Two days past the six-month mark of his administration, President Obama steps before reporters and the American people on Wednesday night for a news conference.
According to The Times’s Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, says the news conference will be a sort of “six-month report card” used to discuss the economy. But of course, health care reform will almost certainly be a major topic. And Ms. Stolberg reports that even members of the president’s own Democratic party are concerned about the next big item on the agenda: remaking the health care system.
Elsewhere in health care reporting, The Washington Post’s Ceci Connolly says that if a health care bill is signed, one thing is “virtually certain: For the first time ever, every American would be required to carry health insurance.” And Politico’s Ben Smith looks at how anti-abortion groups are planning to push back against proposed reforms.
Iraq: Before his news conference, Mr. Obama meets with — and then meets the media with — Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the pair’s first White House meeting since the president was inaugurated.
The Wall Street Journal’s Gina Chon profiles the Iraqi leader, finding he has gained “widening popularity among Iraqis, grudging respect of some political foes and a more even footing with his U.S. hosts.”
F-22 Fight: The White House appears to have won the staring contest over the F-22s with the Senate, who voted on Tuesday to remove funds for the fighter jets from a defense authorization bill after Mr. Obama threatened to veto the legislation. (The Times’s Christopher Drew reports that the administration has been looking to “shift more of the Pentagon’s resources away from conventional warfare projects, like the F-22, to provide more money for fighting insurgencies.”)
Unlike most other contentious votes in the Senate this year, which broke largely on party lines, the vote over the F-22 was more parochial, with lawmakers looking to protect jobs back home. (For example, the Democratic senators from California and the Republican senators from Texas all voted to keep the $1.75 billion, which would have financed seven more jets.)
On Wednesday, another controversial portion of the budget bill could hit the floor: an amendment that would allow those with concealed weapons permits to carry guns across state lines.
Country: The Times’s Jon Pareles files this report on the White House’s country music celebration from Tuesday night, featuring Brad Paisley, Charley Pride and Alison Krauss and Union Station.
Quotable Biden: Touring Ukraine with its president, Viktor A. Yushchenko, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. waxed philosophic on the beauty of Ukrainian women: “I cannot believe that a Frenchman visiting Kiev went back home and told his colleagues he discovered something and didn’t say he discovered the most beautiful women in the world; that’s my observation,” the vice president said.
According to the Wall Street Journal’s Peter Spiegel, a Russian journalist believes the Frenchman referred to by Mr. Biden might have been the author Alexandre Dumas.
On Wednesday, Mr. Biden departs Ukraine and heads for its former Soviet counterpart, Georgia.
Clinton Warnings: Having shifted even further east, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke in Thailand on Tuesday about potential military cooperation between North Korea and Myanmar, a Southeast Asian country that has had some sort of military rule for more than 45 years. As The Times’s Mark Landler reports, North Korea is already believed to be giving Myanmar small arms and may even be helping the country work toward a nuclear program. Last month, a North Korean ship headed toward Myanmar turned back after being tracked by the U.S. Navy, which suspected the freighter might be carrying weapons.
With worries mounting that the two countries are cooperating, Mrs. Clinton said at a news conference that an alliance between the two reclusive countries would “pose a direct threat” to neighbors of Myanmar, such as Thailand. She added that she was “deeply concerned by the reports of continuing human rights abuses within Burma.”
C.I.A. Inquiries: Back in Washington, The Times’s David Johnston looks at the conundrum facing Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.: whether to investigate how terrorist suspects were interrogated post-9/11. In a decision that would display the Justice Department’s independence from the White House, Mr. Holder is apparently considering launching an investigation — albeit a narrow one.
Mr. Johnston reports that even a narrow inquest, focused on C.I.A. investigators and contractors, could backfire in at least two ways: “One is the political fallout if only a handful of low-level agents are prosecuted for what many critics see as a pattern of excess condoned at the top of the government. The other is that an aggressive prosecutor would not stop at the bottom, but would work up the chain of command, and end up with a full-blown criminal inquiry into the intelligence agencies — just the kind of broad, open-ended criminal investigation the Obama administration says it wants to avoid.”
Palin Problems: Sarah Palin, now in her last week as Alaska governor, could find herself under investigation over whether she used her office to solicit funds to pay her legal debts, The Times‘s Katharine Q. Seelye reports. Ms. Palin cited $500,000 in legal debts in her resignation speech a few weeks ago.
Birthers: The the group who keep insisting that Obama was born not in Hawaii, but Kenya, and is thus ineligible to be president — were a consistent side plot to the 2008 election. But even with Mr. Obama firmly ensconced in the Oval Office — and even with copies of Mr. Obama’s Hawaii birth certificate in circulation — the birthers’ passion does not seem to be fading away. Just ask Delaware Representative Mike Castle, a moderate Republican who faced an angry town hall meeting full of people who insisted Mr. Obama was Kenyan-born. MSNBC posted the video on its “Hardball” program.
