K., 13% in France, 33% in Russia) thinks that the national economy is in good shape. However 91% of Chinese, 57% of Indians, and 62% of Brazilians think that their economy is in good shape.

In fact a growing number of people around the globe (31% of those polled) see China’s economy as the most powerful in the world. The percentage naming the U.S. as the leading international economy has dropped from 50% in 2009 to 43%.

In contrast to the Bush years, there is substantial support for U.S. anti-terrorism efforts in a number of countries, including Britain, France, Spain, Germany, and India, and also in two countries that have been struggling with home-grown terrorism, Indonesia and Russia. Opposition to these policies is particularly strong in most Muslim countries and also, perhaps surprisingly, in Japan and South Korea.

There is more support for Obama’s anti-terrorism efforts than there is for keeping troops in Afghanistan. With regard to the way Obama is dealing with key trouble spots Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, polling found that as many countries disapprove as approve. Even in NATO allies in Afghanistan, opinions are divided.

While overall 60% of the global populations polled have a favourable view of the U.S. (up 20 points form 2007) and 64% of people have confidence in President Obama (compared to 21% who had confidence in President Bush), the U.S. is still seen as unilateralst (only 32% thing that the U.S. considers their interests). However 14 of 22 countries think that the U.S. will ‘do the right thing in world affairs’. The list of those who don’t think the U.S. will do the right thing includes Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan and Mexico. In the Bush years only three countries (India, Nigeria and Kenya) believed that the U.S. will do the right thing – not even the U.S. was on this list.

On Monday the GOP killed a House bill that would increase funding for scientific research and math and science education by forcing Democrats to vote in favor of federal employees viewing pornography.

Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX), the ranking member of the House science committee, introduced a motion to recommit, a last-ditch effort to change a bill by sending it back to the committee with mandatory instructions. In this case, Republicans included a provision that would bar the federal government from paying the salaries of employees who've been disciplined for viewing pornography at work.

To proceed with the bill and bring it to a final vote, Democrats would have had to vote against the motion to recommit, and against the porn ban. But they didn't have the stomach for it, and 121 Democrats voted with Republicans to kill the bill.

The bill had passed the committee last month with bipartisan support, in a vote of 29 to 8. At no point during the 48 hearings held on this bill were Minority concerns with isolated incidents of federal employees viewing pornography brought up, and no amendment was offered during any of the three Subcommittee markups, the Full Committee Markup, or the Floor Consideration.

2. Attempting to roll back Obamacare at the expense of small business tax relief.

 A Republican effort to repeal the individual mandate in the Democrats’ health care overhaul failed yesterday afternoon on a largely partisan vote. The procedural motion never really had a shot at passing, but that wasn't the Republicans' point. The vote was 187-230, with 21 Democrats voting to roll back the individual mandate and one Republican (the brave Rep Cao from New Orleans, who knows that the people he represents need these reforms). The votes were essentially the same as the final vote on the health care law.

Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, called for the repeal under a motion to recommit.

It was rather shocking that the bill Camp is using for this manoeuver was a small business tax bill, but clearly the main point for the Republicans was that they wanted to get Democrats on the record once again saying they back a law that requires uninsured Americans to purchase health insurance.

There will be many more efforts like this. “This is a first step in Republicans’ efforts to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with common sense, step-by-step reforms to lower costs,” House Minority Leader John Boehner said.

The individual mandate was the foundation of the Democrats’ push for the health care overhaul, bringing more consumers into the marketplace, but it remains one of the most unpopular parts of the health reform law. Republicans have been unified in their opposition to the individual mandate, repeatedly claiming that the government does not have the authority to force Americans to buy health insurance. Some Republicans have said the mandate is unconstitutional.

However this idea was at the heart of Romneycare in Massachusetts and the GOP counter to Hillarycare in 1993, and it has worked. Analysts have predicted that the impact of the Republican move would be to raise premiums in the health insurance exchanges by nearly 40% and severely undermine employer sponsored health care.

The oil industry and its backers are trying every means to cover up the harsh evidence of oil's destruction. Alabama fire officials report that that BP is keeping trained local officials away from the spill response, and numerous press reports indicate that BP is blocking the media from reporting on the Gulf oil disaster. There is also evidence that BP is withholding water and air monitoring data and hindering public health monitoring.

BP has also consistently denied the existence of subsurface plumes of dispersed oil.

Last week my colleague Ellen-Marie Whelan and I released a paper calling for the federal government to have full responsibility, leadership, and oversight in monitoring and managing the disaster’s public health consequences. Our conclusion: “We cannot afford to leave something as important as Americans’ health to a corporation that has such a bad history of ignoring health and safety requirements, hiding information, and dissembling the extent of ongoing problems. This is already a disaster of unprecedented proportions; the government must act now to ensure that public health is protected so that the disaster does not linger through longstanding ill health effects long after the oil spill is cleaned up.”

This paper was cited in a hearing held on June 10 by the Energy and Environment Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

This week the industry will be called to answer for its crimes. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) will hold a hearing with the CEOs of the top five oil companies on America’s energy future on June 15. The Obama administration has ordered top BP officials to come to the White House on June 16 to discuss how "to ensure that all individuals and communities impacted by the spill are made whole.” President Obama is off to the Gulf States today, and tomorrow night will deliver an address to the nation that is expected to lay out what is expected of BP, with timelines and possibly a requirement that cleanup funds are put in an escrow account.

And in the meantime, if it all seems too bleak, watch this and laugh – or cry!

But Berwick needs Senate confirmation before he can take over as administrator of CMS, and so it is no surprise that his nomination has been targeted by the Republicans and the right . He has become a GOP target because he dared to praise Britain's National Health Service (the conservatives' vision of health care hell) and the National Institute for Clinical Effectiveness (NICE). Indeed, he has been honored by the Queen for his work with NICE. However what Berwick’s critics consistently fail to note is that his praise for the NHS principles of universal coverage and a science-based approach to improving care are offset by criticisms about the NHS being under-staffed and under-performing. And he's not been an advocate of imposing such a system in the U.S.

But why let facts stand in the way of partisan politics and attempts to interfere with the implementation of Obama’s health care reforms? Here’s what Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) said on National Public Radio this morning:   "Do I really want Dr. Berwick? Do I want somebody who is in love with the National Health Service of Britain - someone who says they have incredible respect for the way it works and thinks it's the right way to go? Why would an American citizen want that person to be in charge of Medicare and Medicaid for this country?"

But this is misdirection at its best. Berwick couldn’t ration health care, even if he wanted to. Lawmakers control Medicare's budget as well as most other aspects of the program. If there's going to be rationing, that will be their call, not Berwick's.

What Berwick can do, and what he's exceptionally well qualified to do, is help Medicare and Medicaid deliver more care for the money that's being spent on them. The new law is replete with efforts to eliminate waste, improve coordination among healthcare providers and align providers' financial incentives with patients' interests. Berwick is not only a top advocate for efficiency in health care, he's a world-class expert in ways to improve quality and safety. He's also known for a patients-first approach that emphasizes giving individuals more information and control - the kind of transparency that's needed for consumers to effectively manage their own healthcare spending.

There’s a particularly insightful recent interview with Berwick here.  In this interview he was asked about comparative effectiveness research and how critics have argued that it will lead to the rationing of health care. In response he said this: “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care - the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly.” He could have added that right now most of it is being done by health insurance companies with a focus on their bottom line.

By holding up Berwick's appointment and accusing him of having a hidden rationing agenda, the Republicans are trying to accomplish two goals: to scare voters about health care reform and to deprive the agency of its chief strategist at a time when he is most needed. 

Key findings from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s May Health Tracking Poll show that people are still confused about health care reform and what it will mean for them.

* Confusion over the new health reform law declined but remains widespread, with 44% of the public saying they were confused in May, compared to 55% in April. Moreover, more than a third of Americans (35%) say they do not understand what the impact of the law will be on themselves and their families.

* Americans continue to report getting information about health reform from a wide variety of sources, including the news media, friends and medical professionals. More than half report they got information from friends and family (68%), or from cable (63%) or broadcast news programs (55%).

* In fact, cable news still tops the list of the public’s “most important” sources of news about the new law, with 30% saying they rely on that source more than any other. Among this group, views of the health reform law differ dramatically between those who mostly watch FOX News (41% of whom are self-identified Republicans) and those who mostly watch CNN (45% of whom are self-identified Democrats). The FOX News viewers overwhelmingly oppose the law (78% feel unfavorable toward it versus 15% who are favorable), while the CNN viewers tend to support it (52% favorable, 40% unfavorable).

