White House Outlines Online Privacy Guidelines

The framework for a new privacy code moves electronic commerce closer to a one-click, one-touch process by which users can tell Internet companies whether they want their online activity tracked.

Much remains to be done before consumers can click on a button in their Web browser to set their privacy standards. Congress will probably have to write legislation governing the collection and use of personal data, officials said, something that is unlikely to occur this year. And the companies that make browsers — Google, Microsoft, Apple and others — will have to agree to the new standards.

But because those companies also are the largest competitors in the business of providing advertising to Web sites, and are part of a consortium participating in the development of the principles, administration officials said they expected the standards would give consumers privacy while also allowing electronic commerce to grow.

“American consumers can’t wait any longer for clear rules of the road that ensure their personal information is safe online,” President Obama said in a statement released Wednesday. “By following this blueprint, companies, consumer advocates and policy makers can help protect consumers and ensure the Internet remains a platform for innovation and economic growth.”

Even before Congress approves privacy legislation, the Federal Trade Commission will have the ability to enforce compliance with a code of conduct to be developed by the Commerce Department or with advertising industry guidelines that companies would adopt voluntarily, Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of the F.T.C., said during a call with reporters on Wednesday.

Companies responsible for the delivery of nearly 90 percent of online behavioral advertisements — ads that appear on a user’s screen based on browsing and buying habits — have agreed to comply when consumers choose to control online tracking, the consortium said on Wednesday.

But even if a click of a mouse or a touch of a button can thwart Internet tracking devices, there is no guarantee that companies won’t still manage to gather data on Web behavior. Compliance is voluntary on the part of consumers, Internet advertisers and commerce sites.

"The real question is how much influence companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook will have in their inevitable attempt to water down the rules that are implemented and render them essentially meaningless,” John M. Simpson, privacy project director for Consumer Watchdog, said in response to the administration’s plan. "A concern is that the administration’s privacy effort is being run out of the Commerce Department.”

But Mr. Leibowitz noted that the F.T.C. had already been aggressively penalizing companies that did not adhere to their stated privacy programs. Last year it brought charges against both Google and Facebook.

“If you ask what makes businesses want to do this,” Mr. Leibowitz said, the answer is, “respecting consumer privacy and protecting data online encourages Internet commerce.”

The Digital Advertising Alliance, a group of marketing and advertising trade groups, said it had committed to following the instructions that consumers gave about their privacy choices by using Do Not Track technology already available in most Web browsers.

Stu Ingis, general counsel for the Digital Advertising Alliance, said the group hoped to reach agreement within about nine months with browser companies on standards for the use of a one-click notification of a consumer’s privacy desires.

Hardly a day goes by without some development in the expansion of privacy standards or the punishment of privacy violations. On Wednesday, California’s attorney general, Kamala D. Harris, said the state had reached an agreement with Amazon, Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Research in Motion to strengthen privacy protections for smartphone owners who download mobile applications.

The agreement will force software developers to post conspicuous privacy policies detailing what personal information they plan to obtain and how they will use it. It also compels app store providers like Apple and Google to offer ways for users to report apps that do not comply.

 The new privacy outline brings together several efforts to develop and enforce privacy standards that have been progressing for the last couple of years on parallel tracks, under the direction of advertisers, Internet commerce sites and software companies.

The next step will be for the Commerce Department to gather Internet companies and consumer advocates to develop enforceable codes of conduct aligned with a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights” released as part of the administration’s plan on Wednesday.

The bill of rights sets standards for the use of personal data, including individual control, transparency, security, access, accuracy and accountability.

Tanzina Vega contributed reporting from New York and Nick Bilton and Nicole Perlroth from San Francisco.

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Maryland House Passes Same-Sex Marriage Bill

The bill, known as the Civil Marriage Protection Act, squeaked by in a 72-to-67 vote, drawing loud applause and cheers from proponents in the House. A similar bill failed in the chamber last year.

The measure still faces a vote in the Senate, where it is expected to pass, before Mr. O’Malley can sign it into law. But opponents have pledged to put in on the ballot for a vote on Nov. 6, a prospect that the bill’s supporters acknowledge is practically a foregone conclusion.

The vote, said Anthony O’Donnell, the Republican minority leader, amounted to “beginning a process, not ending a process. The citizens of Maryland will have the final say.”

The debate stretched for hours in the 18th-century, wooden-domed statehouse, and was punctuated by emotional entreaties by supporters of the bill, including several gay and lesbian delegates, who talked about their own lives, and other delegates who invoked Jim Crow laws.

“This is the civil rights issue of our generation,” said Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr., a Democrat from Baltimore. “I’m overwhelmed,” Luke Clippinger, one of the seven openly gay members of the Maryland House, said after the vote. “My voice is still breaking.”

When asked what the vote meant to him, he said, “It means I’m here.”

After the vote, lawmakers who voted for the bill — mostly Democrats — gathered outside the chamber cheering and hugging. Soon after, Mr. O’Malley arrived to congratulate the delegates. He embraced Mr. Clippinger.

The bill’s passage would make Maryland the eighth state to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry. It comes a day after New Jersey’s legislature passed a similar bill, though it was vetoed on Friday by Gov. Chris Christie. New York State legalized same-sex marriage last year, and this month Washington State did so.

In order to be palatable to delegates who were undecided, the bill was amended so that it would not take effect until Jan. 1, 2013, in order to allow the ballot process to take its course. Though Maryland is heavily Democratic, the party is sharply divided on the issue of same-sex marriage.

Of 98 Democrats in the House, as many as 30 — mostly more-conservative Democrats known as Blue Dogs, and African-Americans from districts where churches are strong — had been undecided.

The bill’s passage was made possible by two Republicans, three Blue Dogs, and two African-American delegates, none of whom were initially supportive. In interviews, several of those delegates said that a key change from last year that won their support was language protecting religious institutions from being forced to perform marriages.

“People believe that it’s a sin for a homosexual to be married, but who are they to judge?” said Robert Costa, one of the Republicans who voted for the bill. “It’s up to God, not government.”

John Olszewski, a Democrat initially opposed, said the religious exemptions made him feel comfortable enough to vote for the bill. “Denying basic rights to folks just isn’t the right thing for us to be doing,” he said.

Several delegates said they had been warned by powerful parts of their constituencies that a yes vote would cost them in the next election, scheduled for 2014. Mr. Mitchell said it was a risk he was willing to take.

“I’ve heard all types of threats, that in 2014 at the ballot box, there would be revenge,” he said. “But when that day comes, I know that for the seven openly gay colleagues, if they are able to have the same rights as my wife and I have, then I know that my green vote was the right vote.”

Opponents said they were confident they could gather the signatures needed to place it on the ballot, about 55,000. If the referendum is successful, it would effectively repeal the bill.

A Washington Post poll published on Jan. 30 found that 50 percent of Marylanders supported allowing same-sex marriage while 44 percent were opposed.

“This will go to the people, and the people will make the decision,” said Pat McDonough, a Republican who voted against.

