GOP apres-Voyeur: Sex and war games

by Mark Silva

If the election were held today, pollsters are accustomed to saying....

The Democrats are happy they are not.

"If the election were now, we would have a change election; we would have a 1994,'' says pollster Stan Greenberg, who served former President Bill Clinton through that first mid-term election which handed the House to the Republicans.

But Greenberg, speaking at the Christian Science Monitor Breakfast in Washington this morning, noted that several months remain before the 2010 midterms -- time in which his party hopes to boost its own members "intensity'' for the congressional election fight and temper that of the Republicans.

"The good news for Democrats is that, after health care passed, the Democratic intensity number went up. It still doesn't match the Republican intensity number," said Democratic strategist James Carville, speaking alongside Greenberg today.

"Now if the intensity numbers were the same in November as they are now, it does not bode well for Democrats,'' Carville said. "But if they continue to improve for Democrats, it would be better news. They are not going to pick up seats. That's a given. But how many they lose is quite open."

"It is still going to be a tough election and it will be marginally better than where it is nowm'' Greenberg said. "But I don't think we will have a [repeat of] '94."

by Michael Muskal

Fresh from a major victory in the highly charged healthcare debate, President Barack Obama today offered a glimpse of how he plans to deal with political battles in the future as he formally unveiled his energy policy.

Think of them as Obama's political rules in this midterm election year.

In a speech at Andrews Air Force Base, the president formally unveiled his policy. As expected, he reversed a long-term government stance in announcing an expansion of offshore oil-drilling along the Atlantic coast. The administration will also consider potential new areas for development in the Gulf of Mexico and continue the development of leased areas off the North Slope of Alaska, while protecting Alaska's Bristol Bay.

Obama sought to find space on the energy issue and in the process showed his political approach:

1. Move slowly and weigh the issue.

Announcing his reversal, Obama said: "This is not a decision that I've made lightly." The president and top advisors have "looked at closely for more than a year" at the issue.

2. Seek a golden mean and recognize that any decision will be controversial.

"There will be those who strongly disagree with this decision, including those who say we should not open any new areas to drilling," Obama said. "On the other side, there will be those who argue that we do not go nearly far enough.''

3. Despite the controversy, present the issue as too important to ignore.

"Ultimately, we need to move beyond the tired debates between right and left, between business leaders and environmentalists, between those who would claim drilling is a cure all and those who would claim it has no place," Obama said. "Because this issue is just too important to allow our progress to languish while we fight the same old battles over and over again."

4. Think globally, act locally

"While our politics has remained entrenched along worn divides, the ground has shifted beneath our feet," Obama said

"Around the world, countries are seeking an edge in the global marketplace by investing in new ways of producing and saving energy,'' he said. "From China to Germany, these nations recognize that the country that leads the clean energy economy will be the country that leads the global economy. Meanwhile, here at home, as politicians in Washington debate endlessly whether to act, our own military has determined that we can't afford not to.

5. Offer a bipartisan olive branch, even if it is likely to be rejected.

"So I am open to proposals from my Democratic and Republican friends,'' he said. "I believe we can move beyond the broken politics of the past. And I know that we can come together to pass comprehensive energy and climate legislation that will foster new industries and millions of new jobs protecting our planet and helping us become more energy independent. That's what we can do. That's what we must do. And I am confident that that is what we will do."

by Christi Parsons

President Barack Obama announced plans to expand off-shore drilling for oil and gas today, arguing that it is critical to the cause of energy independence and thus a matter of national and economic security.

Speaking before a military audience in a hangar at Andrews Air Force Base, the president said his administration will consider new areas for development in the mid- and south Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, while working to protect tourism and the environment in the process.

In particular, Obama said the government will support development of leased areas off the North Slope of Alaska, while protecting Alaska's Bristol Bay -- where plans to drill under the Bush administration infuriated environmentalists.

"There will be those who strongly disagree with this decision, including those who say we should not open any new areas to drilling," the president said. "But what I want to emphasize is that this announcement is part of a broader strategy that will move us from an economy that runs on fossil fuels and foreign oil to one that relies more on home-grown fuels and clean energy."

The announcement represents Obama's first policy decision as president on this politically charged topic, and it is bound to ignite debate across the political spectrum. Energy executives and conservatives have pushed for an expansion of drilling since gasoline prices spiked in 2008, and today's news comes as consumers begin to register the effects of the latest rise in prices.

But environmentalists argue that more drilling could lead to oil spills and destruction of fragile ecosystems. Even as the president presses for comprehensive energy and climate legislation, the plans are likely to spark resistance among key supporters of the president's Democratic base.

Offering his case at this Air Force base, home of the presidential aircraft, Obama urged both sides of the debate to rethink the standing political battle lines on this issue.

He spoke on a podium in front of a Navy fighter jet that the Army and Marine Corps have been testing to run on a mixture of bio-fuels. Military officials say the so-called "Green Hornet'' could soon be the first plane to fly faster than the speed of sound on a fuel mix that is half-biomass.

Military leaders aren't seeking these alternative fuels just to protect the environment, Obama said, but are pursuing new energy sources in order to protect national security.

"This is not a decision that I've made lightly," Obama said. "But the bottom line is this: given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth, produce jobs, and keep our businesses competitive, we're going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy."

by Mark Silva

As the White House seeks to salvage an energy bill that has cleared the House and is mired in the Senate, President Barack Obama plans to open a door to expanded off-shore oil-drilling on the Atlantic Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico today.

The president will propose allowing exploration 50 miles off the coast of Virginia and, if a congressional moratorium is lifted,125 miles off the coast of Florida in the Gulf, an administration offiical tells Bloomberg News. This will be part of a speech on "energy security'' that Obama delivers at Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Facility in Washington today.

The goal is to lessen U.S. dependence on foreign oil, the administration tells Bloomberg. But the goal, politically, certainly involves lessening opposition to an energy bill which also seeks to lessen dependence on oil by encouraging alternative sources of electrical power -- wind and solar -- while confronting the challnge of global warming with government controls on emissions of greenhouse gases associated with climate change. The House passed a bill last year. The Senate is sitting on a tougher bill.

The question of off-shore drilling has long been politically divisive, though public opposition to it in Florida has diminished in recent years, and Republican Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has signaled readiness for drilling off the coast of Virginia and the revenue that it could generate for his state.

Under Obama's proposal, the Department of the Interior will permit drilling 50 miles off the coast of Virginia and open up the rest of the Outer Continental Shelf in the south- and mid- Atlantic to oil exploration, the official tells Bloomberg. In Alaska, Obama is proposing to cancel leasing in Bristol Bay, and cancel sales in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas to allow for further scientific study. A sale in Cook Inlet will proceed.

by Mark Silva

Ever since Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France, spent his first summer vacation in office at a lake in New Hampshire, the French leader has been getting the royal treatment in followup visits to Washington.

Former President George W. Bush, who played host to the French first family at his own family's oceanfront compound in Maine, later that year took Sarkozy to Mount Vernon -- where George Washington had met with the French general, Rochambeau - for a consultation in Washington's old green dining room.

And tonight, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama - whose daughters got the royal treatment at the Elysee Palace on their own summer vacation - were playing host to Sarkozy and wife Carla Bruni at an intimate dinner in the White House - just the two presidents, first ladies and interpreters.

This puts us deep into the post-Freedom Fries era in Franco-American relations, that period when congressional canteens barred French Fries from the menus because of then-French President Jacques Chirac's refusal to support Bush in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. In the new era, Sarkozy's France is very much aligned with Obama's U.S. in Afghanistan, and the two today affirmed their mutual determination to deny Iran in its apparent quest for nuclear weaponry.

Tonight's menu was big news in France, apparently. "The French want to know,'' White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today.

"I have to point out that the French are properly famous for their cuisine,'' Obama said during a joint appearance with Sarkozy in the East Room today in which the Frenchman's culinary tour of Washington was publicly noted. "The fact that Nicolas went to Ben's Chili Bnowl for lunch, I think shows... his discriminating palate. My understanding is, he had a half-smoke (that's spicy sausage in English, Swamp note), so he was sampling the local wares.''

Sarkozy dined on lamb at a White House dinner for 100 when he visited the former president. Tonight's private dinner was "an opportunity to return the hospitality that the president and French people have shown'' to him, Obama said.

"And that includes our family's wonderful visit to Paris last summer. Michelle and I will never forget the opportunity to introduce our daughters for the first time to the City of Lights. And I don't think Sasha will ever forget celebrating her eighth birthday at the Elysee Palace with the president of France. That's a pretty fancy way for an eight-year-old to spend their birthday.''

Sarkozy already had won the hearts of leaders here in November of 2007, that first year as president and summer vacationing in New England when he joined Bush at Mount Vernon and addressed a joint session of Congress with an homage to all things American.

"My generation, without even coming to America, shared all of your dreams,'' the French president told Congress then. "And our imaginations were fueled by Hollywood, by the great conquest of the western territories, by Elvis Presley... Duke Ellington, Hemingway, John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Marylin Monroe, Rita Hayworth, but also Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins, who fulfilled mankind's oldest dream on the day when Americans walked on the moon. That day, America was universal, and each one of us wanted to be part of this great venture.''

So what did they have for dinner tonight?

We may have to go to Paris to find out.

(French President Nicolas Sarkozy, above left, joined President Barack Obama, in the East Room of the White House for a brief news conference today. Photo by Susan Walsh / AP.)

by Mark Silva

She is one herself -- a "real American story.''

So it seems that FOX News Channel has chosen an appropriate name for the series that Palin, the onetime Republican candidate for vice president, former governor of Alaska and author of Going Rogue, will host this week and down the road (photo above courtesy of FOX).

The debut of the series, as it happens, will come on April Fool's Day -- at 10 pm EDT. The same day, President Barack Obama will be touting the healthcare bill that he signed into law with a stop in Portland, Me. -- so both parties can have fun with all the April Fool's talk that they like.

FOX says that Real American Stories, hosted by Palin, will feature "real-life tales of overcoming adversity throughout the American landscape.''

The debut will feature a Marine Medal of Honor winner who died in battle, as well as a wealthy stockbroker who puts much of his wealth into helping underprivileged students attend college.

Oh, and the show also will feature country singer Toby Keith, on the inspiration for his song "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.'' Rapper and actor, LL Cool J, and the former chairman and CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch, will both speak of their successes. For those who miss it, the show will air again Sunday at 9 pm EDT.

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama, in an interview that aired on the Today show this morning, maintained that the polarization of the political atmosphere today can be repaired -- but it will take some time, perhaps another presidential election, to settle things down.

"Historically, what happens (at the start with) a party out of power... reacting very negatively, their base ends up being very agitated,'' Obama said. "It may take the next election, or the next presidential election, before things settle down.... All of us, Republicans and Democrats, have a responsibility as leaders to set the tone, to not exaggerate what the other side is trying to do, to not suggest that they are bad people.''

Both sides have done their share of dividing, he says.

'There's no doubt that Democrats are known to play the same game, which is to exaggerate the banality of the other side,'' Obama said. "We now have a pattern of polarization... where the political culture gets so wound up. Frankly, Matt, it gets spun up partly because of the way the media covers politics these days, the 24/7 news cycle and the cable chatter and the talk radio and the blogs, all of which tend to feed the most extreme sides of any issue, instead of trying to solve problems..

"I haven't solved it yet..... I do think it's solvable,'' Obama said. "When i go around the country and talk to folks, they dont think in ideological terms... If we can demonstrate as an administation, that regardless of what the everyday news cycle is showing.... it's possible to stick to your convictions...

"Nothing succeeds like success in this town,'' he said.

Asked for his take on the "TEA Party'' movement, the president said: "I think that it is a still loose amalgam of forces. That is a part of the TEA Party movement that actually did exist before I was elected. There were some folks who just weren't sure if i was born in the United States -- that I was a Socialist.

"Then there is a broader circle of people around that core group of people who are legitmately concerned about the deficit, legitimately concerned that the government is taking on too much,'' he said. "I wouldn't paint in broad brush and say that everybody who is involved or has gone to a Tea Party rally or meeting are somehow on the fringe.''

See that interview above, and see the president on faith, family and basketball, "a more personal side of the president," below: "What we've decided for now, is not to join a single church... We are very disruptive to services. When every other member of the congregation has to be 'magged.'''

The chapel at Camp David remains their favorite sanctuary, and the president receives a daily devotional on his BlackBerry from a circle of pastors and friends.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama, in an interview that will air Tuesday morning on the Today show, calls the healthcare reform that he has signed into law "a first step.''

"I think it is a critical first step in making a health care system that works for all Americans,'' the president says in an interview with NBC News' Matt Lauer which will be shown in the morning. "It is not going to be the only thing. We are still going to have adjustments that have to be made to further reduce costs.''

