In Nod to Rising Gas Prices, Obama Discusses Energy Policy

Speaking to students at the University of Miami, in a swing state where gas averages $3.69 a gallon, Mr. Obama said: “Just like last year, gas prices are climbing across the country; this time, it’s happening even earlier. And when gas prices go up, it hurts everybody.”

The president offered what he called an “all-of-the-above” response, based on more domestic oil production, development of alternative energy sources and stricter fuel-efficiency standards.

Drawing a sharp contrast with Republicans and anticipating potential attacks on the campaign trail, Mr. Obama ridiculed his opponents for recycling a “three-point plan for $2 gas.”

“Step one is to drill, and step two is to drill, and then step three is to keep drilling,” he said.

This was the president’s first major effort to tackle an issue that has surfaced in the last few weeks as oil prices have been driven up by tensions in the Middle East, where Iran has threatened to retaliate against the West because of sanctions over its nuclear program.

Mr. Obama seemed keenly aware of the risk posed by oil prices. A previous cycle of price increases played briefly to the benefit of Senator John McCain during the 2008 campaign, when his running mate, Sarah Palin, revved up crowds with the chant, “drill, baby, drill.”

The president said that the United States is producing more oil now than at any time during the last eight years, with a record number of rigs pumping. The White House, he said, was prepared to open new areas in the Arctic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico to exploration.

But Mr. Obama warned that no amount of domestic production could offset the broader forces driving up gas prices, chief among them Middle East instability and the ravenous energy appetite of China, which he said added 10 million cars in 2010.

“Anybody who tells you we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or just isn’t telling you the truth,” he said to whoops from the crowd of nearly 1,500.

Mr. Obama’s remarks, tinged with humor and sarcasm, were bluntly political, on a trip that included fund-raising events in Miami and Orlando. But his message was sober: neither he nor anyone else can do much about oil prices, which he said were likely to keep rising.

The White House contends that the public has grown accustomed to these periodic spikes and will credit him for speaking honestly about the underlying economic realities rather than offering “gimmicky” fixes — something he eschewed in 2008.

Still, with gasoline prices nationally about 12 percent higher than a year ago, Democratic political analysts believe Mr. Obama needs to get ahead of the issue quickly. Newt Gingrich, for example promised this week to bring gas down to $2.50 a gallon.

“Four dollars per gallon has typically been the tipping point when people go from complacency to exasperation,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, who notes that people have begun mentioning gas prices with increasing urgency in his focus groups.

Gas prices did not figure prominently in the Republican debate on Wednesday in Arizona, where the candidates trained most of their fire on one another. But Republicans in Congress criticized Mr. Obama for not opening more federal land to exploration, and for not approving the Keystone XL pipeline.

“The president would like everyone to forget that gas prices have doubled over the past three years while he consistently blocked and slowed the production of American-made energy,” a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner, Brendan Buck, said in a statement.

Even Mr. Obama, they noted, once referred to his “all-of-the-above” policy as a “hodgepodge.”

Among Mr. Obama’s proposals are opening 75 percent of the nation’s offshore oil and natural gas resources by 2017; fuel-economy and emissions standards for trucks, vans and buses; and an administration effort to prevent bottlenecks in the oil market.

Michael Levi, an energy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said, “Any effective energy policy is almost inevitably going to be a hodgepodge.” He credited the president with stimulating production, though he said the rejection of Keystone sent a weak signal.

The American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s lobbying group, said Mr. Obama had restricted opportunities to produce more oil by shortening leases and slowing permit approvals.

The president fired back, repeating his demand that Congress end subsidies for the oil and gas industries.

“It’s outrageous,” he said. “Every politician who’s been fighting to keep these subsidies in place should explain to the American people why the oil industry needs more of their money.”

None of Mr. Obama’s proposals were new, and some were aspirational. He said gasoline and diesel produced from algae could replace up to 17 percent of imported oil. But experts say such fuel is a long way from being commercially viable on that scale.

Joking that he once bought a car for $500, Mr. Obama said that because of new fuel-economy standards, new cars will average nearly 55 miles per gallon by the middle of the next decade.