Democrats argued that the bill should not go to a referendum because it is an issue of civil liberties that should not be decided by the majority. They said that integration probably would not have happened if left to a popular vote.

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Birth Control Coverage Rule Debated at House Hearing

Lutheran and Baptist clergymen and an Orthodox rabbi joined a Roman Catholic bishop in telling lawmakers that Mr. Obama’s latest policy of shifting the responsibility for paying for the contraceptives from religious institutions to their health insurers was unworkable and did not allay concerns about government entanglement with religion.

“There is no real difference” between the original requirement and the attempted compromise, said John H. Garvey, president of the Catholic University of America, where 81 percent of undergraduates and 59 percent of graduate students are Catholic.

The first of two lineups of witnesses at a House committee hearing on Thursday consisted of five men.

Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, asked: “Where are the women? It’s outrageous that the Republicans would not allow a single individual representing the tens of millions of women who want and need insurance coverage for basic preventive health care services, including family planning.”

The witnesses, who testified at a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, had different views about contraception, but all said they were uneasy with the federal policy.

“The putative accommodation is no accommodation at all,” said the rabbi, Meir Soloveichik of Yeshiva University and Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York City. “Religious organizations would still be obligated to provide employees with an insurance policy that facilitates acts violating the organization’s religious tenets.”

With his proposal, Mr. Obama may have tamped down the public furor over mandating contraceptive coverage. But in Congress, it appears, the election-year debate is just beginning.

Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia, told the witnesses that they were being “used for a political agenda,” to embarrass Mr. Obama. “Today’s hearing is a sham, a shameful exercise,” Mr. Connolly said.

Representative Joe Walsh, Republican of Illinois, insisted: “This is not about women. This is not about contraceptives. This is about religious freedom.”

The Senate and the House plan to vote soon on legislation to block Mr. Obama’s policy.

Under the policy, most health insurance plans must cover birth control for women — all contraceptive drugs and devices approved by the Food and Drug Administration — as well as sterilization procedures. Church-affiliated universities, hospitals and charities would not have to provide contraceptive coverage to female employees, nor would they have to subsidize its cost. Coverage for birth control would be offered to women directly by their employers’ insurance companies, “with no role for religious employers who oppose contraception,” the White House said.

Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, described this as “an accounting gimmick.”

In a rule published Wednesday in the Federal Register, the Obama administration reaffirmed, “without change,” the narrow exemption for churches and other houses of worship. The administration said it would allow a “safe harbor from enforcement” for one year, while it revises the rule to address concerns of church-affiliated organizations that have religious objections to covering contraceptive services.

The Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, said he had no ill will toward the administration. “I pray for the president every day,” Mr. Harrison said, even as he expressed “deep distress” over the new policy and complained of “government intrusions into Christian conscience and practice.”

Representative William Lacy Clay, Democrat of Missouri, said both sides were distorting the facts. “I’m disappointed in some who suggest that the Catholic bishops’ stance represents something sinister, that it is an attempt to deny all women, of any faith, access to any contraception or reproductive health care of any kind,” Mr. Clay said. “I don’t think that’s the case. I’m also disappointed in those who claim that the administration has an agenda: to increase abortions, sterilizations and contraceptive use by Catholics. The facts don’t back that up, not in the slightest.”

The committee heard testimony from two women, both opposed to the administration policy.

The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, said women who could testify to the need for contraceptive coverage had been excluded. “What is it that men don’t understand about women’s health?” Ms. Pelosi said. “And how central the issue of family planning is to that?”

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White House Sees Buffett Rule More as a Guide

The Buffett Rule has become a signal piece of election-year political rhetoric. It featured heavily in Mr. Obama’s State of the Union address last month. It has become a favored talking point on the campaign trail. And Mr. Obama underscored his support of it in his budget proposal.

But the White House says it is a “guideline,” rather than a legislative initiative. And it says it prefers not to establish the Buffett Rule without a broader overhaul of the tax code, though it would support a Congressional effort to carry it out alone.

“This is the guiding principle of tax reform,” said Jason Furman, principal deputy director of the White House’s National Economic Council. “To some degree, it’s a specific policy, where we set a floor, a minimum rate. And to some degree, it is a statement of principle of how you would like to design the tax system.”

The Buffett Rule is named for Warren E. Buffett, the Berkshire Hathaway billionaire who made a point of saying that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his hard-working secretary, Debbie Bosanek, who sat in Michelle Obama’s box at the State of the Union address.

It seems like an appealingly simple way to ensure that the rich do not pay a smaller proportion of their earnings than many members of the middle class. But tax experts and even the White House itself contend it might be hard to carry out. 

The White House asked for numerous changes to raise more revenue from the wealthiest Americans in its budget proposal. Those include allowing the high-end Bush administration tax cuts to expire and taxing dividend earnings as regular income.

But the proposal stops short of suggesting an application of the Buffett Rule on top of that, instead listing it as a “principle” for future reform, alongside a repeal of the alternative minimum tax.

The much-hated alternative minimum tax was initially designed to do just what the Buffett Rule would: prevent the wealthy from using loopholes and deductions to lower their tax rates. But the tax was not indexed for inflation, and therefore, each year it ensnares more and more middle-class Americans.

Congress has “patched” the tax to prevent it from hitting the more than 30 million tax filers who should hypothetically pay it. Still, 4.3 million tax filers paid the alternative minimum tax last year, raising $39.1 billion in revenue.

Tax experts say creating a new alternative minimum tax for the wealthy might make for good political argument, but it is less compelling as policy.

“It just doesn’t make any sense to have one set of rules that applies to some people and one set of rules that applies to everyone else,” said Leonard E. Burman, a tax expert and professor at Syracuse University.

“It’s really complicated,” Professor Burman said. “I’m very sympathetic to taxing capital gains like ordinary income; that’s the issue this proposal is ostensibly addressing. But the idea that we have different sets of rules for different people? It undermines the tax code.”

William G. Gale, a director of the Tax Policy Center and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said: “A well-designed tax system would as an artifact be consistent with something like the Buffett Rule. But trying to glom the Buffett Rule onto the current tax system? That’s going to be a mess.”

There is a second reason for not proposing the Buffett Rule in the budget: It would significantly reduce revenue if installed alongside a repeal of the alternative minimum tax.

According to Internal Revenue Service data, 236,883 tax filers made $1 million or more in 2009, and they paid an average rate of about 24 percent. Bringing that up to 30 percent would raise billions of dollars over time — but not nearly as much as the alternative minimum tax, experts say.

While the White House has declined to make the Buffett Rule a concrete proposal, Democrats in Congress have forged ahead. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat from Rhode Island, independently came up with the idea for a minimum tax for the wealthy, and made a proposal after Mr. Obama mentioned it in his State of the Union address.

The proposed law, the Paying a Fair Share Act, eliminates all deductions for the wealthy except their charitable contributions. After that, they must pay a 30 percent minimum tax on the balance of their income.