* Americans remain divided on health reform, with 41% holding favorable views of the law, 44 percent holding unfavorable views and 14% undecided or unsure. Most Democrats still approve of it and most Republicans still oppose it. The share with “very unfavorable” views is still around three in 10 people overall and seven in 10 among Republicans.

* Those with favorable views of health reform tend to cite the law’s potential for increasing Americans’ access to health insurance and health care (47%) and making both more affordable (12%) as the main reasons for their support. Those with unfavorable views had a wider range of reasons for their opposition, but topping the list were concerns about the cost of reform to the country and to individuals (27%) and opposition to the government’s perceived role in the changes (17%).

The Obama Administration is moving quickly to implement the new health care law so that people begin to see the benefits before the November mid-term elections.

Last Thursday the Obama Administration announced it is about to mail out the first rebate checks to help seniors on Medicare pay for their prescription drugs. The federal government will start on June 10 to send out the first $250 rebate checks to Medicare beneficiaries caught by the so-called “doughnut hole.” The term refers to a gap in coverage of prescription drugs for Medicare recipients. About 8 million seniors a year reach the “doughnut hole” threshold where they have to pay the full amount for their medications.

The new healthcare law closes that gap over time so that seniors only have to pay a fraction of the full cost of their drugs. A little more than 4 million Americans are expected to get rebate checks this year.

The announcement marks the latest example of ongoing efforts to persuade the public, and particularly seniors, of the new healthcare law’s benefits. Seniors disproportionately dislike the new law, and they’re also the group that’s most likely to vote in this year’s midterm elections.

For Democrats, the test here was whether they could hold on to a blue-collar district where they have a 2-to-1 registration advantage but that voted for Republican John McCain in 2008. The GOP used the race to gauge the effectiveness of portraying Obama's health care overhaul as a disaster and his energy-climate change bill as a jobs destroyer. The parties poured more than $1 million each into the campaign, most of it negative. The race was considered so close and so important that Democrats called on former President Bill Clinton to campaign for Critz, while Republicans turned to U.S. Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts to boost Burns.

This was the Democrats’ third consecutive victory in a highly competitive House special election since President Obama took office, with two other wins in upstate New York. And as 1994, 2006 and 2008 show, success in special election contests is a harbinger of success in the fall.

Now of course it’s true that the Democrats did not win the special election in Hawaii on Saturday. But what happened was that Charles Djou, a Republican, took most of urban Honolulu's 1st Congressional District because state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa and former Congressman Ed Case split the Democratic vote. Djou had 39.4 percent of the vote, followed by 30.8 percent for state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa and 27.6 percent for former congressman Ed Case. However with the combined vote for the Democrats considerably larger than that for Djou, he will have a difficult task to retain this seat in November.

Meanwhile, Republicans must figure out whether the “Randslide” in Kentucky is a plus or a minus for them. The GOP primary saw Rand Paul, son of former Presidential candidate Ron Paul, humiliate Trey Grayson, the protégé of the senior Kentucky Senator and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell in what was described by one commentator as a “pure, unalloyed victory for the Tea Party”.

Paul says he is anti-government and means it – he wants to end all agricultural subsidies in a state that relies on them, and shut down the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve Bank. But he does want to keep Medicare – presumably because as an ophthalmologist, it contributes substantially to his income.

Since winning the primary Paul has caused a ruckus by criticizing the Civil Rights Act and the federal role in desegregating private businesses. His comments have generated considerable discomfort for GOP leaders and highlighted the challenge for the national GOP of absorbing the Tea Party’s insurgent, anti-establishment candidates.

There are growing concerns among Republicans about the party’s get-out-the-vote operation and whether it can translate the Tea Party grass-roots enthusiasm into turnout on Election Day.

Republicans have been unified around opposition to the President’s agenda, trying to stop nearly every proposal. But that has allowed Democrats to brand their rivals as obstructionists who are unwilling to compromise. While Republicans have used health care reform as their case study that under Obama government has become too expansive and expensive, they are in a race against time on this score as previously cynical or skeptical voters are already getting to see some of the benefits of health care reform. The biggest threat the Democrats face is that the economic recovery remains tepid, with unemployment still high.

Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, has said that anything short of taking back the House in November would be a failure.

As EJ Dionne has pointed out: of the 56 seats the Democrats picked up from Republicans in either 2006 or 2008, 23 of them were carried by McCain; in six more, Obama was held to 51 percent or less. These are at the heart of Republican hopes and the reason why it will be hard for Republicans not to gain in the House this fall. If Democrats can hang on to some of these McCain districts, they will not only keep control of the House but may be able to hold Republican gains to 25 seats or fewer.

After the enormous buildup of Republican expectations, such a result would be a shock – indeed, by their definition, a failure.

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More concerning is the ill effects that may come from the way that BP cleans up these oil disasters using dispersants. These chemicals, sprayed directly on the oil slick to break it up into much smaller particles, do not remove the oil, but make it less visible and the smaller droplets sink to the ocean floor.

BP has reportedly bought up more than a third of the world's supply of these dispersants. The issue is that we do not actually know what chemicals are in many of these dispersants, or what their long-term effects will be since their exact makeup is kept secret under competitive trade laws.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has begun the process of overhauling the Toxic Substances and Control Act, an important step in protecting public health by setting government standards for safe chemical exposure in workplaces and the environment based on the most up-to-date science. This will require appropriate enforcement authorities and resources. But this important regulatory reform will come too late for those involved in the Gulf oil cleanup and those who live nearby.

As the President's Cancer Panel recently noted, exposure to chemicals in the air, food, and water pose a serious risk to Americans' health. The panel found that federal chemical laws are weak, funding for research and enforcement is inadequate, and regulatory responsibilities are split among too many agencies. The experts called for a new national strategy to focus on these threats.

Many agencies are ramping up monitoring particular effects of this disaster -including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - but none are ultimately responsible for the overall coordination of what could be a public health emergency. In the aftermath of the World Trade Center attack it became obvious that haphazard responses were not enough to adequately address health problems for the first responders and workers.

The good news is that there has recently been a major increase in federal investment in public health infrastructure and workforce. The recently enacted health care reform legislation provides additional tools to begin to ramp up the nation's public health infrastructure and workforce.

But there is much more that needs to be done to protect public health at times of natural and man-made disasters. The principal aim at this time must be for the federal government to act quickly and put monitoring and response systems in place in the threatened Gulf communities. These can be models of a system that could routinely be implemented at such times, regardless of where in the U.S. it occurs.

We can hope that these systems are not needed and that the cleanup work can be done quickly and safely with no adverse after effects. But as we learn more about this disaster, this does not seem to be the case, and action now must occur to ensure that there is no public health version of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

The Task Force also addresses the multi-billion business of food marketing to children . The reports notes that the use of licensed characters to market foods to children is particularly effective and pervasive.. The Sesame Workshop has found that when preschoolers were asked if they would rather eat broccoli or a Hershey's chocolate bar, 78% of the children chose the chocolate bar and only 22% chose broccoli. But when an Elmo sticker was placed on the broccoli, 50% of the children chose broccoli. The report commends the industry for taking steps to reduce advertising of poor quality foods to children, but warns that voluntary industry efforts "had not substantially shifted advertising for children towards healthier products" and argues that "the FCC could consider revisiting and modernizing on commercial time during children's programming."

Those who might be tempted to respond with protestations about the nanny state should simply bear in mind that obesity imposes heavy costs on all Americans. Obesity is estimated to cause 112,000 deaths every year in the U.S., and one third of all children born in the year 2000 are expected to develop diabetes during their lifetime. Each year, obese adults incur an estimated $1,429 more in medical expenses than their normal-weight peers, and overall, the nation spent around $147 billion on obesity-related health costs in 2008.

Some of the recommendations are as down-to-earth as encouraging schools to swap out deep fryers for salad bars, limits on fees for participation in school sports and an increase in the number of playgrounds in low-income neighborhoods.

Simultaneously with the release of the White House Task Force report, the Center for American Progress released a report from me and two of my colleagues looking at the provisions within the new health care reform legislation that have the potential to address childhood obesity.

Some provisions in the Act specifically tackle obesity. These include

• Improved nutrition labeling in fast food restaurants, which will list calories and provide information on other nutrients;

• The Childhood Obesity Demonstration Project, which gives grants to communitybased obesity intervention programs; and

• Community Transformation Grants, which gives grants to community-based efforts to prevent chronic diseases.

