W.H. to pick Baucus as ambassador to China

Baucus has already announced that he will not seek reelection next year. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

Sen. Max Baucus, the veteran Montana Democrat who has served in the Senate since 1978, is expected to be nominated by the White House to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to China, according to several sources familiar with the matter.

Baucus planned to begin informing his colleagues and his staff about his upcoming nomination on Wednesday evening.

Continue Reading

Driving the Day: Senate nominations

Baucus: ACA rollout ‘unacceptable’

It remains unclear when the appointment would take effect, but Baucus would have to win confirmation from his Senate colleagues. If he leaves before his term ends, Baucus would relinquish his gavel on the powerful Senate Finance Committee at a time when he is still aggressively pushing for a dramatic rewrite of the Tax Code.

(PHOTOS: Max Baucus’s career)

The Montana Democrat, who has been a central figure in battles over trade, taxes and health care for a generation, has already announced he will not run for reelection in 2014. And, depending on how long the confirmation process takes, he will be opening up a Senate seat in a tough state for Democrats, but one where the Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock appoints the senator in the case of a vacancy.

(PHOTOS: Senators up for election in 2014)

Baucus’s expected nomination had been rumored in congressional circles for the last month. It only became clear in recent days that the White House would make the appointment, according to sources.

A White House spokesman didn’t respond to an e-mail requesting comment, and a Baucus spokesman declined to comment.

POLITICO – Congress

W.H. to pick Baucus as ambassador to China

W.H. targets local media on Obamacare

The local strategy is unusually aggressive, even for a president on the ropes. | Reuters

President Barack Obama has bungled HealthCare.gov so badly that he’s told senior aides to not even try to win positive coverage from the national press.

Instead, they’re going local.

Continue Reading

In the past month, Obama and his Cabinet have hit nine of the top 10 cities with the highest concentration of the uninsured, while senior administration officials have held almost daily reporter conference calls in nearly a dozen states to challenge Republican governors who refuse to expand Medicaid.

Obama’s political arm, Organizing for Action, is taking a similar approach, holding protests — some only attended by a dozen or so people — that win coverage on the local pages of the nation’s small-town newspapers.

(PHOTOS: 12 Democrats criticizing the Obamacare rollout)

The local strategy is unusually aggressive, even for a president on the ropes and desperate to circumvent the national media. It’s been the only way to break through the glut of bad headlines and go on the offense to make the law work — although even when the White House showers attention on small markets, the results can be mixed.

The effort mirrors how Obama’s presidential campaigns operated. Pay special attention to local press because that’s where far more people who Obama wants to target get their news.

Josh Earnest, the principal deputy White House press secretary, got top billing in front page stories last week in The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg, S.C., The Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C., and the Portland Press Herald in Maine — offering the same talking points that the administration repeats daily in Washington without much notice.

(Understanding Obamacare: POLITICO’s guide to the ACA)

And while the White House briefing room is dominated by national news outlets, just behind the door where the communications staff works is a wall covered with reproductions of front pages of local newspapers. Stories about Obama’s initiatives are outlined with yellow highlighter.

Obama, thin-skinned about media coverage of his presidency and often frustrated by the White House press corps, knows a few favorable local headlines is as good as it gets these days. He made a rare public admission during his Nov. 14 press conference that his aides found strikingly candid for the image-conscious president: the media have been justifiably hard on him.

“Right now everybody is properly focused on us not doing a good job on the rollout, and that’s legitimate and I get it,” Obama said, repeating a sentiment he’s delivered privately to top aides. “There have been times where I thought we were kind of slapped around a little bit unjustly. This one is deserved. Right? It’s on us.”

(PHOTOS: House hearing on Obamacare website)

The centerpiece of the local strategy is the White House’s campaign against Republican governors or legislatures in 24 states that have declined to accept federal money to open up Medicaid to 5.4 million people. With a faulty website, the White House has lost much of the high ground to push back on Obamacare attacks over the last two months, but the one exception is the GOP resistance to expand Medicaid access, said a senior administration official.

Republicans have made a big deal of the canceled policies on the individual market, the official said, but the GOP is responsible for leaving millions of Americans in limbo. This population earns too much to sign up for Medicaid and too little to qualify for tax subsidies to purchase private insurance in the exchanges.

On the local media calls, administration officials quantify the impact state-by-state. In Nebraska, for example, the White House targeted Republican Gov. Dave Heineman, saying his refusal to expand Medicaid leaves 48,000 residents without access to affordable coverage.

(Also on POLITICO: It’s not Obamacare, it’s business)

“They can score short-term political points by attacking the Affordable Care Act and blocking Medicaid expansion,” Earnest told Nebraska media last week. “Or on the other hand, they can actually save taxpayer dollars and ensure that thousands of their residents … would have access to quality, affordable health care.”

The Omaha World-Herald put the story on A6 under the headline: “Nebraska takes heat for not expanding Medicaid.”

But flip to the front of the business page in the same edition, and the news is less favorable for the White House: “Midlands employers expect jump in 2014 health costs.” The story details how Nebraska and Iowa employers are bracing for benefit cost increases that exceed the national average, due in part to the Affordable Care Act, according to the survey of employers.

The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg, S.C., stripped two stories across its front page last week — one was about cancelled insurance policies, but the other focused on the White House demanding Republican Gov. Nikki Haley to open up Medicaid.

Visits by Cabinet officials to Atlanta, Tampa and Detroit, among other cities, generated stories that mostly played it straight, relaying their pleas to give Obamacare a chance and their calls for governors to expand Medicaid access.

POLITICO – TOP Stories

W.H. targets local media on Obamacare

W.H. nears a badly needed win

It won’t be a clean win for either side in the government shutdown fight. | AP Photo

There’s no one dancing in the West Wing end zone.

That’s partly because the ball isn’t there yet — the shutdown isn’t over and the debt ceiling hasn’t been raised. It’s also partly because the White House knows a premature celebration could cause a backlash among Republicans whose votes will be needed and partly because the public suffered when large portions of the government closed.

Continue Reading

But that doesn’t mean administration officials aren’t looking ahead. If a budget deal can be struck in the coming days, White House officials will surely portray it as a victory of common sense over creed, a necessary step forward for the American people so that federal operations can continue and the economy can avoid the catastrophe of a default. President Barack Obama will disavow any interest in the scorekeeping of Washington’s winners and losers.

Obama and fellow Democrats, particularly Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who urged him over the summer to adopt a hard line and keep deal-making Vice President Joe Biden out of the mix, know that their unwillingness to give an inch dragged some of their most ardent Republican adversaries to the position of just wanting to end the pain. They also know that the GOP suffered even greater self-inflicted damage by letting the government shut down before coming to the conclusion that the public agreed with the president’s position.

(PHOTOS: 25 great shutdown quotes)

“This was entirely predictable,” said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), a conservative who warned Republicans not to shut down the government over Obamacare. “But at the end, everybody loses. This isn’t about some political game.”