The law includes a phase-in, to avoid taxing Americans making $1 million at much higher rates than others making $999,999. If the taxpayer makes between $1 million and $2 million, the tax bill is only a fraction of the difference between taxes owed under current law and taxes as determined by the Buffett Rule.

The administration consulted with Senator Whitehouse’s office on the proposal, and has said it backs it. “We’re broadly comfortable with the approach Senator Whitehouse laid out in his proposal,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday. “You can do it different ways, but no concerns about not going ahead with something in that broad neighborhood.”

Testifying about the budget proposal on Capitol Hill this week, Mr. Geithner defended the administration’s requested tax changes and its choice not to include a comprehensive tax reform plan.

He said the White House strongly recommended broad tax reform to broaden the tax base and simplify the dizzyingly complex tax code. But it recommends enacting changes in the meantime to help reduce the deficit and raise revenue from the wealthy. “We think the better way to get there is through comprehensive tax reform,” he said.

“We took a run at trying to negotiate a framework like that with Republican leadership in the House,” Mr. Geithner said of comprehensive reform. “We found no basis for agreement on even the broad framework.”

“We’re just trying to be realistic,” he added.  

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House Members Face Tough Senate Races

It has not worked out that way. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has announced it would spend $200,000 broadcasting gauzy advertisements promoting the energy positions of Mr. Berg, a House freshman. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report downgraded the race to a tossup.

And Mr. Berg’s Democratic challenger, Heidi Heitkamp, a former state attorney general, has begun tearing into his brief record in the terribly unpopular House of Representatives. “The people of North Dakota, like the people of this country, believe Washington, D.C., is badly broken,” Ms. Heitkamp said.

Republicans, who need a net gain of only four seats to guarantee control of the Senate, have long been optimistic that they could capture the majority because they are defending just 10 of the 33 seats up for grabs. But their task is complicated by the fact that many of their candidates are sitting or recent members of the House, which polls show to be deeply unpopular.

In the 15 races ranked as most competitive by The New York Times, Republicans could field current or recently departed House members in eight of them; Democratic House members are top candidates in four Senate races.

Races that were not supposed to be all that close are looking more like barn-burners, in large part because one of the standard-bearers carries the millstone of his or her current position: member of the House.

House membership is “more a liability than I’ve ever seen it,” said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. “We go through periods when Congress is less popular than other times, but Congressional approval ratings right now are so abysmally bad, so unbelievably bad, it has to rub off on members seeking higher office.”

Just west of North Dakota, Montana’s endangered freshman Democratic senator, Jon Tester, is going up against the state’s lone House member, Denny Rehberg. Todd Akin, a veteran Republican representative from Missouri, is in a tough primary to decide whether he will challenge Senator Claire McCaskill, who is considered vulnerable.

Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, remains favored to take the Senate seat of Senator Jon Kyl, who is retiring. But Mr. Flake now faces a spirited challenge from a former United States surgeon general, Richard H. Carmona, running as a Democrat and an outsider. And Representative Connie Mack, Republican of Florida, has an uphill fight to unseat Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat.

Democrats have their own struggles. The Senate contest in New Mexico between Representative Martin Heinrich, a Democrat, and former Representative Heather Wilson, a Republican, is considered close. In Wisconsin, Republican campaign operatives are hammering the House record of Representative Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, as she gears up her campaign for a Senate seat. The House records of both Representative Shelley Berkley, Democrat of Nevada, and Dean Heller, appointed to the Senate from the House, will feature heavily in their Senate contest.

And in the tossup race for an open Senate seat in Hawaii, former Gov. Linda Lingle, a Republican, is likely to brand her once-favored challenger, Representative Mazie Hirono, a creature of the hated House.

But comparatively speaking, the problem in some races may be especially acute for Republicans, who must contend with both Congress’s overall approval rating and the damage that has been done to the Republican brand, Mr. Rothenberg said.

Members are making the best of it. Mr. Rehberg said individual members of Congress were “not as unpopular” as the institution itself. Besides, “Montanans don’t sit around saying, ‘Boy, I hate Congress.’ That’s something for the pollsters and the media to feed — and do,” he said.

Mr. Flake said his record of angering leaders of both parties with his crusade against pet projects financed by earmarks — a crusade that led to his removal from the House Appropriations Committee — would inoculate him from attack.

“I could see how it would be seen as a negative for some if they’re seen as just part of the institution, but if you’re seen as fighting the institution, it’s a plus,” he said.

But Democrats happily e-mailed around links to a Web video put together by Mr. Flake’s Republican challenger for the Arizona Senate nomination that portrays Mr. Flake as a career politician, and Carmona campaign aides say Mr. Flake’s reputation as a rebel is more a fixture of Washington than Arizona.

Opponents eager to tie all the House members seeking a Senate seat to the body they are leaving will make few distinctions. The National Republican Senatorial Committee last week tried to tar Representative Joe Donnelly, Democrat of Indiana, a Roman Catholic alumnus of the University of Notre Dame, with the Obama administration’s requirement that health insurance plans provided by Catholic charities and universities offer free birth control to women. Mr. Donnelly is running for the seat of Senator Richard G. Lugar, a Republican.

Ms. Baldwin, of Wisconsin, was criticized for missing House committee votes on an energy bill but making time to appear on Ed Schultz’s liberal radio show. After Ms. Baldwin introduced legislation codifying President Obama’s “Buffett Rule,” which would increase the tax rate for many people who earn more than $1 million a year, Republicans denounced her for seeking to raise taxes on “American families and small businesses.”

Mr. Mack, of Florida, was hit both for House votes he took — like opposing an increase in the debt ceiling — and votes he missed, like repealing the president’s health care law.

The North Dakota race has been among the major surprises as it has tightened due, at least in part, to dissatisfaction with the perceived performance of Mr. Berg, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

To exploit any weakness, Ms. Heitkamp is going hyper-local with her campaign. While Mr. Berg talks up conservative national issues like a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, she emphasizes budget cuts to the Route 83 Bypass at Minot, road repairs at Devils Lake and essential air service subsidies to Jamestown.

Mr. Rehberg acknowledged that his House seat puts him in a tight spot. The message that Tea Party voters sent in 2010 was that Republicans should stand firm on deep spending cuts, regardless of the consequences. But independent voters are now howling at what they see as Republican obstructionism and demanding more cooperation.

“It creates conflicting things in the governing mind,” Mr. Rehberg said. “That’s why this is going to be a very close election.”

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House passes Keystone bill, Senate action uncertain

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives passed an energy bill on Thursday that would wrest control of a permit for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline away from President Barack Obama, who has put the project on hold.

The bill, part of a broader House Republican effort to fund highways and infrastructure projects, would also expand offshore oil drilling and open up parts of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

While approval of the Keystone measure by the House was widely expected, what happens with a similar proposal in the Democratic-controlled Senate is not yet clear.

Senate leaders were still negotiating on Thursday whether to allow a vote on Keystone as part of debate on a highway funding legislation, said Senator John Hoeven, a Republican from North Dakota who has been a key advocate for the $7 billion Canada-to-Texas project.