Mr. Obama struck his own inadvertent blow for fuel economy, by flying to Florida on a Boeing 757 rather than a 747. The bigger 747, which usually serves as Air Force One, was in the shop.

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Political Memo: Obama’s Tax Policy Targets Slice of His Base: The Affluent

You would not know it from Republican cries of class warfare swirling around Mr. Obama’s new budget, which reiterates his calls for higher taxes on individuals earning more than $200,000 and households earning more than $250,000. Conventional understanding of election-season populism assumes that the president will be looking to stick it to die-hard Republicans.

In fact, affluent Americans have represented a growing portion of the Democratic Party for a generation. Even though Jimmy Carter won the presidency in 1976, for example, he trailed the Republican incumbent, Gerald Ford, 62 percent to 38 percent among voters in the highest income group (those earning more than $20,000, the equivalent of roughly $80,000 today) that were measured by people conducting exit polls.

By 2000, Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee, trailed George W. Bush 54 percent to 43 percent among the highest income group (those earning more than $100,000). In winning the presidency four years ago, Mr. Obama defeated Senator John McCain by 52 percent to 46 percent among voters in the top income group, those earning more than $200,000.

The conservative author Charles Murray, in his new book “Coming Apart,” which is about the nation’s widening class divide, identifies “Super ZIP codes” that the “hyper-wealthy and hyper-elite” call home. Even as he proposed higher taxes on the wealthy in 2008, Mr. Obama beat Mr. McCain in 8 of the top 10 such ZIP codes — by a ratio of 2 to 1 in communities like Atherton, Calif., Gladwyne, Pa., and Chappaqua, N.Y.

Mr. Obama also continued the Democrats’ progress among the much larger group of upper-middle-class voters. In counties with above-average incomes that the research organization Patchwork Nation calls Monied ’Burbs, Mr. Obama received 55 percent of the vote, up from the 49 percent President Bill Clinton received in 1996, the 43 percent that the Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis received in 1988 and the 36 percent Mr. Carter received in 1980.

To make the point that he is not lashing out at opponents, Mr. Obama often notes that his proposals would raise his own taxes or those of allies like Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor. But the Democratic Party’s increasing electoral success in upper portions of the income scale points to something broader: an argument that people like him have a civic responsibility to bear more of the burden of deficit reduction and to pay for government spending priorities.

“It is the opposite of a pander,” said Dante Chinni, the director of Patchwork Nation. And it carries risks as well as potential rewards.

Some fallout appears evident in donations from Wall Street executives, who feel particularly aggrieved by Mr. Obama’s criticisms and policies. After besting Mr. McCain four years ago with donations from the securities, hedge-fund and banking sectors, the president has seen the former Bain Capital executive Mitt Romney amass far more cash from each of them, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

And in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, Mr. Obama is supported by 43 percent and Mr. Romney by 47 percent of voters earning more than $100,000, even as he leads by six percentage points over all in a head-to-head matchup. In 2008, Mr. Obama split voters in the $100,000-plus category evenly with Mr. McCain. Yet Democratic strategists consider that fallout relatively modest and ascribe it more to frustration over gridlock in Washington than ire over potential tax increases. They see Mr. Obama as more vulnerable to defections among economically pinched working class voters than among higher earners whose taxes he would raise.

In large part that owes to the cultural influences that turned a large chunk of well-educated baby boomers toward the Democrats beginning in the 1960s. Those include support for activist government in areas like education, training and job creation, which Mr. Obama argues are necessary to spur growth and stem widening inequality of income and wealth.

“The types of affluent voters who have been going to vote for Democrats are unlikely to be driven away” by the prospect of higher taxes, said Geoff Garin, a pollster for Democratic candidates and for the “super PAC” backing Mr. Obama. “They have an appreciation for what those higher taxes pay for.”

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Poll Finds Support for Contraceptive Policy and Gay Couples

Despite the deep divide between some religious leaders and government officials over contraceptives, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll found most voters support the new federal directive that health insurance plans provide coverage for birth control.

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In addition, most voters said they favored some type of legal recognition for same-sex couples, at a time when the New Jersey Legislature is set to vote on gay marriage and after a federal appellate court ruled that Proposition 8’s ban on same-sex marriage in California was unconstitutional.