Other parts of the new law take a broader approach and have the potential to address obesity because they are focused on prevention and because in their implementation they could make childhood obesity and its risk factors a focus for kids, their parents, and their caregivers. These provisions fall into the following general categories:

• Prevention and public health programs that invest in broader, population-level obesity intervention efforts;

• Primary care and coordination efforts that emphasize prevention, a team-based approach and paying for improved health;

• Community-based care that target communities that are disproportionately obese and overweight;

• Maternal and child health that promote breastfeeding and early-childhood nutrition;

• Provisions focusing on adult obesity that will likely impact the behaviour of children; and

• Better research and data collection to ensurethat what is being done to fight obesity is working.

This new store is certainly very American: there’s a climate-controlled wine cellar stocking 2,500 bottles, an open-flame hearth oven baking artisan breads, a personalized birthday and wedding-cake service, a sit-down sushi bar, a gourmet cheese department, a gelato stand, a carousel grinding fresh nuts, the freezer cases have fog-treated doors, and there are flat-screen televisions so you don’t miss the game while shopping.

In these situations, confronted with an aisle of breakfast cereals – all of them containing too much sugar – or a selection of orange juices with and without pulp, with calcium, ginko or extra vitamins, I’m rendered totally useless and unable to choose. That’s usually my excuse for not doing the food shopping.

I’m intrigued to see if the new Safeway can generate a bit of competition for price and quality with Whole Foods, just up the road. Over the past year most Social Safeway customers have been lured to Whole Foods – will they return? I laughed when I read that a Safeway company executive was quoted as saying "It won't be a problem to get them back. You can't buy Coca-Cola at Whole Foods.”

By the way, Washington DC Safeway supermarkets all have nicknames – there’s the Soviet Safeway, the Seniors Safeway, the Sandinista Safeway and the Secret Safeway.

Soooo inside the Beltway.

But despite this he has been the subject of harsh criticism from Tea Party activists, particularly for his vote for then-President Bush’s bank bailout in 2008, and more recently for working with Democrat Senator Ron Wyden on a health care bill that would have required individuals to purchase health insurance.

It wasn’t just the Tea Party who targeted him. In addition, the Club for Growth , which supports candidates espousing conservative economic policies, spent nearly $200,000 to defeat Bennett. And FreedomWorks, which has ties to the loosely organized tea party groups, dispatched staff to the state.

"The political atmosphere obviously has been toxic and it's very clear that some of the votes that I have cast have added to the toxic environment," said an emotional Bennett after his loss. "Looking back on them, with one or two very minor exceptions, I wouldn't have cast any of them any differently even if I had known at the time they were going to cost me my career."

Bennett finished third in the second round of balloting behind attorney Mike Lee and and businessman Tim Bridgewater. Lee and Bridgewater are now headed to a June 22 runoff to determine the GOP nominee, who will be a shoo-in to win the seat in November.

The dumping of Senator Bennett will give some other Republican Senators heartburn, including Utah’s other Senator, Orrin Hatch , whose term expires in 2012. The Tea Party could have a field day with Hatch’s much-vaunted collaboration over many years with Senator Kennedy on a range of health and education issues.

Hatch has appealed to the Tea Party movement to work with the GOP or see conservatives lose more ground. "If we fractionalize the Republican Party, we are going to see more liberals elected," Hatch warned a town meeting in Utah in February, amid jeers from Tea Party supporters.

• The need to “create a lawful way for foreign workers to come here and support our economy” (2008 State of the Union address).

• “Extending hope and opportunity in our country requires an immigration system worthy of America--with laws that are fair.” (2008 State of the Union address).

• “We cannot fully secure the border unless we take pressure off the border--and that requires a temporary worker program.” (2007 State of the Union address).

But earlier this year, the murder of a prominent Arizona border rancher put a spotlight on the violent smuggling syndicates operating along the border and poured petrol on the political firestorm raging in the state between John McCain and his Republican primary challenger, former Congressman J.D. Hayworth, a notorious anti-immigration hardliner who lost his seat in 2006 to Democrat immigration reformer Harry Mitchell. Hayworth, trying to rekindle his political career, is gunning for McCain by fomenting anti-immigrant fervor among their party’s conservative base.

McCain, who once championed comprehensive immigration reform, has abandoned his prior positions and is now trying to dethrone Hayworth as the state’s top immigration hardliner.

These ugly political skirmishes pale in comparison to the work of the Republican-controlled Arizona legislature, which has just passed draconian, anti-immigration legislation. It would, in effect, criminalize the undocumented population in Arizona and institutionalize racial or ethnic profiling on a stunning scale.

McCain has come out in favour of the legislation - which is likely unconstitutional. Even former Bush adviser Karl Rove said, "I wish they hadn’t passed it.” 

Republican members of Congress have largely remained silent - with a handful even offering support. Only two national Republican lawmakers - Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) - have come out against the bill, while at least ten have either praised it, or remained noncommittal.

In addition to the civil rights toll, the new law could have a major economic impact on Arizona. There are calls for general boycotts of all Arizona goods and services and tourism. The Perryman Group estimates that if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Arizona, the state would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, , $11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140,324 jobs.

But perhaps the worse thing Arizona has done is not to pick on people who look different / problematic but to discriminate against people who talk differently, to the extent of taking their jobs away.

There has been little focus on the fact that the Arizona Department of Education, having in the 1990s hired hundreds of teachers whose first language was Spanish as part of a broad bilingual education program (many of these teachers were recruited from Latin America; the bilingual program was abolished in 2000), has decided that teachers whose spoken English is heavily accented must be removed form classes for students who are still learning English.

Critics charge that the current political climate in Arizona has emboldened state education officials to target immigrant teachers at a time when the budget crisis has forced layoffs.

About 150,000 of Arizona’s 1.2 million public school students are classified as English Language Learners; this includes about 46% of children in kindergarten through grade 2. And in some Hispanic neighbourhood schools, nearly half the teachers are native Spanish speakers.

Some of my favourite parts if the U.S. (Sidona, the Grand Canyon) are in Arizona, but as an outraged, progressive alien (albeit legal) with an accent, I don’t intend to visit that state any time soon.

In an interesting sidebar to this latter issue – trying to turn an environmental and economic disaster into a political football - it turns out that workers from Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s old firm, had just finished cementing the well  when the rig blew. Halliburton was also responsible for cementing a well off the coast of Australia that blew last August, leaking oil for ten weeks before it was plugged. Though the Australian investigation continues, an official from the U.S. Minerals Management Service testified that a poor cement job probably caused the explosion.

Meantime I’ve spent this week in New York City (not too close to Times Square) at the 2010 meeting of the International Medical Workforce Collaborative, where representatives from the US, UK, Canada and Australia meet annually to address workforce issues. It’s surprising how these disparate health care systems have in common. The real surprise, given how eager many are to bag the NHS, is how well the UK is doing in terms of implementing national health reforms that are targeted where needed and meet measurable goals and outputs.

In contrast, Australia does virtually nothing about measuring the effectiveness and outcomes of health care dollars spent; all we can say is how many services are delivered, although sometimes we know to whom and by whom. The focus needs to move beyond quantity to quality and from volume to value.

And it’s not just about setting goals and targets and collecting data about progress towards tackling these – it’s about using this data to drive effective policies and programs.

Early next year the U.S. will get the official report on how the nation collectively fared in reaching the goals of Healthy People 2010, an every-decade governmental assessment of various health indicators. If preliminary results hold, the nation will scrape by with a low C.

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, Howard Koh, Assistant Secretary for Health, says that the nation has “progressed” toward 52% of the measurable goals and has met 19% of them. That’s about the same level of progress as from previous decades.

While there’s good news in heart disease, with the age-adjusted death rate from coronary heart disease surpassing its target, falling to 135 deaths for every 100,000 people from 203 per 100,000 in 1999, progress has lagged in other areas with implications for healthy lives and health care costs. The target for smoking, for example, was 12% prevalence; in 2008 it was 21%. And it will surprise no one who reads headlines that the goal of reducing the obesity rate to 15% was missed by a long shot; about a third of U.S. adults now fall into that category, defined as a BMI of 30 or more. Due in part to that increase in obesity, the age-adjusted prevalence of diabetes rose to 59 cases for every 1,000 people in 2008 from 40 cases per 1,000 in 1997 (the 2010 target was 25 cases per 1,000).

Things really need to improve.