"I think on the merits we're going to get it done. I don't know when. I hope in the highway bill, but if not, we'll stick with it," Hoeven told Reuters.

Hoeven developed legislation that would see Congress grant TransCanada a permit for the project, and filed the bill as an amendment to the highway funding package.

PUMP PRICES SURGE

Republicans have seized upon the Canadian oil pipeline as a way to criticize Obama for his job creation and energy policies in the 2012 election race.

After massive protests from environmental groups, Obama last month said the pipeline needed more environmental review for the portion running through Nebraska, where the state government had rejected an initial proposed route.

Republicans said the project would create thousands of jobs. Environmental groups, who want to kill the project because they argue Canada's oil sands produce too much pollution, also say the numbers are inflated.

Republicans have seized on surging gasoline prices as another way to make their case for Keystone.

In the long term, increasing oil supply from North America would help improve energy security and moderate volatility in gasoline prices, Hoeven said.

"I think we need to approve the Keystone XL project because that brings oil to us from our closest friend and ally rather than the Middle East," Hoeven said.

The pipeline will also carry oil from Hoeven's home state of North Dakota, where production has surged but infrastructure has failed to keep pace.

STEEP CLIMB

Even if the Keystone legislation makes it to the Senate floor for a vote, getting it passed will be difficult. There are currently 47 Republicans in the U.S. Senate, and they would need to find at least 13 Democrats to agree to move it forward.

The Senate and House would also need to agree on a highway bill, which could be difficult given major differences in size and scope between their proposed packages. And the bill would still need to have Obama's approval to become law.

Obama has already threatened to veto the House package, due in part to the Keystone provision.

(Editing by Todd Eastham)

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White House Memo: Obama Balancing Donors in Hollywood and Silicon Valley

First, the soothing. Mr. Obama is flying to Los Angeles on Wednesday to attend three fund-raisers, including one hosted by the actor Will Ferrell and Bradley Bell, a soap opera executive (“The Bold and the Beautiful”). The Foo Fighters will be on hand to perform; expect to see a number of other glitterati.

Problem: Mr. Obama is in the doghouse with the show-business people, who are mad because the White House didn’t support them on the antipiracy bill that got squashed in Congress in January after Google and other Internet high fliers descended on Washington to pressure the White House and Congress to oppose it in a standoff that left Hollywood reeling. But the president has also come to rely on cash from Hollywood, which contributed $9.2 million to his 2008 campaign coffers, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Christopher J. Dodd, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, created a stir — and ruffled White House feathers — just after the drubbing last month when he threatened to turn off the spigot, saying in an interview with Fox News: “Those who count on quote Hollywood for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them.” The White House acknowledged privately that his comment was not received warmly.

But, as if to prove Mr. Dodd’s point, the Center for Responsive Politics reports that money for Mr. Obama from Hollywood was down last year, coming in at just $1.2 million, compared with $2.8 million during the same period in 2008.

White House officials have been doing some stroking of Hollywood to prevent a further erosion; Mr. Obama began the effort during his State of the Union speech last month when he threw the motion picture association a bone, promising to work to protect intellectual property in China. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. picked up the effort on Tuesday, using a lunchtime toast at the State Department with China’s vice president, Xi Jinping, to further raise the intellectual property protection issue — giving his boss the perfect entrée to say at Mr. Ferrell’s fund-raiser that the White House is fighting hard for Hollywood.

But at the same time, administration officials say they don’t plan to reverse their position that major elements of the piracy legislation sought by Hollywood go too far.

On that battle, Google and the techies, so far, have been the clear-cut winner, and they will be able to thank Mr. Obama on Thursday when he heads to San Francisco for Part 2 of his balancing act: he is headlining a fund-raiser at the home of Nicola Miner, daughter of the Oracle co-founder Robert Miner.

And there, Mr. Obama must assure well-heeled attendees that he will take the interests of the new economy to heart. And the high-tech industry at the heart of that new economy has surpassed Hollywood in fund-raising muscle, not to mention overall contribution to the national economy.

In many ways, the fight puts Mr. Obama in a script that could be conceived only in Hollywood. An online piracy bill backed by the big studios was chugging along until it ran into a firestorm in January when Web powerhouses backed by Internet activists rallied opposition to the legislation through Internet blackouts. The White House had a few days earlier released a statement that some parts of the bill went too far, adding wind to the Web storm. By the time the dust cleared, lawmakers had backed off, and the old guard in Hollywood was fuming.

“It’s the Rebellion versus the Empire,” said Donnie Fowler, a Democratic consultant who was Al Gore’s national field director in the 2000 campaign, with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook as Luke Skywalker and Mr. Dodd as Darth Vader.

“The problem for Hollywood here,” Mr. Fowler said, “is that they contribute only about 1/10th as much to the national economy” as technology. “Plus their stars and starlets can’t match up against hundreds of thousands of netizens who go nuts when their Wikipedia and Google go dark for a day.”

Despite Mr. Dodd’s comments about payback, some political observers note that at the end of the day, it is unlikely that Hollywood will suddenly turn to the Republicans.

“I think this is yet another large industry that has been a consistent supporter of Obama, that has to handle some disappointment from time to time,” said Matt Bennett, a vice president at Third Way, a Democratic policy institute. “They’ll swallow hard and contribute.”

But they may not contribute quite so much.

Kate Bedingfield, Mr. Dodd’s spokeswoman, did offer up a clarification of his remarks. Mr. Dodd, she said, “was making the obvious point that people tend to support politicians whose views tend to match their own.”

Mr. Dodd himself has since been more circumspect. “We hope the president will use this opportunity in both communities,” he said in an e-mailed statement, “to reiterate the important point that he made in the State of the Union: that online content theft is a problem, that it harms U.S. workers and U.S. business and that now is the time to come together to find meaningful solutions to protect American intellectual property from foreign criminals.”

He added that Hollywood and the tech industry “need each other to succeed and grow.”

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Policy and Politics of Contraception Rule Fiercely Debated Within White House

"What are we doing here?" asked Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, stepping outside his wheelhouse to ask about a rising storm involving the Obama administration and the Catholic Church. "What's the point?"

It was the Fall of 2011 and Panetta had read about a proposed Obama administration rule that would require employers - excluding houses of worship but including religious organizations such as charities, hospitals, and schools - to offer health insurance that fully covered contraception.

Panetta - a Catholic, former U.S. Representative, and White House chief of staff - didn't quite understand why the Obama administration would be stepping into this conflict.

Panetta's fears have to a degree been realized as White House officials now find themselves taking heat on a policy debate about conscience and religious liberty; the Obama administration is working to find a way to allow religious organizations to not pay for services they find morally objectionable, while also ensuring that, say, the women nurses and doctors who work at Catholic hospitals have full access to birth control. Some officials are discussing a way to introduce something like the law in Hawaii, where religious organizations don't have to pay for employee insurance that covers contraception, but they do have to inform employees how they can get it on their own.