Of course, the final details haven’t been worked out, and the progress made toward a deal on Thursday could blow up at any time. It also won’t be a clean win — the GOP will need enough of a fig leaf to claim that there was a compromise, and Obama seems open to finding one that doesn’t cost him much of anything. House Republicans could return with a proposal to reopen the government that includes demands that Obama can’t accept, such as major changes to Obamacare.

Throughout, the problem for House Speaker John Boehner has been that many rank-and-file Republicans became committed to fighting Obamacare even if it meant shutting down the government or flirting with default. Even as he tried to lead them away from a political debacle, they kept snapping him back into line with the party’s conservative wing.

(PHOTOS: Shutdown’s little-known side effects)

Though the president and his aides have often gently mocked the speaker’s inability to corral his herd, Obama is described as having sympathy for his predicament. And Obama’s meeting with House Republicans on Thursday night was clearly designed to show that he’s willing to find a solution that allows them to save at least a little face while giving up on their demands.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) described Obama as a “firm but conciliatory president who understands Republicans have put themselves in a box” after House Democrats met at the White House on Wednesday.

Regardless, the near-complete surrender of the GOP is clear. Republicans long ago ceded their major policy demands. At first, they insisted that they would only fund the government and raise the debt ceiling if Obama agreed to sign legislation de-funding his signature health care law.

(POLITICO’s full coverage of the government shutdown)

Recognizing that wouldn’t happen, Republicans moved on to insisting that he delay implementation of the individual mandate, which requires the uninsured to sign up for coverage or pay a fine. Obama said all along that he wouldn’t give anything up to get a debt-limit hike and that he wouldn’t rewrite Obamacare to do that or keep the government open.

After Oct. 1, when the government shut down, and registration for Obamacare’s health exchanges opened, Republicans began to have trouble defining what it was they were after.

“We’re not going to be disrespected,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) told the Washington Examiner. “We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”

By early this week, with polling showing they were losing the fight, Republicans in Congress began looking for a way out of their political mess. While the House GOP wants to raise the debt limit for six weeks while continuing to negotiate over the budget, some Senate Republicans have seen enough of this movie and might vote for the one-year debt-limit hike Reid plans to bring to the floor on Saturday.

(POLITICO’s full coverage of the debt ceiling crisis)

A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll released Thursday night – and no doubt reflecting what both White House and Republican pollsters already knew – showed the public approval rating for Republicans at 24 percent, an all-time low in the history of the survey. Seventy percent of respondents said the congressional GOP was putting politics before the good of the country, and, worst for the GOP, the numbers for Obamacare have actually risen during the shutdown.

Thirty-eight percent of Americans now see the Affordable Care Act as a good idea, up from 31 percent last month, according to the poll. And while 43 percent see it as a bad idea – about the same as last month – 50 percent now say they oppose de-funding the law.

“That is an ideological boomerang,” Bill McInturff, a GOP pollster who teamed up with Democrat Peter Hart on the survey, told NBC. “As the debate has been going on, if there is a break, there is a break against the Republican position.”

POLITICO – TOP Stories

W.H. nears a badly needed win

W.H., Obama meeting after CR action

Despite a meeting in the works, some in the White House say it could be a waste of time. | AP Photo

President Barack Obama will likely meet with congressional leadership at the White House after the Senate acts on legislation to fund the government, a White House official said.

The potential of a meeting between Obama and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been a moving target in recent days. Top aides to several leaders have said they have no idea whether a meeting would occur, when it would be and what, exactly, would be discussed.

Continue Reading

It initially appeared that the meeting would happen this Wednesday. The Obama administration reached out last week to congressional leadership to schedule the session, but the White House pulled back, according to sources familiar with the planning.

Time is getting short — the government is slated to shut down Oct. 1. A White House meeting after the Senate passes its continuing resolution could come next week. A Senate vote could come as late as Sunday — just hours before the government is slated to stop functioning.

But another fiscal battle is just weeks away: Treasury says Congress must boost the debt ceiling by mid-October. Obama has said he won’t negotiate over the nation’s borrowing limit. Republicans are asking for a one-year delay of the mandate that individuals purchase health insurance in exchange for a one-year boost in the debt ceiling.

But first, the House and Senate’s divergent positions on government funding must be reconciled.

All but one House Republican — joined by two House Democrats — passed a bill last week that would fund the government until Dec. 15, while defunding Obamacare.

The Senate is expected to take up the measure this week, with Democrats planning to strip out the health care language. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) says he will try to stop consideration of the legislation.

A White House meeting with congressional leadership would not be the first contact between the White House and top congressional officials. Obama called Pelosi and Boehner Friday evening. Boehner’s office said the phone call was disappointing, with Obama restating his position that he will not negotiate over raising the nation’s debt limit. Pelosi’s office did not comment on the call.

Despite a meeting in the works, some in the White House appear to think it could be a waste of time.

“How could talks happen when the 1 demand of the GOP is something they know cannot pass? GOP extremism/absurdity is unprecedented,” Obama Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer tweeted Monday morning, in response to a string of tweets noting the lack of contact between the White House and Capitol Hill.

POLITICO – Congress

W.H., Obama meeting after CR action

W.H. Sends Out Rice, Who Misled on Benghazi, to Make Case for Syria

Daniel Halper
The Weekly Standard
September 9, 2013

Susan Rice famously blamed the Benghazi terror attack that took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, on an Internet video. She further said the terror attack occurred after a spontaneous protest over that anti-Muslim film got out of hand, instead of blaming the al Qaeda backed terrorists responsible for the murders.

“The White House has had quite enough of the controversy over ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, the misleading talking points she used in TV interviews about the jihadist attacks in Benghazi, and the Obama administration’s contradictory narrative about those attacks,” Steve Hayes reported in December.

But today, Rice will be called upon again to make a public case for the White House — this time, she’ll be talking about Syria. Except now Rice is the national security adviser, a promotion she received in the last year.

Here’s the press release from the New America Foundation, where Rice will be speaking today, which the White House forwarded along:

MEDIA ADVISORY

New America Foundation to Host White House National Security Advisor, Susan E. Rice

WASHINGTON, DC — On Monday September 9, the New America Foundation will host a public event on the situation in Syria featuring White House National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice. Ambassador Rice will discuss the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians, the longstanding international norm against the use of chemical weapons, and the need for action to deter the Assad regime from future use of chemical weapons.

WHO:

Introduction: Anne-Marie Slaughter, President, New America Foundation

Keynote remarks: Ambassador Susan E. Rice, White House National Security Advisor

WHEN:

Monday, September 9, 2013

12:30 p.m. EST – 1:30 p.m. EST

Talk about not putting your best foot forward.

This article was posted: Monday, September 9, 2013 at 9:09 am

---

---

Print this page.

---

---

Prison Planet.com

W.H. Sends Out Rice, Who Misled on Benghazi, to Make Case for Syria

W.H. BLITZES CAPITOL HILL, TV ON SYRIA – Assad: "Expect" retaliation – HAWKISH GOP NOW DOVISH – Booker the Dems" Marco Rubio? – Congressional basketball game tonite!

