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.

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As part of a protest next Saturday, the "TEA Party Patriots" of Danville, Virginia had been planning to burn in effigy House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a local freshman Democratic congressman, Rep. Tom Perriello.

But on Friday, as the Lynchburg News Advance reports, word got out about the plan, prompting bloggers and a national news organization to pick up the story.

Now the group is reconsidering the burning in light of the media coverage, which the group's chairman, Nigel Coleman, deemed "kinda strange."

"We've been getting a lot of flack about this," Coleman told the News Advance, adding that "a lot of people in the public are unhappy about" the plan to burn the two politicians in effigy.

Here's some background from the newspaper:

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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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The government-run health insurance plan, or "public option," crafted by House Democrats would typically have higher premiums than comparable private insurance plans, according to a new budget estimate. Yet even though the public plan is weaker than liberals initially hoped -- thereby making it more expensive -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview with Politico Thursday that she does not want liberals to attempt to make it more "robust."

The analysis (PDF) submitted yesterday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office bucks the liberal argument that a public plan would be cheaper for consumers than private insurance. While its administrative costs would be lower, the CBO reported, other factors would offset that.

A significant factor for the higher premiums would be the fact that House Democrats included in the legislation unveiled Thursday a public option that would negotiate its payment rates with medical providers. Liberals like Pelosi were inclined to include a public option that tied its payment rates to Medicare -- this would have made it cheaper, but moderate Democrats from rural areas complained that doctors and medical providers in their regions would not be paid enough.

If the government were to set up a national health insurance exchange -- or "marketplace" of insurance plans for small businesses and individuals -- about 30 million Americans would enroll in plans through it, the CBO estimates. Of those, about 6 million would choose to enroll in the public option.

"That estimate of enrollment reflects CBO's assessment that a public plan paying negotiated rates would attract a broad network of providers but would typically have premiums that are somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plans in the exchanges," the CBO wrote in its analysis. "The rates the public plan pays to providers would, on average, probably be comparable to the rates paid by private insurers participating in the exchanges. The public plan would have lower administrative costs than those private plans but would probably engage in less management of utilization by its enrollees and attract a less healthy pool of enrollees. (The effects of that 'adverse selection' on the public plan's premiums would be only partially offset by the 'risk adjustment' procedures that would apply to all plans operating in the exchanges.)."

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Updated at 5:35 p.m. ET.

Leaders in the House of Representatives on Thursday morning will unveil the health care bill they will bring to the floor, CBS News Capitol Hill Producer Jill Jackson reports.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders met this afternoon to finalize plans for the government-run health care plan, or "public option," and to address other outstanding issues. Yesterday, Pelosi started referring to the public option as the "consumer option."

Based on conversations with lawmakers and aides, Jackson reports, the public option will most likely negotiate its payment rates with doctors and medical providers, putting it on a level playing field with private insurers. The House health care bill is also expected to expand Medicaid to people at 150 percent of the poverty line, with federal financial assistance for states to pay for the expansion.

Lawmakers are also expected to include a surtax on on individuals with an income over $500,000 and families making more than $1 million. The bill is also expected to include a fee on medical devices that could bring in $20 billion. The surtax will be a flat 5.4 percent, rather than a scaled taxed as previously considered. According to a Democratic aide, the tax is expected to hit .3 percent of households, Jackson reports.

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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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Randall Terry, the anti-abortion rights activist and Operation Rescue founder, believes it's time to "start drawing from our proud American tradition of burning people in effigy."

And he's starting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Terry wants like-minded individuals to burn effigies of the two Congressional Democratic leaders on Halloween to protest health care legislation that he suggests will make Americans pay for "child killing."

"No, this is not a threat to their body," a man (not Terry) says in an introductory video, which you can see here. "But it is a threat to their soul." (Above is a shorter preview video featuring the same man.)

In the introductory video, people are told to order a large printout of Reid and Pelosi from a local office supply store, along with images of a devil, and purchase cardboard to tape or paste them to. They are also instructed to call local media to publicize the protest and check local ordinances about open flames.

A woman is then shown pouring lighter fluid onto the cutouts of Reid and Pelosi, along with the devil images, and setting them on fire.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is still supporting a government health insurance plan, or "public option," tied to Medicare rates, but there is more room for flexibility, she told reporters today.

Following a report from Politico that Pelosi had determined that a "robust" public option could not pass in the House, Democratic leadership called a meeting of the entire caucus to count exactly how many supporters the plan had. The results showed that they are inching closer to getting 218 votes for the so-called "robust" plan, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) said Friday.

Woolsey said many Democrats were not at the meeting and that a big group of Democrats are still undecided about the "robust" plan, which would pay medical providers the same rates as Medicare plus an additional 5 percent. Some Democrats are concerned that a public option tied to Medicare would not pay doctors in rural areas enough, since Medicare rates in those areas are below average. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) said they are in no rush to get to 218.

Pelosi continues to support that version of the public option, she said Friday at a press conference, though developments in the Senate have given the House more flexibility. The House health care bill will include a public option, the speaker said, but it may be a weaker version, such as one that would require the government to negotiate medical provider payment rates, to put it on competitive grounds with private industry.

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As leaders in the Senate and the House prepare to present a single health care bill in each chamber, they are not only considering whether or not to include a government-sponsored health insurance plan, or "public option" -- but also what kind of public option.

There are a variety of ways Congress could structure a public option -- and the small differences could have tremendous consequences. The form the public option takes could, for example, impact the payment rates doctors receive for their services, whether doctors in different regions of the country end up getting different rates, how much money the government could save by using the plan, or how many people sign up for it.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has insisted the House health care bill will include a public option, and Thursday she said the House is sending three different public option proposals to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to assess their financial impact. The three plans vary in the way medical provider reimbursement rates are handled.

The three options are:

1. A "robust" public option, favored by progressives and Pelosi: Medical providers would be reimbursed at Medicare rates, plus 5 percent.

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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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