The debate within the White House on this issue was, sources say, heated, and President Obama was legitimately torn. Panetta wasn't alone in his concerns. For months, Vice President Joe Biden and then-White House chief of staff Bill Daley argued internally against the rule, sources tell ABC News. Biden and Daley didn't think the rule was right on either the policy or the politics, sources said. Joshua Dubois, head of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, also expressed concern.

The policy was wrong, the two Catholic men, Biden and Daley, argued, saying that the Obama administration couldn't force religious charities to pay for something they think is a sin. Sources say that Biden and Daley in these internal debates emphasized the political fallout more so than the policy issue. Catholics are the ultimate swing voters, they argued. President Obama won the Catholic vote 54-46% in 2008, but he lost among white Catholics 47-53%, according to exit polls.

But Biden and Daley faced a strong group making the case for the rule within the administration - including Catholics such as senior adviser David Plouffe and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, senior White House advisers Valerie Jarrett and Pete Rouse, and then-domestic policy council director Melody Barnes. Others outside the White House also pushed hard for the rule, including former White House communications director Anita Dunn, Senators Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Cecile Richards. (Some of the details of this internal division were first reported yesterday by Bloomberg's Mike Dorning and Margaret Talev.)

For these advocates, this issue was logical and based on science: birth control saves women's lives, reduces the number of unwanted pregnancies, and is a fundamental issue of a woman controlling her own health care. And the politics were in the long term good, they said. Even with the current controversy raging, many Democrats maintain that the voters they need to vote for Obama in November - young voters nationwide, women voters in battleground states such as Colorado, Virginia, and Pennsylvania - support the president's decision.

Those advocating for the rule argued that the Catholics likely to be most offended by this rule - those who attend mass at least once a week - voted for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., 59-41%. (Though sources say this tidbit was not discussed internally at the White House, it's interesting to note that President Obama narrowly won the Catholics who don't attend church regularly, 52-48%.)

The two sides couldn't even agree about what they were debating. In the fall, Richards brought in polling indicating that the American people overwhelmingly supported the birth control benefit in health insurance. She also highlighted statistics showing the overwhelming use of birth control.

The Vice President and others argued that this wouldn't be seen as an issue of contraception - it would be seen as an issue of religious liberty. They questioned the polling of the rule advocates, arguing that it didn't explain the issue in full, it ignored the question of what religious groups should have to pay for. And they argued that women voters for whom this was an important issue weren't likely to vote for Mitt Romney, who has drawn a strong anti-abortion line as a presidential candidate, saying he would end federal funding to Planned Parenthood and supporting a "personhood" amendment that defines life as beginning at the moment of fertilization.

Political hands disagreed with that interpretation. Cultural issues will play a bigger issue in the 2012 election than they did during the economic crisis of 2008, they said. Some of the suburban women up for grabs in this election, ones who are starting to feel more confident about the economy, can be firmly won over if they learned about this rule - if they also were told that President Obama supported an exemption for houses of worship while Romney opposes not only abortion but federal funding for contraception.

Some in the White House thought that the president's hands became tied when Sebelius issued the proposed rule in August; they would have preferred a delay so as to work out some sort of arrangement with religious charities and schools. The president was boxed in by this rule, they say; after the rule was issued, any discussion about expanding the exemption became a rallying cry for groups that support contraception and legal abortion, such as Planned Parenthood. When President Obama met with Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in November, discussing this topic as well as others, these groups sounded the alarm.

In addition to lobbying by Richards and Dunn, Rouse - a former Senate staffer so plugged in he has been called "the 101st Senator" - spent a great deal of time talking to Boxer, Shaheen, and other senators who felt strongly in support of the rule.

The president ultimately sided with the rule's advocates. He and Secretary Sebelius felt that the policy needed a way to treat religious universities, hospitals, and charities different than general employers, White House officials insist, which is why the Department of Human Services announced that the policy would not be fully implemented until August 2013, giving the administration and these groups more time to work on a policy that would alleviate most concerns.  

The president wanted the decision about the rule to be announced before the State of the Union, so as not to step on his economic message. So much for that.

-Jake Tapper

Also Read

View the original article here

From the go, roller-coaster GOP White House race

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — From the start, it's been a roller-coaster race for the Republican presidential nomination.

GOP primary voters can catch their collective breath for the next two weeks after spending the past six lurching toward one candidate and then another in an exercise of political soul-searching that appears far from settled.

The next contests, in Arizona and Michigan, aren't until Feb. 28. The party with a reputation for order may have it sorted out after March 6, when 10 states get their say. But that would break sharply with this race's tendency toward uncertainty.

"It's just frenetic," says Sally Bradshaw, a Republican strategist and longtime aide to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. "Everyone is changing their mind every week. It is so unpredictable."

To Bradshaw, "it's a sign of a party that does not yet know its path."

With nine contests down, Mitt Romney leads the delegate hunt, and has both the money and the organization to compete deep into the state-by-state nomination calendar. The last contest, in Utah, is set for June 26.

But his two main rivals have scored decisive victories, putting into doubt the strength of the former Massachusetts governor's front-running candidacy.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's sweep of Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri this past week is a reminder of Romney's failures to win over conservatives. That was the case, too, in South Carolina, where former House Speaker Newt Gingrich finished first. The near-victory by Texas Rep. Ron Paul in Maine on Saturday further exposed the GOP's deep divisions.

No one has proved able to assemble a broad coalition of establishment party leaders, social conservatives and tea party activists in a party that lacks a natural national leader such as a former president to influence the rank and file.

The four candidates have had the stage to themselves for only three weeks, survivors in a competition over many months that saw politicians get in and then get out or go through very public deliberations about running before ditching the notion.

Governors, senators and others tempted to run stayed on the sidelines despite much public pressure. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie went back and forth before declining to enter. Donald Trump passed. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin teased well into the fall.

By that point, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty had come and gone from the race. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann's star had risen and fallen, and so had Texas Gov. Rick Perry's after some poor debate performances. It wasn't long before sexual harassment allegations forced tea party favorite Herman Cain out of the contest.

The field finally was set in December, just a month before Iowa's Jan. 3 leadoff caucuses.

Gingrich, whose campaign had imploded last summer, surged by seizing the debate stage and portraying himself as a Ronald Reagan-like antagonist to President Barack Obama.

"How does a Columbia, Harvard law graduate ... look in the mirror and say he's afraid to stand on the same platform with a West Georgia College professor?" Gingrich told a cheering crowd near Des Moines as the year ended.

Romney played to win in Iowa and pounced on Gingrich. Romney and his allies running an independent political action committee pummeled Gingrich with about $3 million in attack TV ads. Paul's campaign ran ads accusing Gingrich of "serial hypocrisy." Gingrich's ties to Freddie Mac, the federally backed mortgage company, came under scrutiny, as did his fresh comments that Palestinians are an "invented people."

All that took a toll on Gingrich.

Santorum, who had toiled in obscurity for months, was the beneficiary. Evangelical voters rallied behind him.

