WASHINGTON NEWS

Obama Won't Rule Out Additional Stimulus

Fox News' Special Report reported that yesterday, President Obama said "there is a chance he will try to come up with a second economic stimulus package." Obama was shown saying, "I don't take anything off the table when unemployment is close to 10% and a lot of Americans are hurting out there." The Washington Post reports, "Nothing may be more important to public assessments of...Obama's leadership than the state of the economy, and at this point there are political warning lights flashing." The Administration is "trying to tamp down talk that it didn't get it quite right -- talk created by Vice President Biden," who told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that the Administration "misread the economy." Obama "tried to modulate the impact of the vice president's words." Obama said, "No, no, no, no, no. Rather than say 'misread,' we had incomplete information." The Washington Post also reports, in a front page story, that the "jobless rate is still climbing and the White House is scrambling to reassure an anxious public that President Obama's prescription for economic recovery is on the right track."

CNBC showed Obama saying: "We haven't always gotten the numbers right but I think the general overview is right. We went through a economic tsunami that was far worse than anything we've gone through since the great depression. Even early on, I think we did not see the full magnitude of what was going to happen." CNBC's John Harwood added, "I've got to tell you, after talking to officials in the White House and Treasury, there is not much appetite within the administration or the Congress for pursuing" a second stimulus package, "especially among Democrats concerned about this image that they are acquiring of spending more money than the government has and fueling this record deficit. So I think the outlook for a second stimulus is very cloudy at best."

The Wall Street Journal reports Senate majority leader Harry Reid "said Tuesday he didn't believe there is yet any case for another economic-stimulus package, saying the impact of the $787 billion plan has yet to be truly felt." The Hill says Reid "threw cold water on the idea of Senate passage of a second economic stimulus plan." Fox News' Special Report noted Reid "says nearly 90% of February's stimulus money hasn't been spent yet." However, according to The Hill, House majority leader Steny Hoyer "said Democrats are open to looking at a second stimulus package." According to The Politico, Democrats "are all over the map on the stimulus and the possibility of a sequel, and it's not hard to see why: When it comes to a second stimulus, they may be damned if they do and damned if they don't."

GAO: Stimulus Spending Ahead Of Schedule The Wall Street Journal reports the stimulus spending "is currently 'slightly ahead of estimates,' with $29 billion distributed to state governments through mid-June," according to the GAO.

Obama, Emanuel Reiterate Support For Public Option

The Hill reports that yesterday White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel "raised some eyebrows on Capitol Hill," when he appeared to suggest in a Wall Street Journal article that the White House might accept a healthcare reform deal without a public option for health insurance. In response, President Obama "issued a statement from halfway across the world reiterating his support for the creation of a government health insurance plan."

Roll Call says Emanuel also "reassured House Democrats on Tuesday night that...Obama strongly backs a government-run health insurance plan, seeking to quell a firestorm among liberals upset at Emanuel's comments in the Wall Street Journal that suggested such a plan could be delayed."

Another Roll Call article reports that Rep. Raúl Grijalva, co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, "fired off a letter to...Obama warning him against dropping a public insurance option from health care reform plans." The Financial Times says the "liberal hopes of a public element to US healthcare reform came under strain" as Emanuel "offered only qualified support and a more modest bipartisan proposal gained ground."

Another article from The Hill notes that Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, "posted the statement on OpenLeft.org, a liberal blog, to highlight Obama's support for the public plan. He used the headline 'Obama to Rahm: Shut. Up.'"

Bipartisan Healthcare Deal Talks Suffer "Significant Setback" The AP reports the attempts "to draft bipartisan health care legislation in the Senate have suffered a significant setback, with Democratic leaders objecting to a proposed tax on high-cost health benefits." Many "in the Democratic leadership also expressed support for a stronger provision allowing the government to sell insurance in competition with private companies."

According to the Wall Street Journal, "Senate negotiators are considering a wider range of ways to pay for expanding health coverage, including President Barack Obama's proposal to limit tax deductions for the wealthy and another proposal to impose an income surtax on the wealthy, people familiar with the matter said. Concerns about the cost of the package and the difficulty of paying for it were running high."

Fox News' Special Report reported, "Employers who provide health insurance coverage to roughly 160 million Americans are worried about possible mandates to provide more expensive insurance for their workers and less flexibility. ... Even those who support reform do concede it is an expensive proposition but they say may be the only way to get a handle on skyrocketing healthcare costs."

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Obama Assessment Of Putin "Less Than Warm"

According to media accounts, the Obama-Putin personal rapport may be, following their encounter, "less than warm." The CBS Evening News interviewed President Obama after his meeting with Russian Prime Minister Putin. Said Obama, "I think this is a very smart, very tough, very unsentimental person." CBS added that "despite that less than warm personal assessment, the President said they're mostly on the same page on some vital issues," including Iran and North Korea.

NBC Nightly News reported that "a senior White House aide" said "the two-hour private meeting was dominated by a 50-minute soliloquy by Putin about the history of US-Russia relations -- sort of a throwback to the Soviet era leaders." Obama, "who last week said Putin had one foot in the old ways of doing business, stuck to that assessment today." Fox News' Special Report says there "was a bit of the chill left over from the cold war as...Obama met with Russian prime minister."

Obama, in an interview with CNN's Ed Henry shown on CNN's The Situation Room, said, "I think in a lot of ways...Putin is representative of Russia. He is very popular here. I think that Russia is still, on the one hand, processing the transition out of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, they recognize an interest in modernizing, diversifying; and recognize that economic power is going to be the most important currency in the 21st century."

On its front page, the Financial Times reports that "Moscow officials...delightedly quoted their White House counterparts as saying Mr Obama was 'now very convinced that the prime minister is a man of today and has got his eyes firmly on the future.'"

Obama Sticks To Conciliatory Message Both in a speech delivered in Moscow and in his meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, President Obama yesterday continued to deliver a conciliatory message toward Russia something he emphasized in interviews broadcast on all three network news programs. Media reports and analyses, however, offer mixed assessments of Obama's success at the summit. The Wall Street Journal, for example, reports that "following some tough talk before his trip, Mr. Obama's visit to Moscow is likely to fuel criticism from some in the US who see the 'reset' he has proposed for relations with Russia as a series of concessions by Washington." The AP says Obama "ended up getting the expected agreement on deep cuts in nuclear arsenals, but he is leaving Moscow with few assurances of Kremlin help in solving other issues key to his foreign policy agenda."

More positive is the tone of the New York Times' story, which reports that "Obama kicked off a new chapter in Russian-American relations during his two-day visit with significant progress on several fronts." USA Today, meanwhile, says it "will take months to determine how successful this first summit has been." The Los Angeles Times reports that "by an old-fashioned score card," Obama "didn't exactly rack up a decisive victory during his two-day visit with Russian leaders this week."

Afghan Offensive Failing?

"Afghan defense officials" tell McClatchy that "Taliban fighters and their commanders have escaped the Marines' big offensive in Afghanistan's Helmand province and moved into areas to the west and north, prompting fears that the US effort has just moved the Taliban problem elsewhere."

The AP also reports that "hundreds of militants...have fled the offensive the Marines launched last week in southern Helmand province." Marine officers now say that "keeping the Taliban from returning so the Afghan government can establish a stable presence will be a bigger challenge." The New York Times, meanwhile, reports, "One week after several battalions of Marines swept through the Helmand River valley, military commanders appear increasingly concerned about a lack of Afghan forces in the field."

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