By Scott Wong (swong@politico.com or @scottwongDC)

A CRITICAL WEEK AHEAD: WHITE HOUSE BLITZES CAPITOL HILL, TV ON SYRIA – President Obama’s last best hope for Congress to authorize a military strike on Syria could lie with his own party, write POLITICO’s Carrie Budoff Brown and Jonathan Allen: “With remarkably little to show for a week of intensive lobbying, the last bit of leverage that Democrats expect the White House to use is this: Barack Obama’s presidency depends on it. This isn’t what Americans will hear when Obama addresses the nation Tuesday night. Publicly, the argument is all about the evidence that the Syrian government used chemical weapons and the ramifications if the United States doesn’t retaliate. Senior White House officials are loath to make it a referendum on Obama, saying they remain confident that he can win by sticking to the merits of the case. ‘Politics is somebody else’s concern,’ White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said on “Fox News Sunday.”  … ‘The president is interested in making sure that our national security is protected. That’s the question, first and foremost, for us.’

– “Proof and peril of the chemical weapons attack haven’t convinced Congress — at least not yet — and the politics point to defeat. So Obama’s last best hope is to convince conflicted Democrats, even if it’s just implicit in private conversations, that they can’t be the ones who cripple his presidency and his ability to deliver the party’s priorities, according to Democrats on Capitol Hill and close to the White House. But the grim reality for Obama is that his reservoir of personal capital on Capitol Hill is running dry. House Democrats are also well aware that former colleagues who lost their seats after taking tough votes for Obama — the stimulus and Obamacare among them — haven’t been taken care of by the White House. For every former Rep. Betsy Markey (D-Colo.), who landed an assistant secretary job at the Homeland Security Department after losing reelection in 2010, there are dozens of Democrats whose loyalty was unrequited.” http://politi.co/1e7YpBQ

– @jonathanweisman: House leadership will meet with WH COS McDonough on Monday at 1:45 to plot a way to 218.

WHERE THEY STAND – A number of news outlets have compiled whip counts on where lawmakers line up on the question of striking Syria. Here’s the latest from the NYT’s interactive feature, including statements from each member: Senate: 25 support, 18 against, 57 undecided.  House: 39 support, 154 against, 213 undecided, 27 unknown. http://nyti.ms/15Ce8G2

ASSAD TELLS CHARLIE ROSE: ‘EXPECT’ RETALIATION – CBS News reports: “President Bashar Assad warned Sunday that if President Obama decides to launch military strikes on Syria, the U.S. and its allies should ‘expect every action’ in retaliation. ‘You should expect everything. Not necessarily from the government,’ Assad told ‘CBS This Morning’ co-host Charlie Rose in his first television interview since Mr. Obama sought congressional approval for military action. In a clear reference to his allies in Iran and the Islamic militant group Hezbollah, Assad warned that his government is ‘not the only player in this region.’ ‘You have different parties, you have different factions, you have different ideology. You have everything in this region now,’ said Assad, who has been accused by the White House of killing 1,400 of his own people in an Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack on the Damascus suburbs.

– “Asked by Rose whether any retaliation for U.S. strikes could include the use of chemical weapons, Assad — whose government has never confirmed officially that it even has chemical weapons — said it would depend ‘if the rebels or the terrorists in this region or any other group have it. It could happen, I don’t know. I am not fortune teller.’ Rose said Sunday on the ‘CBS Evening News’ that the Syrian dictator was ‘remarkably calm’ during the interview as he addressed the claims that he had gassed his own people.” http://cbsn.ws/17kczJJ

OBAMA MAKES PITCH TO SENATORS – POLITICO’s John Bresnahan reports: “President Barack Obama will travel to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to help sell his plan for U.S. military strikes on Syria, just hours before a scheduled national address from the Oval Office. Obama will meet with Senate Democrats as he tries to overcome skepticism — or outright opposition — from members of his own party as the Senate prepares to hold critical votes on the Syria use-of-force resolution. Right now, there are serious concerns among top Senate Democrats about whether they can pass the Syria resolution approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is likely to win a cloture vote on Wednesday, but it is unclear if the Senate will approve the resolution on a final vote after that, Senate insiders says. [The first Syria vote comes on the 12^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.]

– “Vice President Joe Biden met with a number of Senate Republicans on Sunday night as part of the White House’s “all-hands” effort to pass the resolution. Obama unexpectedly joined the dinner, according to White House media pool reports. GOP Sens. Bob Corker (Tenn.), John McCain (Ariz.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Dan Coats (Ind.), Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), Roger Wicker (Miss.), Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Susan Collins (Maine), and Deb Fischer (Neb.) were all in attendance.

– National Security Adviser Susan Rice will meet with members of the Congressional Black Caucus on Monday at the White House. Rice will be joined by Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey will brief all 433 House members on Monday afternoon. Obama will also be sitting down for six TV interviews on Monday as part of the White House public-relations blitz.” http://politi.co/1cYkOxs

OBAMA GOES PRIME TIME – Our own Josh Gerstein has more on Obama’s address, set for 9 p.m. Tuesday: “During his nearly five years in office, Obama has gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid high-stakes, nighttime White House speeches. His advisers have repeatedly denigrated the value of Oval Office addresses, accusing promoters of such talks as being out of touch with modern media realities. Now the president is preparing to deliver precisely such a high-profile address Tuesday night, giving in to pressure from lawmakers demanding a no-holds-barred White House effort to sell the public on the wisdom of a military response to Syria’s alleged chemical weapons use. And so a president who surged into the White House in no small part on the strength of his communication skills will need to turn in a particularly effective performance in a format that’s never been among his most favored. …

– “If Obama does turn to the Oval Office for Tuesday night’s speech — and officials so far have said only that he will speak from somewhere in the White House — it will be a true rarity. As president, he has delivered only two addresses to the nation from his office, both in 2010: a speech about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and another about the end of combat in Iraq. ‘I personally have never loved the Oval,’ [former speechwriter Jon] Favreau added. ‘But I actually think it’s pretty right for this one.’” http://politi.co/18OFT96

MOVEON LAUNCHES SYRIA AD – MoveOn.org Political Action is out this morning with a 30-second TV ad urging Congress to reject authorizing action against Syria. The ad, called “Not Again,” runs this week on MSNBC with heavy rotation around the president’s address Tuesday night. Watch it here: http://youtu.be/_TVseYyddhc

HAWKISH GOP NOW DOVISH ON SYRIA – “Of all the unexpected turns in the Syria debate, one stands out most: The GOP, the party of a muscular national defense, has gone the way of the dove,” Alex Isenstadt and James Hohmann write for the hometown paper.  “A decade after leading the country into Iraq and Afghanistan, Republicans have little appetite or energy for a strike aimed at punishing Bashar Assad for allegedly gassing his own people. To the contrary, many of the party’s lawmakers are lining up to sink President Barack Obama’s war authorization vote. Of the 279 Republicans currently in the House and Senate, 83 were also serving in October 2002. All of them voted to give George W. Bush authorization to invade Iraq. Now, just 10 of those 83 have come out in support of striking Syria. Most of the others have expressed serious reservations or are leaning against voting for the authorization.” http://politi.co/18Ik38F

** A message from the Reagan Presidential Foundation: Registration has opened for “The Reagan National Defense Forum: Building Peace Through Strength Through 2025.” Speakers include Secretary Chuck Hagel, General Martin Dempsey, Secretary John McHugh, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, SASC Chairman Carl Levin and HASC Chairman “Buck” McKeon.