Crist once looked like such a sure thing that he was endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, but he has now become a conservative scourge. They see his career as pockmarked with instances of consensus-seeking, deal-making and bipartisanship - three particularly vulgar notions to the Tea Party movement. Conservatives have tagged Crist as being part of that pariah breed of Republican today: a “moderate.” Or worse. There have been rumours about his sexuality, but to many Republicans, the governor’s biggest sin was literal embrace of President Barack Obama back in February and his support for the Obama Administration’s federal stimulus package.

"I was horrified," Rubio said. "This was more than just a courtesy greeting, this was an embrace and a support of $800 billion of deficit spending."

Cheney, in a statement  issued by the Rubio campaign, said Crist has shown "time and again that he cannot be trusted in Washington to take on the Obama agenda because on issue after issue he actually supports that agenda." "Lately it seems Charlie Crist cannot be trusted even to remain a Republican. I strongly urge him to either stay in the Republican primary or drop out of the race.”

Crist says he has no regrets about appearing with Obama. "I was happy and delighted to do so. I'm a civil guy. The president of the United States is the president of the United States," Crist said. "Especially when it's the first visit to Florida and I'm invited to be there. I have that kind of respect in my soul."

Things are much quieter in the Democratic primary race – or they were. Meek is has been a member of the U.S. House of Representatives since 2003, representing Florida’s 17th Congressional district (North Miami). He was elected to succeed his mother, who also held this seat. A former football star, Meeks made history  by becoming the first U.S. Senate candidate in Florida’s history to qualify for the ballot by petition. Most candidates take the easy option and write a check for $10,000.

Meek appears to have little to worry about from underfunded Democratic rivals, former Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre and former North Miami Mayor Kevin Burns. And indeed, it’s unlikely he will have anything to worry about as a result of Greene’s entrance into the race.

While it’s true that Green has the type of private wealth that could make him a headache for the Democrats, the baggage Greene brings to the race is so profound as to eclipse the "outsider" message on which he is running. It's reported that he got rich on the housing market's collapse; that he took investment advice from John Paulson, the hedge fund manager at the current center of the controversy surrounding Goldman Sachs; and that he once lived with the notorious madam Heidi Fleiss.

The latest Rasmussen Reports poll of Florida voters (taken before these recent announcements) finds that 37% would vote for Marco Rubio, 30% for Charlie Crist and 22% for Kendrick Meek. In a two-way race both Rubio and Crist currently hold solid leads over Meek. Rubio now leads among Republicans and unaffiliated voters with Crist in second. Among Democrats, Meek earns 46% support, while Crist picks up 33% of the Democratic vote.

However the prospect of a three-way race for a U.S. Senate seat in Florida has raised Democratic hopes of winning a nationally watched election that just a few months ago seemed beyond their reach. The Cook Political Report has changed their rating for the race from “likely Republican” to “toss-up”.

Fingers crossed!

Case in point: Senator John McCain, who was once an avid advocate for health care reform and immigration reform, voted against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that contained many of the provisions he once embraced, and can somehow support Arizona’s dreadful new law on illegal aliens. And even then he’s likely to lose his Senate primary race – along with his political respectability and his maverick status.

And then there’s Senator Lindsey Graham. Having worked diligently with Democrat John Kerry and Independent Joseph Lieberman to produce a climate and energy bill that reconciled the needs of the business and environment communities, he pulled the plug last weekend, two days ahead of the formal release of their proposal. Why? Because Senate Leader Harry Reid has said that immigration reform (something that Senator Graham supports) should be a priority. That doesn’t mean that it will be – after all, there’s no legislation, no committee working on this – but it’s definitely on the to-do list.

Anyway, Senator Graham has taken his bat (and ball) and withdrawn from being a player. Personally, I think he was nobbled. These days the Republican leadership makes life pretty difficult for anyone who tries to be bipartisan – or even people who are just trying to be friendly. Ask Florida Governor Charlie Crist, who is paying the price for giving the President a hug.

Now Senate Republicans are apparently united in their opposition to legislation to tighten regulation of the financial system. Mostly this is just an effort to delay, obstruct and prevent the Democrats from doing anything else. And just possibly, the Republicans really do care more about Wall Street than Main Street. Anyway on Tuesday night they voted against allowing debate on the bill to begin. It was a cloture vote and therefore required 60 votes to pass, and the final vote was 57 – 41. So much for democracy you say! Republican Senator Richard Shelby, who has been working for weeks with the Chairman of the Banking Committee, Senator Chris Dodd, to produce a bipartisan bill, couldn’t bring himself to vote to allow debate on the bill to begin.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declared his opposition to the financial reform bill, claiming that it "institutionalises…...taxpayer funded bailouts of Wall Street banks." Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said McConnell's claim is "possibly the most dishonest argument ever made in the history of politics." Meanwhile a new Washington Post poll finds that nearly two-thirds of voters support "stricter regulations on the way banks and other financial institutions conduct their business."

Senator McConnell is using the issue to bolster his overarching political argument (the one he makes endlessly, tiresomely): that the Democrats’ one-party rule in Washington is detrimental. I find this fascinating for two reasons: (1) you can’t lose an election and expect to govern (even if that’s what happened with George Bush); (2) the U.S. system does allow for the losers to be players (and thus fully represent their electorates) if they want to be players, and assuming they have some policies and positions to put on the table, other than just saying “No”.

What the Republicans have done in fact is turn the Congress into a Westminster system, where there is no ability to do things in a bipartisan fashion and crossing the floor to vote with the other side is a major political sin. It’s not clear whether this has happened because the GOP has lost its way, because it’s bereft of policies, or because there is just some visceral antagonism to President Obama that would have him fail at any cost. The net result is the same – it puts party politics ahead of the needs of America.

No wonder my former colleague and I are saddened by this state of affairs. If we were on the Hill today, we would barely know each other and would definitely not both be claiming victories over the enactment of bills to improve nursing home regulation, to provide needed immunizations to children on Medicaid, and to establish programs for people with HIV/AIDS as we did 20 years ago.

It’s not just the rejected recruits who are in trouble. These days, soldiers can find fast food and subsidized fructose just as easily as civilians can. Even as the Army rejects the obese, those already in uniform are growing fatter. According to a 2009 Pentagon report at least 1 in 20 servicemen and women on active duty are “clinically overweight.”

Obesity is winning the war right up the supply chain to the front line. Now General McChrystal has ordered that by the end of April, U.S. bases in Afghanistan must shut down their Popeye’s, Burger King, and Pizza Hut franchises. The General’s staff justified the policy as a matter of logistics, insisting shipments of fries and milkshakes were filling shipping and storage space needed for reinforcements, ammunition and combat supplies, but military fitness may also benefit.

Military concerns about the fitness of our children are not new. It’s ironic that in 1946, General Lewis Hershey was instrumental in convincing Congress to pass the original National School Lunch Act as a way to improve the nutrition of America’s children and increase their height and weight, because then too many recruits were under-nourished.

However the shocker is that Australia’s military personnel are in even worse shape than their Americans counterparts. Last year it was revealed  that 7500 of 53,000 troops are now classified as obese and one in seven members of the defence force is overweight - more than three times the US ratio. The ADF has admitted obesity has become "an issue'' for personnel and has commissioned its specialist research centre, based at the University of Queensland, to investigate possible causes.

The first Kaiser Health Tracking Poll since the passage of health reform last month finds that while 8 in 10 Americans know that President Obama signed the legislation into law, 55 percent are confused about the law and 56 percent say they don’t yet have enough information to understand how it will affect them personally.

The poll finds 46 percent of people view health care reform favorably, 40 percent unfavorably and 14 percent undecided. Thirty one percent of Americans say they expect personally to be better off because of the law, while 32 percent say they will be worse off and 30 percent say they don’t expect to be affected.

Many reform provisions that take effect in 2010 are popular and have widespread support across the political spectrum, including among Republicans and independents

Nearly 9 in 10 Americans favor providing tax credits to small businesses that want to provide coverage for their workers, for instance. And roughly 8 in 10 have favorable views of provisions that would offer access to basic preventive care with no copayments, provide financial help to seniors who hit the gap in Medicare drug coverage known as the "doughnut hole," and end insurance companies’ practice of dropping coverage (recission) if a person has a major health problem.

In each of these cases, at least two-thirds of Republicans and independents join most Democrats in viewing the provisions favorably.

Clearly people are struggling to understand how the law will affect them and their families and to separate fact from political spin. Although anger grabs the headlines, the only emotion shared by more than half of the public when it comes to the health reform law is confusion. Overall, 55 percent say they are confused, an emotion more deeply rooted among those who feel unfavorably toward reform.

