I dare you!

For weeks, the White House strategy on financial regulatory reform remained an open question: Would President Barack Obama water down his bill just to get something passed — the way he did on health care?

A Palinesque “Hell no!” was the answer coming from the White House on Wednesday as the president, his senior aides and his allies on Capitol Hill issued an ultimatum to Republicans fighting Democrats’ plans to overhaul financial oversight.

“For the president, you have to be willing to accept a strong bill,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, after Obama emerged from a contentious meeting with GOP congressional leaders.

“If the effort to get this close is simply to take steps to weaken that legislation, that’s not what the president is interested in.”

Democrats are so emboldened that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is prepared to bring the Banking Committee bill to the floor with no major concessions to Republicans and essentially dare them to vote against the measure, senior leadership aides said.

The End of the Hope

In a potential reversal, White House advisers are close to recommending that President Barack Obama opt for military tribunals for self-professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four of his alleged henchman, senior officials said.

The review of where and how to hold a Sept. 11 trial is not over, so no recommendation is yet before the president and Obama has not made a determination of his own, officials said. The review is not likely to be finished this week.

Officials spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss private deliberations.

Attorney General Eric Holder decided in November to transfer Mohammed and the four other accused terrorists from the prison at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to New York City for civilian trials. That was initially supported by city officials, but was later opposed because of costs, security and logistical concerns.

When opposition ballooned further into Congress and an attempted Christmas airline bombing brought massive scrutiny to Obama’s terrorism policies, the administration said it would review Holder’s trial decision and consider all options for a new location.

In addition to local opposition to a trial, the administration faces pressure on its goal of closing Guantanamo on another front. Republicans in Congress have proposed barring prosecutions of terrorism defendants in federal courts or in reformed military commissions located in the United States.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., has proposed legislation that would prevent the Obama administration from putting Mohammed and other terrorists on trial in any American community. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., joined by about half the Senate’s Republicans and a few Democrats, has made a similar proposal.

Separate from the internal trial review, the White House is in still-ongoing negotiations with lawmakers over those proposals, including how to secure funding from Congress to hold terrorism trials and to close the Guantanamo prison and replace it with another facility in the United States.

The Obama administration views civilian trials for terrorists as an important demonstration of the U.S. commitment to rule of law. Officials also have cited the numerous terrorism trials already held successfully in U.S. criminal courts.

more …..

9/11 Trial Reversal: Obama Advisers Set To Recommend Military Tribunals.

Looser - You gan see it in the face

The White House made it official on Tuesday: the president doesn’t think the votes are there to get a public option passed through reconciliation and consequently won’t make a push to include or pass the provision.

Speaking at the daily briefing, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked again why the administration did not include the government-run insurance option in its final health care proposal in light of the fact that 23 Democratic senators signed a letter calling for its passage.

“We have seen obviously that though there are some that are supportive of this, there isn’t enough political support in a majority to get this through,” Gibbs responded. “The president… took the Senate bill as the base and looks forward to discussing consensus ideas on Thursday.”

The remarks were the clearest indication to date that the White House’s vote counters don’t see a viable path to getting the public option into law, even if Senate Democrats use reconciliation — which would have allowed for an up or down vote. The outstanding question for advocates of the proposal remains: How many lawmakers could have been persuaded to vote for the public plan had the White House actually pushed for its passage?

Gibbs: The Public Plan Doesn’t Have The Votes.

Oh that Robert Gibbs and his Making Fun Of Trig, by writing notes on his hand during today’s White House Press Briefing. Our beloved press corps is simply not sure how to handle this. OUCH, man, OUCH. What did Trig ever do to Robert Gibbs, anyway?

Speaking to reporters shortly after he met with a bipartisan group of congressional leaders, Obama said that he informed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that he would “consider” such a course of action if the GOP obstructionism continued.

“In our meeting I asked the congressional leadership to put a stop to these holds in which nominees for critical jobs are denied a vote for month,” he said. “Surely we can set aside partisanship and do what’s traditionally been done with these nominations.”

“If the Senate does not act, and I made this very clear,” Obama continued, “I will consider making several recess appointments during the upcoming recess because we can’t afford to let politics stand in the way of a well functioning government.”

On Tuesday, one of those nominees — Craig Becker, who Obama appointed to sit on the National Labor Relations Board — is slated to come up for a vote Senate. His confirmation was thrown into serious doubt recently when Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) indicated he would vote against cloture. Should Obama appoint Becker to the post through a recess appointment, he would be able to serve until the end of 2011 before requiring re-confirmation.

Noting the length that some nominations have been held up in Congress as well as the blanket hold that Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) placed on all presidential nominees last week, Obama called on lawmakers to “get past the tired debates that have plagued our politics.”