The president also addresses his surprise visit to Afghanistan on Sunday in the interview, a six-hour tour of Kabul and Bagram Air Base. The president returned to the White House this morning after the unannounced trip to the war-torn nation.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai "is listening,'' Obama tells Lauer, "but I think that the progress is too slow and what we've been trying to emphasize is the fierce urgency of now.

The president also addresses the suicide bombings in the Moscow subway that have claimed many lives.

"We have been on top of the issue of rail security and subway security for quite some time,'' Obama says, according to excerpts released tonight by NBC News.

"We constantly monitor it and try to figure out how to improve what we are doing,'' Obama says. " It is obviously a significant concern. It's not restricted to subways.

"The same thing can happen in a bus terminalm and if you've got somebody who is determined to kill themselves and kill other people with them. That is always a challenge for any government. But I'll have a terrorism briefing this afternoon as I do on a weekly basis and this is something that we are constantly working on.

"A lot of what's important is because the rail system or the subway systems are so far flung in this country, a lot of what's most important to us is being able to identify ahead of time individuals like Zazi in Colorado who have decided they want to cause damage and us being able to roll them up before they are in a position to actually strike.''

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama, who made a surprise landing in Afghanistan today, delivered a message to the Afghan leader about the unfinished business of building a stronger government and battling corruption, and a message of thanks to the thousands of U.S. troops stationed in an escalating war more than eight years old.

The Afghan government had not been informed of Obama's unannounced trip to the presidential palace in Kabul and Bagram Air Base until Thursday, according to the White House. The president arrived at Bagram aboard Air Force One at 7:25 pm local time, after a nearly 13-hour flight. And Obama arrived at the presidential palace by helicopter shortly after 8 pm Kabul time.

Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai emerged from the embattled palace along a red carpet to the parade grounds in the middle of tree-lined palace complex. They stood fro their national anthems, reviewed the assembled troops and returned inside the palace.

Obama was there to "engage'' Karzai on the benchmarks that the U.S. expects of the Afghan government, according to Marine Gen. Jim Jones, the National Security Adviser, who briefed reporters aboard Air Force One en route. Obama was there "to make understand that in his second term, there are certain things that have been not paid attention to, almost since Day One,'' Jones said. "That is things like...a merit-based system for appointment of key government officials, battling corruption, taking the fight to the narco-traffickers, which fuels, provides a lot of the economic engine for the insurgents."

Obama and Karzai met for about a half-hour , according to a senior admnistration official. Obama told Karzai that he felt some progress had been made since they had last spoken via videoconference two weeks ago, the official said. In the meeting, described as "businesslike'' and "very productive,'' the main topics discussed included governance, merit-based appointments of Afghan officials, and corruption. They also talked about recent trips which Karzai took to China and Pakstan - and the Afghan leader is planning another trip to Washington on May 12.

Karzai said he wanted to "express the gratitude of our people for the help that America has given us for the last eight years." He said they had a "good discussion," and thanked American taxpayers for "the rebuilding and reestablishing the institutions in Afghanistan."

Obama thanked his host for his hospitality. "The American people are encouraged by the progress that's been made,' Obama said.

Jones, in speaking with reporters there, underscored the problem of corruption in Afghanistan. "The president [Karzai] needs to be seized with how important that is,'' he said.

Of the meeting between the two, Jones said: "This is something that simply has to be done. We have to have the strategic rapport with President Karzai and his cabinet to understand how we are going to succeed this year in reversing the momentum the Taliban and the opposition forces have been able to establish since 2006."

Later, after leaving the palace at about 10:30 pm Kabul time, Obama returned to Bagram, where an estimated crowd of about 2,000, mostly from the 82nd Airbone, the U.S. military division in charge of eastern Afjghanistan, greeted the commander-in-chief. Obama also met there with Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.

The Bagram audience, already boisterous before the president appeared, burst into loud applause when he entered and began shaking hands and cheered again as he climbed a riser to a podium.

"One of the main reasons I'm here is to just say thank you for the incredible efforts of our US troops and our coalition partners,'' Obama said. "They make tremendous sacrifices far away from home, and I want to make sure they know how pround their commander-in-chief is of them."

(President Obama greeted troops at Bagram Air Base at the close of his surprise Sunday visit to Bagram and Kabul to meet with President Hamid Karzai. Photo of Obama shaking hands by Charles Dharapak / AP. Photo of Obama addressing troops by Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images. With additional credit and thanks to the traveling pool reporting of Peter Spiegel of The Wall Street Journal aboard Air Force One and in Afghanistan today.)

by Mark Silva and updated

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois accompanied Vice President Joe Biden to Texas today for some fundraisers where about $350,000 was raised for Senate campaigns this fall.

The vice president arrived at the Dallas home of Russell and Dorothy Budd with Durbin and others for the second event. Budd is a successful plaintiff's lawyer who supported Biden's run for president in 2008.

Budd said they had raised $250,000 for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee at this event, with an earlier event netting $100,000,

Durbin spoke of when he had first met President Barack Obama, as a state senator in Illinois. Durbin reminded the crowd that it was he who had introduced Obama for his historic keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

"Remember that introduction," he joked. "Wasn't it great?"

Durbin, the majority whip, said the passage of healthcare legislation this week had given Democrats a renewed purpose.

"This is the biggest thing I've ever been involved in in my political lifetime," Durbin said. . "It's a new day. It's a new day, we can't lose."

At the first fundraiser at another Dallas home, Biden spoke of how strong the Obama campaign was -- stronger than his own presidential bid, he assured the audience -- but also the political atmosphere that the new president inherited.

""Both the president and I knew if we won we were going to inherit maybe the most difficult circumstances any president and vice president inherited since the Roosevelt administration,'' Bden said. "It wasn't hyperbole. We talked about it. It wasn't political fodder."

"Before we lowered our right hands (on Inauguration Day), 740,000 people had lost their jobs. 800,000 lost their jobs before we even got the computers hooked up at the White House''

And the Bush administration, Biden said, bore some of the responsibility for the atmosphere Obama inherited.

"We inherited a cynical republic, and I can't blame them," Biden said. "Eight years of collapse, eight years of being misled about wars."

by Michael Muskal

It was deja vu all over again, as John McCain and Sarah Palin, the recent losing GOP presidential ticket, were reunited today on a platform of political mutual aid.

It is the first time the odd couple of political and personal contrasts has campaigned together since the presidential race of 2008. McCain plucked Palin out of the political obscurity of the Alaska statehouse and gave her a platform that turned her into a media star and darling of conservatives across the nation.

Palin today gave McCain what he wanted in a fiery introduction that emphasized his conservative credentials and his standing as an anti-Washington maverick who opposed healthcare overhaul and supported fiscal restraint and small government.

"Those issues are at the heart of a conservative movement that is sweeping this country," Palin said. "It's a beautiful grassroots movement that is putting government back on the side of the people. Some parts of this is the tea party movement.

"I want to clear the air right now," she said to cheers, calling the tea party movement, "a beautiful movement. Everybody here today supporting John McCain, we're all part of that tea party movement."

McCain applauded and in his comments predicted that the recently passed healthcare insurance overhaul will be overturned by the courts. "Repeal and replace," he said, using what has become the GOP rallying cry for the midterm election cycle.

"When it comes to Obamacare," Palin joked. "I see Fidel Castro likes Obamacare and we don't. Doesn't that tell you something?"

by Mark Silva

This is somewhat more complicated than walking and chewing gum at the same time, this achievement of the biggest healthcare initiative since Medicare and negotiation of a treaty with Russia curtailing the arsenals of nuclear arms, but the Obama White House brought both in for a landing this week.

It was April 5 of 2009 when Obama stood in Hradcany Square in Prague and promised that he and Russian President Dimitri Medvedev would deliver a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty by the end of the year. The two finally agreed on that treaty today, the American president announced.

It was March 5 of 2009 when Obama stood at a meeting in the White House and promised to overhaul the nation's healthcare insurance, eventually setting a goal of achieving that by year's end.

A few months further down the road than expected, the president signed into law the healthcare initiative this week and announced an agreement with the Russians on a new START deal.

So now, Obama will travel again to Prague on April 8 to sign the agreement that he has reached with the Russian leader.

The president also will travel to Portland, Maine, on April 1 to tout the healthcare reforms signed into law this week. And he will to Charlotte, N.C., the next day to talk about the continuing challenge that the economy poses - the greatest challenge facing a nation still recovering from recession.

The president announced the START agreement today at the White House with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - "Hillary,'' as Obama introduced an erstwhile rival who also stepped forward to explain how this treaty advances the goals of "the Obama administration'' in international diplomacy.

The treaty, subject to congressional ratification, promises to curtail by about one third the nuclear arsenals of the two greatest nuclear powers, which together possess about 90 percnet of the world's nuclear weaponry -- with, as Clinton said, invoking the words of Ronald Reagan, a requirement to both "trust and verify.'' This still leaves enough weaponry to roast the entire world well-done, but it is, as they say, a start.

The heatlhcare bills, passed by the Senate and House this week, will offer insurance to most of the uninsured -- an estimated 32 million of the 47 million who lack coverage, with no benefits offered for undocument immigrants. It's not the "universal'' plan that the president promised in May of 2007 as a candidate, but it is, as they say, a start.

With two new starts in hand, the economy still beckons. It was, after all, just one month into office that the president signed into law an economic stimulus that promised a few million new jobs. By the White House's measure, more than a million have been created or saved, though unemployment has risen to near 10 percent and shows no signs of substantially easing in the year ahead.

GDP is growing again, and so is employment, by the Labor Department's count. But it takes some 100,000 new jobs a month just to sustain the current level of employment, and next Friday -- as the president travels to North Carolina to talk about his plans for fixing the economy, Labor will roll out the latest jobs-report from March.

Modest growth is expected. It is a start.

by Mark Silva

A Happy Birthday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today.

She is 70.

The speaker hasn't had a bad week for the celebration of a big one: She passed historic healthcare legislation on Sunday, she was dubbed the most powerful woman in America by The Economist and the most powerful speaker in 100 years by a professor of political science at Brown, and yesterday, as she addressed the press at a weekly news conference she was asked what she wants for her birthday.

"You know what I want for my birthday?'' Pelosi said, responding to the question posed as she was leaving the news conference. "I want a pool table.

"I've always wanted a pool table,'' the California Democrat said. "I want a pool table. I want to get better at it, but I have all these grandchildren, they're eight, ten, little ones.''

That healthcare bill was some bank shot for a speaker who now faces a Republican campaign to "fire'' her in November with a GOP takeover of the House.

Time will tell who scratches.

Meanwhile, here is a photo gallery of The Faces of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 70 today.

by Mark Silva

Okay, fans of all things Friday, it's photo-caption time here in The Swamp, where we couldn't pass up this photograph of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stepping off Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base yesterday coming home from Iowa.

Gibbs was carrying the book, Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy by Matthew Reinhart, which he had purchased for his son Ethan at a book shop visited by the president in Iowa City.

Our mind reeled at first to 2000, when Republican John McCain told a camapign rally in Saginaw, Mich., that the Republican presidential primary contest with George W. Bush had become like Star Wars -- he was Luke Skywalker, and he was going for a kill.

But we expect more creativity than that in today's caption contest.

(With credit and thanks to Charles Dharapak of the AP for the shot.)

by Mark Silva

After a yearlong fight over healthcare, with a stunning political upset for the president's party in Massachusetts in January that appeared to spell doom for the White House's hopes of winning an historic legislative prize, the speed with which the bills have cleared Congress and the president's desk may have left some Republicans with what The Hill today is callng a certain "whiplash.''

Democrats are heading home for a two-week Easter and Passover recess with something momentous to show for the fight: A guarantee of more protection in the health insurance that most Americans have and a promise of coverage for most of those who lack it, a 2st Century advance on the order of the 20th Century safety nets of Social Security and Medicare. It is not "the government takeover'' that critics warned it would be, President Barack Obama said this week in Iowa, touting the law's signing.

With Republicans launching a "repeal and replace'' campaign theis week, the president said in Iowa City, where he first proposed healthcare reform in May of 2007: "They're actually going to run on a platform of repeal in November. Well, I say go for it."

Yet The Hill points to some doubts within the ranks of Republicans suddenly realizing that they not only lost -- not a single Republican in the House or Senate voted for the final package of two bills, one signed Tuesday, another passed last night -- but they also have been carved out of any claim to the advantages that could emerge from this overhaul of health insurance. From the start, they fought it, but now they have nothing to show for the fight except a warning that Democrats are "socializing'' the nation.

"Our constituents expect us to stand up and fight the good fight, but there's always a reasonableness factor that needs to come into place," Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), is quoted as saying in The Hill's report. "Sometimes there's a fine line between what is being an advocate for your cause and when you become obstreperous.

