WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama shared Washington’s high-society spotlight on Saturday night with an unlikely co-star — Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
 
Wearing a black satin evening gown, Palin was spotted by journalists making her way into the ballroom at the Capitol Hilton for the Alfalfa Dinner, an annual closed-door roast of the city’s political and business elite.
 
Following in the footsteps of White House predecessors, Obama served as headline speaker at the light-hearted black-tie affair, which in accordance with a 96-year tradition bars reporters.
 
So it was not known whether the president had any choice words from the podium for Palin, who as Republican vice presidential nominee in the 2008 election rarely missed a chance to lash into Obama.
 
But, according to a few of Obama’s joke excerpts released by the White House, he had a few zingers for his hard-driving chief of state, Rahm Emanuel, who has a reputation for sometimes harsh language.
 
“It was actually Rahm’s idea to do the swearing-in ceremony again,” he said. “Of course, for Rahm, every day is a swearing-in ceremony.”
 
“Rahm Emanuel is a real sweetheart,” Obama added. “Every week the guy takes a little time away to give back to the community. Just last week he was at a local school, teaching profanity to poor children.”
 
Of his battle to guard part of his pre-White House lifestyle after his Jan. 20 inauguration, he said, “In just the first few weeks, I’ve had to engage in some of the toughest diplomacy of my life. And that was just to keep my Blackberry.”
 
And Obama, the first black U.S. president, also poked fun at the Alfalfa Club’s founding in 1913 by a group of Southern gentlemen.
 
“Many you are aware that this dinner began almost one hundred years ago as a way to celebrate the birthday of General Robert E. Lee. If he were here with us tonight, the general would be 202 years old. And very confused,” Obama said.

Photo credit: Reuters/Tami Chappell (Palin at a campaign rally for Senator Saxby Chambliss)

WASHINGTON - As a veteran Democratic senator, Joe Biden was an opinionated guy. As vice president, he is still an opinionated guy.
 
Which leads us to our latest installment of “Biden watch,” in which the vice president says he likes the idea of including a “Buy American” provision in the economic stimulus plan. Some lawmakers see the provision as steering U.S. trade policy into protectionist territory.
 
Not Biden.
 
“I don’t view that as some of the pure free traders view it, as a harbinger of protectionism. I don’t buy that at all. So I think it’s legitimate to have some portions of ‘Buy American’ in it,” Biden told CNBC on Thursday.
 
The House of Representatives approved the measure this week as part of an $825 billion bill to revive the U.S. economy. In the House version of the bill, the “Buy American” measure would require all public works projects funded by the stimulus package to use only U.S.-made iron and steel.
 
At the White House on Friday, spokesman Robert Gibbs was asked about the buy American provision and had a wait-and-see answer. Senate debate on the stimulus bill starts next week.
 
Gibbs said the Obama administration was examining the measure to see whether it violates U.S. trade obligations.
 
 ”The administration will review that particular provision and will make a determination of it … . It understands all of the concerns,” Gibbs said.

For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Biden and Obama in the East Room of the White House on Jan. 30)

President Barack Obama is mobilizing his grassroots supporters to help build support for his $825 billion economic stimulus package.

In an e-mail sent out Friday, former Obama campaign worker Mitch Stewart urged the campaign’s most ardent activists to host house parties on Feb. 6 to build support for the plan, which must still clear the Senate after passing the House on a sharply partisan vote on Wednesday.

“The economic crisis can seem overwhelming and complex, but you can help the people you know connect the recovery plan to their lives and learn more about why it’s important,” Stewart said.

It will be a first test for the new organization, Organizing for America, that was built to capture the momentum from Obama’s record-setting presidential campaign to help him enact his policies now that he’s president.

The new group, housed in the offices of the Democratic National Committee, retains Obama’s database of 13 million campaign supporters and has enlisted Stewart and several other campaign veterans to oversee it.

Stewart’s message suggests that the group will take a soft touch, at least initially, by seeking to build support at the grassroots level rather than getting members to lobby lawmakers directly.

Stewart sent the message to those who have already hosted Obama house parties. The organization said 4,200 members hosted house parties in December – how many will heed the call next week?

For more Reuters political news, click here.

WASHINGTON - Vice President Joe Biden promised a “fully transparent” task force to help the middle class. So why is the audience laughing?

Biden is leading a task force to look at how to improve economic realities for working families. And it will have its own Web site astrongmiddleclass.gov as the Obama administration presses on with its goal to use the Internet to communicate with the public.

