This is the beginning to a week of intense competition. Not only is it conference tournament time for college basketball, it’s also budget season. Already, competing philosophies about spending and taxing priorities are surfacing. As The Wall Street Journal’s Janet Hook and Kristina Peterson report, “Mr. Ryan’s budget will include no new tax increases or Pentagon cuts while advancing big changes to Medicare and Medicaid, all with the goal of erasing the annual federal deficit in 10 years. Ms. Murray’s plan is expected to increase taxes on upper-income households and corporations and make modest spending cuts to domestic programs; it wouldn’t balance the budget anytime soon.”
Clearly this difference in opinion will need to be hashed out in the coming weeks and months between the House and Senate, but now there is a genuine opportunity for the White House to show leadership on this issue. A good example of such leadership was hinted at in The New York Times, where “White House aides have not ruled out some money-saving structural reforms to Medicare that Republicans favor, notably an idea promoted by the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, to combine the program’s doctor and hospital components with a single deductible for beneficiaries.” Support for such a measure from the White House is just one way that shows fiscal responsibility and helps to bridge the ideological gaps in order to get to a “grand bargain.”
12:00 PM: Press Secretary Jay Carney - Briefing White House Press Secretary Jay Carney holds his daily briefing with reporters.
3:30 p.m.: HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius delivers remarks at the National League of Cities’ Congressional City Conference.
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On The Radar
Economic Growth
Senate Bill Won’t Include Obama Prioritiesfrom Politico by David Rogers. “Paying a price for his indifference, President Barack Obama is expected to get little or none of the extra money for health care and Wall Street reforms that the administration has been seeking in a six-month stopgap spending bill coming to the Senate floor this week. Bipartisan Senate talks continued through the weekend in hopes of filing final legislation late Monday afternoon. Action by Congress is needed before March 27 to avert a government shutdown and the measure stands to greatly influence how agencies operate in the wake of the across-the-board cuts ordered under sequestration.”
Opinion: Too Much Talk Of Taxingfrom The Hill by Judd Gregg. “Many who march in the army of the president say that all they want is to return to the good old days when Bill Clinton rode the range and rich people paid their fair share of taxes. Back then, they say, all was good. If this is their cause, they should be happy. We are there.”
Job Numbers Are Good, But Some Perils Loomfrom The Wall Street Journal by Ben Casselman. “No jobs report is without its disappointments, and this one was no exception: The drop in the unemployment rate was driven in part by job seekers who gave up their search, and the employment gains were concentrated among part-time workers. But even the most pessimistic of observers had to grant that the labor market took a step forward in February.”
Forget the Good Jobs Report, Long-Term Unemployment Is Still Terrifyingfrom The Atlantic by Matthew O’Brien. “It’s about loss of skills, loss of trust, and loss of networks. The longer people are out of work, the more they presumably forget. That’s the loss of skills. But even if that’s not actually true, and it might not be, employers assume it is — there’s a stigma to being out of work that long. That’s the loss of trust. Now, that’s particularly hard for the long-term unemployed to overcome since being unemployed for so long hurts the kind of professional networks that are often so important to finding a job. The only way for the long-term unemployed to get a job is to already have one. It’s a vicious catch-22.”
‘Tempered Optimism’ For The Oil And Gas Industry from Politico by Andrew Restuccia. “Longtime fears that the country’s oil supplies were dwindling have vanished, energy executives say. In their place, there’s gleeful talk of abundance. Some here call it an oil and gas revolution; others call it a renaissance that harkens back to the years after World War II, when production climbed toward its eventual peak in 1970 at nearly 10 million barrels day. Case in point: Oil and gas companies are running 1,757 rigs to drill new wells in the U.S., well above the 1,275 rigs operating in the rest of the world, according to data from oil field services company Baker Hughes.”
As Momentum Builds Toward Tax Reform, Lobbyists Prepare For A Fightfrom The Washington Post by Jerry Markon. “Tax reform edged closer to center stage in recent days after President Obama opened conversations with Republicans over a deal to tackle the federal deficit. A broad rewrite of the tax code could figure in such an agreement, along with cuts in such entitlement programs as Medicare and other changes in federal spending. The prospect of a tax overhaul has already kicked the capital’s influence industry into high gear. From corporate chiefs and hedge fund lobbyists to Montana ranchers and Broadway producers, the players have already begun their campaigns, pressing for everything from lowering the corporate tax rate to preserving cherished deductions and, in some instances, inserting new tax loopholes into law.”