GOOD MONDAY MORNING, September 9, 2013, and welcome to The Huddle, your play-by-play preview of the day’s congressional news. Send tips, suggestions, comments, complaints and corrections to swong@politico.com. If you don’t already, please follow me on Twitter @scottwongDC.

My new followers include @albertorlammers and @rajmathai.

TODAY IN CONGRESS – The Senate meets at 2 p.m. and at 5:30 p.m. votes on the nominations of Valerie E. Caproni and Vernon S. Broderick to be United States District Judges for the Southern District of New York. The House is also in at 2 p.m. with votes expected about 6:30 p.m. on the Global Investment in American Jobs Act and the Federal Communications Commission Consolidation Reporting Act.

AROUND THE HILL – A stakeout has been approved for a closed Joint House Armed Services and Intelligence Committees briefing on Syria at 3 p.m. in HVC 210. A closed all House member briefing on Syria will be held at 5 p.m. in the CVC Auditorium.

In Memphis today, Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus and House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp make their fourth stop on their national tax reform tour. At 8 a.m. local time, they hold a kitchen table conversation at the Sullivan Family Farm, then tour the FedEx Express World Hub and hold a roundtable discussion with the company and customers from the small business community. 

CORY BOOKER: THE DEMS’ MARCO RUBIO? – POLITICO’s Manu Raju caught up with the Senate Democratic nominee in Newark, N.J.: “Ambitious and Ivy League-educated, he’s a young African-American Democrat calling for a new era of post-partisanship in Washington. Sound familiar? But Cory Booker — who would be just the fourth popularly elected black senator if he wins — says he ‘would never want to be the next Barack Obama’ … The 44-year-old Newark mayor doesn’t want to follow in Obama’s footsteps — at least that’s what he claims. But as he appears poised to become the next New Jersey senator in the Oct. 16 special election, the two-term mayor may end up voting well to the left of the president — and become the biggest Democratic celebrity in town.

– “In a wide-ranging interview here, Booker said he’s opposed to trimming benefits on entitlement programs, even as the president has considered doing so as part of deficit talks. He said the bad actors from the 2008 financial crisis should ‘absolutely’ go to jail, even as the administration has yet to put shackles on top Wall Street executives. Booker ‘absolutely’ supports medical marijuana, even as the president is reluctant about legalizing it. And Booker added that he’s deeply skeptical about military engagement in Syria, even as Obama calls for strikes against the Bashar Assad regime. …

– “In some ways, Booker may end up being the Democrats’ version of Marco Rubio: an attractive, eloquent and press-savvy pol whose core beliefs are firmly in line with his base — but who may break from his party from time to time. While Booker’s style has irked some Democrats, he has only sparingly broken with the left , like on school vouchers and education reform. Asked to identify the issues in which he splits from his party in Washington, Booker couldn’t do it. ‘In some ways, you’re going to have to tell me that. I know where I’m passionate, and I don’t first ask, ‘Does my party agree with this or not?’’” http://politi.co/1fPPkcg

LAWMAKERS, LOBBYISTS HOOP IT UP TONITE – The 15^th annual congressional charity basketball game tips off tonight at the Smith Center at George Washington University. Congressional staffers take on lobbyists at 6 p.m., followed by the lawmakers vs. lobbyists game at 7:30 p.m. The games raise money for the Hoops for Youth Foundation, which help at-risk youth in D.C.

Rosters for Game 1:  Staffers vs. Lobbyists:

Team Staff:  Wes McClelland (WHIP McCarthy), Andy Keiser (Rep. Mike Rogers), Steve Perrotta (Sen. Richard Burr), Keith Stern (Rep. Jim McGovern), Erik Olson (Rep. Ron Kind), Andrew Stoddard (Rep. Ben Lujan), Stephen Martinko (Rep. Bill Shuster), Kyle Oliver (Rep. Ralph Hall), James Robertson (House Oversight and Government Reform), Dustin Huffman (RGA), Kurt Bardella (Team Issa), Ben Branch (Rep. Greg Meeks) and Todd Mitchell (Rep. Leonard Lance).

Team Lobbyists:  Paul Kanitra, Langston Emerson, David Morgan, Stoney Burke, Jess Peterson, Ryan Guthrie, Ben Brubeck, Casey Dinges, Jack Kelly, Brandan Heiner, Monte Ward, Will Jawando and Brian Reardon.

Rosters for Game 2:  Members vs. Lobbyists:

Members of Congress:  Rep. Steve Scalise, Rep. John Shimkus, Sen. John Thune, Sen. Jeff Flake, Rep. Pete Olson, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, Rep. Jeff Denham, Rep. Rick Larsen, Rep. Cedric Richmond, Rep. David Valadao, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann and Rep. Joe Crowley, Rep. Marlin Stutzman, Rep. Jared Huffman and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Team Lobbyists:  Jim Martin (60 Plus Assn.), Paul Miller (Miller/Wenhold Capitol Strategies), Brian Pallasch (ASCE), Dan Cohen, Booth Jameson (American Chemistry Council), Brad Knox (AFLAC), Paxton Baker (BET Network), Brian Wagner (ATK), Danny Leonard (Open Market Energy), Michael Monroe (AFL-CIO), Kenny Hulshof (Posinelli Shughart), Nelson Perez (nationalgrid), Brad Schweer (CenturyLink) and Jim Brewer (Int’l Union of Painters & Allied Trades). Cloture Club has a flier with more info here: http://bit.ly/1cY5WPG

POLL: MOST HILL STAFFERS HAPPY DESPITE WORK ISSUES – Josh Hicks writes for the Washington Post: “Congressional employees are generally happy with their jobs, despite relatively poor pay, unpredictable hours and low public regard for their bosses, according to a report scheduled for release Monday. The Congressional Management Foundation, a nonpartisan group dedicated to improving legislative operations, found in a survey that 80 percent of Capitol Hill staffers are satisfied with their jobs. More than 1,400 employees rated the issues that mattered most to them as well as their level of contentment.  Among the positive findings, 97 percent of respondents said they were confident that they can meet their work goals, and 83 percent said they enjoy taking on assignments beyond their normal duties.  Although they said they were generally happy with their work, staffers also said they also faced frustrations.” http://wapo.st/183upnf

