A Republican-controlled Congress could be a real possibility for the second half of President Barack Obama’s four-year term, according to the latest Gallup poll.

The poll of 894 registered voters suggests Republicans would win the U.S. House of Representatives by 48 percent to 44 percent if the 2010 congressional election were held today.

The Republican lead is well within the poll’s 4 percentage point margin of error. But the results indicate that Republicans might have some momentum after gaining steadily on Democrats since July.

People who participated in the survey were asked only about their local House districts, so the results mean little for that other congressional chamber, the U.S. Senate.

It’s way too early to gauge the outcome of a congressional election that won’t be held until November 2010. The primaries that choose the parties’ respective candidates don’t even begin until early next year. And as Gallup points out, the poll measures only voter preference, not likely voter turnout. 

But a revival of Republican popularity could spell trouble for Obama, given that the GOP appeared to gain ground as the president’s main domestic priorities — healthcare and climate change reforms — gained public attention.  Meanwhile, Democrats slipped 6 percentage points overall and plunged 12 points among independent voters. 

Republicans would be in a very strong position to shut down much of Obama’s agenda if they won control of the House for 2011 and 2012. A Republican House would also pose a greater challenge for a 2012 Obama reelection campaign.

Tangible risks for Obama’s agenda could also lie closer at hand, if the whiff of electoral defeat encouraged enough Democrats today to avoid White House initiatives that might have political consequences tomorrow.

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Photo Credits: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (U.S. Capitol); Reuters/Jason Reed (House Republican leader John Boehner); Reuters/Jim Young (Obama)

Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs are two guys who think President Barack Obama better embrace new structural reforms if he wants a growing economy that isn’t hard-wired to go bust.

Dodd, a Democrat fighting for his political life at home, proposed sweeping regulatory legislation this week that would curb the Federal Reserve’s bank oversight powers, strengthen consumer protection and keep a sharp eye out for systemic problems like housing or stock market bubbles.

The 1,136-page measure reflects Obama’s policies in some ways — for example, it supports the White House call for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency — but it also charts new regulatory waters.

“What we have (now) is a hodgepodge that has grown over the last 80 years, some of it dating to the 19th century and early 20th century regulatory structures,” Dodd told MSNBC.

“These agencies basically have provided a forum for financial institutions that look for a weak charter, in a sense. They shop around and get it. So we need to eliminate or change that fundamentally.”

“I think you’re really on the right track,” Sachs told Dodd in the same broadcast.

But Sachs, who became famous for his economic work in the developing world, thinks Obama should adopt much broader structural change and says current White House policy is akin to using a morning-after drink as a hangover remedy.

“The Obama administration’s stimulus policies are not well targeted. The Republican alternatives are even worse. Both sides are missing the key fact: the U.S. economy needs structural change,” Sachs writes in an op-ed column in today’s Financial Times.

Sachs, who now focuses on sustainable development as director of Columbia’s Earth Institute, says the president is bent on restoring American consumer spending.

Instead, he says, the United States needs dollar depreciation, greater support for exports, a massive expansion in education spending and a robust conversion to a low-carbon economy.

“Move now, Mr. President,” Sachs says in the FT, “or we will spend our time digging out of the next consumer bust and buying our technology from China.”

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Photo Credits: Reuters/Jim Young (Dodd); Reuters/Reuters Photographer (Sachs)

President Barack Obama had a message for his political friends and foes on Monday — “just because I’m skinny doesn’t mean I’m not tough.”

After weeks in which he has been angrily criticized by some on the right, to the point of creating a poster image of him with a Hitler mustache, Obama told a Democratic fund-raising event in Miami that some of his supporters have been expressing concern to him.

“I’ve tried to explain … just because I’m skinny doesn’t mean I’m not tough. I don’t rattle. I’m not going to shrink back, because now is the time for us to continue to push and follow through on those things that we know have to be done but have not been done in decades,” he said.