Legislation has already been introduced in the House that would compel presidential candidates to prove their American citizenship; Chris Matthews recently interviewed Representative John Campbell, one of the legislation’s sponsors. (For his part, Mr. Campbell said that the bill was not about Mr. Obama, and pressed by Mr. Matthews, said he believed the president was a U.S. citizen.)
Now, Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh are getting behind the birthers. The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder takes a look at the Republican party’s choices when it comes to the group: “If they give credence to the birthers, they’re (not only advancing ignorance but also) betraying the narrowness of their base. If they dismiss this growing movement, they might drive birthers to find more extreme candidates, which will fragment a Republican political coalition.”
Sotomayor Votes: Senator Susan Collins of Maine became the fourth Republican senator to publicly back Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, offering even more proof that the judge will easily be confirmed once her nomination hits the Senate floor. But perhaps the biggest Tuesday announcement from a Republican with regards to Judge Sotomayor came from someone not even in Congress. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running for Senate in 2010, revealed that he was not supporting the judge, citing concerns for her stance on the Second Amendment. That position puts Mr. Crist in line with his primary opponent – Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American former speaker of the Florida House – as both men prepare to run in a state with a large concentration of Hispanic voters. (For the record, the man Mr. Crist and Mr. Rubio are trying to replace, Republican Senator Mel Martinez, has announced he will vote for Judge Sotomayor.)
The Judiciary Committee, by the way, officially set next Tuesday as the date for its vote.
Giuliani in Washington: Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now thinking about a run for New York governor in 2010, speaks about free markets at the American Enterprise Institute.
Bernanke/Orszag: Fed chairman Ben Bernanke heads back to Capitol Hill for a second consecutive day, this time testifying before the Senate Banking committee. (He appeared before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday.)
Elsewhere on Wednesday, Peter Orszag, the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, delivers a speech on the economy at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Hot Dog: The annual Capitol Hill Hot Dog Lunch, sponsored by the American Meat Institute, goes down in the courtyard of the Rayburn House Office Building on Wednesday. (It was just last Wednesday, for those of you that remember, that a Playboy playmate covered in lettuce leaves handed out veggie dogs on Capitol Hill to mark National Veggie Dog Day.)
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According to The Times’s Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, says the news conference will be a sort of “six-month report card” used to discuss the economy. But of course, health care reform will almost certainly be a major topic. And Ms. Stolberg reports that even members of the president’s own Democratic party are concerned about the next big item on the agenda: remaking the health care system.
“As for Democrats, Mr. Obama faces a balance-of-power conundrum. He has said all along that he will set out broad principles for a bill and leave the details to Congress. But now House Democrats in the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, including seven who hold decisive votes on the Energy and Commerce Committee, say they will not support the House bill without big changes.The Times’s Robert Pear and David Herszenhorn examine the concerns of the seven Blue Dogs on the energy committee that have led the panel’s chairman, Representative Henry Waxman, to cancel committee sessions scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday. That delay makes it less likely that the House will be able to vote on a health care package before it recesses in early August. On the Senate side, Senator Max Baucus, the Finance Committee chairman, said on Tuesday that progress was being made on that panel’s bipartisan bill.
One question for Mr. Obama is whether to try to strong-arm them, and face a rebellion from some of the very same conservative Democrats who helped put him in office. If he forces them to vote for a bill their constituents do not like, on a timetable that feels too rushed for them, it could hurt them at home. That could mean a bigger political problem for the White House: a resulting loss of Democratic seats in the 2010 midterm elections.”
Elsewhere in health care reporting, The Washington Post’s Ceci Connolly says that if a health care bill is signed, one thing is “virtually certain: For the first time ever, every American would be required to carry health insurance.” And Politico’s Ben Smith looks at how anti-abortion groups are planning to push back against proposed reforms.
Iraq: Before his news conference, Mr. Obama meets with — and then meets the media with — Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the pair’s first White House meeting since the president was inaugurated.
The Wall Street Journal’s Gina Chon profiles the Iraqi leader, finding he has gained “widening popularity among Iraqis, grudging respect of some political foes and a more even footing with his U.S. hosts.”
F-22 Fight: The White House appears to have won the staring contest over the F-22s with the Senate, who voted on Tuesday to remove funds for the fighter jets from a defense authorization bill after Mr. Obama threatened to veto the legislation. (The Times’s Christopher Drew reports that the administration has been looking to “shift more of the Pentagon’s resources away from conventional warfare projects, like the F-22, to provide more money for fighting insurgencies.”)
Unlike most other contentious votes in the Senate this year, which broke largely on party lines, the vote over the F-22 was more parochial, with lawmakers looking to protect jobs back home. (For example, the Democratic senators from California and the Republican senators from Texas all voted to keep the $1.75 billion, which would have financed seven more jets.)
On Wednesday, another controversial portion of the budget bill could hit the floor: an amendment that would allow those with concealed weapons permits to carry guns across state lines.
Country: The Times’s Jon Pareles files this report on the White House’s country music celebration from Tuesday night, featuring Brad Paisley, Charley Pride and Alison Krauss and Union Station.
