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Morning Must Reads -- He said it won't add a dime to the deficit. He didn't say anything about a quarter-trillion dollars.
By: Chris Stirewalt
Political Editor
10/21/09 7:59 AM EDT
Wall Street Journal -- Fight Over Medicare Cuts Plays Into Larger Debate
Democrats’ bid to shore up support for a health-care overhaul among seniors and doctors with a $247 billion package of deficit spending on Medicare is looking pretty fishy.
Writers Greg Hitt and Janet Adamy look at Majority Leader Harry Reid’s effort to keep two key constituencies on health care happy and engage in some creative accounting by on that “one dime” pledge President Obama made about the deficit.
“The bill is supported by the American Medical Association and AARP, the lobbying group for seniors. Adoption of the measure would take one of the most contentious and costly issues off the table as the White House and Democrat-controlled Congress prepare for floor debate this fall on the broader bill.
But Mr. Reid is struggling to find the 60 votes needed to bring the bill to the floor, in part because of questions in his own party. Centrist Democrats worried about the budget deficit are pushing for a more modest bill, perhaps one that would suspend the payment cuts for only two years.
The health bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee would have suspended the cuts for one year, at a cost of $11 billion. That was paid for in the context of the larger health overhaul bill. In the House, Democratic leaders also hope to push forward legislation changing Medicare's payment system, but details haven't been worked out.
New York Times -- Gates Says Afghan Vote Will Not Slow Strategy
The Pentagon and the White House are heading for a showdown as the president and his political advisors wait for a politically opportune moment to pivot off of the “war of necessity” approach to Afghanistan. Military leaders, meanwhile, are bracing themselves for bad news from the president.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates sent a strong signal in Japan Tuesday that he won’t play along with the Obama team’s plan to keep stalling on Afghanistan until the government there eventually sinks or swims.
Examiner colleague Julie Mason explains how the White House is downplaying any talk of a rift, but as writer Thom Shanker explains, Gates’ words were a calculated rebuff the approach of John Kerry, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod: only give Afghanistan more troops if the country shows it deserves them.
“‘We are not going to just sit on our hands waiting for the outcome of this election and for the emergence of a government in Kabul,’ Mr. Gates said. ‘We have operations under way and we will continue to conduct those operations.’
Mr. Gates, in assessing the impact on administration policy of strong charges of election fraud by supporters of President Hanid Karzai, noted that ‘whatever emerges in Kabul is going to be an evolutionary process.’
‘It is not going to be complicated one day and simple the next,’ he said. ‘I believe the president will have to make his decisions in the context of that evolutionary process.’
New York Times -- Obama Takes a Health Care Hiatus
Looking for the pause that refreshes, the White House has pulled President Obama back from the brink of media overexposure on health care.
The idea is that while his team and Harry Reid are hashing out the contents of the final Senate bill, the president is laying low and waiting to make the final sales pitch.
Writer Sheryl Gay Stolberg looks at the dangers of overexposure and polarization in having the president as the primary pitchman. One issue not included in the piece: the immediate problems in Afghanistan and the president’s go-slow approach on a plea for more troops doesn’t allow him to push hard on the long-term problems of health care. But having been relatively subdued for two weeks, you can just tell the president and his team are just itching to get back out on the campaign trail.
“[David] Gergen, the communications strategist, predicts a return to ‘full campaign mode’ by the president. The question is how. One of the few tricks of the trade he has not yet employed is an address from the Oval Office, perhaps the biggest arrow in the presidential communications quiver. Aides say they discussed the idea in September but decided in favor of the address to Congress, because it afforded a longer format in which Mr. Obama could delve deeply into the issue.
Mr. Axelrod would not say whether an Oval Office address was under consideration now, but he made clear that Mr. Obama would hardly be silent for long.
‘Having come all this way,’ he said, ‘you can be assured that we are going to do whatever we can to focus attention on the magnitude of the opportunity here.’
Financial Times -- Tarp inspector threatens subpoena
Writer Tom Braithwaite checks in on the growing acrimony between the watchdog picked to make sure the $700 billion Bush-Obama bailout of Wall Street, General Motors, etc ., Neil Barofsky and Treasury Secretary Tim Giethner.
Braithwaite says Baofsky’s latest quarterly report, due out today, will level accusations that Treasury is concealing evidence that might shed light on possible conflicts of interest in how the cash was and is being doled out.
“His threat to use legal powers to seize documents relates to the public-private investment partnership, the scheme whereby Treasury and Federal Reserve debt and equity is used alongside an investment by private companies to encourage the sale of toxic assets from banks’ balance sheets.
The report from Mr Barofsky says the Treasury is refusing to provide access to the records of the affiliates that are ‘critical’ to identifying conflicts of interest. It adds that the special inspector general’s office would not hesitate to obtain these records using all of its tools, including its subpoena authority.”
Washington Post -- Investors, more than banks, open checkbooks for Obama
Writers Anne Kornblut and Jason Horowitz checked in on the president’s fundraising swing through the world of high finance Tuesday.
Obama spoke on behalf of his call for a new consumer protection agency to guard against American’s bad decisions on loans and investments at a $15,200-per-plate dinner at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Manhattan.
The folks who were there probably dug what he was saying because much of the president’s support is from the Rattner school of investing: use influence to obtain lucrative contracts to invest government and union pension funds.
“"It's different money and it's new money, and it came in during the campaign and it's staying in," said Jane Hartley, chief executive of the consulting firm Observatory Group. Hartley was one of the earliest and most prolific fundraisers for Obama.
Though money is not flowing into the Democratic Party as it did in 2008 -- and the party's 2009 candidates in two gubernatorial races are struggling -- Obama remains an attraction. A rally at the Hammerstein Ballroom sold out, with an estimated 2,700 guests paying for tickets that started at $100. The president's remarks were to be piped into house parties across the country that were convened to push his health-care overhaul plans through Congress.”
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