NYT, A1, “Immigration Reform Falls to the Back of the Line,” By Michael D. Shear and  Julia Preston: “Congress is likely to postpone consideration of an immigration overhaul until the end of the year, if not longer, even as advocates are preparing for an all-out, urgent push this fall to win their longstanding goal of a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants here illegally.  In Washington, the sudden debate over military action in Syria and a looming face-off with President Obama over the budget and the nation’s borrowing limit have shot to the top of the legislative agenda, while Republican angst about losing Hispanic voters in the 2012 presidential campaign has faded.  In the House, where many Republicans view an overhaul bill passed by the Senate as a federal juggernaut that is too kind to immigrant lawbreakers, the legislative summer recess has done little to stoke enthusiasm for immediate action. Senior Republican aides in the House say immigration is at the back of the line, and unlikely to come up for months.  The prospect of a delay is generating frustration among supporters of the legislation, who felt emboldened by a summer in which conservative opposition in House districts largely fizzled and immigrant groups seized the chance to lobby lawmakers on their home turf. “  http://nyti.ms/14xTFB8

– A bill to combat sexual assaults in the military also has taken a back seat to Syria, POLITICO’s Darren Samuelsohn writes: http://politi.co/13zMbLk

AT AFL-CIO MEETING, WARREN RIPS INTO SUPREME COURT – Alex Burns reports from Los Angeles: “Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka denounced the United States Supreme Court on Sunday as a right-wing panel that serves the interests of corporate America, previewing a theme that is likely to rise in prominence with the approach of the 2016 election. On the opening day of the AFL-CIO’s convention, Warren – the highest-profile national Democrat to address the gathering here – warned attendees of a ‘corporate capture of the federal courts.’ In a speech that voiced a range of widely held frustrations on the left, Warren assailed the Court as an instrument of the wealthy that regularly sides with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. She cited an academic study that called the current Supreme Court’s five conservative-leaning justices among the ‘top 10 most pro-corporate justices in half a century.’  ‘You follow this pro-corporate trend to its logical conclusion, and sooner or later you’ll end up with a Supreme Court that functions as a wholly owned subsidiary of big business,’ Warren said, drawing murmurs from the crowd.” http://politi.co/18H66aW

BUSCHON MOURNS 32-YEAR-OLD STAFFER – Kenny Douglass reports for News14 in Evansville, Ind.: “A high ranking member of Congressman Larry Bucshon’s staff was found dead in an Evansville hotel room. Although he held numerous positions on Bucshon’s staff, 32-year-old Steven Reeves served most recently as Deputy Chief of Staff and District Director, based out of the Congressman’s Evansville District Office.  Vanderburgh County Coroner Annie Groves says Reeves was found Wednesday in a room at the Fairfield Inn on Evansville’s east side. She says it appears Reeves died of natural causes. He was originally from Princeton. On Thursday night, Bucshon released a statement, calling Reeves a valued colleague and loyal friend, and a member of the family. … ‘Steven was truly a member of our family and will be greatly missed. Motivated by a genuine compassion for others, he worked to help eradicate AIDS in Africa before serving the 8th District in our office.  He spent much of his life dedicated to serving his country, bettering his community, and improving the lives of others. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends through this difficult and private time.’” http://bit.ly/19ogdCt

FRIDAY’S TRIVIA WINNER – Jeff Pudlo was first to correctly answer that President John F. Kennedy reportedly explored purchasing the Philadelphia Eagles until the Cuban missile crisis delayed a meeting between team owners and his brother, Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Pudlo, who works for a D.C.-based advocacy nonprofit, says he found the answer in a 1991 article from the Newport News Daily Press reviewing a then recently published book, “The Pro Football Chronicle”.  http://bit.ly/16eeWOT  The story also appears in the Eagles Encyclopedia here: http://bit.ly/14F6HaJ

TODAY’S TRIVIA – Claude Marx has today’s question: What solicitor general had to resign his post when his father became chief justice of the U.S.? The first person to correctly answer gets a mention in the next day’s Huddle. Email me at swong@politico.com.

GET HUDDLE emailed to your Blackberry, iPhone or other mobile device each morning. Just enter your email address where it says “Sign Up.” http://www.politico.com/huddle/

** A message from the Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library: The Reagan National Defense Forum on November 16, 2013 is bringing together leaders and key stakeholders in the defense community – including members of Congress, civilian officials and military leaders from the Defense Department and industry – to address the health of our national defense and to stimulate a discussion that promotes policies that strengthen the United States military into the future.  Registrations is $ 499 per person. For more information and tickets, please visit www.ReaganFoundation.org/Defense.  

The program includes a keynote address by General Dempsey, remarks by Secretary Hagel, and multiple panels including “Counterterrorism in 2025,” “Congress, Industry and the Pentagon” and “The Industrial Base After a Decade of War.”

“My husband would be so pleased to know that his ‘Peace Through Strength’ policies are being discussed again with a focus on today’s new technology and tomorrow’s needs.” – Former First Lady Nancy Reagan

POLITICO – Top 10 – Huddle

W.H. BLITZES CAPITOL HILL, TV ON SYRIA – Assad: "Expect" retaliation – HAWKISH GOP NOW DOVISH – Booker the Dems" Marco Rubio? – Congressional basketball game tonite!

W.H. Syria push plagued by mixed messages

President Barack Obama, asked for a third time at Friday’s press conference if he’d still use force against President Bashar Assad’s regime even if Congress fails to back the move, finally told reporters they shouldn’t hold their breath for an answer.

“You’re not getting a direct response,” Obama said.

Continue Reading

It was a statement that summed up the messaging approach his administration has taken for nearly three weeks — ever since the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack that prompted the president’s push for a strike on Syria — as it’s pushed a series of confusing, often contradictory lines of argument.

This past week alone, Obama found himself walking back a top aide’s assertion that he’d be disinclined to order an attack on Syria without congressional authorization, even as Secretary of State John Kerry told the Huffington Post that Obama “reserves the right in the presidency to respond as appropriate to protect the security of our nation.”

The president also distanced himself from his own 2012 statement that the use of chemical weapons represented “a red line” that would warrant American action — disclaiming ownership of a standard that he had originally described in starkly personal terms, saying the action “would change my calculus … would change my equation.”

And he said Friday he didn’t want to make a World War II analogy to argue for action in Syria — just before, in the very same sentence, comparing the current state of affairs in Syria to Nazi Germany’s bombing of London in 1940.

Meanwhile, he and his advisers are consistently defining potential American involvement in the Syrian conflict by what it’s not — Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya — even as they use rhetoric that often sounds airlifted from the run-up to those conflicts.

Even the president’s political arm seems confused. Organizing for Action made no public comments about Obama’s Syria push for five days after he announced he was asking Congress to weigh in, then declared its neutrality.

The next day, it directed its Twitter followers to watch U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power’s full-throated defense of intervention at the Center for American Progress.

None of this has served to build any momentum, among the public or the Congress, for Obama’s Syria plan. Even those who support action in Syria are blaming the White House for its failure to clearly articulate why Congress and the public should back the president’s policy.

