All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

The New York Times' David Sanger and CBS News Chief Political Consultant Marc Ambinder said on "Washington Unplugged" Wednesday that even as emphasis is placed on President Obama's deadline for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan starting in the summer of 2011, there has been little discussion of the fact that the transition and withdrawal will like be very slow.

"There is certainly reason to skeptical about the ability to do the job in the timeframe he has described," Sanger told moderator Bill Plante. "On The Hill this morning the most interesting thing [Secretaries Gates and Clinton] were saying was, 'well the transition just begins in 2011.' But no one would say how long it would take and what at what pace."

"It could be years," Ambinder and Plante both noted.

Read full post…

CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin cautioned that President Obama's troop increase in Afghanistan may take longer than it did in Iraq on "Washington Unplugged" Tuesday.

"In contrast to the surge in Iraq, where everything happened in five months, Afghanistan is such an undeveloped country that you can't just fly troops in. You've got to build bases for them," Martin told moderator Bob Orr.

Senior administration officials said Tuesday afternoon that President Obama chose a strategy that would get troops into Afghanistan as quickly as possible. They said they expected full deployment by next summer.

CBSNews.com Special Report: Afghanistan

This morning on CBS News’ The Early Show, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is not about "nation building."

Read full post…

While the Secret Service has taken responsibility for the high-profile White House security breach, Washington insiders are beginning to suggest that the White House Social Office is partially responsible for allowing gatecrashers at President Obama's state dinner last week.

On "Washington Unplugged" today, Amy Argetsinger of the Washington Post told CBS News correspondent John Dickerson that there should have been a member of White House Social Office assisting the Secret Service at the initial security checkpoint.

The Social Office staff "are the people who are familiar with who is supposed to be on the guest list and who isn't; the names, the faces the backgrounds of people," she said. "And if there is some kind of glitch with a VIP, perhaps it shouldn't be a young guard at the front who is having to deal with an irate VIP who doesn't understand why they are not being let in right away. That is something that should be up to the Social Office to smooth over, and act sort of like an auxiliary gate-keeper."

Read full post…

In a beautiful tent on the White House's South Lawn, celebrities, politicians and journalists toasted Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the Obama White House's first State Dinner.
CBS News' Nancy Cordes and Politico's Anne Schroeder Mullins and Patrick Gavin lamented that their invitations were "lost in the mail" but had plenty to say on "Washington Unplugged" on Wednesday.

The Obamas wanted "a larger than usual State Dinner," Gavin said. "President Bush held the one in 2005 indoors which limits you to about 150 guests or so but he wanted 320 guests or so which is why they had to construct that huge pavilion on the South Lawn. So the first thing we realize is most likely State Dinners going forward, depending on the delegation of the visiting country, will probably be on the South Lawn in a tent."

Photos: White House Arrivals
Photos: Scenes from the State Dinner

Read full post…

Blue Dog Democrat Jim Matheson (D-Utah) told CBS News' John Dickerson that members of the moderate Democratic coalition are the "true Democrats because we wear that label even when it may actually effect us in a negative way in our elections," on "Washington Unplugged" Tuesday.

"At the end of the day if people want to question the Democratic credentials of the Blue Dogs," Matheson said, "I'll tell you what, by Blue Dogs running as Democrats we face a handicap in running in our districts. There are other people who by running as a Democrat they automatically win."

Read full post…

It's only November, but fears over the H1N1 virus have already hit a fever pitch, with some Americans uneasy about their lack of access to a vaccine that's in relatively short supply.

There are signs, however, that H1N1 may turn out to be less deadly than many feared. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) released a report last week which shows similarities between H1N1 and other strains circulating in the population since 1988. According to the NIH, healthy adults may have a degree of immunity that can blunt the severity of an H1N1 infection.

Quest Diagnostics, which provides clinical laboratory services globally, also released a report last Friday stating that rates of infection by the H1N1 virus may have peaked in late October due to the impact of H1N1 vaccinations and changes in physician test-ordering practices.

So how bad is this pandemic really turning out to be? Some medical experts are calling for officials to inform the public that, despite the hype, the worst-case scenario has not, and likely will not, come to pass.

Read full post…

Updated 12:52 p.m. ET

Rep. David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat and the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, is the latest lawmaker to call for a new tax aimed at the rich to pay for a troop increase in Afghanistan.

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag has suggested it could cost the government $40 billion per year to send the 40,000 new troops sought by top U.S. commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal. (The Pentagon puts that figure somewhat lower.) Obey tells CBSNews.com the cost of the war could "destroy the other things we are trying to do in our economy."

In interviews with CBS News and ABC News, the Wisconsin lawmaker said that he favors a "war surtax" in which high-earners pay five percent of their incomes and lower-earners pay a smaller percentage, down to one percent.

"What we are saying is if this war is worth fighting, then it is worth paying for," Obey said on Monday's edition of CBSNews.com's "Washington Unplugged." (Watch at left.)

"We would impose a one percent surtax on anyone with taxable income that would rise to about two percent if you are making roughly $200,000 dollars, and once you get up into the stratasphere in terms of four or five hundred thousand dollars in income the surtax would be higher than that," he said. "Whatever the cost of the war is would be paid forthrough that tax. Because if we don’t do that that war will bleed every dollar in the budget away from any other initiative and it will block us from making the investments we need to make in our own economy."

Read full post…

On Saturday, the Senate will vote on whether to begin debate on the health care reform bill introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) earlier this week.

Reid "wants to get that wind under his belt before all these senators leave for Thanksgiving recess and don't see each other for another week or so," CBS News' Capitol Hill Correspondent Nancy Cordes said on "Washington Unplugged" Friday.

She said members of the Senate leadership are increasingly confident that they will get the sixty votes needed to start debate on the health care bill. Right now, Cordes said, Reid has the solid support of fifty-eight senators.

"We are getting smoke signals from just about everybody at this point that in fact they will vote yes to actually start this debate in motion," Cordes told Bob Schieffer. "They are not saying how they will vote in the end but the consensus seems to be, 'why not start debating it then you can bring up amendments to try to change the parts of the bill that you don't like, and then in the end you can always vote no again?'"

Read full post…

On "Washington Unplugged" Thursday, CBS News' Marc Ambinder said that while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has an uphill battle getting the health care he bill introduced last night passed, not all hope is lost

He noted how important the votes of Democratic Sens. Mary Landrieu (La.) , Ben Nelson (Neb.) and Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), as well Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.), are to the bill's chance of passage. "Their biggest stated concern is that the bill will add to the deficit over ten years," Ambinder explained, adding that the White House and Democratic leaders are encouraged because the Reid plan was estimated to decrease the deficit.

"It removes a major obstacle to moderates supporting it," he said. And the White House may have reason to rejoice.

"The White House strategy amounts to three words," CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller said. "Get it passed."

Read full post…

On "Washington Unplugged" Wednesday, Mississippi's Republican Governor, Haley Barbour, told host Bob Schieffer that he expects Sarah Palin "is going to sell a lot of books."

"Whether she intends to run for something else, or where she's headed, I'm not privy to that," he said, noting that he is focused on 2010 as opposed to 2012.

"My wife and I like her," Barbour said of Palin, the former Alaska governor. "She's a heck of a lot smarter than she gets credit for."

Barbour, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, also said Democrats are "whistling past the graveyard" if they don't recognize the lessons from Republican victories in this year's two governors races.

Read full post…