All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

House Republicans aren't backing the President Barack Obama's new Afghanistan policy. At least, not yet. The issue is not the additional 30,000 troops, which they support. It's the timeline for withdrawal.

Mr. Obama announced last night that he would begin removing troops from Afghanistan in July of 2011. That's a move that Republicans say will make the surge less effective.

"It never makes sense to tell the enemy when your commitment to fight will run out," said House GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-IN), at left, after members met this morning to discuss the president's new strategy.

Republicans also questioned the president's true commitment to winning the war and criticized his speech last night for not focusing enough on commitment to success.

"Republicans want to know, is the president serious about fulfilling this mission?" said Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon (R-CA), the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee.

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After a week dominated by Afghanistan, President Barack Obama will try to turn attention to the economy tomorrow when he hosts a jobs forum at the White House. The president will be joined by business leaders and economists to brainstorm ideas to bring down the 10.2 percent unemployment rate.

On the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, House Democrats have a plethora of ideas – and the 2010 midterm elections looming. They are trying to cobble together a new jobs package to specifically tackle the unemployment problem. Lawmakers insist it will be a targeted package, but there are numerous, possibly competing, proposals among the Democratic Caucus.

Here are some of the ideas House Democrats are considering:

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Before President Barack Obama addresses the nation Tuesday night from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on his decision regarding the Afghanistan war, he will have to face a possibly tougher audience.

Top congressional leaders, Chairmen and ranking members of the Armed Services, Foreign Affairs and Appropriations committees have been invited to the White House late Tuesday afternoon to meet with the president for an advanced briefing on the new policy. And it could be tense.

It is expected that Mr. Obama will announce that he will deploy 30,000 to 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan. That's in addition to 68,000 U.S. troops already in that country, bringing the total number of soldiers to around 100,000. Both the White House Office of Management and Budget and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen have estimated that it would cost $1 billion for each thousand additional troops to pay for logistical support, salaries, equipment, transportation and additional training.

CBSNews.com Special Report: Afghanistan

That cost issue has become a real target for at least two Democrats invited to Tuesday's meeting. The first is the powerful Chairman of the House Appropriations committee, David Obey (D-WI). It's often said that the Appropriations Committees hold the purse strings in Congress. Any additional war spending would have to go through Chairman Obey, and he's threatening to tie those strings tight.

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Updated at 5:35 p.m. ET with news of bill's passage.

The House of Representatives passed the Medicare Payment Reform Act today by a vote of 243 to 183.

The measure is a permanent fix costing $210 billion. It must still clear the Senate, however, before the president can sign it into law. If Congress does not pass it, doctors' Medicare reimbursement rates will be cut by 21 percent in January.

The fix is not paid for, even though House Democrats attached pay-go legislation to the bill. The move is an attempt to force the Senate to accept their solution to curbing the massive deficit, but the Senate has resisted pay-go legislation so far. This is something that would need to be worked out between the two chambers in conference if the Senate is able to pass its own "Medicare doc fix" bill.

The pay-go legislation would force lawmakers to offset all new entitlement spending or tax cuts -- excluding the "doc fix," the Alternative Minimum Tax, the estate tax and the extension of former President George W. Bush's tax cuts for people who make less than $250,000.

Additionally, pay-go would not apply to appropriations bills. With so many exceptions -- including the "doc fix" itself -- Republicans are calling pay-go a sham.

The Senate tried, and failed on a procedural vote, to pass an unpaid for "Medicare doc fix" last month.

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Jill Jackson is a CBS News Capitol Hill Producer. You can read more of her posts in Hotsheet here. You can also follow her on Twitter.

The House passed H.R. 3962, called the "Affordable Health Care for America Act," in a 220 to 215 vote on Saturday night. Here's a look at some of the provisions in the $1.2 trillion dollar bill:

Creates a public health insurance option and a national exchange for the uninsured and small businesses to purchase health insurance. The Secretary of Health and Human Services would negotiate rates with doctors and hospitals on reimbursement rates.

The bill includes mandates for individuals to purchase and businesses to provide health insurance or pay a fine. Individual penalty is 2.5 percent of gross income unless they get a waiver. Businesses that don't offer insurance pay a fine equal to 8 percent of their payroll. Businesses with a payroll of less than $500,000 are exempt from the mandate.

Insurance companies are prohibited from denying coverage based on a pre-existing condition. There are caps on deductibles and annual out of pocket spending is capped at $5000.

Eliminates the Medicare doughnut hole over ten years.

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To say it's a big day on Capitol Hill would be an understatement. Congress rarely meets on a Saturday. It's no regular occurrence for President Obama to come to the Hill to meet with the House Democratic Caucus. And Democrats are increasingly confident that they have the votes to make history and pass H.R. 3962, the "Affordable Health Care for America Act" tonight.