“You have to be convinced that this is a worthwhile endeavor,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), one of Obama’s chief allies on Syria, told constituents at a town hall meeting Friday.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who also favors intervention, has tweaked Obama for his failure to galvanize congressional or public support. Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck played up the importance of Obama’s decision to address the nation on Syria Tuesday — while playing down the possible impact.

“The speaker has consistently said the president has an obligation to make his case for intervention directly to the American people,” Buck said Friday. “Members of Congress represent the views of their constituents, and only a president can convince the public that military action is required. We only hope this isn’t coming too late to make the difference.”

It isn’t that the president has been silent on the issue — it’s that the message from both Obama and his top advisers has been too fractured to be truly convincing. As the White House argument for action in Syria has evolved, aides and allies have offered competing explanations for it, and have yet to settle on a straightforward and compelling pitch for why an American strike in Syria is necessary.

Taken together, it all paints a picture of an administration at times as confused and conflicted as the Congress it aims to win over.

For instance, on the key question of whether Obama would act in Syria without congressional approval, Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday that he didn’t know what would happen if Congress said no. “Well, I can’t tell you what the president’s going to do because he hasn’t told me,” Kerry said.

Then Friday morning, NPR broadcast an interview with Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken in which he said Obama would be disinclined to order an attack without the blessing of Congress.

“The president of course has the authority to act, but it’s neither his desire nor his intention to use that authority absent Congress backing him,” Blinken said.

Four hours later, Obama was already walking that line back. Told exactly what Blinken had said, Obama characterized it as a misreading of his aide’s words.

“I don’t think that’s exactly what he said,” Obama said. “But I think I’ve answered the question.”

He had not.

The administration is pitching slightly different messages to the public and to Congress. Congress hears specifics, with in-depth conversations about what inaction would mean for Iran and Hezbollah — a pitch that doesn’t resonate as well with the public at large.

“Members understand that more than the broader public,” said Tommy Vietor, a former Obama National Security Council spokesman.

It isn’t just the hypotheticals that pose a headache for the administration — even the seemingly direct arguments Obama administration officials make have been a bit muddied.

For the past two weeks, Kerry has been comparing Assad to Saddam Hussein and Hitler, saying the trio are the only leaders to use chemical weapons on their own people in the last century. This week, he argued for aid to Syrians by pointing, during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, to an incident shortly before U.S. involvement in World War II in which a boatload of Jewish refugees was turned away from the coast of Florida.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) upped the ante at the White House Tuesday, saying “never again” — a nod to the Holocaust — should the U.S. turn a blind eye to people being massacred. And Obama himself on Friday compared the situation in Syria to Nazi Germany’s bombing of London in 1940.

But the administration has also argued that the past actually isn’t a guide to why there’s a need for action in Syria, or to the potential pitfalls that could await. Top officials from the president on down have stressed almost daily that Syria is not Iraq. And the president himself said Friday he was “not drawing a analogy to World War II” other than to highlight the similarity between the domestic unpopularity of U.S. intervention early in that conflict and the anemic support for Syria intervention in current polls.

Past aside, the present environment has posed its own set of messaging challenges. The White House just can’t seem to consistently answer the question: How much of a threat, if any, does the situation in Syria pose to the United States?

The president and his top aides have certainly left the impression that lack of action in Syria could harm U.S. national security, arguing that if Assad’s chemical weapons use goes unpunished, it could lead to the further development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

“Failing to respond to this breach of this international norm would send a signal to rogue nations, authoritarian regimes, and terrorist organizations that they can develop and use weapons of mass destruction and not pay a consequence,” Obama said Friday. “And that’s not the world that we want to live in.”

But Obama said Friday that he had the luxury of seeking congressional authorization precisely because there was no immediate threat to the United States or its allies.

“I could not honestly claim that the threat posed by Assad’s use of chemical weapons on innocent civilians and women and children posed a imminent, direct threat to the United States,” Obama said.

If the danger were truly immediate, he said, he would have acted first and allowed lawmakers to ask questions later.

“In that situation, obviously, I don’t worry about Congress. We do what we have to do to keep the American people safe,” Obama said. “I could not say that it was immediately, directly going to have an impact on our allies. Again, in those situations I would act right away.”

Then, a day after saying the threat posed by the chemical weapons attack was neither “imminent” nor “direct,” Obama used his Saturday radio address to call it “a serious threat to our national security.”

None of this has rallied the public to the cause of attacking Syria. Nor are the administration’s efforts Monday and Tuesday, with Obama to appear on network television and to address the nation, likely to move people in his favor, said Clinton White House speechwriter Michael Waldman.

“The president’s speech will be one element of a public campaign here, but its important to remember presidents almost never can rally the public toward military action in advance, especially with a big speech,” Waldman said. “The public is almost always skittish about military action. Once it begins, then people rally around the military and rally around the flag.”

If the present landscape is murky, the future seems completely uncharted territory for the administration, which has been far from clear about how the action being discussed would help it attain concrete goals in Syria, about its vision for a likely endgame — or about its views of the forces who stand to gain ground if the United States takes aim at Assad.

For instance, when Obama met with congressional leaders at the White House Tuesday, he emphasized that a bombing campaign is part of “a broader strategy that will allow us to upgrade the capabilities of the opposition” fighting the Assad regime, something McCain had pressed him on the day before.

By Friday, the only mention Obama made to an opposition was the opposition he faces in Congress. There was little framing of his goals in intervening in Syria beyond punishing Assad. A White House website focused on the Syria conflict — which went live late in the week — didn’t do much to clarify, offering just one sentence on mission objectives, but no detail on any opposition forces or preferred political outcomes.

In the face of a messaging flop on this scale, even the Obamaland political snark hasn’t held up.

Minutes after Obama announced he’d seek congressional authorization on Syria, former adviser David Axelrod took to Twitter to dub Congress “the dog that caught the car.”

But by Friday he was all in earnest. Sure, the president has been pitching Syria action for weeks now. But he hasn’t made the sale. And so the priority for Obama, Axelrod told “Morning Joe,” had to be generating a message that resonates on the Hill.

“[Obama] needs to make the case and give them the arguments and the cover, frankly, for a yes vote,” he said.

Obama’s upcoming address to the nation is intended to help Congress relay a more unified administration narrative back in their districts. “When you go on TV and do a speech, that’s an address to the nation, it’s because Congress thinks they need help explaining it to their constituents,” Vietor said.

It may be the administration’s last, best hope to budge the needle — but it only works if the story the president relays Tuesday doesn’t require any more explanations of its own.

POLITICO – TOP Stories

W.H. Syria push plagued by mixed messages

W.H. to Congress: Help protect Israel

Israel’s enemies could be emboldened by a lack of action, administration officials say. | AP Photo

The Obama administration is using a time-tested pitch to get Congress to back military strikes in Syria: It will help protect Israel.

Israel’s enemies, including Iran and the terrorist group Hezbollah, could be emboldened if Congress fails to approve action against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, senior administration officials said Saturday.