Americans of all political leanings pointed to cable television news more than any other source when they were asked to choose their most important source of news and information about the law. More than a third (36%) cited cable TV news stations and their websites as their most important outlet, followed by network news (16%), newspapers (12%), friends and family (10%) and the radio (9%).

There were some differences along party lines, however. Republicans were more likely to name cable TV as their most important news source, with 45 percent saying so compared to 30 percent of Democrats. On the other hand, Democrats were twice as likely as Republicans and independents to say that they got most of their information from network news (23% of Democrats compared to 12% of the other two groups).

Given the level of misinformation and bias on cable TV news stations, that is a major concern and a major obstacle to be overcome as implementation proceeds.

Overall sentiment about the new law still breaks sharply along partisan lines. Nearly 8 in 10 Democrats (77%) favor the new law, while about as many Republicans (79%) view it unfavorably, a mix very similar to that seen before the bill’s passage in March. Political independents tilt against the law (46 percent opposed compared to 37 percent in favor), while self-described moderates favor the measure 55 percent to 31 percent.

And how do I know President Obama watches Treme? Because his deputy press secretary said so.

Nearly half of people polled say the government negatively affects their daily lives, a sentiment that's grown over the past dozen years. Currently, 43% see the federal government’s personal impact as negative, and only 38% see it as positive. But rising criticism about government’s personal impact is not limited to the federal government. Just 42% say their state government has a positive effect on their daily lives, and 51% now see the impact of their local government as positive.

While a majority of Americans say Washington is too big and too powerful, the public is split over whether the government should be responsible for dealing with critical problems or scaled back to reduce its power, presumably in favor of personal responsibility. About half say they want a smaller government with fewer services, compared with roughly 40% who want a bigger government providing more. Still, despite the distrust in government, more than 3 out of 5 Americans still think Washington should do more to rein in banks and exert control over the economy during the recession. Perhaps this is because the Pew poll shows that the people dislike banks, financial institutions and large corporations about as much as they like the federal government.

These findings fly in the face of claims from conservative critics that Americans continue to oppose governmental activism and prefer reliance on the free market to solve the country’s problems. And it is also supported by the best available evidence about Americans attitudes toward the role of government – the 2008 American National Election Study. In that study a majority of Americans came down on the side of governmental activism – 56% said that government had got bigger because the country’s problems had got bigger, 68% said that the country needs a strong government to handle complex economic problems, and 59% said that there were more things government should be doing.

The roots of government distrust stretch far back into America's past. In the opening line of the first of the Federalist Papers , Alexander Hamilton refers to "an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government." This distrust has been reinvented regularly, as in the public philosophy of President Reagan, and now the Tea Party groups.

However, as Marc Hetherington points out in his book Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism there remains constant and widespread support for big government in areas where most Americans benefit. Hetherington writes: “Contemporary political rhetoric fuels this misunderstanding. By railing against ‘big government’ in general, conservative and moderate politicians imply that people want less government across the board. However, public opposition to government is focused entirely on programs that require political majorities to make sacrifices for political minorities, such as antipoverty and race-targeted initiatives. In short, Americans continue to support big government when they benefit from it, but they want limited government when they are asked to make sacrifices.”

Current political rhetoric and inconsistency also seem to go hand-in-hand. A recent Economist / YouGov poll found almost two-thirds (62%) of those responding said that they wanted to cut spending to reduce the budget deficit rather than raise taxes. But just three questions later, the only area of federal spending that a majority (71%) was willing to cut was foreign aid; only 7% would cut social security and Medicare; 11% would cut Medicaid; 13% would cut health research; 12% would cut education. But a surprising 22% would cut defence.

The programs that make up the largest share of the federal budget are typically the ones that the fewest people want to cut. Which suggests that whatever the problems with the political system, it does a decent job allocating public resources into programs that people like. Complaints about "big government" and excessive spending are more often based on who is getting the money - the poor and minorities often inspire the most ire - rather than the fact that spending is happening at all, despite the framing that conservatives would like to impose on the discussion.

And anyway, after reading this New York Times article , it seems to me that the US does not need to raise taxes to tackle the deficit, it should just get people (and corporations) to pay their taxes.

Although unemployment in the U.S. is at levels unknown since the Great Depression, 70% of Tea Party supporters say that their own economic situation is “fairly good” and only 14% have experienced “hardship.” Their rage about the economy is not directed not at Wall Street bankers, but at politicians like Barack Obama who might help the poor..

Their responses to the poll’s questions are like those of the general public in some ways. Most describe the amount they paid in taxes this year as “fair.” Most send their children to public schools. A majority do not think Sarah Palin is qualified to be president. They are surprisingly liberal on social issues; 57% favour gay marriage or civil unions, 65% favour access to abortion and 65% support some gun restrictions.

The Tea Partiers are overwhelmingly concerned with economic rather than social issues. They are far more pessimistic than Americans in general about the economy, but while most Americans blame the Bush administration or Wall Street for the current state of the American economy, the Tea Party supporters blame Congress and a majority remain supportive of George W Bush.

What primarily distinguishes them from other Americans is their animosity towards Washington, and the president in particular. This is rooted in deep pessimism about the direction of the country and the conviction that the policies of the Obama administration are disproportionately directed at helping the poor rather than the middle class or the rich – 92% believe Mr. Obama is moving the country toward socialism.

The overwhelming majority of supporters say Mr. Obama does not share the values most Americans live by and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves. More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25% think that the administration favors blacks over whites, compared with 11% of the general public who hold this opinion.

Asked what they are angry about, Tea Party supporters offered three main concerns: the recent health care overhaul, government spending and a feeling that their opinions are not represented in Washington. More than 90% of Tea Party supporters think the country is headed in the wrong direction and they strongly disapprove of the job Mr. Obama is doing over all, and particularly fault his handling of health care, the economy and the federal budget deficit.

When talking about the Tea Party movement, the largest number of respondents said that the movement’s goal should be reducing the size of government - more than cutting the budget deficit or lowering taxes. But they do not want to see cuts in Medicare or Social Security.

The New York Times quotes a retired woman in Jacksonville as saying this about Obama: “He’s a socialist. And to tell you the truth, I think he’s a Muslim and trying to head us in that direction, I don’t care what he says. He’s been in office over a year and can’t find a church to go to. That doesn’t say much for him.”

The only consolation is that the US has been through this eruption of conservative grass-roots anger before – and survived. For example, the affluent members of the Liberty League vilified President Roosevelt and attacked his New Deal in the 1930s, and the rallies of the National Indignation Convention , the 1960s version of the Tea Parties, which drew thousands of people, proclaimed JFK a communist of the caliber of Castro, and his administration was called “treasonous”.

Today is the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, and President Clinton came to the Center for American Progress to talk about what the lessons of that terrible tragedy are for today. He drew parallels between the antigovernment tone in the 1990s that preceded that devastating attack and the political tumult of today, saying government critics must be mindful that angry words can stir violent actions. Take the time to read or watch his speech and the words of others at this event  – they are important and very relevant in today’s world.

There are presumably several reasons for this.

1. The new Affordable Care Act offers lots of tax breaks to small businesses and individuals. So perhaps some Republicans have figured out that vowing to repeal the Act means they are effectively promising to raise taxes.

2. The Progressive States Network has released an analysis of the progress of state health care legislation which reveals the failure of conservative attempts to obstruct reform at the state level which reveals that legislation intended to nullify recently passed federal reforms has already been defeated or failed to pass in 14 states, with the count expected to rise. Despite the fact that the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council which drafted the bills, has claimed success for their health care nullification legislation in 40 states, the analysis reveals that their bills, which have been called unconstitutional by experts across the ideological spectrum, have only succeeded in four.

3. Last weekend South Florida, in the first federal election since reform passed, voters elected, with a resounding margin of over 20 points, a Democratic state senator, Ted Deutch, to fill the vacancy in the US House of Representatives left by the retirement of Representative Robert Wexler (D). His Republican opponent tried and failed to run on a platform of opposition to health care reform, in a district in which more than one in every four resident are over 65 years old. There was little evidence of a fall-off in the Democratic vote among seniors, who are widely regarded as a critical voting bloc in the 2010 midterms.

Fox News and Republican lawmakers have been pushing a claim that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will need to hire more than 16,500 new agents to enforce the universal insurance mandates in the health care reform bill, and that the agency will impose harsh punishments on those who don't purchase insurance it deems worthy. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) warned Fox News host Sean Hannity that "the IRS will be tasked with breathing down the necks of 300 million Americans every month to determine whether we have purchased governmentally acceptable levels of health insurance."

