Politics Today: Waiting Out Afghanistan Election Aftermath
Politics Today is CBSNews.com's inside look at the key stories driving the day in politics, written by CBS News Political Director Steve Chaggaris:
** Getting everyone on board for health care reform...
** Looking for a strong government partner in Afghanistan...
** Obama and Biden make cameos in the New Jersey governor race...
5356466HEALTH CARE: President Obama continues his closed one-on-one chats with moderate Senate Democrats today as he meets with Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., presumably to discuss the ongoing negotiations over health care reform, which the Senate continues work on this week.
"The White House is waiting for Congress to settle on a final health care bill, even though President Barack Obama has a clear preference in favor of at least one specific — the much-debated public option, advisers said," reports the Associated Press' Steven R. Hurst.
"Obama, however, will not demand that legislation include a government-run insurance plan intended to drive down costs through competition with private insurers, they said.
"Instead, the White House will let Congress work out the details required to get something passed.
"'There will be compromise. There will be legislation, and it will achieve our goals: helping people who have insurance get more security, more accountability for the insurance industry, helping people who don't have insurance get insurance they can afford, and lowering the overall cost of the system,' presidential adviser David Axelrod said."
"The health-care battle will be tested this week in the Senate, as Democrats push a bill that would set aside nearly $250 billion over the next decade for higher Medicare payments to physicians," adds the Washington Post's Ceci Connolly. The reimbursement rates are scheduled for automatic reductions. But each year, Congress overrides the formula, which would trim fees by 21 percent in 2010.
"Fixing the payment gap is of enormous concern to the American Medical Association, but lawmakers have yet to find the money to pay for it.
"Obama and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) kept the provision out of health-care reform legislation, saying it is something Congress would do regardless of broader reform. But Republicans and some Democratic deficit hawks object.
"'This is so transparent,' said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). 'They're taking this issue out of health care, suggesting that we spend a quarter of a trillion dollars, not pay for it, so that they can then argue, the very next week potentially, that this trillion-dollar health-care bill is paid for.'"
"The spread of insurance would help drug makers, pharmacies and hospitals. All of them sometimes have to give away their services -- or lose business altogether -- because their customers don't have a way to pay under the current system.
"Insurance companies would get more customers, too, but not necessarily the ones they want. The Finance bill bars insurers from rejecting people because of pre-existing illness. And the committee weakened the requirement that all Americans carry coverage. Insurers also face the heaviest new taxes under the bill."
Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown, "Analysts to Democrats: Aim pitch at women": " With health reform still struggling among voters, analysts say Democrats are missing the chance to win over one key group — women — despite dramatic proposals to transform the way insurers treat them.
"All of the bills in Congress add strong new protections for women's health, but President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats rarely talk about them.
"Maternity care would be guaranteed. Insurance companies could no longer charge higher premiums for women than men. And insurers now allowed to label a Cesarean section or even domestic violence a pre-existing condition to deny coverage would be barred from the practice.
"But proponents of health reform say women don't know what's in it in for them — and question why Democrats have been slow to target women with the same intensity that political campaigns pursue this key swing group."
New York Times' Carl Hulse and Robert Pear, "Health Care Poses Stiff Tests for Top Democrats": "While they may have different styles and different sets of Democrats to assemble behind separate proposals, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid have an identical goal: passage this year of a major health care overhaul.
"Achieving that end and enacting a top priority of President Obama will present perhaps the stiffest test yet of the skills of the two Congressional leaders. How they perform could influence not only the political fate of their own colleagues, but the standing of the administration as well.
"No one expects it to be easy."
Washington Post's Lori Montgomery, "In health debate, those numbers are just numbers: The CBO's price tags are educated guesses, but guesses nonetheless"
"As an audit of Afghanistan's Aug. 20 election ground toward a conclusion, American officials pressed President Hamid Karzai to accept a runoff vote or share power with his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister. Although Mr. Karzai's support appeared likely to fall below 50 percent in the final count, together he and Mr. Abdullah received 70 percent, in theory enough to forge a unity government with national credibility."
"Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts held a prolonged meeting last night with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and urged him to agree to a runoff vote or take other steps to end the postelection crisis that has gripped the Afghan government for the past two months," writes the Boston Globe's Farah Stockman.
"Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, has played a mediating role since he arrived in Kabul on Friday. He met with opposition candidate Abdullah Abdullah and had a meeting and two meals with Karzai, delaying his flight to Pakistan yesterday until well past midnight because their talks lasted longer than expected, aides said.
"But it was unclear last night whether Kerry was able to persuade the Afghan leader to accept the results of an election complaints investigation, which called for a runoff election between Karzai and Abdullah, his top challenger."
""I don't see how President Obama can make a decision about the committing of our additional forces or even the further fulfillment of our mission that's here today without an adequate government in place or knowledge about what that government's going to be,' Kerry told John Dickerson, host of CBSNews.com's '"Washington Unplugged,' during the senator's visit to Afghanistan's capital.
"Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top military commander in Afghanistan, has requested Mr. Obama send more troops to the country. Kerry spoke with McChrystal during his visit. The senator said winning the war in Afghanistan will rely on more than just sending more soldiers there.
"'Counting the numbers of troops is not going to define our success here,' Kerry told Dickerson. 'There is no military success ultimately to Afghanistan. The Afghans themselves are going to define what happens here and we have to convince ourselves that we have a strategy in place that empowers them to do that and that is realistic in what our expectations are from them and on what schedule.'"
"'It's not a matter of delay; the review will continue,' Rahm Emanuel said on CBS' 'Face the Nation' ... 'The review will continue the next week and the following week.
"'What I think Senator Kerry was pointing to, which is absolutely correct - which is the essential part of the strategy or a key component or a leg on the stool - is an Afghan partner that is ready to take control of both the security situation in Afghanistan [and] the civilian side of that.'"
The Los Angeles Times' Peter Nicholas and Laura King add, "A U.N.-backed commission's audit of the vote has been essentially completed, according to officials familiar with the recount process. But a separate Afghan-appointed election panel is disputing the methodology. Public disclosure of the results has been repeatedly delayed.
"Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Sunday that the disputed election should not be an excuse for the White House to drag out its review.
"'At some point, deliberation begins to look more like indecisiveness which then becomes a way of emboldening our enemies and allies and causing our allies to question our resolve,' he said on 'Face the Nation.'"
"The delay, though, reflects deep uncertainty inside the White House about the prospects of waging a successful war without a partner in Kabul with widespread legitimacy among the Afghan people," adds the NY Times' Baker and Tavernise. "A delay could also provide some political space at home for Mr. Obama, whose efforts to pass health care legislation are reaching a climactic moment in Congress, although the White House has denied any relationship between the two issues.
"The election in Afghanistan was so badly marred by allegations of fraud that they helped prompt Mr. Obama to rethink the strategy he unveiled just in March, officials have said. Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., among others at the White House, had already soured on Mr. Karzai, whose government and family are accused of corruption and ties to drug dealing. The election reinforced those doubts, officials said."
"'It shows the commitment from the White House, and the belief that the momentum is with us, and we're going to win this election,' Democratic State Committee Chairman Joseph Cryan said. 'Bringing these guys in sends a message. They're not here if there's not a path to victory.'"
Politics Daily's Walter Shapiro adds, "With Democrat Creigh Deeds falling increasingly behind in the open-seat Virginia governor's race, Corzine has become the Obama team's best hope for post-election bragging rights. (Governor's races in odd-numbered years have shown little predictive power for future elections, but a double Democratic wipeout in New Jersey and Virginia would inevitably create a high-decibel 'Obama in trouble' chorus). In short, the better Corzine is doing, the more eager the White House is to lend its full prestige to guarantee victory.
