CQ Roll Call Daily Briefing: Bringin' the Cheese
Friday, March 30, 2012
Today In Washington
THE SUPREME COURT: The justices convened this morning (with no one else in their paneled conference room overlooking the corner of 2nd and A streets) to take their first votes on the fate of the health care overhaul. If consensuses emerge on the propriety of deciding the case, the legitimacy of the new Medicaid requirements on the states, the constitutionality of the individual mandate — and the future of the rest of the law if the mandate is struck down — the senior justices on each side will assign the opinion-writing. But the majority and minority alliances could shift as multiple drafts of opinions are circulated, and there’s no reason to expect the rulings to be announced much before the court’s term ends in 13 weeks.
THE WHITE HOUSE: Obama is spending the day raising money and campaigning in two of the most reliably Democratic parts of New England. Air Force One just landed Burlington, where a $7,500-a-plate lunch for 100 donors at the Sheraton will be followed by a 2:30 rally at the University of Vermont. (Grace Potter and the Nocturnals is the warmup; student tickets are $44.) The president then heads to Portland for a speech at Southern Maine Community College and a fundraising dinner at the city’s art museum. He’s due back on the South Lawn before 10:30.
THE SENATE: Not in session; next convenes at 2 on Monday, April 16. (There won’t even be any pro forma sessions during the next two weeks under a deal reached yesterday, in which McConnell allowed the confirmation of six-dozen executive branch officials on a voice vote after Obama promised not to use his recess appointment power during the spring break.)
THE HOUSE: Convened at 11 for a brief pro forma session, but members are not expected back for 18 days; they also return Monday, April 16.
LOOK OUT BELOW: The dam may be about to break in front of Mitt Romney’s push toward the Republican nomination.
Four days before the Wisconsin primary — where Rick Santorum once looked decently positioned for a victory that would slow his rival’s path — a new poll puts Romney up by a solid 7 percentage points: He’s at 40 percent, Santorum is at 33 percent, Ron Paul is at 11 percent and Newt Gingrich is at 8 percent. And Paul Ryan is nowone of those people firmly and frontally in the Romney plurality. Just as the NBC/Marist poll was being released this morning, the pride of Janesville became the latest nationally prominent Republican to offer his formal backing. (His is also the 93rd congressional endorsement — meaning 32 percent of GOP House members and senators are now on board.)
Romney “has the skills, principle, courage, and tenacity to do what it takes to get American back on track,” said the chairman of the House Budget Committee, who expects Obama’s challenger will campaign this fall as a champion of the fiscal policies embodied in the budget that Ryan pushed to nearly-party-line adoption in the House yesterday. He also adopted the talking point favored by almost all the big guns of the GOP who have been rushing to Romney’s side in the past week — that the hotly contested primary season, while a productive party-builder to this point, is “entering a phase when it could be counterproductive if it goes on much longer.” (George Bush the elder made a similar point in offering his photo-op endorsement with Romney in Houston last night, gamely mangling the Kenny Rogers lyric about knowing when to hold and when to fold.)
Romney is in a position to sweep the 56 delegates at stake in the D.C. and Maryland primaries on Tuesday. If he also wins by a solid margin in Wisconsin (42 delegates), he would be on a clear path to securing the magic number of 1,144 delegates by the time the primaries end in June. The NBC/Marist survey nonetheless underlines the tough general election he could face; it has Obama leading Romney in the state by 13 points (52 to 35) — essentially his margin over McCain four years ago.
THEY MIGHT NEED ALL 90: Congress may have exceeded the conventionally cynical expectations by coming to terms on another stopgap public works deal more than two full days ahead of the moment when construction projects would have ground to a halt. But there is no reason to believe that yesterday’s 90-day truce is a harbinger of any rush to dealmaking when lawmakers return in two weeks.
The ultimate endgame is as elusive as ever. Senators in both parties are standing solidly behind their bipartisan plan to keep road, bridge and mass transit programs going for two years by tapping a hodgepodge of revenue streams — and one of them, Mary Landrieu, is insisting she’ll use all her considerable powers to block a 10th temporary extension of the current law even if that’s the only viable option come the end of June. House Republicans are insisting they are going to try again next month to find the votes they’ve come nowhere close to finding so far for Boehner’s more ambitious five-year plan — which some budget hawk Republicans think would spend too much and some Chamber of Commerce Republicans think wouldn’t do enough for crumbling infrastructure. And even if it gets through the House, the measure looks to be a senatorial non-starter because of its reliance for funding on revenues from drilling in the arctic and on the outer continental shelf, which makes the environmentalists cringe.