"We need to make sure that we're always cognizant of that and we push appropriately so but recognize where that line is."

The Hill notes that senators such as Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) "had initially planned to offer scores of amendments to stall the healthcare reform fixes and stop Democrats from putting the finishing touches on the legislation. By Wednesday, however, the political tone had changed.

""The leadership has asked us to focus on substantive amendments," said DeMint on Wednesday. "I had 50 amendments, I still have them in my back pocket, but I'll probably only offer two or three."

The Senate eventually voted on only one DeMint amendment.

That's not the only issue where the train has left the station without Republican support. Next comes the Democratic leadership's financial regulatory bill.

"I just think we should have been engaged since October in trying to seek a compromise bill," said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a member of the Banking Committee. "Once something comes out of committee, you lose a little leverage. It's one more step along the way."

by Mark Silva

John McCain launched Sarah Palin's national career: A spot on the GOP's 2008 ticket, a multimillion-dollar book-deal and a million-dollar per-episode reality TV show.

Now Palin is trying to help McCain salvage his -- after four terms in the Senate and two in the House, the onetime prisoner of war who was his party's nominee for president faces an intra-party rival back home in Arizona who could derail the old "maverick.''

The two, who once energized the Republican base with their appearance on stage at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., in the summer of 2008, are launching the spring and summer of a heated 2010 primary campaign in Arizona today with an appeal to that same party base.

Former congressman and conservative talk-radio host JD Hayworth is calling McCain, who succeeded Barry Goldwater in the Senate in 1986, too moderate for Arizona Republicans. He points to McCain's reputation for working with Democrats on everything from campaign finance reform and immigration to climate change.

Palin is campaigning for McCain today in Tucson and on Saturday in Mesa.

They also plan a fundraiser today at the Phoenixx hotel where they conceded the presidential election on the night of Nov. 4, 2008 -- a night when Palin wanted a chance to speak on stage, too, but was denied it, after a tough campaign that drove a wedge between the upstart Palin, a first-term Alaska governor, and the professional Washington-based staff of the McCain organization..

Palin ultimately capitalized on the name the McCain team had for her off-the-script behavior on the campaign trail: Going Rogue -- with a memoir that has sold well. And now Discovery's The Learning Channel will be presenting "Sarah Palin's Alaska.'' Few Americans believe that Palin is qualified to serve as president, but she has said she'd be crazy not to consider a campaign in 2012.

Hayworth is billing himself as "the consistent conservative.'' Palin lately has rallied the TEA Party at a convention in Nashville, complete with palm notes on stage, and will be the keynote speaker at a Susan B. Anthony right-to-life dinner in May.

"We look forward to having Gov. Palin's support following the primary," Hayworth ssays. "But we welcome her and we understand why she's in the state stumping for McCain."

As for McCain, should he fall short of winning a fifth term in the Senate, his family still has a beer distributorship.

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama has another bill to sign:

In the culmination of a battle that raged for more than a year, the House tonight cast the final vote on a healthcare "reconcilation bill'' that is bound for the president's desk.

The House voted 220-207 tonight for a bill that cleared the Senate earlier today on a 56-43 vote, amending the major healthcare bill that Obama signed into law this week.

No Republican voted for either bill in either chamber, but nearly three dozen Democrats voted against the House's bills and a few Senate Democrats balked today.

Together, the bills promise healthcare for an estimated 32 million uninsured Americans by requiring most to purchase coverage, offering subsidies to those who cannot afford it and providing tax breaks for businesses that cover their workers. It is extimated to cost about $940 billion over 10 years, by the scoring of the Congressional Budget Office, and pare the federal buget defict by a projected $143 billion.

As Republicans watched the Democratic leadership pass measures for which the president has long fought, the GOP shifted its eyes toward the November elecitons, with a "repeal and replace'' message for voters -- repeal the healthcare law by replacing the Democratic leaders of Congress, voting their party majorities out in the midterms.

"Republicans fought on behalf of the American people this week and will continue to fight until this bill is repealed and replaced with commonsense ideas that solve our problems without dismantling the health care system we have and without burying the American dream under a mountain of debt," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said.

Obama, promoting his healthcare victory today in Iowa, suggested that nothing will come of the repeal movement and Americans will learn to love the healthcare law once they see its benefits -- including protections for those who already are insured that take effect this year.

And, as for the GOP campaign to repeal the law that he signed this week, the president said today in Iowa: "I welcome that fight.''

by Mark Silva

The initial reaction to passage of an historic healthcare bill in some quarters of the country this spring is staring to make the TEA Party protests against taxes and the rest last summer look tame -- now come bricks through the windows of congressional offices back home, a bullet through the window of a congressman's campaign office (a Republican who opposed the healthcare bill.)

The president was in Iowa today reminding people that non asteroids hadnot fallen from the sky with the passage of the healthcare bill and the president's signing it into law this week -- no "Armageddon'' -- just bricks through windows, we note.

"First of all, I think we should all know that we can have disagreements without being disagreeable,'' Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff says.

"This was a long debate, a lot of heat, sometimes not a lot of light, but a lot of heat around it.,'' the former congressman from Chicago says in an interview that aired this evening on PBS' NewsHour. "I think it's important for every elected officials, regardless of party or where you are in the issue, to speak to the country about calming and setting things down.

"We all have a collective interest. A vibrant democracy is a good thing,'' he says. "But this is a debate with a level of civility that should be around it. And that debate now about health care is over. We will have a continuing debate about health care, et cetera, role of government, et cetera, but not one that I think obviously endangers and brings forth any sense of violence or threat.

"And, so, every elected official, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum or where they are -- were on the issue of health care, has a responsibility to help calm the waters,'' the president's senior adviser says.

Emanuel isn't specifically blaming anyone for inciting all this -- and says the Republicans who voted in lockstep against the healthcare bill in the House on Sunday and in the Senate today are not to blame.

But "I think elected leaders have a role in calming it down,'' Emanuel says. "The only person -- the only time I would ever say, you know -- I don't say blame or point finger, but I would say a responsibility not to incite it or encourage it, as some have recently.''

"Let me say that there's no excuse,'' Rep. Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican, said in an interview on the NewsHour this evening.

"Regardless of how strongly people feel in opposition to this health care legislation, there's no excuse for bigotry or threats or -- or acts of violence,'' Pence said. "We condemn them in the strongest possible terms. The people who engage in that behavior are undermining any cause that they purport to believe in. And they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

Emanuel also was asked by PBS' Jim Lehrer if he's happy with his job, and if he plans to stick around a while -- yes , says the chief of staff who had designs on the speaker's office but has told Tribune's Washington Bureau recently that his congressional days are over, but he is not running for mayor of Chicago while Richard Daley is on the ballot.

"I would be less than honest if I didn't tell you it was a stressful 14 months, in the sense of, you come in, and you have a financial meltdown, an economic recession, two wars, three wars, would be the one in Iraq, one obviously in Afghanistan, as well as the war on terror.'' Emanuel tells Lehrer. " And it took a lot to not just get to this point, but to continue to push on. But I find, if you were to do public service, which is what I have done with my adult career and my professional career -- I have been fortunate enough to work in the White House, fortunate enough to get elected to Congress, and then fortunate enough to work in the White House again as chief of staff -- this is tremendously rewarding. It's what I have chosen to do with my life.

"I find it rewarding.''

See the interviews with Emanuel and Pence below:

by Peter Nicholas

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- With his healthcare overhaul now enshrined in law, President Barack Obama warned Republicans today that any attempt to repeal the measure would backfire and that Americans will quickly see that the new package of medical benefits they receive will not usher in "Armageddon.''

Obama returned to the city where he first laid out his healthcare proposal as a candidate for president nearly three years ago, the first stop in an aggressive White House push to defend a plan that is likely to be a focal point of the midterm elections in November.

Some Republicans have said they will campaign on a promise to repeal the bill, which the president signed into law on Tuesday. In a gust of election-year bravado, Obama dared them to try it. Meanwhile, the Senate approved a second healthcare reconciliation bill today and returned it to the House for a final vote.

"They're actually going to run on a platform of repeal in November,'' said Obama, appearing before 3,000 people at the University of Iowa field house. "And my attitude is, go for it! If these congressmen in Washington want to come here in Iowa and tell small business owners that they plan to take away their tax credits and essentially raise their taxes, be my guest.''

The president was heckled at one point by a man in the crowd who said the bill should have gone farther and included a "public option'' - a government-run program that would compete with private insurance plans.

"That's not in it,'' Obama said.

"Why not?'' came the reply.

"Because we couldn't get it through Congress, that's why,'' Obama said, adding: "There's no need to shout, young man.''

After the bill passed, certain Democratic lawmakers were targets of vandalism and threats. Emotions are still raw. A few dozen protesters gathered outside the field house carrying signs that read, "Can We Impeach Yet?'' and "Dictator Obama.''

Speaking without his suit jacket, Obama suggested that opposition springs from "fear-mongering and plenty of overheated rhetoric.''

He added: "You turn on the news, you'll see the same folks are still shouting about how it's going to be the end of the world because this bill passed. .... Leaders of the Republican Party, they called the passage of this bill 'Armageddon.' Armageddon! End of freedom as we know it! So after I signed the bill I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling. Some cracks opening up in the Earth! Turned out it was a nice day!''

(Protesters assembled outside the University of Iowa field house, and a heckler challenged the president inside. Dr. Erik Edens is pictured above protesting the healthcare law that President Obama signed this week. Photo by John Schultz / The Quad City Times via AP)

by Michael Muskal

The Senate completed its work on a package of healthcare amendments today, forcing the House to vote once again on the healthcare "reconciliation'' later in the day.

By a 56-43 vote, the Senate approved a bill that amends the healthcare insurance overhaul bill which it passed Christmas Eve and which the House approved Sunday night.. The vote was largely along party lines, as befits the entire healthcare debate, a fiery, partisan divide that has monopolized Washington for more than a year.

Three Democrats voted "no" and one Republican was absent. Among the Democrats voting no was was Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, who faces a tough reelection campaign.

Republicans continued their opposition to the amendments through an overnight session that began Wednesday. Though they failed to derail the reconciliation bill, they succeeded in winning two points of order, which required the House to vote again.

The House vote will be the last stop on a legislative journey that gave Americans a highly publicized look at how laws are made.

Polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans said they disliked the process, which became heavily politicized as Democrats and Republicans sparred over President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.

The House, which had passed its own version of healthcare last fall, passed the Senate version on Sunday. Obama signed that bill into law on Tuesday.

by Mark Silva

"Words have power,'' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says.

"They weigh a ton.''

Lately, a lot of heavy words have been dropped on lawmakers passing the historic healthcare law - as well as bricks and even, now, reports of bullets, dropped through the windows of some this week.

"I don't want this to be a distraction" to the work of Congress, Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at a news conference today. "I have news for them - it's not working in their favor.''

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) echoed her sentiments. While many may be angry over the healthcare law, he said, ""threats and violence should not be part of a political debate."

At least four Democratic offices in New York, Arizona and Kansas were struck this week, and at least 10 members of Congress have reported some sort of threats, including obscenity-laced phone messages, congressional leaders have said. No arrests have been reported.

Democrats aren't alone as targets: The House's No. 3-ranking Republican, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, who voted along with the rest of the House's Republicans against the healthcare bill on Sunday, said today that someone fired a bullet through a window of his campaign office in Richmond this week and he has received threatening e-mails.

The shot was fired into the office of two Republican political strategists who are longtime advisers to Cantor. The building in downtown Richmond has no markings that link it to Cantor or to political activity.

"To use such threats as political weapons is reprehensible," Cantor said.

The actions against Democrats have included racial slurs hurled at black lawmakers, e-mail and telephone death threats.

"Our members are undaunted,'' Pelosi said today. "They are proud of their vote. They understand what it's about.''

by Mark Silva

The Gallup Poll, with its daily tracking of President Barack Obama's job approval, has the first read on the public's read on the president's performance since Congress passed a healthcare overhaul and Obama signed it into law:

Gauged at 51 percnet in the March 22-24 surveys, "the first measure conducted entirely after the House passed the healthcare reform bill on Sunday night,'' Gallup notes, the president's job approve is "fundamentally'' unchanged from where it stood throughout much of March -- though we did see a five-point spike from last week.

"Obama's approval rating has hovered around 50 percent since November, and was precisely 50 percent in the last three days of Gallup polling before the vote took place,'' Gallup's Jeffrey Jones notes. "However, in recent weeks Obama has been consistently below the majority approval level and his ratings were generally the lowest of his presidency. That includes term-low 48 percent weekly average approval ratings each of the last two weeks, and several 46 percent ratings in Gallup Daily three-day rolling averages, the most recent coming in March 15-17 polling.''