While same-sex marriage and coverage for contraceptives have generated significant debate this month, the poll suggests that voters do not place social issues high on their agenda. When asked to name one issue that presidential candidates should discuss, most voters, including Republicans who described themselves as primary voters, mentioned an economic problem, like unemployment or the budget deficit. Few said they wanted to hear the candidates talk about abortion or gay marriage, for example.

On contraceptive coverage, 65 percent of voters in the poll said they supported the Obama administration’s requirement that health insurance plans cover the cost of birth control, and 59 percent, said the health insurance plans of religiously affiliated employers should cover the cost of birth control.

In a compromise last week, President Obama said insurance companies could shoulder the costs required under the new federal health care law, but the Conference of Catholic Bishops and other religious leaders continue to oppose the rule.

A majority of Catholic voters in the poll were at odds with the church’s official stance, agreeing with most other voters that religiously affiliated employers should offer health insurance that provides contraception. Jennifer Davison, 38, a Catholic from Lomita, Calif., agrees with the federal requirement. “My opinion is that it is a personal issue rather than a religious issue,” she said in a follow-up interview.

Unlike Catholics, white evangelical Christian voters were more divided, with half objecting to requiring the health insurance plans of religious employers to cover contraceptives; 43 percent supported it. “It is a religious issue with me,” said Jessica Isner, 22, an evangelical Christian from Elkins, W. Va. “I believe that providing birth control is O.K. if the hospital is not religiously affiliated.”

Gay marriage is another debate in which the Catholic laity disagrees with church doctrine. More than two-thirds of Catholic voters supported some sort of legal recognition of gay couples’ relationships: 44 percent favored marriage, and 25 percent preferred civil unions. Twenty-four percent said gay couples should receive no legal recognition.

Again, white evangelical Christian voters expressed more conservative views. A majority said there should not be legal recognition of a gay relationship, while 18 percent said they should be allowed to marry and 25 percent supported civil unions.

The nationwide telephone poll included 1,064 registered voters, of whom 226 were Catholic and 238 were white evangelical Christians. The margins of sampling error are plus or minus three percentage points for all voters, plus or minus seven points for Catholics, and plus or minus six points for white evangelical Christians.

Marina Stefan contributed reporting.

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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

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AP sources: Obama revamping birth control policy

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rushing to end a political uproar, President Barack Obama on Friday will announce that religious employers will not have to cover birth control for their employees after all, The Associated Press has learned. The administration instead will demand that insurance companies will be the ones directly responsible for providing free contraception.

Obama's abrupt shift is an attempt to satisfy both sides of a deeply sensitive debate, and most urgently, to end a mounting election-year nightmare for the White House. The leader of a Catholic organization and a prominent women's group both expressed initial support for the changes.

Women will still get guaranteed access to birth control without co-pays or premiums no matter where they work, a provision of Obama's health care law that he insisted must remain. But religious universities and hospitals that see contraception as an unconscionable violation of their faith can refuse to cover it, and insurance companies will then have to step in to do so.

Obama will speak about his decision at 12:15 p.m. EST.

Senior administration officials confirmed the details to the AP but insisted they remain anonymous in advance of the president's announcement.

By keeping free contraception for employers at religious workplaces — but providing a different way to do it — the White House will assert it gave no ground on the basic principle of full preventative care that matters most to Obama.

Yet, it also was clear that Obama felt he had no choice but to retreat on a three-week-old policy in the face of a fierce political furor that showed no signs of cooling.

The White House consulted leaders on both sides of the debate to forge a decision.

The president of the Catholic Health Association, a trade group representing Catholic hospitals that had fought against the birth control requirement, said the organization was pleased with the revised rule.

"The framework developed has responded to the issues we identified that needed to be fixed," Sister Carol Keehan said in a statement.

Planned Parenthood also backed the revisions, saying the Obama administration was still committed to ensuring all women have access to birth control coverage, no matter where they work.

"We believe the compliance mechanism does not compromise a woman's ability to access these critical birth control benefits," Cecile Richards, the women's group president, said.

Officials said Obama has the legal authority to order insurance companies to provide free contraception coverage directly to workers. He will demand it in a new rule.

