A move by the Obama administration to begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions was intended to get Congress moving on global warming legislation, but the message was largely lost on lawmakers mired in the health care debate.
Their response to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson: Climate change will take a back seat to health care.
"If health care doesn't get off this table, we are never going to move on to anything else," said Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., a supporter of the House climate change bill passed last summer.
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As President Obama weighs his options for the future mission in Afghanistan, his options include -- but are not limited to -- to two discrete strategies.
Within the administration, backers of counterterrorism favor targeting al Qaeda and other bad actors directly -- maintaining a smaller footprint, a limited military presence, and a narrower mission that uses pilotless drones and other methods, that ideally would allow for earlier troop withdrawal.
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Facing intensifying criticism for slow-walking a decision on troop levels for Afghanistan, the White House is pushing back, saying President Obama won't let politics influence his decision.
"The president's going to make the decision that he feels is in the best interest of the United States' national security," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "You know, the president is happy to hear the back-and-forth from both sides on this, but is going to take his time to decide what is right for the American people."
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The White House defended President Obama’s trip to Denmark this week to promote Chicago’s bid for the Olympic Games, saying health care reform is in good enough shape for him to miss a couple of days.
“I think he believes he can do this and get back in time,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. “He felt strongly and personally that he should go and make the case of the United States, and that’s what he’s going to do.”
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Senior citizens are putting the Democratic Party's 2010 election prospects and their health care reform proposals on a collision course.
Outraged over Democratic plans to cut between $400 billion and $500 billion from Medicare in the next decade, voters over the age of 65 are poised to make the party suffer even steeper losses at the polls than have already been predicted for the midterm election.
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As the seas of the Indian Ocean, like those of the Atlantic, calm with the end of storm season, we need to worry about another threat that dominated the news at times earlier in the year but has since fallen off our radars: piracy along the African coast.
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Defense Secretary Robert Gates signaled that President Obama may not be ready to send tens of thousands of additional troops to fight the war in Afghanistan, as the top military commander there has requested.
Instead, Gates told ABC's "This Week," Obama will decide, within weeks, "whether or not to make adjustments in the strategy" in the wake of the country's recent election, as well as a dire new assessment of the war by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
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While White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel declared that health care reform would clear Congress in the next two months, lawmakers in the House and Senate remained in gridlock over how to move legislation out of either chamber.
Emanuel told PBS's Charlie Rose that a health care bill "will be passed before the members go home for Thanksgiving," and it will meld aspects of both the House and Senate proposals that are miles apart philosophically.
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President Obama's repeated pledge that senior citizens would not lose benefits under his proposed cuts to Medicare has been officially contradicted by an independent congressional analyst whose dire prediction could put the latest Senate health proposal in jeopardy.
The $856 billion health care reform bill now being drafted in the Senate Finance Committee would be paid for in part by slashing $125 billion from the Medicare Advantage program, which is used by about 9 million people, or nearly 20 percent of all Medicare recipients.
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The growing debate on net neutrality heightened this week following an announcement by Federal Communications Committee Chairman Julius Genachowski supporting increased regulations on broadband carriers to preserve a "free and open" flow of Internet content.
Genachowski's comments ignited a swift response from legislators and a host of discussions across the Web.
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