By the night of the Iowa caucuses, Romney was declared the winner over Santorum by a mere eight votes. Gingrich finished fourth.

"Game on," Santorum declared, nonetheless triumphant.

By the next morning, Bachmann was out after finishing sixth. Perry headed straight to South Carolina, reversing course after hinting he would pull out of the race after finishing fifth in Iowa.

New Hampshire was next up and it wasn't really a contest. Romney cruised to victory and easily beat back one-state challenger Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman.

But Romney would face obstacles, most of them self-inflicted, that would signal problems down the road.

"I like being able to fire people," Romney said in Nashua, N.H., while promoting choice in insurance options. His rivals immediately attacked.

It was a reminder of Romney's vast wealth in tough economic times, and an example of a series of comments ready-made for critics. "Corporations are people," he said at one point. He also had wagered a $10,000 bet with Perry.

Gingrich looked for a revival, and found it by attacking Romney's tenure as the founder and CEO of a venture capital firm, Bain Capital. A $5 million check by a Las Vegas casino mogul to a pro-Gingrich super PAC put that criticism on TV ahead of the South Carolina primary.

In that first-in-the South voting state, Romney was cast as a job-killer but the move backfired. The GOP establishment accused Gingrich of waging war on free-market principles that are the bedrock of the GOP.

Huntsman declared Romney "the best equipped to defeat Barack Obama" as he quit the race. Romney toured with South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and 2008 primary winner John McCain. A first-ever GOP sweep of the opening three contests seemed within Romney's reach.

Then, it didn't.

Romney stumbled over whether he would release his tax returns. Gingrich turned in solid debate performances, at one point turning the bombshell 11th-hour allegation from his second wife that he sought an open marriage before their divorce into a strident attack on the media.

In one bizarre Thursday before the primary, Iowa GOP officials announced Santorum had actually won the Iowa caucuses. Perry quit and endorsed Gingrich.

Gingrich easily won South Carolina.

The race turned to Florida, where Romney had built a firewall by pouring far more money and resources into the state than any of his rivals. Only Romney and his allied super PAC had the ability to compete in the state's 10 media markets. They combined to spend $17 million in advertising, nearly all of it attacking Gingrich.

Gingrich triumphantly arrived in Naples, Fla., to a crowd of 5,000 two days after the South Carolina vote. Then the attacks took hold.

Gingrich decried what he called "carpet-bombing" on TV. He spent much of the 10 days on the defensive as he struggled to answer Romney's newfound aggressiveness during the two Florida debates. Specifically, Romney labeled Gingrich an "influence peddler," and tied his Freddie Mac connection to the housing crisis that has hit hard in Florida.

In the end, Romney comfortably carried Florida over Gingrich.

Paul and Santorum finished far back, having abandoned the state for more promising territory.

Four days after Florida, Romney easily won the Nevada caucuses; his fellow Mormons accounted for 25 percent of voters.

But it wasn't long before trouble emerged anew.

Having retreated from Florida, Santorum was virtually alone as he campaigned ahead of the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses and Missouri's nonbinding primary.

Last week, Santorum re-emerged as Romney's chief challenger by carrying all three states, forcing Romney to recalibrate his campaign in the face of conservative reluctance to support him.

Maine was the latest state to weigh in and Romney was narrowly declared the victor Saturday over Paul.

It was just the latest chapter in a race certain to continue to be volatile — and long.

View the original article here

Policy and Politics of Contraception Rule Fiercely Debated Within White House

"What are we doing here?" asked Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, stepping outside his wheelhouse to ask about a rising storm involving the Obama administration and the Catholic Church. "What's the point?"

It was the Fall of 2011 and Panetta had read about a proposed Obama administration rule that would require employers - excluding houses of worship but including religious organizations such as charities, hospitals, and schools - to offer health insurance that fully covered contraception.

Panetta - a Catholic, former U.S. Representative, and White House chief of staff - didn't quite understand why the Obama administration would be stepping into this conflict.

Panetta's fears have to a degree been realized as White House officials now find themselves taking heat on a policy debate about conscience and religious liberty; the Obama administration is working to find a way to allow religious organizations to not pay for services they find morally objectionable, while also ensuring that, say, the women nurses and doctors who work at Catholic hospitals have full access to birth control. Some officials are discussing a way to introduce something like the law in Hawaii, where religious organizations don't have to pay for employee insurance that covers contraception, but they do have to inform employees how they can get it on their own.

The debate within the White House on this issue was, sources say, heated, and President Obama was legitimately torn. Panetta wasn't alone in his concerns. For months, Vice President Joe Biden and then-White House chief of staff Bill Daley argued internally against the rule, sources tell ABC News. Biden and Daley didn't think the rule was right on either the policy or the politics, sources said. Joshua Dubois, head of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, also expressed concern.

The policy was wrong, the two Catholic men, Biden and Daley, argued, saying that the Obama administration couldn't force religious charities to pay for something they think is a sin. Sources say that Biden and Daley in these internal debates emphasized the political fallout more so than the policy issue. Catholics are the ultimate swing voters, they argued. President Obama won the Catholic vote 54-46% in 2008, but he lost among white Catholics 47-53%, according to exit polls.

But Biden and Daley faced a strong group making the case for the rule within the administration - including Catholics such as senior adviser David Plouffe and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, senior White House advisers Valerie Jarrett and Pete Rouse, and then-domestic policy council director Melody Barnes. Others outside the White House also pushed hard for the rule, including former White House communications director Anita Dunn, Senators Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Cecile Richards. (Some of the details of this internal division were first reported yesterday by Bloomberg's Mike Dorning and Margaret Talev.)

For these advocates, this issue was logical and based on science: birth control saves women's lives, reduces the number of unwanted pregnancies, and is a fundamental issue of a woman controlling her own health care. And the politics were in the long term good, they said. Even with the current controversy raging, many Democrats maintain that the voters they need to vote for Obama in November - young voters nationwide, women voters in battleground states such as Colorado, Virginia, and Pennsylvania - support the president's decision.

Those advocating for the rule argued that the Catholics likely to be most offended by this rule - those who attend mass at least once a week - voted for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., 59-41%. (Though sources say this tidbit was not discussed internally at the White House, it's interesting to note that President Obama narrowly won the Catholics who don't attend church regularly, 52-48%.)

The two sides couldn't even agree about what they were debating. In the fall, Richards brought in polling indicating that the American people overwhelmingly supported the birth control benefit in health insurance. She also highlighted statistics showing the overwhelming use of birth control.

The Vice President and others argued that this wouldn't be seen as an issue of contraception - it would be seen as an issue of religious liberty. They questioned the polling of the rule advocates, arguing that it didn't explain the issue in full, it ignored the question of what religious groups should have to pay for. And they argued that women voters for whom this was an important issue weren't likely to vote for Mitt Romney, who has drawn a strong anti-abortion line as a presidential candidate, saying he would end federal funding to Planned Parenthood and supporting a "personhood" amendment that defines life as beginning at the moment of fertilization.