Jones concludes: "The passage of healthcare reform in the House, a major victory for the Obama administration, has not yet had an overwhelmingly positive impact on Obama's approval rating. That may be in part because of the divisiveness over the healthcare reform legislation, which struggled to gain majority public support throughout the process. It appears, though, that the healthcare victory did provide enough momentum to put Obama back above the majority approval level for the time being.''

The survey of 1,544 adults conducted over three days this week carries a possible 4 percentage point margin of error.

by Mark Silva

Well, it's come to this:

Never mind the Gallup Poll's daily tracking surveys.

Never mind Rasmussen Reports (as a general rule.)

MAD magazine is "writing off Obama'' -- so says the DC Comics Web-site promoting the 503rd issue of the venerable home of cartoon satire on sale now.

Obama, for his part, has taken his own cue from MAD's own Alfred E. Neuman when asked about sagging job approval and other problematic opinion polls:

"What, me worry?''

(MAD cover reprinted with permission of DC Comics.)

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama returned to Iowa City, Iowa, today to tout the healthcare legislation that he signed into law today. It was Iowa City, on May 29, 2007, where candidate Obama first proposed his vision of a healthcare overhaul for millions of uninsured Americans.

"We can do this,'' candidate Obama said that day on the campaign trail.

"Yes, we did,'' a celebrant called out at the bill-signing this week.

Back then, Republican Mitt Romney's pledge to forgo the presidential salary if he were elected president was gaining as much press attention in newspapers around the nation as Obama's healthcare plan was.

Back then, Obama's advisers were talking about a somewhat different price tag: An estimated $50 billion to $65 billion a year to finance the plan, according to a memo written by three outside experts and distributed by the Obama campaign. The CBO-estimated cost of the plan winning congressional approval is $940 billion over 10 years.
Yet back then, Obama also was talking about helping to pay for the plan by repealing then-President George W. Bush's tax cuts for households earning more than $250,000 year - a tax increase now envisioned in Obama's budget plans for 2011.

Obama also promised that he would sign a universal healthcare plan into law by the end of his first term. The bill signed this week, a little more than a year into his term, offers coverage to an estimated 32 million of the nation's 47 million uninsured - illegal immigrants, who account for much of the gap, are barred from coverage.

The candidate's promise also included cost-savings to help pay for the plan. Savings in Medicare expenses are part of the plan that Congress has approved.

That promise also included a projection that the average consumer could save $2,500 a year in insurance premium prices with the reforms proposed. The White House is offering a more general prediction now of savings that could result from changes in the law signed this week: "You will likely pay less --- perhaps much less. If you buy coverage like you have today on your own, premiums are expected to drop by 14 to 20 percent. If you get coverage through your job, premiums could decline by up to 3 percent. ''

"The senator came across with a large plan, but in Democratic presidential terms it's a centrist plan," Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health, said at the time, reading from the Tribune's account from the campaign trail in Iowa City that day. "He's talking about something that takes the existing system and makes it work."

"To help pay for this, we will ask all but the smallest businesses who don't make a meaningful contribution today to the health coverage of their employees to do so," the candidate said. Companies that do not provide health insurance would be charged a payroll tax to help fund subsidized insurance. The plan passed by Congress requires larger employers that don't provide insurance for employees to pay fines.

The candidate's proposal would have supplemented the private insurance market with a government-run National Health Insurance Exchange for those who needed to buy coverage. The so-called "public option'' fell off the table as House leaders acceded to more conservative Democrats in the Senate who refused to buy into it.

There have been a lot of white coats around healthcare events during the president's campaign for congressional passage of a healthcare plan. There were some white coats around at the University of Iowa's medical research center in May of 2007, too, when Obama proposed his plan. (See the picture below by Charlie Neibergall / AP:)

by Noam N. Levey and Michael Muskal

The House will vote on amendments to the healthcare reconciliation bill tonight if the Senate as expected finishes its deliberations in the afternoon, lawmakers said.

The Senate is expected to take its final healthcare vote around 2 pm EDT, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said this morning. The package of amendments will then go back to the House for final passage.

"The Senate is expected to complete work [this] afternoon on the improvements bill to the new healthcare reform law," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said in a prepared statement today. "If they finish their work later [today] as planned, the House will take up the improvements bill with technical corrections [this] evening."

Legislators are trying to finish off their work on healthcare before the holiday recess this weekend.

The final Senate vote will also come as President Barack Obama is set to speak on the healthcare insurance overhaul in Iowa City, Iowa. As a presidential candidate, Obama announced his healthcare plan in Iowa City in May 2007. The president's appearance will be both a victory lap and a sales pitch for the plan he signed into law Tuesday.

The House over the weekend passed the Senate version of the healthcare overhaul, and the president signed it into law on Tuesday, but the House also passed a package of amendments to make the bill more palatable to its members.

Since the signing, the Senate has been considering the House-approved amendments with Republicans fighting the legislation as they have for the last year. But after nine hours of defeating Republican amendments, Senate Democrats hit a temporary snag this morning and were forced to abandon their plans to pass the House package without changes.

Los Angeles

by Mark Silva

A narrative quickly formed this week for an election campaign.

It's called "repeal and replace.''

It involves repealing the healthcare legislation that President Barack Obama signed into law this week -- which won't be repealed anytime soon -- and replacing the leaders of the House and Senate who passed it, which requires a GOP takeover in November.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell was sounding the theme just two hours after Obama signed the healthcare bill into law on Tuesday, Bloomberg News' James Crowley notes. "We'll continue to fight until this bill is repealed and replaced with common-sense ideas that solve our problems without dismantling the health-care system we have," McConnell (R-Ky.) said during Senate debate on the reconciliation bill which the House also passed and the Senate is now debating.

"The idea is not that there is a realistic chance of repeal," says Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University. Rather, the theme gives Republicans a chance to offer voters "something tangible" beyond merely criticizing the law.

"Repeal and replace" is a political fight which Democrats relish, the writer notes -- remember, it was radio's Rush Limbaugh who early on proclaimed that he wanted the president's agenda to fail.

"Now that the bill is passed and signed into law, the American people have something" and "the Republicans are saying they want to take it away from them," says Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat. "That is going to be a loser, big time, for the Republicans."

Republican leaders disagree.

"That's wishful thinking because there aren't any real substantial benefits," said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who heads his party's campaign committee for Senate Republicans. Citing a March 18-21 CBS poll finding that "only 20 percent of the public thinks they'll be better off under this bill,'' Cornyn says public opposition shows "this is going to be a white- hot issue leading up to November.''

by Mark Silva and updated

Vice President Joe Biden told a few jokes on himself last night.

They involved that open-mic expletive of his the other day, at the ceremonial presidential signing of the healthcare overhaul at the Whte House. It was a moment in history, Biden said in his formal remarks introducing President Barack Obama. Then, turning to embrace Obama, Biden told the president: "This is a big (effin') deal.''

Biden, speaking last night at a political fundraiser at the home of Baltimore-based developer David S. Cordish, acknowledged the presence of retired Sen. Paul Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat.

"I would have never made the faux pas I made the other day if you [Sarbanes] were still around,'' Biden said.

All Biden could think of, after learnng that his effusive expletive was picked up by the open mic at the podium in tthe East Room and broadcast around the world on cable news was, "Thank God my mom's not ..." (the rest of his words were lost to laughter in the room, our pool reporter reports.)

The president was unphased, Biden told his audience last night. At the next morning's presidential briefing, Biden said, Obama remarked: "You know what the best thing about yesterday was? Joe's comment."

The president had tried to have a T-Shirt made with Biden's now-famous phrase emblazoned on the front, Biden said, but he couldn't get one made in time.

Biden told Obama -- or so Biden told his fundraising audience last night -- "If you thought it was so good, why didn't you say it?"

Biden went on, in a serious vein, to explain what a B(F)D winning passage of the healthcare bill really was: "The thing this portends the most is, that this country is capable of handling complex, ideological divisive, consequential issues. If we were unable to move the ball on this issue, not only in the political sense might we be dead... But in terms of being able to deal with other major issues on our plate, we would've been done. Absolutely done.''

(White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, asked en route to Iowa City today aboard Air Force One if the president share's Biden's assessment about being "done'' if the healthcare bill had not passed, said with a smile: "I think health care was a big deal.'')

""What happened two days ago represents fundamental change in an incredibly, incredibly difficult political environmentt,'' Biden said. adding to applause in the room that "reports of the demise of the Democratic Party in November are premature...

"The ace we have in our pocket is the Republican Party,'' the vice president said. "The Republicans concluded that their success lies in our failure." (Republicans, for their part, are already out raising their own campaign funds with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a targe and Biden's own words as a fundraising booster.)

About 60 people attended the fundraiser at Cordish's home in Lutherville north of Baltimore -- Cordish's company helped reshape Baltimore's Inner Harbor and has been responsible for other developments around the nation. Ticket prices started at $2,500 per person. The menu included grilled vegetables, saffron infused rice, seafood Newberg with jumbo shrimp, fresh lobster, crab, blueberry crisp with vanilla ice cream.

And one big dollop of Biden.

by Mark Silva

It didn't take long for the Republicans to turn Vice President's choice words about the healthcare legslation signed into law this week into fundraising fodder.

It was Biden who, after introducing the president at the formal East Room bill-signing ceremony yesterday, could be overheard via the microphones at the podium as he embraced the president telling him: "This is a big (effin') deal.''

"Joe Biden was right, this is a big, 'ahem,' deal,'' a fundraising e-appeal from the National Republican Senatorial Committee today reads. "Help us show the Vice President and Democrats how big of a deal it is that they rammed this health care bill through against the wishes of a majority of Americans.''

Another fundraising quarter is closing, and the GOP figures a little Biden-inspired boost could help make the quarterly report all the brighter -- with a somewhat humble goal for such a goldmine of a comment from the veep.

"The end of the quarter is only a week away, and we need your help to continue to fight against legislation the American people do not want. Republicans want to "repeal and replace" this bill and you can help support them,'' says the email, asking for donations of $10, $25 $50 or "even $100'' -- (and we thought this was a big deal?)

by Mark Silva

There's a lot of talk this week among Republicans about repealing the healthcare law that President Barack Obama has just signed.

But House Minority Leader John Boehner, among the talkers, acknowledges that this is no short-term goal.

"We need to repeal this bill and replace it with common sense reforms that'll bring down the cost of health insurance,'' Boehner said this afternoon on FOX News Channel's America Live with Megyn Kelly. But "with a Democrat president for the next two and a half years, even if we gained the majority it's going to be very difficult to repeal this bill outright."

The leader of the House Republicans who voted as a bloc against the healthcare bill on Sunday said today: "This is a budget busting health care bill that I think is going to bankrupt our country... What's becoming clearer every day are the gimmicks that were used in order to show that this was actually going to save money."

Boehner (R-Ohio_ suggests that public "anger'' over the measure should help his party register voters and elect Republicans this fall.

"There are a lot of angry Americans and they're angry over this health care bill. They're angry about the fact that the democrats here in Washington aren't listening to them,'' Boehner said, at a time when the rhetoric has grown overheated on some street corners here in the capital. "Violence and threats are unacceptable. That is not the American way... I know there's anger, but let's take that anger and go out and register people to vote, go volunteer on a political campaign, and let's do it the right way."

by Mark Silva

There was a lot of activity around the White House last night, where the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu turned into a mini-summit that lasted into the evening. But there is not a picture to be had, by the White House's own design.

The president today was signing an executive order asserting that the Hyde amendment's prohibition of federal funding for abortion will apply to the healthcare bill that the president signed into law this week -- an order written to keep several anti-abortion Democrats in line with the 219-212 vote by which the bill passed.

There will be a picture of the order-signing at 2:30 pm EDT today -- a White House picture, but no press surrounding the signing of an order that has angered both sides in the abortion debate, with abortion-rights advocates accusing the president of importing the Hyde Amendment to the Oval Office and abortion opponents decrying it as a meaningless piece of paper. Nothing like the media extravangza that surrounded the president's signing of the healthcare bill won with the promise of today's order.

But there was no picture from the Oval Office last night when Obama and Netanyahu starting meeting there at 5:30 pm, a meeting that ran until a little after 7, spokesman Robert Gibbs said today. The president returned to his residence in the White House, and Netanyahu remained to consult with hiw staff in the Roosevelt Room, in the West Wing. The prime minister then requested another meeting with Obama, and they returned to the Oval at 8:20 pm for another half-hour.

With relations between Israel and the United States strained by the Israeli insistence on building new settlements in areas claimed by the Palestinians and the U.S. insisting on a cessation of settlements -- something that has been central to American demands since George W. Bush's idea of a "two-state solution'' -- the two leaders had "an honest and straightforward discussion about our relationship, about regional security and about comprehensive peace efforts,'' spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

"The president asked the prime minister to take steps to build confidence for proximity talks, so that progress can be made towards that comprehensive Middle
East peace... There are areas of agreement. There are areas of disagreement.
And that conversation is ongoing. ''

As for the absence of any media coverage -- not even an official White House photograph from the in-house photographer -- Gibbs said: "We've handled different visits in different ways, and this is the way we felt most comfortable handling this one.''

