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Washington Update

Poll Shows Voters Favoring Health Overhaul Repeal
October 26, 2010 | National Journal
Just over half of Americans likely to vote in next week’s midterms want the next Congress to repeal this year’s health care overhaul if Republicans gain power on Capitol Hill, according to a new poll, a dramatic rebuke to a sitting president and freshly minted statute. Fifty-one percent of voters most likely to vote support taking the new health care law off the books if the GOP takes the House and Senate, or either, while 41 percent oppose repeal, according to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center.
Health Reform Weighs Down Obama
October 25, 2010 | Clive Crook in Financial Times
If anything, the law is less popular than before, and most of the voters who oppose it do not merely dislike it, they loathe it. Republicans are campaigning against the reform and Democrats in competitive seats, when they are not telling voters that the measure needs repair, are silent on the subject. Simple repeal is hard to imagine. However brutal a kicking Democrats get next week, Mr Obama will still be in office, veto at the ready, so a bill to repeal the reform cannot succeed before 2012. Alterations are a different matter. Actually, some are not just possible, they are likely.
G-20 Divided over Geithner PlanW
October 25, 2010 | Washington Post
The Obama administration has offered what it hopes is an elegant solution to the thorny problem of conflicting global currency and trade policies that keep the world economy unstable. But the proposal - to cap the amount of mismatch between what any nation produces and invests and how much it consumes - is drawing fire as countries that run steady trade surpluses make it clear they want to hang onto their advantage.
Boehner Faces Tricky Dilemma
October 22, 2010 | Financial Times
John Boehner, the Republican poised to become Speaker of the House of Representatives next month in the event of a GOP takeover, wants to model himself on Nicholas Longworth, a fellow Ohioan who did the job in the 1920s. Longworth, who was from Cincinnati, which borders Mr Boehner’s district, promised to give more power to committee chairmen as he led a revolt against Joe Cannon, the autocratic Republican leader in the House.
Financial Regulation Overhaul Draws Weak Public Support
October 21, 2010 | Real Time Economics
Many Democrats hoped this summer’s financial regulation overhaul would help them in elections this fall. A survey by economists at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University indicates they’re not getting much traction from it. Just 12% of respondents in the survey said they were satisfied with the Dodd-Frank law to revamp financial oversight, while 54% were dissatisfied. Two out of three people said they believe the measure is insufficient to protect against future bailouts. Even among only Democrats, the law has little support.
Americans Less Satisfied Than In Any Other Gallup Midterm Poll, Ever
October 21, 2010 | Ezra Klein
Gallup finds 21% of Americans satisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time. If that figure does not improve considerably in the next two weeks, it would be the lowest level of U.S. satisfaction Gallup has measured at the time of a midterm election in more than 30 years of tracking this measure. That's no surprise. We're in the worst economy that the poll has ever recorded. The closest runner-up is 1982, and sure enough, satisfaction was low then, too. But it doesn't bode well for Democrats next month, and it's not likely to change in the next two weeks.
Social Security Payment Faces Senate Hurdle
October 20, 2010 | Congressional Quarterly
Senate Democrats are ramping up efforts to try to pass a one-time $250 payment to Social Security recipients during the lame-duck session, but Majority Leader Harry Reid will have to tackle deficit concerns to convert Democratic and Republican opponents into supporters. Reid, D-Nev., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and President Obama have pledged to push for the payments after the Social Security Administration announced Oct. 15 that the government would not provide Social Security recipients a cost-of-living increase in 2011 because inflation has not been high enough to warrant it.
No Such Thing As Shovel-Ready Projects
October 19, 2010 | KeithHennessey.com
On September 27th the President told Peter Baker of The New York Times: He realized too late that “there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects” when it comes to public works. Yet just three weeks earlier, in a speech to the LaborFest in Milwaukee, the President said: "So, that’s why, Milwaukee, today, I am announcing a new plan for rebuilding and modernizing America’s roads and rails and runways for the long term." Question for Team Obama: If there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects, how will the $50 B of new infrastructure spending create jobs immediately?
Foreclosure Freeze Leads to Uneasy Politics for Democrats
October 19, 2010 | Washington Post
The calculus is clear for most Democratic incumbents, especially those in tight races like Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid: Nothing could be worse on the eve of elections than images of people being booted out of their homes by big banks that have relied on sloppy, if not fraudulent, paperwork. But reviving the economy requires repairing the housing market, which won't happen until foreclosed properties and delinquent mortgages are dealt with. So the White House, which is looking past the midterm elections, has been restrained.
GOP House Leaders Seek to Avoid Mistakes of '94
October 19, 2010 | Wall Street Journal
Republicans on the campaign trail are bashing the president and his agenda and some are vowing to shut down Washington if they don't get their way. Behind the scenes, key party members are talking a different game. A number of House Republicans, including some who are likely to be in the leadership, are pushing a post-election strategy aimed at securing concrete legislation, with the goal of showing they can translate general principles into specific action. Among the ideas is to bring a series of bills to the floor, as often as once a week, designed to cut spending in some way.

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