Continue Reading

And for the second day in a row, President Barack Obama publicly cited the threat against Israel if Assad’s reported use of chemical weapons goes unchecked. “It endangers our friends and our partners along Syria’s borders, including Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq,” Obama said Saturday in the Rose Garden. “It could lead to escalating use of chemical weapons, or their proliferation to terrorist groups who would do our people harm.”

(PHOTOS: Syria: Where politicians stand)

The White House will need every vote it can get on the Syria resolution, and the senior administration officials left little doubt that Israel would be a point of emphasis in private discussions with members of Congress.

The Capitol is filled with strong supporters of Israel who understand the argument, one of the officials said.

But Israel’s security is a political razor blade that could cut both ways.

As Obama has weighed potential military action, the politics of Israel’s interests have become more delicate. The prospect of strikes against Syria triggering reprisals from Iran and Hezbollah is real enough to bolster the case against authorizing the president to use force, too, congressional insiders say.

(PHOTOS: International response to Syria)

“You’re going to see people arguing the exact opposite” of Obama, said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, who has spent time in the region. An Israel play “could really backfire.”

Even a persuasive case that Israel’s security depends on American intervention in Syria might not be enough to overcome what Capitol Hill sources say is significant opposition to the president’s proposal for using military force against Assad.

Washington’s pro-Israel lobby, typically highly critical of the Syrian regime, has been publicly silent in recent days, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked officials in his government not to speak about possible American intervention in Syria.

(PHOTOS: Scenes from Syria)

“Everyone is in a wait-and-see mode about where this is all leading,” former Israeli Deputy Ambassador to the United States Dan Arbel told POLITICO earlier this week. “The fact is, right now, the picture is not so clear.”

Indeed, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, wrote on its website Thursday that the Syrian crisis underscored the need to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions, delicately sidestepping the question of whether Obama should strike Assad.

The administration’s case that intervening benefits Israel will turn on what lawmakers hear from pro-Israel groups in their communities and from the reactions of leading Jewish lawmakers, said a senior House Democratic aide.

(Also on POLITICO: Obama sends Syria resolution to Hill)

The Israel angle “only has a major impact if it’s getting validated from others,” the aide said. “Doesn’t have to be AIPAC writ large, but the local AIPAC lay leaders that the members have personal relationships [with] need to be validating.”

House leaders are likely to use prominent Jewish members who are hawkish on Israel as a bellwether. That group includes Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and Steve Israel (D-N.Y.). Engel announced on Friday that the administration had convinced him it was appropriate to make punitive strikes against Assad, though he had been pretty clearly in the camp favoring action before that.

“We cannot stand idly by,” Engel said on NBC’s “Today” show. “If we stand idly by, then every despot in the world thinks they can commit war crimes and no one will do anything.”

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a leader in the progressive caucus who is Jewish, released a statement Saturday night praising Obama for seeking congressional approval for the use of force in Syria. But she stopped short of endorsing his authorization measure.

(Also on POLITICO: Obama’s slow-strike strategy)

“We need to determine the best way to respond to the heinous use of chemical weapons in Syria and how we can act effectively to protect civilians from further massacres,” she said.

The true test, congressional sources said, may have much less to do with the politics of Israel than district-by-district domestic politics for lawmakers who are both weary and wary of war.

“At this point, it seems to be fairly far-fetched that there would be even close to enough votes to authorize,” said Nunes, who opposes the use-of-force resolution because he believes Obama has not articulated a clear military objective.

Or, as the Democratic aide put it, “Members are going to get the s—- kicked out of them at home this week. This is going to be a really hard vote for people.”

POLITICO – Congress

W.H. to Congress: Help protect Israel

W.H. offers no timetable on Syria

Members issued statements afterward reiterating their long-held views on Syria. | AP Photos

White House officials offered few details and no timeline for a possible attack on Syria during a 90-minute conference call on Thursday evening for members of Congress, according to a congressional source who participated in the call.

The call appears to have done little to change anybody’s mind. Members issued statements afterward reiterating their long-held views on Syria.

Continue Reading

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said the White House should seek international support for “limited, targeted strikes” against Syria, once again urging the administration to “increase the military pressure on the [Bashar] Assad regime by providing lethal aid to vetted elements of the Syrian opposition.”

(PHOTOS: Scenes from Syria)

Meanwhile, the committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. Jim Inhofe, was undeterred in his opposition to military operations in Syria until there’s a clear plan to pay for them.

“As I have said before, no red line should have even been drawn without first preparing a strategic plan and assessing our resources,” the Oklahoma Republican said following the unclassified briefing.

“The administration owes it to Congress and to the American people to lay out how they will fund their military action,” Inhofe said. “Is it going to be more furloughs?”

On the call, White House officials told lawmakers the president is still weighing his options on Syria, according to the congressional source. Several officials were on the call representing the administration, including Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Secretary of State John Kerry, White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Sandy Winnefeld.

In a statement, the White House said 15 members of Congress asked questions during the call and that it would continue reaching out to lawmakers.

“The views of Congress are important to the president’s decision-making process, and we will continue to engage with members as the president reaches a decision on the appropriate U.S. response to the Syrian government’s violation of international norms,” the White House said.

(PHOTOS: International response to Syria)

Members of Congress pressed the officials about a range of issues, the congressional source said, including how military operations in Syria would be funded. The officials offered no answer, the source noted, saying Hagel agreed it was an important question pledged to provide additional information before or soon after any attack was launched.

Even with such questions unanswered, however, advocates continued to push for military action.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said in a statement that “the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime requires a decisive response.”

“This is not a moment to look the other way, to blind ourselves to the horrifying images in Syria, and to send the dangerous message to the global community that we would allow the use of a chemical weapons attack to take place with impunity,” Menendez said.

And Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he agrees “with the president that the use of these weapons not only violates international norms, but is a national security threat to the United States.”

“The president’s national security team said that he is still weighing his options and will continue to consult with Congress,” Engel said. “The president’s team agrees that this type of action cannot go without consequences.”

POLITICO – Congress

W.H. offers no timetable on Syria

W.H. prepares for major Obamacare push

Obama’s deepening engagement stands in contrast to his past treatment of the law. | AP Photo

Three years after signing Obamacare into law, President Barack Obama finally looks eager to talk about it.

The White House is mapping out a strategy to deploy the president, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Jill Biden in what will be their most coordinated effort yet to sell Obamacare, senior administration officials said.

Continue Reading

A burst of activity will coincide with the October opening of the insurance marketplaces, but the West Wing views this next phase as something more akin to a political campaign’s push for early votes. Over the six-month enrollment period, the White House will use the Obamas and Bidens strategically, tracking the turnout for the exchanges in key states and sending them into weak markets to boost numbers.

(PHOTOS: 25 unforgettable Obamacare quotes)

Obama’s deepening engagement stands in contrast to his arms-length treatment of the law since the legislative fight, bruising and endless, drew to a close in 2010. He moved onto other priorities — and only rarely, if not reluctantly, looked back.