Asked about the image conveyed by this lack of image, Gibbs said: "Look, they spoke for over two hours last night face to face. So I think we have a strong relationship with a strong ally. There are areas that they discussed last night, some of which they agree and some of which they disagree. And as I've said, those talks are -- those talks are ongoing... But the conversation was honest and straightforward.''

Which means we'll know things are looking up when the two pose for a picture again.

by Mark Silva

Sarah Palin, the reality show star.

The word is that the Republican from Alaska whose farewell speech midway through her term as governor has been interpreted as beat poetry on air by William Shatner will be airing her own version of reality TV -- on the Discovery Channel.

"According to everyone from Variety to The Washington Post, the series, Sarah Palin's Alaska , has been picked up for a reported $1-million-plus per episode,'' People notes.

Variety says Palin's project with reality-TV rainmaker Mark Burnett "will center on interesting characters, traditions and attractions in the 49th state - with the ex-VP candidate as a guide."

It could give Caribou hunting a whole new image

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

by Michael Muskal

In the Senate, where the debate on healthcare "reconciliation'' is underway, the divided parties are making no secret of their sentiments today.

Under the Senate rules, 20 hours have been set aside for debate and more than a third of that has been used already. Republicans will introduce a series of amendments designed to make political points for November, but the final result is not really in doubt.

"It looks like the Democrats are walking in lockstep," Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said in an interview on FOX News Channel. "We have some good amendments," he said, while conceding that he expects that "all of the amendments to be voted down in a party-line votes. That's unfortunate."

"This is a political exercise for too many on the other side of the aisle," said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, appearing on NBC's oday show.

South Carolina's Sen. Jim DeMint, one of the co-sponsors of the GOP's doomed attempt to repeal the healthcare bill that already has passed and was signed into law this week, maintains that Americans are angry about the bill and the way it has become law.
Democrats are hoping "that Americans don't notice this is another power grab," DeMint said.. "So we're going to bring these issues up."

The bill under consideration now -- passed by a 220-211 vote in the House Sunday night -- amends the Senate-and-House-passed bill that President Barack Obama signed into law this week. The House-backed amendments drop a special Medicaid deal for Nebraska but keep other deals that helped win the Senate's 60-39 approval of its bill on Christmas eve. It also changes a proposed tax increase on high-end insurance policies that House Democrats opposed because it would hit union members.

"You can put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Wednesday morning during the Senate's debate.

This revived a frequent refrain from his own failed presidential campaign. McCain had been wont to say that himself on occasion, but his party an issue of it when Obama used it -- some viewed it as a smear of McCain running mate Sarah Palin, who of course had explained that she was a pit-bull in lipstick. And who will be helping McCain campaign for reelection this year in Arizona, where he faces a challenge within his own party.

by Mark Silva and updated

Newt Gingrich, patron of the Contract With America, is making a double-barrel prediction for the midterm and presidential elections ahead.

It has to do not only with the pasage of the healthcare bill that President Barack Obama signed into law this week, but also with the agenda that the Obama White House will pursue the rest of this year heading into the midterm elections in November.

The healthcare legislation "won't stand,'' Gingrich said in an appearance on FOX News' FOX & Friends this morning. "I think in the end it will be repealed probably in February of 2013 with a new president and a new Congress."

Obama "won an enormous victory -- nobody should be confused about that,'' Gingrich said. "He gambled a great deal, and he won the vote."

But the former Republican speaker of the House who rode the wave of the Republican sweep during former President Bill Clinton's first midterm elections, echoes the warnings of others in the GOP that Obama's party will face a price to pay.

"What you are going to see is not the audacity of hope, but the audacity of raw pure power,'' Gingrich said of Obama's strategy in the months ahead. "I think you are going to see them go for broke in the next six or eight months...while they still have this majority."

Democratic leaders are predicting that it is opponents of the legislation who will have a lot of explaining to do once people come to understand the benefits of it.

"In November, this bill will be positive for those who supported it,'' Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said just now on the Senate floor, where the "reconciliation bill'' aimed at resolving differences remaining between the House and Senate is under debate, "and those who opposed it will come to regret it.''

Media Matters also has weighed in with a note that, while Gingrich has joined the chorus calling for repeal of the healthcare law -- and supports those attorneys general who are challenging the law in court for its mandate that most Americans buy health insruance -- Gingrich's own proposals on the subject of healthcare have included mandates for upper middle-class Americans, those making more than $75,000.

June 2008 Associated Press article: "Gingrich suggests insurance mandate for those who can afford." According to a June 11, 2008 Associated Press article (accessed from the Nexis database), which ran under the headline, "Gingrich suggests insurance mandate for those who can afford," Gingrich reportedly "outlined his strategy to combat rising health care costs a plan of attack that includes insurance mandates for people who earn more than $75,000 a year" at a visit to a Nebraska health system. The article went on to report that "Gingrich called it 'fundamentally immoral' for a person who can afford insurance to save money by going without, then show up at an emergency room and demand free care. He said those who can afford insurance and choose not to buy it should be required to post bonds to pay for care they may someday need... Gingrich said everyone should have insurance, but not provided by the federal government."

In Gingrich's 2008 book, Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works, he wrote: "Finally, we should insist that everyone above a certain level buy coverage (or, if they are opposed to insurance, post a bond). Meanwhile, we should provide tax credits or subsidize private insurance for the poor.'' [Page 276]

by Mark Silva

It was a big day at the White House.

The president's signing of historic healthcare legislation was "a big ('effin') deal,'' as the vce president so publicly proclaimed.

The atmosphere in the East Room at the bill-signing was more reminiscent of the wave of support on which Barack Obama rode into office -- "yes, we did,'' a celebrant called out at the bill-signing -- than the troughs of sinking public approval that Obama has faced in recent months.

Yet victory is transitory in the city of 24-hour news cycles and hourly blogging -- it is forgotten nearly as quickly as failure (which bears a certain hangover; failure on healthcare would have been long remembered).

"I guess we'll be considered smart again for at least another four weeks,'' Obama told one of his aides yesterday, according to White House correspondent Jake Tapper's reporting for ABC News.

Obama, who mimicked the chatter of the cable news pundits in one of his final speeches before passage of the healthcare bill in the House on Sunday with a flapping of his thumb and fingers, is well aware of the half-life of success in this city.

That Gallup Poll daily tracking survey which has been attached to the president like a heart monitor since his inauguration -- the first time that Gallup has provided such a running account of job approval for any president -- rose above water again this week: The president's approval, at 51 percent, rose five points from just last week. Similarly, his disapproval dropped five, and the spread between A and F reached eight points. That's not a lof of room in which to maneuver.

In addition, 49 percent of the people surveyed by Gallup on Monday said the passage of the healthcare bill was "a good thing'' -- with 40 percent calling it a bad thing. That's a reversal in recent reports suggesting widespread wariness or opposition.

Four weeks from now, Gallup will have new numbers.

Four weeks from now, the Senate should be finished with its "reconcilaton'' of the healthcare issue -- though Republicans appear intent on prolonging that process as long as possible -- and there will be new measures of how successfully the president has sold the benefits of a historic bill's passage to the public.

That selling started this week in Washington -- in words that only Vice President Joe Biden could muster -- and iit continues Thursday in Iowa City, where Obama will travel to tout the new law. This is the place where he first staked a campaign promise of healthcare reform early in his bid for the White House, nearly three years ago, in the state that launched his candidacy with a caucus victory more than two years ago.

If the daily temperature of the place is best kept in perspective, weeks, the White House knows, may be nearly as meaningless. But the president's party does have just a little more than seven months to work on the next real report card.

by Mark Silva

ACORN, lke Mark Twain once said of himself, is "not dead yet'' -- except, of course, he is now.

But you get it.

The leader of the embattled organization said today that reports of the demise of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now are greatly exaggerated -- it had been reported online first this week that the group was disbanding.

Ever since a conservative activist -- read, video vigilante -- visited ACORN offices posing as a pimp (though he saved the flamboyant garb pictured in his video account of the sting for after the actual visit) and seeking tax advice for he and his purported prostitute, the organization has been under the greatest challenge to its existence since it was accused of tampering with voter registration forms in a drive to recuit voters.

Congress cut off funding. Some state chapters split away.

But Bertha Lewis, CEO of the organization, says: "First of all, let me set the record straight. Rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated We are transforming, of course. I've been transforming this organization since June of 2008. And, yes, we've had our financial woes, and, yes, we are fighting an unconstitutional ban on any government funding."

In an interview with Lewis that National Public Radio's Tell Me More is airing, the ACORN CEO says: "We've gotten leaner and meaner and some of our state chapters have chosen to go their own way. We haven't been able to maintain the resources, state by state, that we had. So we have gotten a little bit smaller. We've had to change some of our programming, but we're not dead yet."

Despite what some may say, she says, "We are ACORN, Inc. I'm still Bertha Lewis. We still have a board the board may be smaller. I'm the ACORN lady. No, we continue to fight. Poor people haven't gone away. Black folks haven't gone away. People of color haven't gone away. And as we've seen in this last drama around health care, organizations like ours are needed now more than ever.''

The district attorney's office in New York concluded that ACORN's representative in the videotaped encounter with the BigGovernment.com-sponsored undercover agent , had no criminal problem. But the agent himself, James O'Keefe, and a few friends picked up some legal problems of their own when they entered the New Orleans-area office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) posing as a telephone repair crew (BigGovernment's Andrew Breitbart said he wasn't paying for that escape, though he does pay O'Keefe.).

Landrieu's office, for the record, has not closed either.

by Mark Silva and updated at 4:40 pm

It would seem unlikely that an event as historic -- by both sides' accounts -- as the signature of a healthcare bill delivering insurance to millons of Americans and improving it for those already insured, and, yes, taxing the wealthiest Americans for all of this, would pass unnoticed in the opinion polls that measure the temperature of a presidency.

The immediate effect of the past few days' events in Washington has been a gradual increase in President Barack Obama's job approval in the daily trackng surveys of the Gallup Poll. It stood at 51 percent today, a report of the last three days' surveys.

Just last week, the March 14-17 measures had put Obama's approval at 46 percent in the Gallup Poll, a term low. His diapproval rating also rose to 48 percent at the end of that four day series of tracking surveys -- two points higher than his approval rating then.

The president's disapproval is down to 43 percent in the latest results reported today -- a good eight points shy of his approval rating, and also a movement of five points since last week.

This isn't the only number that's moving.

In a poll that Gallup conducted on Monday, the day after the healthcare bill passed the House, people were asked if, "all in all,'' they thought the healthcare bill's passage was "a good thing'' or "a bad thing.'' Forty-nine percent said good, 40 percent bad.

The partisan disparity on this question was almost as dramatic as the divide in Congress, where no Republicans voted for the bill. Among Democrats surveyed, 79 percent called the bill a good thing, with just 14 percent of Democrats agreeing -- but among those middle of the road independents, 46 percent said it was a good thing.

The poll run for USA Today also gauged "Americans' emotional responses to the bill's passage'' -- more positive than negative -- with 50 perccent enthusiastic or pleased about it, compared with 42 percent who were angry or disappointed.

"Whether these groups' views on the issue harden or soften in the coming months could be crucial to how healthcare reform factors into this year's midterm elections,'' Gallup's Lydia Saad writes. "Given that initial public reaction to Sunday's vote is more positive than recent public opinion about passing a healthcare reform bill, it appears some softening has already occurred.''

As for Obama's approval rating, the only thing of significance that has transpired between last week and this week -- other than Obama blowing his NCAA mens' basketball bracket predictions for the Final Four -- was the House's passage of the healthcare legislation on Sunday.

Obama signed that healthcare bill into law today.

It will be worth watching what happens over the next seveal days -- whether that significant shift in public opnion was a blip on the radar of tracking polls or whether there is any uphill benefit in the signing of a bill which the public is largely wary about.

We heard one of the pundits over the weekend suggest that people may not know all about the healthcare bill, but people like winners.

by Michael Muskal

Moments after President Barack Obama signed the healthcare insurance overhaul into law today, attorneys generals from 13 states filed suit, challenging the law on constitutional grounds.

At the heart of the suit is whether Congress has the legal authority to mandate the purchase of healthcare insurance, Nebraska Atty. Gen. Jon Bruning said in an interview televised on MSNBC.

"Ultimately this is a Constitutional question. This is a commerce clause question," Bruning said. "For years, Congress' power has continued to grow and grow and grow, but this is a quantum leap," he said.