Quotable Biden: Touring Ukraine with its president, Viktor A. Yushchenko, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. waxed philosophic on the beauty of Ukrainian women: “I cannot believe that a Frenchman visiting Kiev went back home and told his colleagues he discovered something and didn’t say he discovered the most beautiful women in the world; that’s my observation,” the vice president said.
According to the Wall Street Journal’s Peter Spiegel, a Russian journalist believes the Frenchman referred to by Mr. Biden might have been the author Alexandre Dumas.
On Wednesday, Mr. Biden departs Ukraine and heads for its former Soviet counterpart, Georgia.
Clinton Warnings: Having shifted even further east, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke in Thailand on Tuesday about potential military cooperation between North Korea and Myanmar, a Southeast Asian country that has had some sort of military rule for more than 45 years. As The Times’s Mark Landler reports, North Korea is already believed to be giving Myanmar small arms and may even be helping the country work toward a nuclear program. Last month, a North Korean ship headed toward Myanmar turned back after being tracked by the U.S. Navy, which suspected the freighter might be carrying weapons.
With worries mounting that the two countries are cooperating, Mrs. Clinton said at a news conference that an alliance between the two reclusive countries would “pose a direct threat” to neighbors of Myanmar, such as Thailand. She added that she was “deeply concerned by the reports of continuing human rights abuses within Burma.”
C.I.A. Inquiries: Back in Washington, The Times’s David Johnston looks at the conundrum facing Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.: whether to investigate how terrorist suspects were interrogated post-9/11. In a decision that would display the Justice Department’s independence from the White House, Mr. Holder is apparently considering launching an investigation — albeit a narrow one.
Mr. Johnston reports that even a narrow inquest, focused on C.I.A. investigators and contractors, could backfire in at least two ways: “One is the political fallout if only a handful of low-level agents are prosecuted for what many critics see as a pattern of excess condoned at the top of the government. The other is that an aggressive prosecutor would not stop at the bottom, but would work up the chain of command, and end up with a full-blown criminal inquiry into the intelligence agencies — just the kind of broad, open-ended criminal investigation the Obama administration says it wants to avoid.”
Palin Problems: Sarah Palin, now in her last week as Alaska governor, could find herself under investigation over whether she used her office to solicit funds to pay her legal debts, The Times‘s Katharine Q. Seelye reports. Ms. Palin cited $500,000 in legal debts in her resignation speech a few weeks ago.
Birthers: The the group who keep insisting that Obama was born not in Hawaii, but Kenya, and is thus ineligible to be president — were a consistent side plot to the 2008 election. But even with Mr. Obama firmly ensconced in the Oval Office — and even with copies of Mr. Obama’s Hawaii birth certificate in circulation — the birthers’ passion does not seem to be fading away. Just ask Delaware Representative Mike Castle, a moderate Republican who faced an angry town hall meeting full of people who insisted Mr. Obama was Kenyan-born. MSNBC posted the video on its “Hardball” program.
Legislation has already been introduced in the House that would compel presidential candidates to prove their American citizenship; Chris Matthews recently interviewed Representative John Campbell, one of the legislation’s sponsors. (For his part, Mr. Campbell said that the bill was not about Mr. Obama, and pressed by Mr. Matthews, said he believed the president was a U.S. citizen.)
Now, Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh are getting behind the birthers. The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder takes a look at the Republican party’s choices when it comes to the group: “If they give credence to the birthers, they’re (not only advancing ignorance but also) betraying the narrowness of their base. If they dismiss this growing movement, they might drive birthers to find more extreme candidates, which will fragment a Republican political coalition.”
Sotomayor Votes: Senator Susan Collins of Maine became the fourth Republican senator to publicly back Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, offering even more proof that the judge will easily be confirmed once her nomination hits the Senate floor. But perhaps the biggest Tuesday announcement from a Republican with regards to Judge Sotomayor came from someone not even in Congress. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running for Senate in 2010, revealed that he was not supporting the judge, citing concerns for her stance on the Second Amendment. That position puts Mr. Crist in line with his primary opponent – Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American former speaker of the Florida House – as both men prepare to run in a state with a large concentration of Hispanic voters. (For the record, the man Mr. Crist and Mr. Rubio are trying to replace, Republican Senator Mel Martinez, has announced he will vote for Judge Sotomayor.)
The Judiciary Committee, by the way, officially set next Tuesday as the date for its vote.
Giuliani in Washington: Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now thinking about a run for New York governor in 2010, speaks about free markets at the American Enterprise Institute.
Bernanke/Orszag: Fed chairman Ben Bernanke heads back to Capitol Hill for a second consecutive day, this time testifying before the Senate Banking committee. (He appeared before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday.)
Elsewhere on Wednesday, Peter Orszag, the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, delivers a speech on the economy at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Hot Dog: The annual Capitol Hill Hot Dog Lunch, sponsored by the American Meat Institute, goes down in the courtyard of the Rayburn House Office Building on Wednesday. (It was just last Wednesday, for those of you that remember, that a Playboy playmate covered in lettuce leaves handed out veggie dogs on Capitol Hill to mark National Veggie Dog Day.)
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