But in the last month alone, Obama has plugged the new health benefits on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” convened a videoconference with state health officials from the Situation Room, devoted a weekly address to the law and tweeted about it with Katy Perry, who boasts 41 million followers.

(Also on POLITICO: The Obama-Clinton health care bond)

Capitalizing on the March on Washington this week, Obama and top administration officials courted leaders of the African-American community, which has the highest uninsured rate of any demographic. And on Thursday night, he touted Obamacare in a recorded video message at MegaFest, a faith-based conference in Dallas organized by megachurch pastor T.D. Jakes.

The increased involvement comes at an obvious juncture, as the unpopular law enters prime time. But it also signals the stakes for Obama: It’s his best opportunity to prove critics wrong and begin turning around public opinion if the rollout can beat expectations, which the president is already trying to downplay with his refrain that Obamacare won’t be the first flawless enterprise in human history.

(Also on POLITICO: TOP 5 complaints about Obamacare)

“Check it out, find out what’s right, sign up preliminarily and then actually go ahead and get that insurance starting on October 1st,” Obama said in an interview aired Thursday on the Yolanda Adams Morning Show. “And so we’re just going to keep on providing people with information, pumping this up.”

Just don’t look for the president on Oct. 1.

It’s the first day to sign up for health care — and a major milestone for Obama’s signature domestic achievement — but he isn’t likely to mark what aides describe as an arbitrary benchmark, even though he’s emphasized the date in his recent interviews.

(Also on POLITICO: Conservatives prep for fiscal fights)

Government funding runs dry that day, raising the possibility that congressional gridlock could force in a shutdown, so the White House wants to keep his schedule open.

There will be an coordinated push, with events by advocacy groups and tweets from celebrities, but aides said they’re reluctant to over-hype the first day. Glitches and problems are likely. At least one state, Oregon, has delayed opening its exchanges until mid-October. And the actual coverage doesn’t begin until Jan. 1.

In recent months, Obama has not only focused on the law more often in public. The implementation has consumed an increasing share of his attention behind closed doors.

Obama packs health policy aides into the Roosevelt Room at the White House every month, pressing them for more than an hour at a time on latest on Obamacare implementation.

POLITICO – TOP Stories

W.H. prepares for major Obamacare push

Rumsfeld to W.H.: Justify Syria attack

Rumsfeld said the U.S. is in “withdrawal mode, an apology mode. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the Obama administration has not yet justified an attack on Syria.

“There really hasn’t been any indication from the administration as to what our national interest is with respect to this particular situation,” Rumsfeld told Fox News’s Neil Cavuto on Wednesday.

Continue Reading

“If you think of what’s really important in that region, it’s two things,” he added. “It’s Iran’s nuclear program and the relationship between Iran and Syria, the Assad regime, with respect to funding terrorists that go around killing innocent men, women and children including Americans.”

(See POLITICO’s full Syria coverage)

Asked what he thinks China and Russia’s response may be — both countries have said the U.S. must abide by international law, wait for the United Nations chemical probe results, and should not bypass the U.N. Security Council — Rumsfeld replied, “Well, it’s hard to know.”

“I mean there’s no question that each of those two countries, the People’s Republic of China and Russia, have leaders that are fundamentally opposed to our values and our interests,” he said.

Under President Barack Obama, Rumsfeld said the U.S. is in “withdrawal mode, an apology mode,” and that “vacuum we’ve created is being filled by people who don’t have our values or our interest, and that gives China and Russia an opportunity to do things that are fundamentally against what we as a country and the American people would prefer to have happen.”

(PHOTOS: Scenes from Syria)

Rumsfeld also said Secretary of State John Kerry “has been dealt a pretty bad hand” thanks to Obama’s administration and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s choices over the past four years, calling it “a complicated situation.”

POLITICO – Congress

Rumsfeld to W.H.: Justify Syria attack

Frustrated with Syria, W.H. tries gunboat diplomacy

En route from Hawaii to Malaysia, Hagel declined to discuss any specifics.

ABOARD A MILITARY AIRCRAFT OVER THE PACIFIC  — The Pentagon is moving naval forces closer to Syria in preparation for a possible decision by President Barack Obama to order military strikes, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel suggested on Friday.

Hagel declined to describe any specific movements of U.S. forces. He said Obama asked that the Pentagon to prepare military options for Syria and that some of those options “requires positioning our forces.”

Continue Reading

U.S. Navy ships are capable of a variety of military action, including launching Tomahawk cruise missiles, as they did against Libya in 2011 as part of an international action that led to the overthrow of the Libyan government.

(PHOTOS: Chuck Hagel’s career)

“The Defense Department has a responsibility to provide the president with options for contingencies, and that requires positioning our forces, positioning our assets, to be able to carry out different options — whatever options the president might choose,” Hagel said.

He said the U.S. is coordinating with the international community to determine “what exactly did happen” in the reported use by the Syrian government of chemical weapons against civilians earlier this week.

“We’re still assessing that,” he said.

(Also on POLITICO: Barack Obama: Syria situation ‘troublesome’)

Hagel said a determination on the chemical attack should be made swiftly because “there may be another attack coming,” although he added that “we don’t know” whether that will happen.

Hagel said that although he is scheduled to spend the next week traveling in Southeast Asia, he will remain in contact with the White House about developments in Syria and planning for potential U.S. action.

POLITICO – TOP Stories

Frustrated with Syria, W.H. tries gunboat diplomacy

Frustrated with Syria, W.H. tries gunboat diplomacy

En route from Hawaii to Malaysia, Hagel declined to discuss any specifics.

ABOARD A MILITARY AIRCRAFT OVER THE PACIFIC  — The Pentagon is moving naval forces closer to Syria in preparation for a possible decision by President Barack Obama to order military strikes, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel suggested on Friday.

Hagel declined to describe any specific movements of U.S. forces. He said Obama asked that the Pentagon to prepare military options for Syria and that some of those options “requires positioning our forces.”

Continue Reading

U.S. Navy ships are capable of a variety of military action, including launching Tomahawk cruise missiles, as they did against Libya in 2011 as part of an international action that led to the overthrow of the Libyan government.

(PHOTOS: Chuck Hagel’s career)

“The Defense Department has a responsibility to provide the president with options for contingencies, and that requires positioning our forces, positioning our assets, to be able to carry out different options — whatever options the president might choose,” Hagel said.

He said the U.S. is coordinating with the international community to determine “what exactly did happen” in the reported use by the Syrian government of chemical weapons against civilians earlier this week.

“We’re still assessing that,” he said.

(Also on POLITICO: Barack Obama: Syria situation ‘troublesome’)

Hagel said a determination on the chemical attack should be made swiftly because “there may be another attack coming,” although he added that “we don’t know” whether that will happen.

Hagel said that although he is scheduled to spend the next week traveling in Southeast Asia, he will remain in contact with the White House about developments in Syria and planning for potential U.S. action.

POLITICO – TOP Stories

Frustrated with Syria, W.H. tries gunboat diplomacy