Obama was in Miami raising $1.5 million for Democratic congressional candidates for the 2010 elections, in which Democrats are seeking to hold onto their strong majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

And he had tough words for those Republican critics who he says are not helping solve some of the problems that festered when they were in control of the White House and Congress.

“Lately I feel like somebody made a big mess and I’ve got my mop and I’m mopping the floor and the folks who made the mess are there (saying) ‘you’re not mopping fast enough. You’re not mopping the right way. It’s a socialist mop.’”

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Photo credit:Reuters/Jim Young (Obama at Democratic congressional candidates fundraiser in Miami)

Americans are still sharply divided over President Barack Obama’s vision of healthcare overhaul, but they’re starting to come around  — again –  on the so-called public option, so says a new Washington Post/ABC News poll published on Monday.

Fifty-seven percent of all Americans now favor a government-run insurance plan that would compete with private insurers while 40 percent are opposed, according to the poll.

That’s up from 52 percent support in mid-August, but still down from 62 percent in June.

What’s happened since the congressional summer recess  when anger over the prospect of a public option  heated town hall meetings across the country?

The public option (a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers) is still favored by Obama and liberal Democrats as a way to increase competition and cut rising costs.

There’s still plenty of opposition from Republicans and other critics who argue that a public option  would be a government takeover and could drive private insurance companies out of business.

In the Senate,  lawmakers are trying to craft a single healthcare bill out of two separate proposals — one with the public option and one without. All three pending House bills include a public option.

Some numbers from the Washington Post/ABC poll:
- 57 percent of Americans now favor a public insurance option, 40 percent are opposed
- 56 percent favor a provision mandating all Americans to buy insurance
- 45 percent favor the broad outlines of the proposals now moving in Congress, 48 percent are opposed
-  seven in 10 Democrats back the plan,  almost nine in 10 Republicans oppose it
- 52 percent of Independents are against proposed reforms, 42 percent are in favor

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Photo credit: Reuters/Hyungwon Kang; Reuters/Jonathan Ernst  ( Pharmacist Sonya Safaie at work in Great Falls, Virginia; /Copy of House healthcare bill HR 3200 )

President Barack Obama started his day by learning he had won the Nobel Peace Prize,  but that didn’t stop him from quickly turning downright prickly.

After a meeting with Americans who had been ripped off by the financial system, Obama on Friday said big banks and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce were trying to block some of his efforts at financial regulatory reform.

They specifically want to torpedo his plan for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, he said. Legislation creating the agency is now working its way through Congress.

The proposed agency would help ordinary people who borrow money for homes or other purposes, he told an East Room gathering at the White House.

It would get rid of those “ridiculously confusing contracts” that govern everything from credit cards to home mortgages.

“A lot of the banks and big financial firms don’t like the idea of a consumer agency very much,” Obama said. “In fact, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is spending millions on an ad campaign to kill it.”

It was the ads that aggravated him.

“You might have seen some of these ads — the ones that claim that local butchers and other small businesses somehow will be harmed by this agency,” he said. “This is, of course, completely false.”

“We’ve made clear that only businesses that offer financial services would be affected by this agency. I don’t know how many of your butchers are offering financial services,” the president added.

He noted the Chamber had spent nearly half a billion dollars to lobby the government over the past decade.

And he said big banks were trying to maximize “their profits at the expense of American consumers, despite the fact that recently a whole bunch of those same American consumers bailed them out as a consequence of the bad decisions that they made.”

The Chamber of Commerce, seeing the attack coming, put out a note in advance saying they completely agree that consumers need protection.

They just don’t think a big new federal agency should be created to provide the protection.

Instead, the Chamber favors leaving consumer protection to the six federal regulators already doing the job. Their powers could be beefed up so they could become even more effective, it said.

And that ad about the local butcher?

The Chamber says a Consumer Financial Protection Agency would have sweeping authority over virtually every business that extends credit to American consumers.