At best, a long and intense round of negotiations is sure to last close to Memorial Day, by which point state engineers will have had to make their plans for the summer and fall good-weather-required projects (and the hiring decisions that go along with them) without any guarantee of help from Washington. And the struggle to agree on a multi-year bill has drawn out so long that the Highway Trust Fund, which pays for highway and mass transit projects, could be drained as soon as October.
SPEND MORE, MAKE LESS: Consumer spending climbed eight-tenths of a percentage point in February — a jump in the biggest piece of the gross domestic product (70 percent) that provided new evidence of a strengthening election-year economy. The increase exceeded economists’ expectations and was the biggest since last July.
But the Commerce Department also reported that Americans’ income grew by a relatively weak 0.2 percent for a second straight month. And, after taxes and adjusted for inflation, incomes actually declined 0.1 percent in February, the third decrease in the past four months. When the pace of spending outstrips the pace of income growth, one result is that savings starts drying up. And so the saving rate dropped to 3.7 percent of after-tax income in February, the lowest level since August 2009. (The rate averaged 4.7 percent last year.)
Consumers bought more autos, clothes and appliances in February. They also paid higher prices for gasoline, of course. (Yesterday’s national average for a gallon of regular unleaded was $3.93 — 65 cents more than when the year began, by AAA’s figuring.) If the numbers at the pump keep going up for long enough, they could slow economic growth by taking spending away from consumer goods and services. But, for now, people remain relatively optimistic about the economy. The Conference Board this week said its gauge of consumer confidence was off only slightly for this month after reaching its highest level in a year in February.
TRAIL TIPS: (Montana) Of the 10 Republicans who voted against the Ryan budget yesterday, only one is running for higher office — Denny Rehberg, the state’s at-large House member, who’s challenging first-term Senate incumbent Jon Tester in a race that’s one of the main GOP pickup opportunities this fall. And, unlike almost all the other critics of the Ryan budget (fiscal conservatives who said it was too timid) Rehberg is declaring the blueprint all wrong when it comes to its provisions for reining in Medicare. (The state has a high proportion of elderly people and its voters have a penchant for favoring more of a strong federal hand than many in the rest of the West.)
The other Republicans who voted against the budget were Justin Amash, Joe Barton, Jimmy Duncan, Chris Gibson, Tim Huelskamp, Walter Jones, David McKinley, Todd Platts and Ed Whitfield. Among those who missed the vote were Ron Paul and another Senate candidate, Florida’s Connie Mack.
(Maryland) In the hottest congressional primary next week, state Senate Majority Leader Rob Garagiola has won the backing of Gov. Martin O’Malley, but millionaire baker John Delaney says his own polling shows him walking away with the Democratic nomination next week to face veteran Republican Roscoe Bartlett. A poll taken Monday and Tuesday, shows him up by 26 percentage points (49 to 23), with Milad Pooran with 10 percent and 16 percent undecided. A Delaney poll earlier in the month, the candidate said, had him ahead by 17 points.
(New Jersey) He’s still the prohibitive front-runner to win a 13th term in his suburban Philadelphia district, but Rob Andrews has clearly run into the biggest public relations problem of his career. According to an analysis by The Associated Press, he spent $97,000 in campaign money on at least 18 trips to California in the last five years. And at least four of the trips coincided with appointments attended by his daughter, Josie, at her record label. Campaign finance reports show the senior Armed Services member raised about $260,000 in donations from California residents and political action committees during the trips.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Today, Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska (50) and Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia (62). Four more Democrats tomorrow: Sen. Pat Leahy of Vermont and Rep. Barney Frank (both 72), fellow Massachusetts congressman Stephen Lynch (57) and Dennis Cardoza of California (53).
— David Hawkings, editor
Become a Facebook fan at facebook.com/DavidHawkingsDC. Or follow me on Twitter @davidhawkings.
More congressional campaign coverage is on Roll Call’s At the Races politics blog.
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