All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

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.

Read full post…

Updated 11:11 a.m. Eastern Time

President Obama will announce his new strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as any troop increase in the region, in a speech next Tuesday at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time at the United States Military Academy at West Point, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters this morning.

In the speech at West Point, which is located 50 miles north of New York City, the president is expected to announce he is deploying between 30,000 and 35,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. Gibbs said today that the president has not yet informed him of a final decision.

The press secretary said the president will discuss how to get additional troops into Afghanistan, how to train Afghan forces to take their place, and how to get them out.

"This is year nine of the United States in Afghanistan and we're not going to be there in another eight or nine years," he said, adding: "Our time there will be limited."

Gibbs said the president will discus how to ramp up training of Afghan personnel so security forces "can keep the gains that have been made."

Following a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yesterday, the president vowed to "finish the job" that began more than eight years ago in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks.

Read full post…

Updated 1:13 p.m. ET

President Obama vowed to "finish the job" in Afghanistan today, less than 24 hours after his final meeting to determine a new strategy going forward in the war.

At a brief press conference following a meeting with India's Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, at the White House, Mr. Obama said that "after eight years, some of those years in which we did not have, I think, either the resources or the strategy to get the job done, it is my intention to finish the job."

"And I feel very confident that when the American people hear a clear rationale for what we're doing there, and how we intend to achieve our goals, that they will be supportive," he continued.

Washington Unplugged: Dissecting Obama's Promise

The president was responding to a question from CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller, one of only two questions he took at the appearance.

Read full post…

Politics Today is CBSNews.com's inside look at the key stories driving the day in politics. Because of the holiday, the column will not appear again until Monday. Happy Thanksgiving!

**President Holds Final Meeting on Troop Levels

**Said to be Planning to Add 34,000; Announcement to Come Next Tuesday

**Obama Hosting First Official State Dinner

Afghanistan: Following his latest (and apparently final) meeting with his national security team on a new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan last night, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said President Obama "has the information he wants and needs to make his decision and he will announce that decision within days."

According to McClatchy Newspapers, which cites unnamed U.S. officials, the president will announce that he will send 34,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, slightly fewer than then 40,000 being sought by the top U.S. commander there, Gen. Stanley McChrystal. There are 68,000 U.S. troops in the country now, including the 21,000 already deployed by the president.

The president will make a primetime address Dec. 1 on the Afghanistan decision, CBS News confirmed.

"Obama is expected to announce his long-awaited decision on Dec. 1, followed by meetings on Capitol Hill aimed at winning congressional support amid opposition by some Democrats who are worried about the strain on the U.S. Treasury and whether Afghanistan has become a quagmire, the officials said," reports McClatchy's Jonathan S. Landay, John Walcott and Nancy A. Youssef.

Read full post…

Gen. Stanley McChrystal may not get everything he wants when President Obama announces his revised strategy for Afghanistan next week, but he may get more help from NATO.

CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante reports Mr. Obama is expected to announce between 20,000 and 30,000 troops will be committed — less than the 40,000 additional troops McChrystal requested.

Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institute, said that U.S. allies in Europe may actually provide more soldiers than expected on the Afghan front.

"They certainly have been pushed to ultimately put up more troops," he told "Early Show" anchor Harry Smith this morning.

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…

The White House has announced that President Obama will hold another meeting with his so-called "war council" tonight to discuss the administration's long-awaited decision on strategy and U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan. According to CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller, this will be the president's ninth such meeting to review Afghanistan and Pakistan policy.

The meeting with the national security team will take place at 8 p.m. ET in the Situation Room of the White House. Below is the list of expected attendees in addition to President Obama, according to the White House:

Vice President Joe Biden
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
Ambassador Susan Rice, Permanent U.S. Representative to the United Nations
Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg
Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan
Under Secretary of Defense Michele Flournoy
Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
General James E. Cartwright, USMC, Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
General David Petraeus, U.S. Central Command
General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Commander in Afghanistan (via videoconference)
Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan (via videoconference)
Anne Patterson, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan (via videoconference)
General James Jones, National Security Advisory
Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor
John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security
Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, Special Assistant to the President for Afghanistan and Pakistan

CBSNews.com Special Report: Afghanistan

Politics Today is CBSNews.com's inside look at the key stories driving the day in politics

** Now the real fight over health care reform begins...

** President Obama tackles unemployment...

** Sarah Palin rises in polls during her book tour...

HEALTH CARE: Democrats Saturday night squeaked by with 60 votes on a procedural motion to move the health care debate forward.

Still, writes Shalaigh Murray of the Washington Post, " Democrats had little time to savor their weekend Senate health-care victory, as two of the lawmakers who voted to move the debate forward Saturday night indicated Sunday that they will not vote to pass the package if it includes a government-run insurance program."

"Despite the success in the test vote, the fragile consensus in the Democratic caucus will face its greatest test yet as the health-care debate moves to the Senate floor and Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) struggles to stave off internal schisms. The cracks in the 60-member caucus are most obvious over the public insurance option.

"One member of the Democratic caucus, independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), reiterated Sunday that he will oppose any bill that contains a public option. Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," he called such a government-run plan 'radical.'

"Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), another centrist who supported the move to continue debate but has made it clear he has many objections to the legislation as currently written, restated his opposition to a public plan. 'I don't want a big-government, Washington-run operation that undermines the private insurance that 200 million Americans now have,' he said on ABC's 'This Week.'"

Read full post…

Michigan Sen. Carl Levin (right), a Democrat and the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is arguing that wealthy taxpayers should perhaps shoulder the cost of sending additional troops in Afghanistan.

In an interview for Bloomberg Television's "Political Capital With Al Hunt," the senator suggests funding additional troops with an "additional income tax to the upper brackets, folks earning more than $200,000 or $250,000."

"They have done incredibly well, and I think that it's important that we pay for it if we possibly can," Levin said, according to Bloomberg. He also called for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to provide half of the new soldiers sent to Afghanistan.

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag has put the cost of each additional troop at $1 million.

Read full post…

President Obama told CBS News' Chip Reid that anyone in his administration caught leaking information about the Afghanistan troop decision would be fired. But transparency only goes so far.

Releasing information that transpired among senior staff in the high-security Situation Room in the basement of the White House about how to conduct or wind down the war in Afghanistan is not appropriate, the president said.

Other presidents, such as Mr. Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, have made similar threats. Mr. Bush said he would fire anyone who leaked Valerie Plame's name to the press. Scooter Libby, chief of staff for former Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted and convicted on charges of obstruction and perjury related to the leak, but he quit before anyone could fire him. Libby was sentenced to a 30-month prison terms and fined $250,000. But Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence.

Read full post…