Following an intense White House debate that led to the original policy, officials said Obama seriously weighed the concerns over religious liberty, leading to the revamped decision.

It was just on Jan. 20 that the Obama administration announced that religious-affiliated employers — outside of churches and houses of worships — had to cover birth control free of charge as preventative care for women. These hospitals, schools and charities were given an extra year to comply, until August 2013, but that concession failed to satisfy opponents, who responded with outrage.

Catholic cardinals and bishops across the country assailed the policy in Sunday Masses. Republican leaders in Congress promised emergency legislation to overturn Obama's move. The president's rivals in the race for the White House accused him of attacking religion. Prominent lawmakers from Obama's own party began openly deriding the policy.

The sentiment on the other side, though, was also fierce. Women's groups, liberal religious leaders and health advocates pressed Obama not to cave in on the issue.

The furor has consumed media attention and threatened to undermine Obama's re-election bid just as he was in a stride over improving economic news. Political reality forced the White House to come up with a solution to a complex matter must faster than anticipated.

The fact that Obama himself will deliver the news was a sign of the stakes.

Under the new policy, religious employers will not be required to offer contraception and will not have to refer their employees to places that provide it.

If such an employer opts out, the employer's insurance company must provide birth control for free in a separate arrangement with workers who want it.

The change will still take affect with an extra year built in, in August 2013.

Already, 28 states had required health insurance plans to cover birth control before the federal regulations were issued.

However, they appear to have differing exemptions for religious employers.

Obama's health care law requires most insurance plans to cover women's preventative services, without a co-pay, starting on Aug. 1, 2012. Those services include well women visits, domestic violence screening and contraception, all designed to encourage health care that many women may otherwise find unaffordable.

The White House says covering contraception saves insurance companies money by keeping women healthy; how the insurance industry will see the mandate is another question.

Without adjusting his stand, Obama has risked alienated Catholics who have become courted swing voters in such pivotal political states as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. In 2008, Obama won 54 percent of the total Catholic vote, compared to 45 percent for Republican John McCain.

As the week wore on, the White House increasingly signaled that a change was coming.

Vice President Joe Biden, a Catholic, said in a radio interview Thursday that "there is going to be a significant attempt to work this out and there is time to do that."

Outside advocates were urging a quick resolution.

"As a Catholic I don't want to hear about this in Mass every week until the election," said Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats For Life of America. "I don't think it's good for the party and I don't think it's good for Obama's re-election chances."

__

Associated Press writer Erica Werner contributed to this story.

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Obama: Birth control policy meets everyone's needs

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says a revamped birth control policy will both protect religious liberties and protect women's access to contraception.

Speaking at the White House, Obama announced changes to the policy that has generated criticism from religious groups and others who say it would force them to violate their faith.

Obama urged politicians not to use the complicated matter as a wedge issue.

Under the changes, religious employers will not have to cover birth control for their employees. Instead, the government will demand that insurance companies be directly responsible for providing free contraception.

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Under fire, Obama adjusts his birth control policy

WASHINGTON (AP) — Under fierce election-year fire, President Barack Obama on Friday abruptly abandoned his stand that religious organizations must pay for free birth control for workers, scrambling to end a furor raging from the Catholic Church to Congress to his re-election foes. He demanded that insurance companies step in to provide the coverage instead.

Obama's compromise means ultimately that women would still get birth control without having to pay for it, no matter where they work. The president insisted he had stuck by that driving principle even in switching his approach, and the White House vehemently rejected any characterization that Obama had retreated under pressure.

Yet there was no doubt that Obama had found himself in an untenable position. He needed to walk back fast and find another route to his goal.

The controversy over contraception and religious liberty was overshadowing his agenda, threatening to alienate key voters and giving ammunition to the Republicans running for his job. It was a mess that knocked the White House off its message and vision for a second term.

Leaders from opposite sides of the divisive debate said they supported the outcome — or at least suggested they probably could live with it. Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, the head of the nation's Roman Catholic bishops and a fierce critic of the original rule covering hospitals and other employers, said the bishops were reserving judgment but that Obama's move was a good first step.

Conceding he wanted a resolution, Obama ordered advisers to find a middle ground in days, not within a year as had been the plan before the uproar. He said he spoke as a Christian who cherishes religious freedom and as a president unwilling to give up on free contraceptive care.

