Tales from the Trail

American voters made their feelings very clear last week. U.S. government borrowing is too high and needs to be reduced. How sad, then, that the presidential commission tasked with coming up with a credible plan to cut the deficit is already being dismissed as a non-event.

“This is the most predictable economic crisis we have ever faced,” Erskine Bowles rightly said today as he unveiled his joint proposals with co-chair Alan Simpson.

What is lacking, though, is not a realization of this fact, but the political will and bipartisanship to find a solution. Already, some members of their own commission have expressed skepticism about the plan or dismissed it entirely, while the wider audience in Congress is hardly rushing to embrace the ideas.

The commission was supposed to show the way to bipartisanship and magically supply the missing political will. It is already clear that has not happened.

Bowles and Simpson challenged critics of their plan to come up with better ways to cut the deficit. Somehow, that too seems like a vain hope.

Sarah Palin says on her Facebook page that the healthcare overhaul passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last week should be “Dead on Arrival” in the U.S. Senate. 

The House-passed bill, which includes a new government health insurance plan, may not be what the Senate passes. But the far-reaching healthcare reform backed by President Barack Obama is far from dead. At least one influential Republican senator believes Congress will enact sweeping legislation.

“I think a bill is going to pass,” said New Hampshire Republican Senator Judd Gregg. In an interview with C-Span’s “Newsmakers” that will air on Sunday, Gregg said Obama has invested too much political capital in his top domestic priority to allow it to fail. Gregg once considered joining the Obama administration, but now has become a major critic of Obama’s proposed healthcare reform and its impact on the country’s mounting debt.

The opt-out is in.

The Senate healthcare reform legislation will include a form of public option that would allow states to opt out of participating in a government-run insurance plan if they choose.

And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says his Democrats will support it.

“While the public option is not a silver bullet, I believe it’s an important way to ensure competition and to level the playing field for patients with the insurance industry,” Reid said.

But by including the opt-out, the Democrats lost the lone Republican senator to vote for healthcare legislation — Senator Olympia Snowe from Maine — who opted out because of the opt-out.

Alan Greenspan may have retired as chairman of the Federal Reserve, but his insight is still in hot demand, so much so that Senate Republicans invited him to be their guest speaker at their weekly policy lunch.

Per his normal practice, Greenspan declined to tell reporters what he told the lawmakers behind closed doors, but that did not stop a few senators from spilling the beans.

New Hampshire Republican Senator Judd Gregg said the former Fed chief talked mostly about the need to address the long-term budget deficit, specifically the Medicare healthcare program for the elderly and those with disabilities. The U.S. deficit is expected to crest at more than $1.8 trillion in fiscal 2009 which ends Sept. 30.

WASHINGTON – New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg certainly irked the White House by accepting the nomination to be Commerce secretary and then withdrawing, but it seems he is still welcome at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

President Barack Obama on Monday will host a summit on “fiscal responsibility” at the White House which is aimed at addressing the long-term issues like the costly Social Security retirement program and Medicare health care system and Gregg said he has accepted an invitation to attend.
    
Gregg, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee,  withdrew last week as the Commerce secretary nominee because of fundamental policy differences with the Democratic Obama administration, particularly over the economy.
    
Even so, it seems that both sides have agreed to move on and even work together.
 
“Reform is urgently needed, especially as long-term entitlement spending threatens to strangle our economy, and action must be taken sooner rather than later,” Gregg said in a statement.
    
“I will certainly do everything I can to work with the president and others in Congress to set a course for the long-run that addresses the issue of how we pass on to our children a government they can afford,” he said.

For more Reuters political news, click here.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama in early February with Gregg.)

How many people does President Barack Obama have to nominate before he finally gets a Commerce Secretary? He himself doesnt seem to know — he even suggested reaching back in time and tapping Abraham Lincoln for the job.

But for live candidates, so far it’s two and counting. One close ally (Bill Richardson), one Republican who seemed — initially —  willing to work with the Democratic president (Judd Gregg). At least until yesterday when he changed his mind.

That left Obama, who was visiting the land of Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois, on Thursday, to muse that the 16th president might be sitting somewhere “maybe wondering if someone might call him up and ask him to be commerce secretary.”

Let it snow. Why should London have all the fun? Washington weather calls for a few inches, just enough for a snowball fight for hearty Midwesterners like President Barack Obama.

But guard that snow gear. The New York Times says reports of stolen snowplows are up in cold-weather states as the economy declines.

Speaking of the declining economy, Obama doing separate interviews this afternoon with just about every TV channel in the vicinity of the White House — ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and FOX.

WASHINGTON — New Hampshire Governor John Lynch appears to have cleared the way, at least politically, for Democratic President Barack Obama to name Republican Senator Judd Gregg as U.S. commerce secretary.
 
Lynch, a Democrat, indicated in a brief statement on Monday that he would yield to Gregg’s demands and appoint a Republican to replace him in the Senate if Obama, as anticipated, picks the 61-year-old New Hampshire senator as head of the U.S. Commerce Department.
 
A Senate Democratic aide wrote in an e-mail to Reuters that if Obama picks Gregg, Lynch will indeed replace him with another Republican in order not to upset the balance of power in the Democratic-led Senate.
 
If Gregg was replaced by a Democrat and Minnesota’s Al Franken survived a court challenge of his apparent victory, Democrats would have 60 seats in the 100-member Senate, enough to ram through Republican procedural roadblocks.
 
Gregg did not want to do that to his fellow Republicans.
 
“I have had conversations with Senator Gregg, the White House and U.S. Senate leadership,” Lynch said in the statement issued by his office.
 
“Senator Gregg has said he would not resign his seat in the U.S. Senate if it changed the balance in the Senate. Based on my discussions, it is clear the White House and Senate leadership understand this as well.”
 
Without specifically saying he would replace Gregg with a Republican, Lynch said: “It is important that President Obama be able to select the advisors he feels are necessary to help him address the challenges facing our nation.
 
“If President Obama does nominate Senator Gregg to serve as Commerce Secretary, I will name a replacement who will put the people of New Hampshire first and represent New Hampshire effectively in the U.S. Senate.”

Photo credit: Senator Gregg’s website (http://gregg.senate.gov/public/)