Bruning agreed that the Constitution gave Congress the ability to regulate interstate commerce. However, he argued, the mandate to buy insurance is an expansion of how courts have usually see the power of Congress.

The White House on Monday and other Democrats in the past week have argued that the federal government does the ability to mandate that all individuals buy health insurance, the heart of the overhaul bill signed by the president.

But in the suit, filed in Florida, the states disagreed.

"The issue here is that Congress has gone beyond the powers granted in the Constitution," Bruning said.

"If they can force you to buy insurance they can force us all to buy electric cars which is a noble goal," he said "but is not necessarily where we want America to go."

In addition to Nebraska, the other states in the suit are Florida, South Carolina, Texas, Michigan, Utah, Pennsylvania, Alabama, South Dakota, Louisiana, Idaho, Washington and Colorado.

Florida's attorney general, former Orlando congressman Bill McCollum, is a Republican running for governor this year. He maintains the lawsuit is not "political.''

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had this to say about the expected legal challenge on Monday: "My advice from counsel is that we'll win these lawsuits.''

by Mark Silva

Vice President Joe Biden was effusive with his praise for President Barack Obama today as he introduced the boss at a bill-signing for the historic healthcare legislation.

And, as Biden embraced Obama for the start of his East Room remarks, we're pretty sure we heard the vice president and former longtime senator from Delaware utter a word that his predecessor as vice president, Dick Cheney, had once uttered about an opponent.

"This is a big f-----n' deal,'' Biden could be heard telling Obama.

"Thank you, Joe,'' Obama said at the start of his own remarks.

(FOX News Channel is claiming credit as the first to report on the faux pas: At 12:00:41 pm EDT, FOX's Bret Baier said on air: "It was pretty striking for Vice President Biden to turn to the president and say .. this is a big blanking deal, using the F word with the microphones picking it up... But it is a big deal, F word or not."

Way big.

by Mark Silva

With a sense of generational history in the making, President Barack Obama today signed into law a sweeping healthcare overhaul that offers insurance to an estimated 32 million uninsured Americans and provides new guarantees of more secure coverage for all.

Obama, who sought passage of this legislation for more than a year, portrayed it as an achievement on an historic par with the passage of Social Security after the Great Depression and Medicare in the 1960s.

"Today, after almost a century of trying, today, after over a year of debate, today, after all the votes have been tallied, healthcare insurance reform becomes law in the United States of America,'' Obama said at a boisterous bill-signing ceremony attended by Democratic congressional leaders in the East Room of the White House.

"We mark a new season in America,'' said Obama, suggesting that "all the over-heated rhetoric of reform will suddenly confront the reality of reform...

"The bill I'm signing will set in motion reforms that generations of Americans have fought for,'' the president said. "It will take four years to implement fully many of these reforms, because we need to implement them responsibility. But a host of desperately needed reforms will take place right away.''

The immediate benefits include tax credits this year for small businesses offering health insurance to employees, as well as a guarantee that children with pre-existing medical conditions can gain insurance coverage and a ban against insurers dropping coverage for the ill.

"It's easy to succumb to the sense of cynicism of what's possible in this country,'' Obama said. "But today we are reaffirming that essential truth... We are not a nation that scales back its expectations... We are not a nation that does what's easy.. We are a nation that faces its challenges and accepts its responsibilities... Here in this country, we shape our own destiny. That is what we do. That is who we are.''

Among Republicans who opposed the new law, however - not one Republican member of the House or Senate supported the bill that the president signed today - the new law offers a political opportunity: Challenging the Democratic leadership of Congress in the fall midterm elections over a measure that polls have portrayed as unpopular.

The Republican National Committee is taking aim at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who steered the Senate-passed healthcare bill through a 219-212 vote of the House on Sunday night. "Fire Nancy Pelosi,'' the RNC demanded with a new Web-site based fundraising drive picturing Pelosi in flames and raising money for 40 targeted House seat campaigns - nearly $1 million reported so far.

"Democrats are celebrating,'' the narrator of a RNC Web-site based ad launched today says of the healthcare bill. "It's time to fire Nancy Pelosi. Now that's a cause worth celebrating.''

Obama called Pelosi "one of the best speakers the House of Representatives has ever had,'' and the crowd cheered, "Nancy.''

(Vicki Kennedy, wife of the late healthcare reform champion, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, joined the president at the bill-signing, above, and is pictured above, blowing a kiss in the East Room. (Photos by J. Scott Applewhite / AP))

by Mark Silva and updated

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in flames - that's the image presented at the Republican National Committee's Web-site today.

And that's the new midterm election mission for the GOP: "Nancy Pelosi has to be fired,'' the RNC chairman says.

"I think, overall, most Americans would like to see the thing undone and started over,'' party chairman Michael Steele says of the healthcare bill that President Barack Obama will sign into law this morning. "The bottom line on this bill is too expensive, it creates too much of a burden on small businesses.''

With all their talk of taking over the House and repealing the healthcare bill now, aren't Republicans putting themselves in an awkward position of taking something away? The first benefits of the new bill - preventing children with preexisting conditions from being denied coverage, tax breaks for small businesses to provide coverage for employees and other measures, will take effect this year, long before any tax increases for the wealthiest Americans or mandates to purchase insurance, which sponsors count on buoying public support for the new law before Election Day.

"This is a shell of a bill that will be written largely through a regulatory process,'' Steele complained in an appearance on NBC News' Today Show this morning. " You can set up this straw dog argument that I know the left is trying to do: 'Republicans are trying to repeal this bill, they want to take this away.'''

On that flaming Web-site, where the RNC is using Pelosi -- "the most powerful woman in the world'' -- as the poster-speaker for a fundraising drive to reclaim 40 seats in the House this fall -- "no more Madam Speaker'' -- and has claimed raising nearly $1 million so far for the cause::

"I find it amusing now, all of a sudden that this thing is passed, everyone is interested in civil dialog,'' Steele said. "She's the one that pulled this out of the fire for the president after the Scott Brown election... She owns this.... The bottom line is, if you want to try to undo a lot of the damage that's being done, or that's being planned to be done under this bill, Nancy Pelosi has to be fired.''

"Democrats are celebrating,'' the narrator of a new RNC Web-ad today notes (for a look at what the campaign ads might look like, play it here:). "It's time to fire Nancy Pelosi,'' the narrator says. "Now that's a cause worth celebrating.''

If the plan is so good, why is the president heading out to sell it some more, the White House was asked today - as Obama will do with a speech delivered at the Interior Department in Washington after this morning's White House bill-signing ceremony, and with an appearance in Iowa City on Thursday - where he first spoke of healthcare reform early in his campaign for the White House.

"He's going back to Iowa where he made his first speech on health reform,'' David Axelrod, the president's senior political advisor, said on the Today Show. "I know there is a fascination with polls. Every poll you look at shows that when you look at the individual components of what this bill is, it's embraced.''

As the Senate moves forward with a package of fixes which the House approved on Sunday along with the bill on the president's desk today, the White House is voicing confidence that the entire package will be signed into law - but today's signing remains a signal victory for the president's agenda.

"We're signing this bill into law today,'' Axelrod said. ... The important thing is, today, kids with preexisting conditions and their families will have the assurance of knowing that they can get coverage... Small businesses all over this country will this year get tax credits, 35 percent, so that they can give healthcare coverage to their employees.... Lifetime caps (on insurance benefits) will be lifted. You can't get thrown off your insurance if you are ill .''

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

by Mark Silva

Finally, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said late last night in her closing argument for passage of the healthcare bill, being a woman will no longer be considered a preexisting medical condition. She was speaking of a healthcare bill which President Barack Obama, who pursued it for year, has called "a Patients' Bill of Rights on steroids.''

But, in the aftermath of the House's passage of a bill that has eluded Democratic leaders for decades, suddenly the criticism that the California Democrat has fielded for months over the handling of a measure that should have been easier for a comfortable majority to control in Congress has turned to hyperbolic praise for her power.

The most powerful woman in American history, The Economist is gushing. The most powerful House speaker in a century, a Brown University professor has suggested.

"That sounds good,'' the first female speaker of the House tells the female anchor of ABC News' evening news, Diane Sawyer, in a report airing tonight. "I don't take it personally,'' Pelosi says, "except I take it as a compliment for all women.

"My sisters here in the Congress, this was a big issue for us,'' she says of fellow "care-givers'' who had a lot invested in healthcare reform. "I certainly wanted to demonstate that we could get a job done that has eluded others for a century.''

In the World News inerview with Pelosi , passage of the healthcare legislation that Obama plans to sign tomorrow is on par with the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

At the same time, Pelosi downplays the suggestion of a fellow congresswoman who suggests that it was Pelosi who put the "steel'' in Obama's spine after the Senate lost the supermajority that had enabled it to pass the healthcare bill now becoming law -- pushing ahead with the Senate-passed bill and seeking a separate reconcilation of the two chambers came out of a Pelosi playbook that rejected any scaled-down compromise on healthcare in the aftermath of the Massachusetts election of a Republican senator.

"That's ridiculous," Pelosi says of the spinal steel-conveying powers attributed to her, in the interview with Sawyer airing tonight. "Many presidents since Teddy Roosevelt have tried to pass healthcare reform for Americans. And many speakers of the House have tried to do it, as well," she says. "And last night, we had that level of success."

by Mark Silva

There is an old saw that says, if everyone is angry at us, then we must be doing something right.

That's what Rep. Bart Stupak is saying today, on FOX.

Stupak, the Democrat from Northern Michigan who managed to insert anti-abortion language into the first House healthcare bill and finally aquiesced to no added measure in the Senate-passed bill which the House approved on Sunday -- a bill which observers agree does nothing to take away from or add to abortion right -- said today that he's hearng criticism from both sides.

The executive order which the Obama White House agreed to produce on Sunday stating that the healthcare legislation will not entitle anyone to federal funding for an elective abortion -- which is the current state of law under the Hyde amendment -- did not mollify hardliners who denounced the order on the House floor as "a piece of paper'' with no force of law. It also drew criticism from the Center for Reproductive Rights, which contends that the White House now has "imported'' the Hyde amendment into an executive order, not what pro-choice activists had in mind for this White House.

But it satisfied Stupak and several others enough to vote for the bill, which, after all, was passed by a dulled razor-thin margin of 219 to 212, with only three votes to spare.

It turns out now that there may be something more to Stupak's observation. A new poll released by CNN and Opinion Research Corp. today shows that, indeed most people say they are opposed to the healthcare legislation which the House and Senate are producing -- the Senate still must act on a package of changes which the House approved on Sunday, traveling under a separate "reconciliation billl.''

But look beneath the overall results of 59 percent telling CNN's pollster that they oppose the final healthcare legislation -- with just 39 percent saying they favor it -- and there is another set of numbers: Among those who oppose it, 13 percent say it is "not liberal enough." Another "43 percent say it is too liberal."

So, if a little more than one in 10 of the six in ten who oppose the bill call it not liberal enough, that works out to something close to an even split between people who simply oppose the bill and people who either support it or wish it went further. That may not be a bad playing field on which the president hopes to convince the public that the bill which he is prepared to sign on Tuesday isn't as bad as critics have made it out to be.

The CNN survey of 1,030 adults run March 19-21 carres a 3 point margin of error.

"It obviously must be a good piece of legislation if both sides are made at you,'' Stupak said in an appearance today on FOX News Channel's America Live with Megyn Kelly -- his take on both abortion rights and anti-abortion activists angered by the order.
.
"I would just say to Susan B. Anthony they can give their Defender of Life award to whoever they choose,'' he said. "I did not do it to win an award; I did it because I stood for the principle to protect the sanctity of life. I've done that... If I would have followed Susan B. Anthony's way it wouldn't have worked."

The executive order, he maintains "is worth more than the paper it is written on... History shows us that an executive order has the whole force of law. It is just as good as having a law,'' Stupak said. "Would I have liked to have had a law... absolutely."

"The only option you had was leave the Senate language or strengthen it to prevent abortions under an executive order -- that's what we did, we stayed true to those principles -- or vote no.,'' he said. "So you kill the bill and we do not have health care... I've always said I want to see health care for the nation.''

The law is just as vulnerable as any executive order to revison, he notes: "Whether it's an executive order or a statute, the next Congress or even this Congress can overturn a law in the next six months." (Republicans are already talkng about repeal.)

by Michael Muskal and updated

President Barack Obama will take to the road this week to sell his healthcare insurance overhaul to the American people, whom polls show remain dubious about the package.

Obama is scheduled to travel to Iowa City, Iowa, on Thursday, the White House announced. By then, it is expected that he will have signed the already Senate-passed healthcare overhaul legislation that the House passed on Sunday.

Many probably woke up this morning to the headlines of the historic House vote and thought that healthcare, which has blasted at high decibels through the body politic, could now fade into background noise.