So if the local butcher lets his customers pay him tomorrow for hamburger meat today,  he might be seen as offering financial services and his books could be open to federal scrutiny.

The agency would “have the ability to collect information about his customers’ financial accounts and take away many of their financial choices,” the Chamber’s ad says.

What do you think? Does that ring true?

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama makes remarks on financial regulatory reform Oct. 9 in the East Room of the White House)

The sweeping legislation unveiled in the U.S. Senate today aims to curb climate change, arguably one of the biggest tasks ever undertaken on this planet. But it's a bill that runs to more than 800 pages, and hidden in its folds is a provision that could turn a noted symbol of New York City -- the yellow taxicab -- green.

And it wouldn't just be in New York. Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and other major U.S. cities would be able to create taxi fleets made up entirely of hybrid vehicles under the proposed Green Taxis Act of 2009.

Offered by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who now fills Hillary Clinton's former seat in the Senate, the measure aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 296,000 tons in New York City alone, which its sponsors say would be like taking some 35,000 cars off the road and save drivers $4,500 annually in gas costs.

“By creating an all hybrid taxi fleet, we can improve air quality and lower carbon emissions," Gillibrand said in a statement. "As a mother with an asthmatic child, I believe this is a win-win for our children and our efforts to combat climate change.”

That has to be a good thing, and it's not exactly unheard of. A quick search for "green taxi" turns up nearly 70,000 hits. But will New Yorkers say "Fuhgeddaboutit"? Will the Taxi and Limousine Commission oppose it? WIll preservationists balk at changing what has become a durable talisman of life in the Big Apple? Or will New York residents (and other residents of other cities where this law could apply) embrace their inner environmentalists?

Let the debate begin!

Photo credits: REUTERS/Eric Thayer (Taxis drive past carbon counting sign on Deutsche Bank building in Manhattan, June 18, 2009)

REUTERS/Lucas Jackson (New York City skyline, Sept 2, 2009)

U.S. Representative Barney Frank has never been shy about expressing his opinions. His opening remarks at a hearing he chaired with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Wednesday was no exception. Frank poked fun at a political squabble over healthcare reform as he detailed his position on what to do about non-bank financial firms considered "too big to fail."

    "There will be death panels enacted by this Congress, but they will be for non-bank financial institutions that will not be considered too big to die.
    I say that because we have this euphemism that we are going to be 'resolving' these institutions. It has not been my experience that when someone says they are going to resolve something, they kill it. We are talking about dissolution, not resolution. We are talking about making it unpleasant for the entities. This is not a fate people will want."

Rarely, if ever, have so few words moved so many people to contribute so much money so quickly.

Within 15 hours of Republican Representative Joe Wilson yelling “You lie!” at President Barack Obama, Wilson’s Democratic foe in next year’s election received more than 10,000 donations totaling upward of $350,000, according to the House Democratic campaign committee.

“And the numbers are still rising,” a spokesman said.

Wilson’s Democratic challenger, Rob Miller, an ex-Marine turned small businessman, lost a bid last November to unseat the now five-term congressman from South Carolina, 54 percent to 46 percent.

But Miller has suddenly become increasingly hopeful that he can topple America’s best known presidential heckler in the November 2010 contest.

“Representative Wilson’s behavior tonight exemplifies everything that is wrong in Washington,” Miller said on Wednesday after Wilson’s outburst during Obama’s nationally broadcast address to Congress on healthcare reform.

“Instead of engaging in childish name-calling and disrespecting our Commander-in-Chief, Joe Wilson should be working towards a bipartisan solution that makes quality, affordable health care available to each and every South Carolinian,” Miller said.

Wilson apologized while congressional Democrats as well as fellow Republicans denounced his actions.

At the White House, Obama brushed off the matter. “I’m a big believer in that we all make mistakes,” he said. “He apologized quickly and without equivocation and I’m appreciative of that.”