Immigration
In Talk Show Tour, Jeb Bush Promotes Book On Immigration And Replies To Criticsfrom The New York Times by Jackie Calmes. “But, he added, ‘The basic premise needs to be that coming to the country legally should be easier, with less cost, than coming to the country illegally.’ On the CBS News program ‘Face the Nation,’ Mr. Bush said that his views on immigration’ ‘absolutely’ coincided with those of Senator Marco Rubio, his former protégé in Florida. Mr. Rubio is also a member of the group involved in immigration talks, and he supports a path to citizenship. He is also considered to be a potential candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Asked on the CNN program ‘State of the Union’ about President Obama’s recent outreach to Congressional Republicans, Mr. Bush was generally complimentary. ‘I’m not a cynic about this,’ he said. ‘And I think Republicans appreciate it.’”
Senators Struggle Over Work Visasfrom The Wall Street Journal by Sara Murray. “A bipartisan Senate group, labor unions and business groups all agree it is time to overhaul the visa system for foreign workers who come to the U.S. for low-wage jobs because it can be arduous, costly and offers few protections for workers. However, there are sharp divides over how to do it. … Competing interests abound. The Chamber of Commerce and businesses it represents are locked in negotiations with the AFL-CIO about workers in industries like hospitality and landscaping. Meanwhile, farm-worker unions have been quietly negotiating with growers associations about how to revamp short-term visas for agricultural workers. And senators from both sides of the aisle are weighing in to ensure their state industries are protected.”
Health Care
G.O.P. in Arizona Is Pushed to Expand Medicaidfrom The Washington Post by Fernanda Santos. “In the battle to get the Medicaid expansion being championed by Gov. Jan Brewer approved by the state’s legislators, her closest advisers are hanging their hopes on the number eight. That is how many of the 17 Republicans in the State Senate they believe they can get on their side.”
Republicans Resume Effort To Repeal ‘Obamacare’from The Los Angeles Times by Lisa Mascaro. “Republicans in Congress are renewing their political assault on the nation’s new healthcare law, trying to repeal President Obama’s signature domestic achievement as part of the next battle over the federal budget. Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, last year’s Republican vice presidential nominee, said Sunday his forthcoming budget proposal will include repeal of ‘Obamacare,’ as his party calls it. That position puts tea-party conservatives at odds with others in the GOP who want to find common ground with Obama on the nation’s fiscal woes after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the health law. In the Senate, conservatives will press for a vote this week to delay funding for the health law as part of a bill that must pass to keep the government running beyond March 27.”
Eat Your Heart Outfrom The New York Times by Gretchen Reynolds. “In broader terms, the new analysis muddies the already murky issue of just how diet affects heart-disease risk and health in general. Polyunsaturated oils, while decreasing cholesterol, may simultaneously promote inflammation throughout the body, says Philip C. Calder, a professor of nutritional immunology at the University of Southampton, in England, who wrote an editorial accompanying the new analysis. This inflammation may initiate heart disease and ‘outweigh any possible good effect’ of the oils.”
States Wrestle With New Obamacare Exchangesfrom Politico by Jason Millman. “Most states are taking a hands-off approach to the exchanges, even after the Supreme Court ruling and the November election made it clear the GOP opponents of Obamacare weren’t going to stop the law in its tracks. So HHS has been carving out a quiet role for states to play even in these federally run exchanges. As an enticement, they’re even offering states grants. And that role looks an awful lot like a partnership exchange, even if neither the states nor HHS wants to come out and say so.”
X-Factor
Wanted: PhDs Who Can Win a Bar Fightfrom Foreign Policy by Maj. Fernando Lujan. “Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen wrote a memo calling it his “number one” manpower priority and asked the services to search for the “best and brightest” candidates. The concept was innovative: A small contingent of several hundred military personnel from all branches of service would be carefully selected, given intensive instruction in Dari, Pashto, or Urdu, and then would spend years rotating between critical assignments in theater and Afghanistan-Pakistan staff positions in Washington or at Central Command.”
GOP Looks For Answers On Polling from Politico by Alexander Burns. “The campaign arm of the congressional GOP is moving to reboot its polling operation after a messy 2012 cycle, the first concrete remedy taken by the Republican side since candidates and outside groups were left stunned on Election Day by results that their internal data never came close to predicting.”
Cory Booker, Twitter Visionaryfrom The New York Times by Ashley Parker. “To hear Mr. Booker tell it, Twitter simply provides him with an effective and hyper-efficient avenue to provide the services that are part of being mayor. “’I will find out before anybody in my government when a light is out, when a pothole is there,’ he said. ‘I can now show up with a space heater and blankets. I can now take a level of action I couldn’t before.’”