"Six weeks ago, it was Corzine who needed help, even though (thanks to his nine-digit personal wealth) he was always going to outspend his Republican challenger by a margin of about four-to-one. With the state unemployment rate pushing 10 percent and property taxes turning homeowners in leafy suburbs into pitch-fork wielding militants, Corzine looked like the successor to Democratic Gov. Jim Florio, who lost his 1993 reelection bid over taxes. Republican Chris Christie, a former federal prosecutor, led in every published poll (sometimes by double-digit margins) from the time he won the GOP nomination in early June until two weeks ago. The polls have been knotted since then, as the lead bounces around from survey to survey, with all the results falling within the margin of error.
Corzine (whose unfavorable ratings have been over 50 percent in every Quinnipiac University poll since July) has fought his way back to even footing the old-fashioned way – by making Christie almost as unpopular as he is."
Meantime, with President Obama set to campaign for Virginia's Deeds next week, the Richmond Times-Dispatch's Andrew Cain writes, "Deeds fights to hold Obama's Va. coalition": "On Oct. 27, Obama returns to Virginia a week before Election Day, hoping to light a fire under the voters who helped him become the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state in 44 years.
"That appearance, at a site yet to be determined, comes as Deeds struggles to hold together the coalition of blacks, young voters, women and independents that helped sweep Obama to his historic Virginia victory.
"At Virginia Commonwealth University, 20-year-old Andrea Elkovich said there is a stark difference from last fall, when the presidential election was the buzz on campus.
"'For the governor's election, literally no one has been discussing it,' said Elkovich, a biomedical engineering major from Chesterfield County. Elkovich, who backed Obama, plans to cast an absentee ballot for Deeds. But she adds: 'I don't even know if any of my friends are voting in it, to be honest.'"
5202455ADMINSTRATION AND WALL STREET: "Top Obama administration officials sharply criticized Wall Street firms planning to pay big bonuses, pointedly contrasting the soaring profits some financial companies have recorded in recent days with continuing high jobless rates across the country," report the Washington Post's Michael A. Fletcher and Zachary A. Goldfarb.
"The firms are benefiting from government efforts, some initiated by the Obama administration, to stabilize and restore confidence to the capital markets after a global financial crisis that began last year. With their fortunes rebounding, the Wall Street firms plan to pay tens of billions of dollars to executives.
"'The bonuses are offensive,' Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said Sunday on ABC's 'This Week,' adding that banks must do more to support lending across the country and should stop their lobbying efforts aimed at blocking the passage of new financial regulations that are being prepared in Congress.
"'They ought to think through what they are doing, and they ought to understand that a year ago a lot of these institutions were teetering on the brink, and the United States government and taxpayers came to their defense,' Axelrod said. 'They have responsibilities, and they ought to meet those responsibilities.'"
In contrast to the Post, the Wall Street Journal's John D. McKinnon and Naftali Bendavid write, "Criticism of Wall Street Pay More Muted This Time": "Administration officials on Sunday criticized Wall Street banks over their high compensation packages and their lobbying against plans to tighten financial regulations. But the administration's tone appeared muted compared with attacks made earlier in this year, as Democrats -- with an eye toward the 2010 midterm elections -- seek to put a positive spin on recent economic developments. ...
"The rhetoric was more heated in March, when the administration joined in the outrage in Washington over $165 million in bonuses to AIG executives. And the stimulus bill signed into law in February had a provision that limited bonus payments to no more than one-third of annual compensation at banks and other firms that have received federal bailout funds."
Politico's Victoria McGrane, "Chris Dodd, Richard Shelby lead unified finance reform": " Although a Senate reform bill has yet to emerge, extensive interviews by POLITICO found that the marquee players who will emerge in both the Senate and the House during this fall's debate on regulatory reform have been negotiating and hashing out ideas for months.
"It's a process that is notably different from the partisan path of health care reform. It's also distinct in that the White House has led, rather than lagged behind, the legislative writing process. Rep. Barney Frank, Dodd and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, for instance, put their heads together from time to time, as they did Sept. 22 in Dodd's Senate hideaway office.
"The behind-the-scenes coordination could significantly improve the chance of reform's passing by year's end and delivering to President Barack Obama the first real bipartisan victory of his term."
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