"We will pass healthcare reform," Pelosi said confidently to reporters after meeting this morning with the president.

But there are still twists and turns that Democratic leadership and proponents of the bill could face this evening.

Just last night, Democratic leadership gave up on efforts to work out a compromise between Democrats who support abortion rights, those who do not and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The original abortion language required that the exchange have at least one plan that covered abortion and one that did not. It would have required all insurance companies in the exchange to put federal funds and private premiums in separate accounts to make sure abortions were only paid for with private funds. Opponents of abortion rights called that simply a line on the ledger.

Speaker Pelosi realized that to get the votes for the overall bill, she would have to allow Democrats against abortion rights, led by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), the chance to offer an amendment that would essentially bar insurance companies in the health insurance exchange from covering abortion. Stupak has been threatening for weeks to block the bill if he did not have the chance to offer his amendment and said he had around 40 members who would vote with him.

Between Democrats and Republicans in the House who are opponents of abortion rights, the Stupak amendment could very well pass tonight. The speaker put 190 members of the Pro-Choice Caucus in the awkward position of wanting a health care reform bill, but not wanting to support that abortion language either.

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Everyone thought the public option was off life support when Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced yesterday that a government-run health insurance plan would be in the Senate bill.

The proposal is certainly gaining momentum in Congress, but the word "public" could be in trouble. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tried to change the terminology today when she emerged from a Democratic caucus meeting on health care.

"It's not really a public option, it's a consumer option," Pelosi said. "As we're mandating that people buy insurance we are saying to them, you have leverage, you have another choice. This is your consumer option." To back up her point, Pelosi said that the program would be self-sustaining and benefits would be paid for by premiums, not taxpayers.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) was quick to endorse Pelosi's new lingo. "She's absolutely right, a consumer option," Hoyer said.

Changing the language of a heated debate is nothing new in Congress. Last year, when the economy was in freefall and Congress had to step in with $700 billion dollars to keep big banks from collapsing, lawmakers changed the toxic term "bailout" to the more innocuous "Troubled Asset Relief Program," or TARP. If members say it enough, it can eventually make it into media reports and then into everyday American terminology.

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At the House Democratic Caucus meeting this morning, members actually kicked staffers out of the meeting so they could delve into the nitty-gritty proposals of their evolving health care bill.

But for all that drama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer had little new to tell reporters after the meeting. Pelosi said they're not in the home stretch yet, but that "we are coming around the bend and we have to make our decision about what form the public option will be in the bill."

Hoyer said "we expect in the coming weeks to put a bill on the floor that will garner a majority of support of the Congress of the House of Representatives and pass that bill."

But the big challenge, as Pelosi pointed out this morning, is that the bill has to add up to zero. That means it cannot add anything to the deficit. Lawmakers are grappling with the scale right now as they take one provision off, put another on, tweak it here or there, and hope it comes out even.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), for instance, said that a surcharge on wealthier Americans is still the favored way to pay for the bill among House Democrats. However, he said traction is gaining to raise the income level.

Originally proposed to hit families who make over $350,000 per year, House Democrats now want to raise that to $1 million, but lawmakers have to grapple with how they make up for that lost revenue.

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The White House is finally giving Republicans some face time on the issue of health care.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will meet with the House Republican Study Group on Wednesday afternoon -- that’s the majority of the Republican Conference.

Republicans have been demanding a meeting with President Obama to talk about health care. A couple of weeks ago, they were told the president could not meet with them but that Sebelius could.

This is the first House Republican contact with the administration on health care in months.

Jill Jackson is a CBS News Capitol Hill Producer.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered few specifics today about compromises Democrats are making on health care reform. The speaker was crystal clear, however, on her thoughts about one possible compromise known as the public option "trigger."

The trigger is an idea supported by many fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats. The idea is that private insurance companies would get a window of time to get in shape, reduce costs and expand coverage. If the insurance companies fail to do so after a certain period of time, then the government could step in by creating a public insurance option to compete with private insurers. Moderates in both the House and Senate have favored, or are at least open to this idea, because it would give markets a chance to reach the goals Congress sets, but could, ultimately, keep the government out.

When asked today if the trigger was on the table as a possible compromise, Pelosi quickly shot the idea down. She said that members of her Caucus felt that "a trigger is an excuse for not doing anything." When asked if that was her personal view, the Speaker said she believes the bill is the trigger and waved off the idea.

"I don't even want to talk about a trigger," Pelosi said.

She also reiterated that the health care bill that comes to the House floor will have a public option despite the Senate Finance Committee moving forward without one.

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