The Republicans have attributed the 16,500 figure to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, but in fact the figure comes from a report prepared by the Republican staff of the House Ways and Means Committee. IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman has made it clear that these claims are nothing but misconceptions. As for claims of draconian enforcement, including jail time, for those who do not buy insurance, the bill specifically prohibits the IRS from confiscating taxpayer assets, from using liens or levies, or imposing criminal penalties of any kind - including jail time - because of a lack of health care coverage.

New taxes will hurt big business

For months, Republicans and their allies like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have been claiming that health care reform would create huge new taxes that would hurt businesses. Since the passage of the PPACA, AT&T, Caterpillar, John Deere and others have come out with a series of seemingly coordinated press releases announcing that the new bill will cost them billions of dollars.

The affected companies have already greatly profited from an inequitable provision in the 2003 Medicare prescription drug law. At the time, many employers were already providing drug coverage for their retirees. And to keep them from dropping that coverage, the new law provided doubly sweet subsidies to corporations.

For every $100 the company spends on retiree drug benefits, Medicare sends it a subsidy payment of $28. On top of that, the companies got a rare double tax break. The $28 subsidy is tax-free, and the company was allowed to deduct the entire $128 as a business expense.

The new health care reform law has left the 28 percent subsidy intact and continued to exempt it from taxation. But companies will no longer be allowed to deduct the subsidy as if it were an expenditure of their own; there will be no more double dipping.

Accounting rules require that the present value of the entire additional tax that companies will have to pay over the next several decades be put on the books now. Caterpillar Inc., Deere & Co., AT&T, Verizon Communications Inc. and Prudential Financial Inc. have said they will have to take first-quarter write-offs to reflect future higher costs due to the new tax provision. But this is an accounting change which will have a negligible impact on these companies’ valuation, or market capitalization.

It is really disingenuous for companies to suddenly complain about this provision, considering the change was a part of the draft bill that passed the Senate Finance Committee in September last year. At that time the chairman of Business Roundtable said about the change, "it's very closely aligned to [our] principles."

Wall Street certainly gave a collective yawn at these announcements. Stock prices for the companies that made announcements barely budged and some went up. Moreover, this change now treats all employers equally instead of favoring profit-making firms with a special deduction that is of no value to nonprofit organizations, state and local governments, or firms that lose money.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman, Henry Waxman, has called a hearing for April 21 to examine whether retirees will be affected, and issued letters to Verizon, Deere and Caterpillar. The committee said in a statement that company statements “appear to conflict with independent analyses which show that the new law will expand coverage and bring down costs.” Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius said, “They have been actually taking tax deductions on money that the government has given them in the first place. That will cease under this bill.”

Analysis shows that some of the companies protesting this tax change managed to pay less than one-third of the 35 percent statutory federal corporate tax rate in at least one year from 2007 to 2009, despite being profitable in these years. Xerox, Navistar, Verizon, Boeing, Con-Way, and Deere all paid less than a third of the statutory rate on their profits in at least one of those years. Three of these companies - Boeing, Verizon and Xerox - actually got federal tax rebates in at least one profitable year during this period, meaning that their corporate income taxes were less than zero.

The Long War of Repealing Obamacare

The conservative Heritage Foundation has been emailing everyone, including me, with a missive entitled “The Long War of Repealing Obamacare” . It and the linked information that accompanies it are seductive materials that misstate the legislation and misuse the facts. Those who have actually read the legislation and the cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation know what the reality is, others are vulnerable to this sort of ideological analysis.

At first blush it also appears to offer some sort of alternative plan for health care reform, but then you get to the giveaway statement: “An effective reform program would begin to address the cost problem by making changes throughout federal health-care law. But the trick [emphasis added] is to do so in a way that allows for gradual change and decentralized decision-making.”

As anyone who has read Paul Ryan’s Road Map for America’s Future reform bill and the CBO analysis  of it knows, that ‘trick’ is to do away with both Medicare ( the very program Republicans argue they are fighting to save) and Medicaid.

What thoughtful conservatives are saying

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I’m no conservative, but I can respect a considered conservative opinion. I found this blog , on Frum Forum, interesting and thought-provoking. To quote selectively: “A radical reaction has erupted in response to the health care bill, and its motto is: “Repeal and Replace.” But this isn’t a principle; it is a talking point bordering along utopianism. True conservatives are not radicals; they respect tradition and work for stable reform to fix institutions.”

On Sunday and Monday Obama has individual meetings with heads of state from India, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Pakistan, Armenia, China, Jordan, Malaysia and Ukraine. before holding a working dinner with the leaders of the 46 delegations. Meanwhile, on the Sunday talk shows, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave interviews meant to reassert the nation's military strength – a somewhat surprising launch into the two-day nuclear summit, but clearly designed to reassure defense hawks that U.S. security will not be compromised. They indicated that the U.S. would spend $5 billion this year to modernize its existing nuclear weapons, which could be used if the country's security is in danger or in response to the threat of a biological attack.

The other major focus of the major weekend newspapers and the Sunday talk shows was the announcement that Justice John Paul Stevens will retire this summer, providing President Obama with the opportunity to make his second Supreme Court nomination in his first term of office – and providing the Republicans with yet another opportunity to block the President’s agenda. Senator Orrin Hatch has promised a “whale of a fight’  and the fact is that these days the GOP would put up a whale of a fight even if Obama nominated Senator Hatch himself.

Justice Stevens highlights precisely that a President can never really know what the legacy of his Supreme Court nominees will be. He was named to the Court in 1975 by President Gerald Ford, to replace Court’s longest serving justice, William O. Douglas. Although he was a Republican appointee, and for many years he was at the centre of the court, he came to side with the court's liberal bloc in the most contentious cases -- those involving abortion, criminal law, civil rights and church-state relations. He led the dissenters as well in the case of Bush v. Gore that sealed President George W. Bush's election in 2000. "I don't really think I've changed. I think there have been a lot of changes in the Court," said Justice Stevens in 2007.  "I see myself as a conservative, to tell you the truth, a judicial conservative."

The Senate confirmed Stevens in a 98-0 vote on December 17, 1975. We can be certain of one thing – that will not be the vote this time around.

Most Americans spent the weekend ignoring all this, more intent on watching Phil Mickelson win his third Masters title at Augusta, Georgia. This tournament also saw the return of Tiger Woods to the golf circuit – but he was let down by his putting and was never in contention.

And if golf was not your thing, then you could always watch Tina Fey doing her wonderful Sarah Palin imitation on Saturday Night Live . If you had a really strong stomach, you could watch Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin together delivering their red meat, racist rhetoric, rah-rah rallying cries to adoring fans in Minneapolis . But you really need to be James Morrow to enjoy that!

The weekend also saw the wind-up of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans. They were all there – beleagured RNC Chairman Michael Steele, promising no more money for forays into strip joints, Sara Palin proclaiming that this was the ‘party of no’, Michele Bachmann proclaiming that this was the ‘party of hell no’, and Newt Gingrich proclaiming that this must be the ‘party of yes’.

Perhaps because he wasn’t there, Mitt Romney secured a surprise victory over Sarah Palin in the convention’s straw poll on who should challenge Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential race. Romney won 24% (439 votes), one vote ahead of Ron Paul, with Gingrich and Palin both securing 18% (330 votes).

No wonder I’m more interested in what Congress is doing! Both the House and the Senate are back this week. They have a packed slate of issues, including energy reforms, and Senate Leader Harry Reid has promised to address immigration reform too. A recent CNN/OPC poll shows that of younger Americans, those 18 to 49 years old, just over half say that protecting the environment is most important and 47 percent say the economy is most important. Older and younger Americans apparently don't see eye to eye on the issue; 58 percent of people 50 years of age and older questioned in the poll say that the economy should be the top priority, with 37 percent saying that the environment is more important.

So, to cheer everyone up at the start of the week, here’s a nice looking graph that shows the economy is looking up.

Last summer, conservatives - led by Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) and Fox News' radical host Glenn Beck – began a fearmongering campaign designed to discourage Americans from filling out their census forms. Now that health care reform has passed, the right is setting its sights once again on the census, ratcheting up fiery rhetoric intended to scare Americans about some imaginary federal government overreach.

Many on the right argue that it is unconstitutional for the census to ask anything beyond the number of people in a household. While this year's questionnaire asks about race, gender, and age, the census has asked similar questions for decades. Beck has said that that he refuses to complete the census form because the government is "out of control” and the "the survey is an attempt to "increase slavery."