“This task force, I might add — which, coming out of the vice president’s office, will be a bit unique — will be fully transparent, totally transparent,” Biden said.

And the audience laughed.

“We are going to consult openly — openly and publicly with outside groups who can help us develop the most far-reaching and imaginative solutions to help us solve these problems and create the outcome we’re looking for,” Biden said. 

“And we’ll put all the material from our meetings and any report we produc`e up on the Web site.  None of this will happen behind closed doors.  We want the American people engaged.  We want them engaged from the outset,” he said.

Well…

All this talk about openness and transparency and no closed doors by the new vice president sounds a lot like a not so veiled dig at his predecessor, Dick Cheney, whom critics considered overly secretive.

The former vice president went to the Supreme Court to block adversaries from getting documents from an energy task force he headed.

And remember the undisclosed location?

For more Reuters political news, click here

Photo credit: Reuters/Molly Riley (Biden and Cheney at vice president’s residence)

WASHINGTON - Republicans in the House of Representatives say they appreciate Democratic President Barack Obama’s efforts to win their support for the economic stimulus bill, which is now approaching $900 billion. But they have made it clear that the partisan divide remains extremely hard to bridge.

“He’s sincere. I think he’s passionate,” Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, said on Thursday at a retreat for House Republicans at the Homestead resort in Hot Springs, Virginia.

“When he spoke to House Republicans, it was clear to me his sincerity and passion about the level of debt,” he said. “Clearly, we disagree on the economic stimulus effect of the government spending.”

Obama met with the House Republicans on Tuesday but failed to win a single vote from them on House passage of the stimulus plan the next day. With the fight over the legislation now focused on the Senate, Republicans have insisted on a greater emphasis on tax cuts and less on federal spending to reverse the deepening recession.

The House Republican plan includes cutting the lowest income tax rates, expanding tax breaks and incentives to small businesses and eliminating most of the spending House Democrats have put forward.

“It seems to me it’s more either  ideological, or it’s just power politics in Congress and spending money on pent-up constituencies that haven’t had a ton of spending for a long time,” said Representative Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican.

Ryan, who is the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, said that while a bipartisan deal on the stimulus package is probably elusive, Obama “did a good job of laying the groundwork for the future collaboration on other projects by coming to us.”

For more Reuters political news, please click here.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (House and Senate Republican leaders speak to reporters after meeting Obama at the White House.)

WASHINGTON - Lots of spinning going on.

Morning TV shows had footage of a spinning shark twirling out of the water and a spinning small plane blown about by the wind upon landing. And sports fans looking forward to the spinning football at Sunday’s Super Bowl.

NBC touting a live interview with President Barack Obama at about 5 p.m. EST before kick-off on Sunday.

Obama saying Wall Street taking bonuses while firms are being bailed out by taxpayer money is “the height of irresponsibility” and “shameful” is still making the rounds.

The U.S. economy contracted 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter, which was actually a smaller decline than the consensus expectation by economists for a 5.4 percent slip.

So is the GDP decline, the largest since the first quarter in 1982 — that’s almost 27 years — actually good news? Only the markets know.

Meanwhile, backat the White House, Obama expected to deliver remarks on a Middle Class Working Families Task Force and sign related executive orders later this morning.

Click here for more Reuters political coverage

Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama when presidential nominee holds up Pittsburgh Steelers football jersey)

WASHINGTON - Republican critics of the Democratic-backed landmark stimulus package are pointing out that its 800-billion-dollar-plus price tag would — “in one fell swoop,” as Republican Representative Todd Akin put it — consume more resources than have been laid out for two wars, so far.

The Pentagon says the United States has committed $524.6 billion to the nearly six-year-old conflict in Iraq and $120.9 billion to the fighting in Afghanistan since 2001.

“I almost have to pinch myself, gentlemen, to think that just standing here a couple of hours ago, we just voted to spend $800 billion, more than the cost of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the Republican Akin declared Wednesday after the House of Representatives passed the stimulus without a single Republican vote in favor.

“Can our economy handle that?” he asked.

For years, Democratic opponents of the war in Iraq have questioned its cost and the fact that the 2003 invasion under the Republican Bush administration and the occupation that followed were done on borrowed money, adding to U.S. debt that ultimately must be paid by taxpayers.

Now Republicans, who largely supported the Iraq war, are trying to turn the tables on their Democratic critics and ask whether it is wise to borrow as much cash again all at once, taking on even more interest costs. “I know the Bush administration was savaged for the money that’s spent on the war in Iraq,” Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican, said this week.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, dismissed Republican criticism that the package was too big, saying he had also consulted with Republicans who said “the package was too small” to get the economy moving again.

