Obama S Plan

WASHINGTON - President Obama said Wednesday that he would reject any Republican effort to tie a long-term budget deal to a vote to increase the debt ceiling, saying such a strategy would be a threat to the recovering economy. “That is a bad strategy for America, it's a bad strategy for your businesses, and it is not a game that I will play,” Obama told a group of business leaders gathered for a meeting of the Business Roundtable. The president was reacting to reports that Republicans on the Hill are considering a new way out of their standoff with the president over a massive set of tax rates and spending cuts set to take effect in the new year.

President Obama continued to stump for his jobs plan Wednesday, traveling to the battleground state of North Carolina and again suggesting that he will blame a failure by Congress to pass the package squarely on Republicans. The president told a crowd of about 8,000 at North Carolina State University in Raleigh that the GOP was resisting the plan, in part, because Republicans don't want to “give me a win” in advance of the 2012 elections. “Give me a win? Give me a break!

ASHEVILLE, N.C. -- Providing medical insurance coverage for people with preexisting health conditions is among the more popular provisions of President Obama's signature healthcare law. Mitt Romney, while pledging to repeal and replace Obamacare, has repeatedly said that he would require insurance companies to cover people with preexisting conditions, provided the customers previously had continuous coverage. Romney has never said what he would do with people who did not have continuous coverage, but he offered a new clue in an interview that was published Thursday.

WASHINGTON - Elderly Americans on Medicare are substantially happier with their insurance coverage than their younger counterparts who rely on commercial insurance, according to a new national survey . Only 8% of Medicare beneficiaries 65 or over rated their coverage “fair” or “poor,” the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund found. By comparison, 20% of those with employer-based coverage gave their insurance plan low marks. And 33% of people who bought insurance on their own reported unhappiness with their coverage.

As Paul D. Ryan campaigned near Florida's Space Coast, Mitt Romney on Saturday released a plan for space exploration that said remaining the global  leader in that arena is vital for the nation's economic and security needs. With an eye toward impressing crucial Florida voters, Romney and his running mate also argued that President Obama  has allowed the nation's space dominance to erode. "He has put the space program on a path where we're conceding our position as the unequivocal leader in space," Ryan said in Orlando on Saturday, the Associated Press reported.

DANVILLE, Ky. - The old lion tried to whup the young pup. He tried by sneering, laughing, smiling, snickering and interrupting. He yelled. He dropped his voice. He crossed his arms and threw himself back against his chair in frustration. But the young one had a few tricks of his own. He kept his cool, stuck to his script, patiently explained things in his wonky way, and looked at his overwrought opponent with kindly concern. Compared with the first presidential debate, Thursday's encounter between Vice President Joe Biden and GOP nominee Paul Ryan was a rollicking roller coaster of a show.

Mitt Romney told his top donors Wednesday that his loss to President Obama was a disappointing result that neither he nor his top aides had expected, but said he believed his team ran a “superb” campaign with “no drama,” and attributed his rival's victory to “the gifts” the administration had given to blacks, Hispanics and young voters during Obama's  first term. Obama, Romney argued, had been “very generous” to blacks, Hispanics and young voters. He cited as motivating factors to young voters the administration's plan for partial forgiveness of college loan interest and the extension of health coverage for students on their parents' insurance plans well into their 20s. Free contraception coverage under Obama's healthcare plan, he added, gave an extra incentive to college-age women to back the president.

Rarely does California’s diverse congressional delegation agree on anything, but President Obama’s drawdown plan for U.S. troops in Afghanistan is drawing fire from Golden State lawmakers in both parties. Liberals and even one prominent conservative said it doesn’t go far enough. Another prominent conservative warned it may go too far. "I'm deeply concerned,’’ Rep. Howard "Buck’’ McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said at Capitol Hill hearing today on the president’s plan to withdraw 10,000 troops by the end of this year and another 23,000 by the end of next summer.  "With the Taliban stumbling, we need a strategy designed to knock the enemy to the mat, not give them a breather.’’ Rep. Judy Chu (D-El Monte)

Reporting from Nashua, N.H. -- The difficult truth about political ads is that context often doesn't matter -- and on Monday, Romney uttered a line that he will likely come to regret by November if he wins the Republican nomination for president.  At a time when Romney is facing an onslaught from independent groups attacking his experience at the private equity firm Bain Capital, the normally cautious candidate slipped up in Nashua on Monday morning...

President Obama unveils a budget blueprint Monday designed to give the economy a shot in the arm while laying out a long-term plan to cut federal deficits, senior administration officials say. The new budget is designed to reduce deficits by $4 trillion over the next decade by decreasing government spending and raising taxes on the wealthy. After a year preoccupied with cutting spending, Obama's budget plan raises questions about spending priorities and distribution of the tax burden.