 Anti-immigrant groups have also relaunched their anti-census campaign, fearing "theft of representation from lawful Americans." A recent press release from Americans for Legal Immigration stated that: "We want Congress to take action now to authorize and require the use of census data collected to identify illegal aliens, exclude them from the census count for tax resources and Congressional redistricting, and to detain and deport those found in violation of our immigration laws."

However Republicans have belatedly realized that these campaigns to dissuade people from participating in the census could reduce the number of Republican seats in Congress and state legislatures for the next ten years. According to the Census Bureau figures, some of the most conservative states have among the lowest response rates so far,

The 14th amendment requires that elected representatives be apportioned according to an indiscriminate population count of "the whole number of persons in each State." Moreover, the census data is used to allocate federal funding. Thus, non-citizens, children, ex-felons, legal residents, and several other non-voters are included in census apportionment data in order to paint an accurate portrait of a state's demographic makeup and population density that is key to effective and adequate representation.

So an attempt to repair the damage inflicted by his right wing compatriots sees Karl Rove in a public service announcement on YouTube, pointing out that the questions on the Census forms are no more invasive than they were more than two centuries ago. "If you've not yet mailed back your 2010 Census form, please do," Rove says in the PSA. "Please, answer the 10 easy questions. They are almost the same ones Madison helped write for the first Census in 1790."

Love it!

The visit was important to local residents, who often feel they are forgotten by those who are elected to represent them. Forty percent of the residents live in poverty, the unemployment rate is 28.5 percent, and just last week four people were killed and five wounded in a drive-by shooting.

On Easter Monday the President and First Lady hosted the 2010 Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House. The origins of this event reportedly date back to Easter Sunday in 1878, when the Congress enforced a ban on egg rolling at the Capitol, and President Rutherford B Hayes, seeing tearful children while riding by the Capitol Grounds in his carriage, invited them to play on the White House lawn.

This year 30,000 families from around the nation won tickets to attend the event, which consumed 14,500 hard-boiled and dyed eggs for the egg roll and the egg hunt, and an additional 4,500 hard-boiled eggs for the egg dying station.

And if this is spring then it must also be the start of the baseball season. On Monday morning the President also found time to throw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals’ opening day. This marks the 100th anniversary of presidents throwing out Opening Day first pitches - Taft was the first to do so in 1910. Apparently the President has engaged in a little spring training in the Rose Garden to get his curve ball in Opening Day order, according to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

Clad in a red Washington Nationals jacket and a black Chicago White Sox cap that he pulled from his pocket to show his allegiance to his hometown team, the left-handed President threw his pitch high and a little outside the batter’s box.

But on Tuesday it’s back to work with a vengeance. Then the Obama administration is set to release its Nuclear Posture Review - a report that Congress requires of every president. Obama has said his plan is designed to "reduce the number and role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, even as we maintain a safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent." On Wednesday, Obama flies back to Prague for the signing of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia, one of the goals he outlined in his Prague speech a year ago. He will also meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, in part to discuss one of the world’s biggest nuclear challenges: Iran. Next Saturday Medvedev will join 40 foreign leaders attending a nuclear security summit which Obama will host in Washington, DC.

The bill differs from the predicted Senate bill primarily by covering 8 million more people, albeit at a slightly higher cost.

What Pelosi didn't volunteer was that the bill now only funds the provisions for prevention and wellness and public health (originally funded at $89 billion / 10 years) at $34 billion / 5 years.  I assume the plan is to come back in later years to authorize further funds for this important refocusing of health care services.

The bill, which is up on the web, will be available for public scrutiny for 72 hours.  At that point, on Monday morning, the House managers expect to introduce an amended version, incorporating further changes, which will need to be available for a further 72 hours.  So the bill could be on the House floor for a vote as soon as Thursday next week.

Meanwhile the Republicans struggle on.  Yesterday, House Minority Leader John Boehner and House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence  held a press conference to explain why progressive health reform would hurt seniors and to highlight the GOP's "better solutions."  Boehner instructed readers to go to the GOP healthcare website "and you can see all of our proposals", but seniors are not addressed in any of the plans presented. In fact, there are no occurrences of the words "senior," "elderly," or "older Americans" at all. An archived version of the website can be found here.

Republicans have been insisting for months that Democrats are shoving a secret bill down the throats of the American public. The health reform legislation "should be posted online for 72 hours so members and the American people get a chance to see what's in these bills," Boehner told Fox News.   At a press conference this morning, a reporter turned the tables on Boehner and asked whether he'd post the GOP plan for 72 hours. Boehner declined to make such a pledge. Presumably the Republicans won't post the GOP plan because there isn't one. As Boehner said later in the press conference: "..... it's pretty difficult for us to have a solid plan".

There are currently just nine weeks left in which to get a health care bill to the President's desk for his signature before Christmas.  It should be a busy time for the Democrats.  I guess the Republicans can recycle their same old speeches and take it easy.

This is my last blog in this format. If you are keen to follow the rest of the story from Washington on health care reform, then you can read my Letters from Washington on the Menzies Centre for Health Policy website.

In most US states' insurance companies can retroactively cancel the entire policy if any condition was missed - even if the medical condition is unrelated, or if the person was not aware of the condition at the time. This practice is called rescission, and is often used to limit insurance payouts for expensive illnesses such as breast cancer.

In 45 states, when a person with a breast cancer tries to buy health insurance through the individual insurance market, insurance companies can charge higher premiums, exclude coverage for any recurrence of breast cancer or even deny coverage altogether. Because of this, breast cancer patients, even when in remission, are unlikely to find meaningful insurance coverage in the individual insurance market. A full 11% of individuals with cancer say they cannot obtain health insurance because of their illness.

The consequence of all this is that cancer patients stress about their disease and they stress about their bills. And there is growing evidence that stress is a key indicator as to whether cancer patients do well.

Many minority and low-income women are disproportionately affected by breast cancer, in large part because they are less likely to have adequate health insurance. While African American women have a lower risk of developing breast cancer than White women, once they develop the disease, they have a higher rate of dying from it. African American women experience five-year survival rates of 78% compared to 90% for White women.

Disparities also exist in treatment. Studies have demonstrated that African American and Hispanic women with early-stage breast cancer who undergo surgical treatment are less likely than White women to consult oncologists and receive recommended follow-up radiation and/or chemotherapies.

Health care reform offers real hope for women with breast cancer, their daughters and grand-daughters. Health care reforms will provide universal insurance cover, ban recission, treatment caps and discrimination on the basis of pre-existing conditions, make  preventive health care such as mammograms free, limit out-of-pocket costs in any year, and tackle quality and inequalities.

Hopefully it will help save some of the 40,170 women (and men) who will die of breast cancer this year from an early, untimely, and sometimes preventable, death.

A new whisper around Washington, now that passage of legislation looks increasingly likely, is that opponents of health care reform are laying the groundwork for lawsuits to stall and eventually kill any Democratic legislative victory. A broad group of conservatives has begun to explore how to file such lawsuits, who would file them, and what components of the legislation would be challenged, if not all of it.

As if to goad these conservatives into action, a new Washington Post - ABC News poll shows that support for a government-run health care plan to compete with private insurers has rebounded from its summer lows and wins clear majority support from the public (57% support; 40% oppose). There is also clear support for a mandate requiring all Americans to have health insurance. 

The poll does show that people are leery about the proposed changes to the health care system (45% support; 48% oppose), and there are some deep splits over whether the proposed changes go too far or not far enough. But since last month there has been a 9 points increase in the number who say that government should be more involved.

Two further polls out today from CNN / Opinion Research Corporation and USA Today Gallup have similar findings.

Some of this is change in support towards health care reform is because there has been a raft of hearings and reports highlighting the problems Americans face with health insurance every day. The Shriver Report, which Erin Riley blogged about earlier this week is just one example.

Sometimes the Republicans only open their mouths to change feet. A recent newspaper article that highlighted that maybe WHO data that ranked the US 37^th with respect to health care was less than accurate, was eagerly seized upon. But it seems no-one read all the article, which went on to state that new UN data shows that the US is seriously lagging in some of the key indicators of public health. For example, from 2000 to 2009 the US slipped from 18^th to 24^th rank in male life expectancy and 28^th to 35^th rank in female life expectancy. Rankings in preventing male and female mortality in children under 5 also slipped to the 30s.

Meanwhile, while the right watches Glenn Beck tear up at the good old days, the left, who watch MSNBC, have been contributing to a fund to support free health clinics around the nation. In all, about 4 million Americans are expected to visit the country's 1,200 free health clinics this year.