Political hands disagreed with that interpretation. Cultural issues will play a bigger issue in the 2012 election than they did during the economic crisis of 2008, they said. Some of the suburban women up for grabs in this election, ones who are starting to feel more confident about the economy, can be firmly won over if they learned about this rule - if they also were told that President Obama supported an exemption for houses of worship while Romney opposes not only abortion but federal funding for contraception.

Some in the White House thought that the president's hands became tied when Sebelius issued the proposed rule in August; they would have preferred a delay so as to work out some sort of arrangement with religious charities and schools. The president was boxed in by this rule, they say; after the rule was issued, any discussion about expanding the exemption became a rallying cry for groups that support contraception and legal abortion, such as Planned Parenthood. When President Obama met with Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in November, discussing this topic as well as others, these groups sounded the alarm.

In addition to lobbying by Richards and Dunn, Rouse - a former Senate staffer so plugged in he has been called "the 101st Senator" - spent a great deal of time talking to Boxer, Shaheen, and other senators who felt strongly in support of the rule.

The president ultimately sided with the rule's advocates. He and Secretary Sebelius felt that the policy needed a way to treat religious universities, hospitals, and charities different than general employers, White House officials insist, which is why the Department of Human Services announced that the policy would not be fully implemented until August 2013, giving the administration and these groups more time to work on a policy that would alleviate most concerns.  

The president wanted the decision about the rule to be announced before the State of the Union, so as not to step on his economic message. So much for that.

-Jake Tapper

Also Read

View the original article here

Policy and Politics of Contraception Rule Fiercely Debated Within White House

"What are we doing here?" asked Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, stepping outside his wheelhouse to ask about a rising storm involving the Obama administration and the Catholic Church. "What's the point?"

It was the Fall of 2011 and Panetta had read about a proposed Obama administration rule that would require employers - excluding houses of worship but including religious organizations such as charities, hospitals, and schools - to offer health insurance that fully covered contraception.

Panetta - a Catholic, former U.S. Representative, and White House chief of staff - didn't quite understand why the Obama administration would be stepping into this conflict.

Panetta's fears have to a degree been realized as White House officials now find themselves taking heat on a policy debate about conscience and religious liberty; the Obama administration is working to find a way to allow religious organizations to not pay for services they find morally objectionable, while also ensuring that, say, the women nurses and doctors who work at Catholic hospitals have full access to birth control. Some officials are discussing a way to introduce something like the law in Hawaii, where religious organizations don't have to pay for employee insurance that covers contraception, but they do have to inform employees how they can get it on their own.

The debate within the White House on this issue was, sources say, heated, and President Obama was legitimately torn. Panetta wasn't alone in his concerns. For months, Vice President Joe Biden and then-White House chief of staff Bill Daley argued internally against the rule, sources tell ABC News. Biden and Daley didn't think the rule was right on either the policy or the politics, sources said. Joshua Dubois, head of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, also expressed concern.

The policy was wrong, the two Catholic men, Biden and Daley, argued, saying that the Obama administration couldn't force religious charities to pay for something they think is a sin. Sources say that Biden and Daley in these internal debates emphasized the political fallout more so than the policy issue. Catholics are the ultimate swing voters, they argued. President Obama won the Catholic vote 54-46% in 2008, but he lost among white Catholics 47-53%, according to exit polls.

But Biden and Daley faced a strong group making the case for the rule within the administration - including Catholics such as senior adviser David Plouffe and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, senior White House advisers Valerie Jarrett and Pete Rouse, and then-domestic policy council director Melody Barnes. Others outside the White House also pushed hard for the rule, including former White House communications director Anita Dunn, Senators Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Cecile Richards. (Some of the details of this internal division were first reported yesterday by Bloomberg's Mike Dorning and Margaret Talev.)

For these advocates, this issue was logical and based on science: birth control saves women's lives, reduces the number of unwanted pregnancies, and is a fundamental issue of a woman controlling her own health care. And the politics were in the long term good, they said. Even with the current controversy raging, many Democrats maintain that the voters they need to vote for Obama in November - young voters nationwide, women voters in battleground states such as Colorado, Virginia, and Pennsylvania - support the president's decision.

Those advocating for the rule argued that the Catholics likely to be most offended by this rule - those who attend mass at least once a week - voted for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., 59-41%. (Though sources say this tidbit was not discussed internally at the White House, it's interesting to note that President Obama narrowly won the Catholics who don't attend church regularly, 52-48%.)

The two sides couldn't even agree about what they were debating. In the fall, Richards brought in polling indicating that the American people overwhelmingly supported the birth control benefit in health insurance. She also highlighted statistics showing the overwhelming use of birth control.

The Vice President and others argued that this wouldn't be seen as an issue of contraception - it would be seen as an issue of religious liberty. They questioned the polling of the rule advocates, arguing that it didn't explain the issue in full, it ignored the question of what religious groups should have to pay for. And they argued that women voters for whom this was an important issue weren't likely to vote for Mitt Romney, who has drawn a strong anti-abortion line as a presidential candidate, saying he would end federal funding to Planned Parenthood and supporting a "personhood" amendment that defines life as beginning at the moment of fertilization.

Political hands disagreed with that interpretation. Cultural issues will play a bigger issue in the 2012 election than they did during the economic crisis of 2008, they said. Some of the suburban women up for grabs in this election, ones who are starting to feel more confident about the economy, can be firmly won over if they learned about this rule - if they also were told that President Obama supported an exemption for houses of worship while Romney opposes not only abortion but federal funding for contraception.

Some in the White House thought that the president's hands became tied when Sebelius issued the proposed rule in August; they would have preferred a delay so as to work out some sort of arrangement with religious charities and schools. The president was boxed in by this rule, they say; after the rule was issued, any discussion about expanding the exemption became a rallying cry for groups that support contraception and legal abortion, such as Planned Parenthood. When President Obama met with Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in November, discussing this topic as well as others, these groups sounded the alarm.

In addition to lobbying by Richards and Dunn, Rouse - a former Senate staffer so plugged in he has been called "the 101st Senator" - spent a great deal of time talking to Boxer, Shaheen, and other senators who felt strongly in support of the rule.

The president ultimately sided with the rule's advocates. He and Secretary Sebelius felt that the policy needed a way to treat religious universities, hospitals, and charities different than general employers, White House officials insist, which is why the Department of Human Services announced that the policy would not be fully implemented until August 2013, giving the administration and these groups more time to work on a policy that would alleviate most concerns.  

The president wanted the decision about the rule to be announced before the State of the Union, so as not to step on his economic message. So much for that.

-Jake Tapper

Also Read

View the original article here

Are House Republicans Mitt Romney's 'biggest liability'?

Tuesday was a terrible day for Mitt Romney. Conservatives abandoned him in droves for once-insignificant rival Rick Santorum, who won three statewide presidential contests. Still, the former Massachusetts governor remains heavily favored to win the GOP nomination. If (or when) he does, he'll surely be associated throughout the campaign with the one branch of the federal government his party controls, the deeply unpopular House. That may not be good news for Mitt. House Republicans don't seem too keen to moderate their more controversial policy prescriptions in order to help their nominee appeal to a general election audience. Is this Romney's biggest campaign challenge?