"I've been confident from the start that we could work out a sensible approach here, just as I promised," Obama said. "I understand some folks in Washington may want to treat this as another political wedge issue, but it shouldn't be. I certainly never saw it that way."

Under the new plan, religious employers such as charities, universities and hospitals will not have to offer contraception and will not have to refer their employees to places that provide it. If an employer opts out of the requirement, its insurance company must provide birth control for free in a separate arrangement with workers who want it.

"Very pleased," was how Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, reacted in a statement distributed by the White House. Her trade group represents Catholic hospitals that had fought against the birth control requirement, and Keehan said the new arrangement addresses the concerns it had.

Planned Parenthood, a prominent women's health organization, said Obama had reaffirmed his commitment to birth control coverage. The group's president, Cecile Richards, added, though, that it would be monitoring for "rigorous, fair and consistent" enforcement so women get the promised coverage.

Before announcing his decision to reporters, Obama telephoned Keehan, Richards and Dolan.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, many shrugged and said the rewrite did not change anything.

"It's an accounting trick," said Mike Gonzales of the Heritage Foundation. "Do they think people are stupid?"

The debate within the White House was intense even before the Jan. 20 decision was announced to exempt only churches and other houses of worships from the requirement that employers must cover free contraception. Other religious organizations were given an extra year to comply, but that concession didn't do enough.

First in a rumble, and then in a roar, critics formed a movement to overturn what they considered to be an egregious violation. Bishops assailed the policy in Sunday Masses and Republican leaders in Congress pledged to push a legislative repeal.

The White House seemed to be caught flatfooted.

"The past three weeks have witnessed a remarkable unity of Americans from all religions, or none at all, worried about the erosion of religious freedom and government intrusion into issues of faith and morals," said Dolan, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The turmoil, in turn, prompted advocates from other sides to get vocal in the battle for public opinion. They defended the rights of women and the need for preventive health care, including contraception, to be provided without fee for people of all faiths, no matter where they work.

Officials said Obama has the power under his health law to compel insurance companies to provide free contraception coverage directly to workers.

The health insurance industry voiced concern that putting the burden on them could set a precedent of shifting cost its way. The insurance companies will weigh in later as Obama's new policy undergoes review, said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for the America's Health Insurance Plans trade group.

Administration officials say providing birth control won't cost insurers any more in the long run, because it's less expensive than the costs of maternal care and delivery. But insurers say they'll have to pay drug companies for pills and doctors for prescriptions, so it won't be free to them. The costs probably will be passed on to policy holders, as is happening already with other requirements of the health care law, such as allowing young adults to stay under their parents' coverage until age 26.

By keeping free contraception for employers at religious workplaces — but providing a different way to do it — Obama was able to assert he had found "a solution that works for everyone." Unclear was why the White House had not come up with the idea in the first place.

While Obama in 2008 won the total Catholic vote, 54 percent to Sen. John McCain's 45 percent, he lost the white Catholic vote, 52 percent to 47 percent, according to exit polls. Once reliably Democratic, Catholics are now swing voters, with white Catholics making up the majority of the group.

The Rev. Joel C. Hunter, a moderate evangelical leader and a spiritual adviser to the president, said he thinks Obama responded quickly enough to heal the rifts with many of his religious allies. "I think it's simple enough that most people will say, 'Oh good, we can get to other things now,'" said Hunter.

Yet the change just led to more criticism from some of Obama's opponents.

Texas Republican Rep. Kevin Brady said the revamped rule marked a "full scale retreat by a disconnected president who now knows that Washington shouldn't force American to abandon their religious convictions."

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner said that that initial response indicated church leaders were not yet convinced the mandate respected religious freedom. Boehner has said he believes the original measure violates First Amendment rights, and his office said Friday that he would seek legislation.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., an ardent support of the original measure, offered a restrained response. Focusing on the benefits of health care, she said: "I appreciate the president's unifying approach."

___

Associated Press writers Julie Pace, Erica Werner, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Jim Kuhnhenn, Laurie Kellman, Rachel Zoll and Jay Lindsay contributed to this story.

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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

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