Tales from the Trail

You’ve no doubt heard the old saying about money and Washington: a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money. That seems to be the case for fixing U.S. healthcare.

President Barack Obama got some good news from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office yesterday, which estimated that a healthcare plan by the Senate Finance Committee would cost $829 billion. CBO said this plan would cut the budget deficit by $81 billion over 10 years.

There was good news this morning too, as the Labor Department reported new unemployment claims at a nine-month low.

These moves are so recent they haven’t shown up in polls tracking whether Americans approve of how Obama is doing his job. The president’s job approval rating has been wiggling around 52 percent for the last three weeks, according to an average of poll results by RealClearPolitics.com. Disapproval ratings for the same period floated around 42 percent.

He’s still doing far better than Congress as a whole, which generally gets dismal poll ratings. It certainly is now, with the RealClearPolitics average approval rating at 25.8 percent, with a 66.5 disapproval rating.

Looking for that perfect gift for the holidays?

Hillary Clinton’s mom, Dorothy Rodham, has a suggestion for you — a children’s book about her daughter.  For a slightly-higher-than-retail price you can even get the book autographed by Clinton and help her pay down her campaign debt.

The unique gift suggestion and campaign donation idea was sent around in an email from Dorothy Rodham entitled “A Perfect Gift.”

Here’s a copy of the email:

“I’m so proud of everything my daughter has accomplished and excited about what her future holds.

WASHINGTON – Republican John McCain‘s warning that Barack Obama isn’t ready for the awesome job of commander-in-chief may not be registering with a key constituency: the American military.

According to a study released by the Washington watchdog group Center for Responsive Politics, U.S. troops, and especially those deployed abroad, are talking with their wallets and saying they want Democrat Obama as the next president.

Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than McCain and the “fiercely anti-war Ron Paul,” another Republican presidential candidate, CRP said.