Not a chance in this midterm election year, and not even likely in the runup leading to the presidential election cycle of 2012.

"I assume the president will talk about health care for a long time,'' Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today, "but the president has over the course of the past many weeks, even as the legislative agenda has been focused on getting health care done, which we did last night, the president also... has been working on a number of other issues that are at the forefront and that we'll have an opportunity to talk about.

"I have no doubt that we'll be on the road extensively in the fall as it relates to health care reform and as it relates to helping those that supported health care last night and supporting Democrats, even some that didn't.''

First will come Obama's formal bill-signing ceremony, tentatively set for Tuesday -- a late-morning signing, possibly on the South Lawn, if the rain lets up here. That could be the same day that the Senate begins its work on a package of amendments, also passed by the House, and whose passage has been promised by Senate Democratic leaders.

Politically, Senate Democrats will have to make their pledge good or the party's cocktail mixers will become very uncomfortable. Look to Republicans to try to make the Senate battle as long and as dilatory as possible in the hopes of keeping the healthcare issue feisty and politically alive.

by Mark Silva

There are benefits for many Americans -- particularly the uninsured -- in the healthcare legislation ready for President Barack Obama's signature.

There also are new taxes to help pay for it all -- particularly for the wealthiest Americans.

"It's very clear that taxes are levied on the wealthy and the benefits will spread across the entire income distribution, with a lot going to expanded Medicaid distribution and expanding health insurance," Roberton Williams, an economist at the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research institute backed by the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, tells Bloomberg News, which is counting the ways the healthcare bill taxes the wealthiest Americans. "One couldn't claim he didn't keep that promise" to "spread the wealth around."

The Senate-passed bill (60-39) which cleared the House last night (219-212) without a single Republican vote on either side and 34 Democrats voting no in the House will generate $409.2 billion in additional taxes by 2019, according to an analysis by the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. It imposes about $69 billion in penalties for individuals and businesses who don't meet mandates to buy insurance, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Most of this comes from higher Medicare taxes on about 1 million individuals earning more than $200,000 and higher taxes for about 4 million couples filing jointly who make more than $250,000 -- Obama pledged not to raise taxes on people making less than $250,000 as many of the Bush-era tax cuts are phased out next year.

The bill, for the first time, applies the Medicare tax to investment income for those upper-income households, starting in 2013. That means the 3.8 percent rate applies to unearned income such as realized capital gains, dividends, interest, rents, and royalties.

The president's budget for 2011 also proposes to all the existing 15 percent tax rate on dividends and capital gains to rise to 20 percent in 2011 for that upper bracket. Laying a 3.8 percent Medicare tax on top of that means a new top rate on dividends and capital gains of 23.8 percent.

The bill also increases an individual's share of Medicare payroll tax currently imposed on salaries starting at $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples to 2.35 percent, up from 1.45 percent currently.

The combination of the new Medicare taxes and Obama's budget proposals, if in place this year, would cost a married couple with a household income of $5 million an additional $287,100 in taxes, according to the firm, Deloitte Tax, in Washington.

Other provisions affecting higher-income individuals scale back tax preferences associated with paying out-of- ocket medical expenses. Starting in 2013, Americans under 65 won't be able to deduct medical expenses until they exceed 10 percent of income, up from 7.5 percent now; retirees will retain the lower threshold.

The bill in 2011 places new restrictions on what can be purchased using special savings accounts, pre-tax dollars, including health savings accounts. And Improper withdrawals from these accounts also face a new 20 percent tax. The bill places a $2,500 annual limit on what can be contributed to employer-sponsored flexible spending accounts, another pre-tax fund that can be used to pay for medicines, co-payments, and other expenses. Employers currently set their own limits, typically between $3,000 and $5,000 in the absence of a government cap.

This change will cost an average worker about $625 in tax savings, according to WageWorks Inc., a San Mateo, Calif., company that administers 1.5 million accounts.

For tanning salons, the bill imposes a 10 percent excise tax. On wheelchairs, there is a 2.9 percent excise tax.

If the Senate adopts the second, "reconcilation'' bill which the House also has approved, individuals who don't purchase insurance would be subject to a fine of $325 in 2015 and $695 in 2016. Individuals may be subject to a charge equal to as much as 2.5 percent of their income in 2016, if the total is greater than the flat payment.

And employers with 50 or more workers would pay $2,000 per worker if they don't offer health insurance. The legislation offers a small business tax credit to help pay for employer-provided premiums.

by Mark Silva and updated

Before the sun had risen in Washington on the House-passed healthcare legislation that President Barack Obama has sought for a year and won last night on Capitol Hill, the new Republican rallying cries were rising: "Repeal'' and "A price to pay.''

It's difficult to concoct a scenario under which anyone repeals very soon the legislation that the president is prepared to sign. The midterm elections may well cause some upheaval in the House and Senate, but control of either chamber remains elusive for the GOP. Even with that, however, a narrow margin of Republican control could not generate the votes sufficient to repeal the president's plan and overcome a certain veto.

There is a movement afoot, however, among Republican attorneys general in states such as Florida -- where the state A.G. is running for governor and welcomes any issue that can sustain a campaign -- to challenge the legality of the new law that eventually will require most Americans to purchase healthcare insurance and face fines for not complying. So, on whatever front the challenge is waged, the GOP -- having lost a yearlong fight with the president -- is certain to take a stand on some manner of repeal.

That's where Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who challenged Obama for the presidency in 2008, stood this morning, when the sun rose at Good Morning America.

""For the first time in history, we will have a major reform enacted without a bipartisan support," McCain said on the ABC News morning news show today. "We'll challenge it every place we can. ... We'll fight everywhere."

McCain, who faces his own tough fight for reelection with a primary challenger back home, warned that the Democrats will face consequences for the bill in November.

"With all this euphoria that's going on, this inside-the-Beltway champagne toasting and all that, outside the Beltway the American people are very angry,'' McCain said on GMA. "And they don't like it, and we're going to try to repeal this, and we're going to have a very spirited campaign between now and November, and there will be a very heavy price to pay for it.''

Republican Mitt Romney, who challenged McCain for the party's presidential nomination and, by all appearances, is suiting up to run again in 2010, comes from a state with universal healthcare but maintains that Obama will pay for an unprecented power grab with the federal healthcare bill.

"America has just witnessed an unconscionable abuse of power,'' Romney said today. "President Obama has betrayed his oath to the nation -- rather than bringing us together, ushering in a new kind of politics, and rising above raw partisanship, he has succumbed to the lowest denominator of incumbent power: justifying the means by extolling the ends. He promised better; we deserved better.''

"He calls his accomplishment 'historic' -- in this he is correct, although not for the reason he intends,'' Romney says. "Rather, it is an historic usurpation of the legislative process -- he unleashed the nuclear option, enlisted not a single Republican vote in either chamber, bribed reluctant members of his own party, paid-off his union backers, scapegoated insurers, and justified his act with patently fraudulent accounting. What Barack Obama has ushered into the American political landscape is not good for our country; in the words of an ancient maxim, "what starts twisted, ends twisted."

"His health-care bill is unhealthy for America,'' Romney says. "It raises taxes, slashes the more private side of Medicare, installs price controls, and puts a new federal bureaucracy in charge of health care. It will create a new entitlement even as the ones we already have are bankrupt. For these reasons and more, the act should be repealed. That campaign begins today."

by Mark Silva and updated

"This is what change looks like,'' President Barack Obama proclaimed near mdnight last night, standing in the East Room of the White House with his closest advisers hailing the House's narrow passage of healthcare legislation that he has sought for a year.

This is reform, the president said of the bill which he finally will be able to sign -- "major reform,'' but not the "radical'' reform that many of his critics want to call it. In the long run, the president said, the record will reflect that "we did not avoid our responsibility -- we embraced it. We did not fear our future -- we shaped it.''

With the opposition of all the House's Republicans and 34 of its Democrats, the White House has won a signal victory: The House's 219-212 Sunday night approval of a Senate-passed healthcare bill that is headed to the president's desk for signature.

That bill alone will not end the fight.

The House also has passed, by a similar margin, a package of "fixes'' designed to align the House and Senate on some remaining conflicts -- this new bill traveling on its own back to the Senate, where Democratic leaders hope to pass it under "budget reconcilation'' with a simply majority vote, inasmuch as they now lack the 60-vote filibuster proof majority they held when they passed their bill on Christmas eve by a vote of 60-39 -- there, too, without the vote of a single Republican.

Yet, regardless of what happens with that bill, Congress has now passed a healthcare bill that the president is prepared to sign, probably this week. It is, sponsors say, an achievement on the order of Social Security and Medicare, offering insurance for some 32 million uninsured Americans and better coverage for those who have it.

The GOP has drawn and held a hard line against this bill, with the one House member who voted for a House bill in November falling in line with his party last night.

There were some high-fives celebrated in the White House last night, we are told, and with the president in the East Room following the House's votes stood the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who had fielded criticism for his handling of this issue, and David Axelrod, the senor political adviser, as well as Robert Gibbs, the press secretary.

Together, they are turning their attention now to what could be the final chapter in their yearlong fight for healthcare: The Senate's move. And then, a continuing a public campaign for support for a measure that most people are only beginning to understand.

This is the "change'' for which they campaigned.

"For the first time in our nation's history, Congress has passed comprehensive health care reform. America waited 100 years and fought for decades to reach this moment. Tonight, thanks to you, we are finally here,'' Obama wrote by email to his supporters early this morning.

"Consider the staggering scope of what you have just accomplished: Because of you, every American will finally be guaranteed high quality, affordable health care coverage. Every American will be covered under the toughest patient protections in history. Arbitrary premium hikes, insurance cancellations, and discrimination against pre-existing conditions will now be gone forever.

"And we'll finally start reducing the cost of care -- creating millions of jobs, preventing families and businesses from plunging into bankruptcy, and removing over a trillion dollars of debt from the backs of our children. But the victory that matters most tonight goes beyond the laws and far past the numbers. It is the peace of mind enjoyed by every American, no longer one injury or illness away from catastrophe.''

The GOP will be telling its supporters another story today: About the change that is needed in November, when the midterm elections come -- "change' that the Democrats will really believe in. The opposing party has taken its stand -- after a year, the White House has won the day. The fall, and how it falls out, remains to be seen.

"With all this euphoria that's going on, this inside-the-Beltway champagne toasting and all that, outside the Beltway the American people are very angry,'' Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who ran against Obama in 2008, said today on ABC News' Good Morning America. "And they don't like it, and we're going to try to repeal this, and we're going to have a very spirited campaign between now and November, and there will be a very heavy price to pay for it.''

See the president's East Room address here and read it below:

by Mark Silva and Janet Hook first at 9:30 am EDT and updated.

Delivering a hard-fought victory in President Barack Obama's year-long pursuit of a national healthcare overhaul, a divided House tonight narrowly approved legislation which both supporters and opponents call historic in its sweep.

The House's 219-212 vote tonight on a Senate-passed bill will deliver to the president's desk an initiative for which he has fought on Capitol Hill and campaigned across the country: A healthcare bill that he finally can sign.

Thirty-four members of the president's party joined all the House's Republicans in voting against the healthcare bill.

The House then approved, by a vote of 220-211, a package designed to reconcile differences between the Senate-and-House-approved bill and another which the House already had approved in November.

Together, the two measures would present the president with a long-sought triumph for the signature domestic agenda of his presidency, a bid to offer health insurance to an estimated 32 million Americans who are uninsured and improve the coverage of those with insurance.

"This is what change looks like,'' Obama said in a buoyant, televised address from the East Room of the White House near midnight. "We proved that we are still a people capable of doing big things,. We proved that this government -- a government of the people and by the people -- still works for the people.''

The second measure still must go to the Senate, where leaders hope to approve it by a simple majority vote under a process of "budget reconciliation.'' Any changes made in the Senate, however, would return that to the House before the president signs it.

"I know this bill is complicated, but it's also very simple,'' said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) during the final debate. "Illness and infirmity are universal, but we are stronger against them together than we are alone.... In that shared strength is our nation's strength.''

"Tonight, we will make history for our country and progress for the American people,'' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in the leadership's closing argument. Crediting Obama for his "unwavering commitment to healthcare for all Americans,'' the speaker said "this legislation... if I had one word to describe it tonight, it would be opportunity.''

"Today, we should be standing together, reflecting on a year of bipartisanship,'' House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said near the close of debate. "We should be looking with pride on this legislation, and our work. But it is not so. Today we are looking at a healthcare bill that nobody in this body believes is satisfactory.''

As the outcome of the vote appeared certain, Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) told the House: "Perhaps it's time for Washington to stop talking and start listening... I'm listening to the thousands of citizens who traveled to our nation's capital this weekend to tell us in no uncertain terms, they want us to kill this bill.''