However the AHIP report has been seen as a cynical overplay by the very industry whose practices have driven the need for health care reform. It's been a strategic blunder for them, and ironically has increased Democrats' support for a public health insurance option. PricewaterhouseCoopers who did the report for AHIP are backpedalling frantically.

While House and Senate leaders work to get bills ready to take to the floor of each chamber within the next two weeks, recent data and analysis highlight the variations around the nation in who has health cover and the political dilemma faced by the politicians who represent these Americans.

If the states of America are divided into red (states that have two Republican Senators and voted for McCain in the last presidential election), blue (states that have 2 Democratic senators and voted for Obama) and purple (states that split their ballots in the presidential and senate elections), then residents of blue states are far more likely to have health insurance than residents of red states, with residents of purple states in the middle.

These data are based on both private and public cover, including Medicaid, but exclude Medicare which is available to virtually everyone over 65.

Of the 150 congressional districts with the most insurance, only three are in red states - one each in Alabama, Tennessee and Kansas. Another 25 are in purple states. The remaining 122 are in blue states.

However while the uninsured are more likely to be in red states, those with the least access to insurance are in minority blue districts in these states. Of the 10 congressional districts with the least insurance, seven are in Texas (red), two in California (blue) and one in Florida (purple).  However nine of these districts (which are largely black or Hispanic) are represented by Democrats.

Thoughtful Republicans keen on getting re-elected thus face an exquisite dilemma in the upcoming votes on health care reform legislation: will they represent the needs of the people of their electorate or their ideology of their party?

• Medicare spends on average $5,796 each year for the previously uninsured versus $4,773 for the previously insured.
• These differences are largely due to increased inpatient and home health agency spending and are concentrated among the 67% of adults with cardiovascular disease or diabetes.
• Previously uninsured adults have more hospital stays. Those with cardiovascular disease or diabetes are more likely to be hospitalised for complications like a heart attack, heart failure or stroke.
• Among adults with arthritis, those without coverage before enrolling in Medicare were more likely to be hospitalised for joint replacement that those with prior coverage.

This indicates that the cost of providing health coverage to uninsured adults aged 51 to 64, estimated at $197 billion a year, would reduce subsequent Medicare spending on adults aged 65 to 74 by about $98 billion - offsetting almost half the original costs.

These findings highlight the fallacy (and the cost to Medicare) of Republican proposals that would provide only catastrophic cover to people who are currently uninsured.

2. Medicaid expansion will generate revenue for the states

A study from the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services finds that the Medicaid expansions proposed in the health care reform bills will generate significant economic returns, between $2 and $6 for every dollar invested. These returns are as a consequence of new business activities, jobs, salaries and wages.  Medicaid represents essential revenue for community health centres, but it is also important to the economic health of medically underserved communities.

Expanding Medicaid is a cost-effective way to expand insurance coverage, but the costs are a significant impost on the budgets of the states, especially given the effects of the present economic downturn on their economies. While states fund a large portion of Medicaid costs (half or less, depending on the federal contribution rate to any particular state matching rate), the majority of funds come from the federal government.

Combined federal and state Medicaid payments for health care are directly translated into revenues to physicians, hospitals, clinics, nursing facilities, community drug stores, and other state and community providers of health care. In turn, these local health care providers pay staff, purchase goods and supply vendors, many of whom also are local. Workers and vendors use this income to pay their mortgages, car loans, grocery bills, state and local income and sales taxes, etc. The resulting cascade of funds raises household spending for consumer goods and eventually leads to increases in state government revenue through income, sales, and property taxes.

The conservative response to the health care crisis: 37 bills, no solutions

This week my analysis of the 37 bills which House Republicans have offered as their 'health care solutions'  is up on the website of the Center for American Progress. You can read it here.

On the House side, Speaker Pelosi has been working round the clock to structure a bill to take to the House floor before the end of the month. Whatever the outcome, based on her meeting schedule no-one can say that their point of view on the bill has not been heard.

But many Republicans are still raising the same stale objections; some are even inventing new reasons to oppose the legislation. For example, Senator Grassley, once a member of the Gang of Six, has developed a new-found opposition to the individual mandate - a policy that even health insurers support. Yet in June, in an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Grassley said, "there isn't anything wrong with it [an individual mandate], except some people look at it as an infringement upon individual freedom. But when it comes to states requiring it for automobile insurance, the principle then ought to lie the same way for health insurance. Because everybody has some health insurance costs, and if you aren't insured, there's no free lunch. Somebody else is paying for it....I believe that there is a bipartisan consensus to have individual mandates."

However there is growing bipartisan support for action on health care reform. Former Bush Administration Secretary of HHS Tommy Thompson has joined with Democratic former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt to issue a statement in support of reform, saying that "Failure to reach an agreement on health reform this year is not an acceptable option".  Last week former Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist - a surgeon - said he would vote for health care reform. He said that even though he'd probably "take heat" from his party, "that's leadership". That's what California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg also think.

Meanwhile Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal tried to edge his way into the debate but merely reprised his uncanny talent for clunkers. In a Washington Post opinion piece he added to the chorus of Republicans criticising their party's leadership and pressing them "to join the battle of ideas" on health reform. However he was apparently unaware that eight of the ten ideas he proposed for consideration are already incorporated into the House bill. It's time for Jindal to turn off Fox News and read the legislation - he might be pleasantly surprised.

In Gaithersburg, when it comes to their health care, no-one is happy, everyone has a complaint. Nobody understands the way the current system works, only that it doesn't work very well, even for those people with expensive policies and expendable incomes. A working mother of three young children summed it up this way; "I don't know what everyone is so afraid of, I don't know what amazing coverage these people have that they're so afraid of losing."

These are the people President Obama must count on to give his health care reform effort the grass-roots push it needs to get through Congress. But it's only recently that the White House has realized the need to focus on this group which constitutes about 65% of the population.

With many middle-class families still facing huge financial burdens and uncertain employment prospects, the new selling language for health care reform is around providing more security and stability for those with insurance - and it's working.

One reason why this message appeals is that one out of three Americans under 65 were without health insurance at some point during 2007 and 2008, and 80% of these uninsured people were in working families. They lost cover because they lost their job, or were required to work reduced hours, or just simply could not afford the premiums which now average over $13,000 a year for coverage for a family of four.

Increasingly the polls show that the conservative members (of both parties) of the Senate Finance Committee who are still wrangling over amendments are out of touch with what the public wants. Yesterday saw two amendments to add a public health insurance option to the Senate Finance bill go down, despite the fact that over 60% of the population supports this approach to making health coverage more affordable.

Recent polls show that despite the summer town hall meetings, tea parties and tirades and the accompanying misinformation and hysteria, Obama's approval ratings are where Ronald Reagan's and Bill Clinton's were at this point in their presidencies. The President polls ahead of the Republicans in Congress on all the issues interrogated.

The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, out today, finds that 57% of Americans now believe that tackling health care reform is more important than ever - up from 53% in August. The proportion of Americans who think their families would be better off if health reform passes is up six percentage points (42% versus 36% in August), and the percentage who think that the country would be better off is up eight points (to 53% from 45% in August).

Like me, the public continues to view the action in Washington with mixed feelings. The largest share (68%) said they were "hopeful" about reform, but 50% are "anxious" and 31% are "angry."

As always, these amendments run the gamut from far-reaching and thoughtful to provocative, predictable, and, dare we say it, simply out-of-touch (in most cases so out-of-touch that they will be ruled non-germane to the bill).

It's easy to tell where many of these members get their financial campaign support from on the basis of the amendments they are sponsoring. There are a depressing number of Senators simultaneously offering amendments to limit health insurance cover or help with out-of-pocket costs for low-income families and amendments that protect health insurance companies and pharmaceutical and device manufacturers.  At least 16 Republican amendments are about protecting doctors from medical liability costs.

The Center for Responsive Politics has looked at recent donations to the members of the Senate Finance Committee from health lobbyists. The three Democrats and three Republicans who make up the Gang of Six have each received an average of $74,600 in the first half of this year. This is about 25% more than the average of $59,600 in such donations that the other members of the Committee have received from the pharmaceutical, hospital, insurance and nursing home industries. However most of this is because of the high rate of donations to Senator Grassley, the Republican ranking member ($223,600) and the Chairman, Senator Baucus ($141,000). Senator Snowe received only received $9,000 and Senator Bingaman only $5,000. 

The White House has been really going to bat for health care reform. Yesterday, President Obama appeared on five Sunday morning talk shows fielding questions that predominantly focused on h