While Wilson said he was sorry, he still insisted — despite Obama’s statements to the contrary — that illegal immigrants would be able to get health insurance coverage. “I say that respectfully and we need to discuss the issues,” Wilson told reporters.

Pending legislation denies coverage to illegal immigrants. But critics argue that requirements of proof of citizenship are inadequate.

The Democratic campaign committee hoped to cash-in on the Wilson furor. It sent a letter to donors on Thursday, citing Wilson’s famous one-liner — and aiming to raise another $100,000 in 24 hours to defeat Wilson and other Republicans in next year’s election.

“Your contribution will be immediately put to work to defeat Republican members of Congress and support meaningful health insurance reform,” wrote Jon Vogel, executive director of  the House Democratic campaign committee.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Cheryl Ravelo (dollar bills at a money changer in Manila)

The dust is settling — and the political haggling is resuming — after President Barack Obama’s healthcare speech to Congress last night, but the spotlight is still shining, though not very flatteringly, on Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina.

If you watched on TV, you might not have seen him, but you probably heard a catcall from the House chamber when Obama told the audience that illegal aliens would not be covered by the proposed healthcare plan. That was Wilson, a Republican, shouting out, “You lie!”

Problem is, Obama spoke the truth on that point, and other Republicans acknowledged that. Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who ran against Obama for the presidency last year, told NBC’s “Today” show that the plan would not cover illegal immigrants. Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, one of Obama’s most vocal congressional critics, said the same thing on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Cantor and others noted that Wilson apologized, and Vice President Joe Biden figured that Obama would accept that apology. Still, feathers were ruffled.

“I was embarrassed for a chamber and a Congress that I love,” Biden said on NBC. “I thought it demeaned the institution … That was very very damaging.”

But really, what’s the big deal? Mostly, it’s considered bad form to diss the president of the United States when he comes to address the country’s highest legislative body. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said as much in a complaint to Republican congressmen about Wilson’s behavior: “No president has ever had that happen. My advice is he apologize immediately. You know my number.”

UPDATE: Wilson called Emanuel last night to apologize and the apology was accepted on behalf of the president, according to an administration official. 

The New York Times called it a breach of protocol. The Washington Post’s normally humorous political theater columnist was unamused, calling conduct by Wilson and other hecklers “appalling.” CNN’s user-generated I-report site was filled with responses such as “You are disrespectful sir.”

No word from Wilson on his official House of Representatives Web site. It was “down for maintenance” early today. But he did say in his apology “I let my emotions get the best of me” as explanation.

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Photo credit: REUTERS/Jim Young (U.S. Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina listens to President Obama’s speech to a joint session of the Congress in Washington)

Two weeks after his death, Senator Edward Kennedy’s words on healthcare rang out before a joint session of Congress when President Barack Obama quoted from a letter that he received from the liberal Democrat posthumously.

Obama in seeking to turn public opinion his way in a primetime speech to Congress referred to Kennedy’s letter before an audience that included the late senator’s widow, Vicki, and two sons. The White House released it publicly after the president’s address.

The letter was written in May shortly after Kennedy was told that the brain cancer he was battling was terminal. The senator called healthcare reform “the cause of my life” and said he was optimistic that it would be achieved. 

“When I thought of all the years, all the battles, and all the memories of my long public life, I felt confident in these closing days that while I will not be there when it happens, you will be the President who at long last signs into law the health care reform that is the great unfinished business of our society,” Kennedy wrote to Obama.

The senator also made a comparison to when his brother, John F. Kennedy, was president.

“I entered public life with a young President who inspired a generation and the world,” Kennedy wrote. “It gives me great hope that as I leave, another young President inspires another generation and once more on America’s behalf inspires the entire world.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Joshua Roberts (Obama at start of healthcare speech); Reuters/Larry Downing (Vicki Kennedy and Michelle Obama at president’s healthcare speech to Congress)