At an estimated cost of $940 billion over 10 years, supported in part by additional taxes on the wealthiest Americans, the legislation is projected to offer coverage to some 32 million uninsured people.

Democratic leaders hail the healthcare measure as "historic,'' legislation on a par with the enactment of Social Security after the Great Depression and Medicare in the 1960s. Underscoring that sense of history, House Rules Chair Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) brought to the floor and read from a copy of the typed 1939 letter that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent to Congress asking it to make a national healthcare program part of the Social Security Act.

by Mark Silva

When a Democratic president is too busy to attend the annual Gridiron Club dinner, one of Washington's longest-running rituals of humor for power-brokers and the press, there's a good chance that he can find a substitute -- like a former Democratic president.

Like Bill Clinton, who told the white-tie crowd last night that President Barack Obama, hard at work tying down final votes for the healthcare bill on Capitol Hill this weekend, actually was busy "polishing his Nobel Peace Prize.''

Clinton, who failed in his time to win healthcare reform, predicted that Democrats will prevail this time. "It may not happen in my lifetime or in Dick Cheney's, but hopefully by Easter," he said -- with an allusion to the heart conditions that he and the former Republican vice president share. (Clinton has had a bypass, Cheney five heart attacks.)

Speaking on a warm start-of-Spring evening, Clinton suggested that this is "otherwise known to Al Gore as proof of global warming." (Gore won a Nobel, too.)

Clinton had some words for the evening's other speaker, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, handling the traditional minority report: "Orrin, he's the wittiest of all the Republicans. That 's sort of like saying he's the tallest of the Seven Dwarfs."

Clinton, who left a budget surplus when he left office, also had this to say about his own record as president: "My only regret in creating 23 million new jobs is that 2 million of those jobs were for right-wing pundits.''

See the media reviews above of the "old hounddog'' who had "eight years to practice'' his act, courtesy of Politico. Wire services contributed to this report.

by Mark Silva

Republican leaders have warned that Democrats will face "a price to pay'' in the midterm congressional elections for their votes for healthcare reform today.

But that's not the only party warning of a price to pay.

An assembly of labor-union leaders has delivered letters to hesitant lawmakers warning that November is not far around the bend.

"We were shocked and dismayed to hear this week that you may be breaking your promise (to fight for and vote for real reform) by voting against reform this Sunday,'' the leaders wrote to Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.) on Saturday. "To do so would be a betrayal to our members who worked hard to help you win your office, and it would do an enormous disservice to the residents of Pennsylvania's 4th Congressional District who stand to benefit enormously from this legislation...

"Congressman,'' they wrote, "we will not be able to explain to the members of our unions why you voted against this bill. The feeling of betrayal will be very deep and long-lasting....

"Our members support elected leaders who understand what it means to work hard to support a family in these tough times. Our members look for elected officials who have the courage to stand up to lies, distortions and political scare tactics. Your vote this Sunday will tell them what kind of elected official you are. Please do not disappoint them or us.''

The letter highlights the perceived attributes of the bill:

by Mark Silva and updated Sunday morning

There was quite a scene outside the Capitol today, where the House was embroiled in debate over passage of a healthcare bill that President Barack Obama is demanding.

Protesters amassed, and some of them spawned some ugly rhetoric.

Our good friend and colleague Bill Douglas of McClatchy Newspapers reports today on the sentiments that some Southern black Democrats heard outside of the Capitol -- words more reminiscent of their struggles in the 1960's. The venom of the crowd was not limited to racism.

Already, some are rushing to deny that any of this happened, declaring that the absence of a videotape confirming it suggests that someone is lying. That standard of proof would reduce us all to getting our news from YouTube. The House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer, had something to say about the incident last night -- see his comments below, after Douglas' account for McClatchy, a reliable source:

WASHINGTON -- Demonstrators outside the U.S. Capitol, angry over the proposed health care bill, shouted "nigger" Saturday at U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia congressman and civil rights icon who was nearly beaten to death during an Alabama march in the 1960s.

"People out there today, on the whole, were really hateful," Frank said. "The leaders of this movement have a responsibility to speak out more."

by Mark Silva

There has been a lot of talk lately about the "price to pay" for the healthcare vote coming Sunday -- but the ramifications of voting for, or against, the bill that President Barack Obama has made his signature domestic initiative may have a lot more to do with the districts of individual congressmen than the parties of any of them.

One of the more telling announcements this week was that of Rep. Allen Boyd, a conservative Democrat from North Florida who voted against the House's healthcare bill in November who said that he will vote for the bill up for debate on Sunday. Boyd, a former state lawmaker from Northern Florida's Monticello who represents a wide district reaching west far into the Panhandle and east nearly to Jacksonville, is among the leaders of the House's "Blue Dog Democrats,'' fiscal hawks, social conservatives.

Boyd, who has held a safe seat since his election in 1996, faces a serious primary challenge this year from a longtime state legislator,state Sen. Al :Lawson, an African-American from Tallahassee in a 16-county district with a lot of minority-rich communities who has made Boyd's opposition to the healthcare bill last fall one of the rallying points of his campaign for the Democratic Party nomination at summer's end.

Suddenlly, Boyd's Web-site is aglow with the benefits of the healthcare bill , which he is now ready to vote for on Sunday.

The bill, Boyd proudly tells his constituents, will "reduce the cost of healthcare services for individuals and families.'' It will provide nearly 194,000 households in his district with "tax credits and other assistance to purchase health insurance.

"For example: a family of four making $50,000 per year would receive approximately $5,800 in tax credits for the purposes of purchasing health insurance,'' he explains.

The bill also "caps annual out-of-pocket costs at $6,200 for individuals and $12,400 for families who purchase insurance through the insurance exchange or who receive insurance through their small business employer.'' And it offers 15,400 small businesses in his district "tax credits of up to 50 percent of the cost of providing health insurance to their employees. '' It ensures that 95 percent of Americans will have "access to quality, affordable health insurance, including 67,000 uninsured residents in the district.''

That's not all, Boyd tells his constuents. As an indication of how much the Congressional Budget Office's scoring of the bill, with a cost of $940 billion over 10 years, but also the promise of $138 billion in deficit reduction, has helped Obama's cause this weekend, Boyd, one of the most ardent deficit hawks, tells his voters that the bill "reduces the deficit: According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the legislation would reduce the federal deficit by $1.2 trillion over 20 years, constituting the single largest deficit reduction effort since 1993. ''

""It's not perfect," Boyd told his hometown newspaper, the Tallahassee Democrat. "My y decision has been based from the very beginning on the substance of this policy."

And his position, of course, has nothing to do with the primary challenge of Tallahassee's Lawson , who recently reported a poll showing a vulnerable incumbent. Boyd may be a Blue Dog Democrat'in Washington, but his district is the home of the "Yellow Dog Democrats'' -- people who would just as soon vote for a yellow dog as they would vote Republican. A real primary threat is a career-breaker.

"Allen Boyd is out of touch with North Florida, and the voters have noticed," Josh Robinson, Lawson's campaign manager, said. "Allen Boyd's embrace of radical positions, such as opposing health care reform, voting against the federal stimulus bill and privatizing Social Security, has placed him outside the mainstream of North Florida."

The question, come November, is where the mainstream will be on healthcare, and whether a vote for, or against, the president's bill will play well back home. It largely will depend on the dynamics of each congressional race, which makes the outcome of the 2010 midtern elections far from any foregone conclusion.

by Noam N. Levey and Michael Muskal and updated

In a visit that felt more like a victory celebration than a political huddle, President Barack Obama met with congressional Democrats today at the Capitol to rally them in their final push for a healthcare overhaul amid signs that Democrats were closing in on the required votes and resolving last-minute problems and procedural disputes.

Under pressure, House leaders decided on a straight up-or-down Sunday vote on the Senate healthcare bill followed by a vote on a package of amendments rather than their original plan to use a parliamentary tactic that Republicans have turned into a political liability.

Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada promised that he had the needed 51 votes to pass the reconciliation package in the Senate, while House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer reassured his colleagues, "On Sunday, tomorrow, we will do it."

But it was Obama, who has made healthcare overhaul the centerpiece of his domestic agenda, who brought the Democrats to their feet with cheers.

"Don't do it for me, don't do it for the Democratic Party, do it for the American people. They're the ones looking for action right now," Obama told lawmakers.

"I know it is a tough vote," the president said. "And I am actually confident, I've talked to some of you individually, it will end up being the smart thing to do politically because I believe good policy is good politics."

It was a day of fast-moving decisions as Democrats went into a weekend of arm-twisting and cajoling on the issue that has monopolized Washington for more than a year. Last-minute issues from abortion language to Medicare payments for rural medicine had to be dealt with.

"It is time to pass healthcare reform for America and I am confident you are going to do it tomorrow," Obama said. "Let's get this done."

The day's first battleground was the House Rules Committee, which began meeting in the morning. Republicans repeatedly accused the Democrats of trying to avoid a politically charged vote on the Senate bill through a parliamentary maneuver called "deemed to have passed."

Originally, leaders were considering incorporating the Senate version of the healthcare bill that was passed before Christmas into the package of amendments. This process -- commonly used in prior Congresses -- would "deem" the Senate bill passed without a debate that the GOP would like to have for its own political reasons in this midterm election year.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) urged rules Committee Chairwoman Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.) to pass an open rule instead of the "deemed to have passed" version so that policy differences between Democrats and Republicans could be openly debated.

"This process corrupts and prostitutes the system," he said.

"I appreciate you are the bluebird of happiness," Slaughter replied. "I hate it that one of the parties has opted out" of the process, she said of the GOP, which has opposed the Democrats' plans in both chambers. "We have to get on with it," she said.

But later in the day, Democrats backed off.

At a televised news conference, Hoyer, said the leaders had changed their minds on procedure. The House would vote on the reconciliation amendments, followed by a vote on the Senate bill. Hoyer said the Senate bill would go to Obama for his signature while the companion bill heads to the Senate.

House Republican Leader John Boehner praised the concession.

"The decision to abandon the 'Slaughter Solution' is a victory for the American people, who want a straight up-or-down vote,'' Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement issued late this afternoon. ""Now, House Democrats will face two crucial votes tomorrow. They will have to vote on the Senate-passed bill, stuffed with tax hikes, Medicare cuts, and infamous backroom deals - and they will vote on something worse: their 'fix' with more taxes, more Medicare cuts, and new special deals.''

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama, summoning the House's Democrats to the White House midday for one more push before expected action on the healthcare legislation Sunday, is turning the focus of his weekly address to next week's start of action on financial regulatory reform in the Senate.

The bill which the Senate Banking Commmittee is taking up Monday "would provide greater scrutiny of large financial firms to prevent any one company from threatening the entire financial system - and it would update the rules so that complicated financial products like derivatives are no longer bought and sold without oversight,'' the president says in his weekly radio and Internet address.

"These reforms include a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency to prevent predatory loan practices and other abuses to ensure that consumers get clear information about loans and other financial products before they sign on the dotted line,'' the president says.

The fact that the president has moved on to another front -- after devoting 13 of his weekly addresses to healthcare -- suggests a certain confidence in passage of his signature domestic initiative after making one final public push for the healthcare bill Friday in Virginia.

The House's Republicans are focused on something else today in their weekly address: Putting a spotlight on the tactics that House Democrats are employing to pass a healthcare bill which has picked up a few more Democratic supporters in the closing days but still has more than 200 opponents in a chamber that will need 216 votes to pass it. The Rules Committee is meeting today to clear the way for a procedure that could bypass a roll-call vote on the Senate-passed healthcare bill as the House takes up a package on Sunday that reconciles differences between the two. The House on Sunday will debate both the Rules Committee's recommendation and the final bill.

House Republican Leader John Boehner, delivering the GOP's weekly address today, reiterates his party's complaints with the healthcare bill that the House is considering this weekend -- "government takeover,'' new taxes, Medicare spending cuts and more -- but also speaks of it as something of a lost cause for opponents.

He is demanding a roll-call vote on all matters this weekend, as House Democratic leaders weigh a "deem and pass'' procedure that could enable them to simply the deem the Senate-passed healthcare measure as having passed as they vote on their 170-page package of changes that will reconcile the House and Senate on the issue.

"Democrats are so afraid of the public's outrage that they have devised a strategy that would allow them to force this massive bill through Congress without even voting on it,'' Boehner (R-Ohio) says in the weekly address for teh GOP. "It's outrageous, and it's an affront to the principles of representative democracy.

"We were elected to make tough choices, not run from them. And this vote is certainly one of the toughest.,'' Boehner says. "With that in mind, I asked Speaker Pelosi to have the final health care votes recorded by a 'call of the roll.' Under this procedure, each lawmaker will have to stand before the American people and announce his or her vote.''

See the president's address above, the minority leader's address below, and read the texts of both below, here in The Swamp.