But Sessions said: “We’re talking about the largest spending bill in the history of the republic.” He cited Congressional Budget Office estimates that the  stimulus could cost $347 billion in interest on the national debt over the next decade, if none of its costs are offset.

Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing(House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer speaks next to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about the economic stimulus package on Capitol Hill in Washington on January 28.

For more Reuters political news, click here.

WASHINGTON - Trying to figure out where the Obama team is going on the economy? It probably helps to be a stool maker.
 
The $825 billion stimulus bill moving through Congress “is just one leg in a multi-legged stool,” the president said during a visit to Congress this week.
 
Reporters have been trying ever since to figure out exactly how many legs are on the economic recovery stool.
 
“Is it a three-legged or a four-legged stool?” one reporter asked White House spokesman Robert Gibbs during a briefing Thursday. And, “What are those legs specifically?”
 
“I think roughly you have, whether you’re talking about stools or pillars or what have you, three main areas,” Gibbs said. “You have a Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, which is moving through Congress. You have a financial stability package. And you have financial re-regulation.”
 
“I don’t know that it’s tremendously pertinent to get caught up in whether there are three stools, three legs on this stool or four, or rungs, or what have you,” he said.
 
“I think the American people understand that we have to deal with … each of these in order to move the economy forward.”
 
Then Gibbs added a complication: ”I’m not sure … which leg housing is.”
 
But he sought to reassure the American people.
 
“You may not understand which leg of the stool you’re on, but you understand it’s a problem that has to be dealt with.”
 
What about the “international leg of the stool that was discussed by the G20 here … people say that it’s not moving anywhere,” asked a reporter, referring to a group of industrialized and major developing nations.
 
Gibbs said more detail on the international leg would be forthcoming as the G20 meeting in London in April draws near.
 
Reporters were not entirely satisfied with the level of detail coming from the White House spokesman.
 
“I’m wondering,” said one, “when you’re going to show us a little more leg.”
 
For more Reuters political news, please click here.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Gibbs at a briefing Tuesday)

The newest sports fan at the White House isn’t afraid to pick sides in Sunday’s Super Bowl. And like many Americans, he’s having a few people over to watch the big game.

President Barack Obama says he’ll be rooting for the PIttsburgh Steelers to win, although he joked that Kurt Warner – the 37-year-old quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals and a former Super Bowl MVP — was closer to his age than anybody else who’ll be playing on the field.

“I wish the best to the Cardinals. They’ve been long-suffering; it’s a great Cinderella story,” Obama said of the Cardinals, who peaked in the post-season and stunned many by making it to their first Super Bowl.

“But other than the Bears, the Steelers are probably the team that’s closest to my heart.”

Also turns out the Steelers owners and coach were big Obama supporters during the long presidential campaign. Sorry, Arizona.

For more Reuters political news, click here.

- Photo credits: Reuters/Hans Deryk (Warner throws during practice in Tampa on Jan 28)

First lady Michelle Obama took a turn in the spotlight Thursday, hosting a reception for a woman whose treatment at Goodyear prompted Congress to change the law on pay discrimination. 
 
It was one of the highest-profile public events for the first lady since the inauguration last week. And it was on behalf of a woman — Lilly Ledbetter — who got to know the first couple well during the presidential campaign.
 
President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act into law in the East Room of the White House flanked by a small crowd of lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
 
“This is what change looks like,” Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland joked to the audience as the lawmakers crowded around the document Obama was to sign.
 
The first lady later spoke about Ledbetter at a reception in the State Dining Room as guests sipped orange juice and cranberry juice and munched cherry orange scones, apple muffins and other pastries.
 
“She is one of my favorite people in the whole wide world,” Michelle Obama said. 
 
“She knew unfairness when she saw it and was willing to do something about it because it was the right thing to do, plain and simple.”
 
Ledbetter discovered after 19 years on the job at Goodyear Tire & Rubber that she was the lowest-paid supervisor at her plant despite having more experience than some male co-workers.
 
A jury found she was the victim of discrimination. But the Supreme Court reversed the decision two years ago, saying discrimination claims must be filed within 180 days of the first offense.
 
“I will never see a cent from my case,” Ledbetter said. “But with the passage (of the bill) and president’s signature today, I have an even richer reward. I know that my daughters and granddaughters and your daughters and your granddaughters will have a better deal.” 
 
For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Michelle Obama greets guest); Reuters/Jim Bourg (Obama hands pen to Ledbetter after signing bill)