The House GOP is "Romney's biggest liability": House Republicans are going out of their way to become "an albatross to Romney's presidential bid," says Jonathan Bernstein at The Washington Post. They're "apparently preparing to dive off a cliff again" by doubling down on Rep. Paul Ryan's unpopular Medicare-voucherizing plan, and fighting a popular tax on the rich that would pay for an extension of the payroll tax holiday. "These are both issues where conservative orthodoxy is on one side, and the bulk of the American people" are on the other. Every time the House GOP brings up its "unpopular conservative positions," Romney is "going to take hits."
"Mitt Romney's biggest liability: The House GOP?"

But at least we'll get a real contest of ideas: "The future of Medicare is on the line," says Cory Adams at Big Think. And thanks to the House GOP's continued focus on Ryan's controversial plan, which Mitt has backed, "a Romney vs. Obama match-up will surely address this contentious issue." In the end, that may hurt Mitt. But we should all be glad that "in an era of record U.S. deficits, the question of individual liberty and the responsibility of the state is coming to the fore in a way that is hasn't for decades."
"Paul Ryan, individual liberty, and the fate of Medicare"

Plus, Romney's real problem is his social squishiness: "Conventional wisdom has long held that the 2012 election would be about fiscal and economic issues" like Medicare and taxes, says Joel B. Pollak at Big Government. But as Santorum's resurgence shows, "social conservatism may be due for a revival." That will be Romney's Achilles' heel: He's a notorious "flip-flopper" on social issues, and "after a year of frustrating compromises in Congress," voters want a man of conviction.
"Will 2012 be about social conservatism after all?"

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View the original article here

Policy and Politics of Contraception Rule Fiercely Debated Within White House

"What are we doing here?" asked Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, stepping outside his wheelhouse to ask about a rising storm involving the Obama administration and the Catholic Church. "What's the point?"

It was the Fall of 2011 and Panetta had read about a proposed Obama administration rule that would require employers - excluding houses of worship but including religious organizations such as charities, hospitals, and schools - to offer health insurance that fully covered contraception.

Panetta - a Catholic, former U.S. Representative, and White House chief of staff - didn't quite understand why the Obama administration would be stepping into this conflict.

Panetta's fears have to a degree been realized as White House officials now find themselves taking heat on a policy debate about conscience and religious liberty; the Obama administration is working to find a way to allow religious organizations to not pay for services they find morally objectionable, while also ensuring that, say, the women nurses and doctors who work at Catholic hospitals have full access to birth control. Some officials are discussing a way to introduce something like the law in Hawaii, where religious organizations don't have to pay for employee insurance that covers contraception, but they do have to inform employees how they can get it on their own.

The debate within the White House on this issue was, sources say, heated, and President Obama was legitimately torn. Panetta wasn't alone in his concerns. For months, Vice President Joe Biden and then-White House chief of staff Bill Daley argued internally against the rule, sources tell ABC News. Biden and Daley didn't think the rule was right on either the policy or the politics, sources said. Joshua Dubois, head of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, also expressed concern.

The policy was wrong, the two Catholic men, Biden and Daley, argued, saying that the Obama administration couldn't force religious charities to pay for something they think is a sin. Sources say that Biden and Daley in these internal debates emphasized the political fallout more so than the policy issue. Catholics are the ultimate swing voters, they argued. President Obama won the Catholic vote 54-46% in 2008, but he lost among white Catholics 47-53%, according to exit polls.

But Biden and Daley faced a strong group making the case for the rule within the administration - including Catholics such as senior adviser David Plouffe and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, senior White House advisers Valerie Jarrett and Pete Rouse, and then-domestic policy council director Melody Barnes. Others outside the White House also pushed hard for the rule, including former White House communications director Anita Dunn, Senators Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Cecile Richards. (Some of the details of this internal division were first reported yesterday by Bloomberg's Mike Dorning and Margaret Talev.)

For these advocates, this issue was logical and based on science: birth control saves women's lives, reduces the number of unwanted pregnancies, and is a fundamental issue of a woman controlling her own health care. And the politics were in the long term good, they said. Even with the current controversy raging, many Democrats maintain that the voters they need to vote for Obama in November - young voters nationwide, women voters in battleground states such as Colorado, Virginia, and Pennsylvania - support the president's decision.

Those advocating for the rule argued that the Catholics likely to be most offended by this rule - those who attend mass at least once a week - voted for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., 59-41%. (Though sources say this tidbit was not discussed internally at the White House, it's interesting to note that President Obama narrowly won the Catholics who don't attend church regularly, 52-48%.)

The two sides couldn't even agree about what they were debating. In the fall, Richards brought in polling indicating that the American people overwhelmingly supported the birth control benefit in health insurance. She also highlighted statistics showing the overwhelming use of birth control.

The Vice President and others argued that this wouldn't be seen as an issue of contraception - it would be seen as an issue of religious liberty. They questioned the polling of the rule advocates, arguing that it didn't explain the issue in full, it ignored the question of what religious groups should have to pay for. And they argued that women voters for whom this was an important issue weren't likely to vote for Mitt Romney, who has drawn a strong anti-abortion line as a presidential candidate, saying he would end federal funding to Planned Parenthood and supporting a "personhood" amendment that defines life as beginning at the moment of fertilization.

Political hands disagreed with that interpretation. Cultural issues will play a bigger issue in the 2012 election than they did during the economic crisis of 2008, they said. Some of the suburban women up for grabs in this election, ones who are starting to feel more confident about the economy, can be firmly won over if they learned about this rule - if they also were told that President Obama supported an exemption for houses of worship while Romney opposes not only abortion but federal funding for contraception.

Some in the White House thought that the president's hands became tied when Sebelius issued the proposed rule in August; they would have preferred a delay so as to work out some sort of arrangement with religious charities and schools. The president was boxed in by this rule, they say; after the rule was issued, any discussion about expanding the exemption became a rallying cry for groups that support contraception and legal abortion, such as Planned Parenthood. When President Obama met with Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in November, discussing this topic as well as others, these groups sounded the alarm.

In addition to lobbying by Richards and Dunn, Rouse - a former Senate staffer so plugged in he has been called "the 101st Senator" - spent a great deal of time talking to Boxer, Shaheen, and other senators who felt strongly in support of the rule.

The president ultimately sided with the rule's advocates. He and Secretary Sebelius felt that the policy needed a way to treat religious universities, hospitals, and charities different than general employers, White House officials insist, which is why the Department of Human Services announced that the policy would not be fully implemented until August 2013, giving the administration and these groups more time to work on a policy that would alleviate most concerns.  

The president wanted the decision about the rule to be announced before the State of the Union, so as not to step on his economic message. So much for that.

-Jake Tapper

Also Read

View the original article here