Obama Warns GOP He Will Use Recess Appointments.

Don't make up O!

After publicly sparring in the fall, the White House and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are trying to make up.

In an extraordinary exchange of letters written after last week’s State of the Union address, Chamber President Tom Donohue and President Barack Obama agreed to disagree on some issues and work together where they can.

In a letter to Obama initiating the exchange, Donohue agreed to support the administration’s goals of reforming education, doubling exports, expanding nuclear power and domestic drilling, improving worker training and funding infrastructure projects.

“While we don’t agree with every idea in your speech, we support the priorities I mentioned and will work vigorously to achieve them,” Donohue wrote in the Jan. 28 letter.

On Monday, Obama responded with a more expansive “Dear Tom” letter that thanked Donohue for his “kind comments” about the speech and welcomed the Chamber’s help moving his agenda through Congress.

The president recalled their shoulder-to-shoulder effort a year ago to pass the stimulus bill. Noting last week’s report that the economy grew nearly 6 percent in the fourth quarter, Obama wrote:

“It was the largest yearly turnaround in economic growth in three decades and wouldn’t have happened without the legislation you and the Chamber supported.”

Americans United for Change released the spot on Monday morning. In it, the group makes the same political pitch the White House has made in recent weeks, one that elevates cleaning up Wall Street over health care reform on the legislative agenda.

“When big banks went hog wild on Wall Street they left behind one fine mess on Main Street,” the ad goes. “Their greed and recklessness left the economy stuck in the mud and over seven million Americans without jobs. But the big banks were first in line at the trough for their taxpayer bailout and back to their old piggish ways in no time. Now the Wall Street lobbyists say they will clean up their act. But remember you can put lipstick on a pig. But it is still a pig. Tell Congress it is time to step up and pass President Obama's plan to hold Wall Street banks accountable.”

via Pro-Obama Group Goes After Wall Street ‘Pigs’.

white house wins labor support for health care

Leaders of the labor movement announced Thursday afternoon that they have reached a compromise agreement with the White House and congressional leaders to address union concerns with the health care reform bill.

The most contentious issue facing the negotiators was the excise tax on high-cost, “Cadillac” insurance plans. The tax was not eliminated, as many union members had called for, but was scaled back so that it won’t hit as many labor households. The threshold for what constitutes a Cadillac plan was raised and will continue to rise with inflation – though likely not as fast as health care costs will rise. In 2015, dental and vision will not be included in the calculation.

For an eight-year period, plans that are the result of collective bargaining – union plans – will be exempted from the tax.

“Let’s go on and actually pass this bill,” Anna Burger of the Service Employees International Union said in a conference call union leaders held with reporters to announce the deal. The AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka cautioned, however, that full labor support is “subject to the final bill.”

The deal was reached with the White House, they said, but Congress is also on board. “We are informed that they are. We have spoken with them. We think everyone is on board with this,” said Trumka. “We will endorse and we will do that proudly, but it’s subject to the final bill.”

The threshold for a Cadillac plan was lifted to $24,000 for families and $8,900 for individuals. It will be adjusted upward if there are “unexpected rises in health care” costs between 2010 and 2013, said Trumka.

Labor also won special treatment for workers who are charged more for insurance because of the age or gender of their workforce, high-risk workers and some qualified retirees.

more………

White House Wins Labor Support For Health Care.

I am speaking, of course, of White House Christmas parties.

You can’t judge a president by his parties. But Washington is nothing more or less than high school writ large: a city of socially awkward, judgmental nerds who interpret (overinterpret) the significance of whatever they see. Having been to four presidencies’ worth of press parties, I am a pretty good example of the breed.

So here goes:

The first thing to mention about the Obama’s media party earlier this week: Jazz! Now, the Bushes (father and son) and Bill Clinton had nothing against jazz, so far as I know, but they didn’t feature any at holiday parties. I seem to remember a lot of gigs by the Marine Band in dress reds in the foyer, with brass music stands and Christmas carols by Muzak.

The Obamas are jazz buffs. So when guests walked into the East Room on Monday evening—a very crowded room, by the way—they entered what felt a little bit like a large and loud jazz club. It seemed to me the lights had been dimmed ever so slightly, and there was a jazz quintet at work on a raised stage at one end of the room. They were playing cool and mellow stuff, sophisticated but not raucous, and their music wove its way through the hubbub of the place. It felt more like New York or Chicago.

I noticed that the bass player in the group was a Caucasian female. I’m sorry to deal in stereotypes (but what the heck, that is also what we do in Washington), but I think jazz fans will confirm that there aren’t many prominent Caucasian female bassists around. “Change you can believe in,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, told me with a laugh.

Read more:

Fineman: Inside the White House Christmas Party – Howard Fineman – Newsweek.com.