Don’t get caught flat-footed in front of the press!  Below is a quick rundown of today’s “must reads.” – John T. Doolittle, House Republican Conference Secretary

The Morning Murmur – Tuesday, January 31, 2006

1.  Bush to push for health reforms – Chicago Tribune
President Bush is expected to push for health reform in his State of the Union address including an extension of tax breaks for individual medical spending and an expansion of tax-free health savings accounts.  The goal is to make medical markets more efficient and give consumers an incentive to shop more carefully for health care.

2.  Republicans on the rebound – Washington Times, Tod Lindberg
The problem for the Democratic Party, which has been apparent since the Ralph Nader candidacy of 2000, is that it hasn't figured out since Bill Clinton how to move to the center without losing its left.

3.  Suicide of the Dems:  Kerry’s Flopibuster – New York Post’s Deborah Orin
Just 25 Democrats were willing to join Kerry as the party split apart over Alito.  It's the latest example of how Kerry — plus 2000 loser Al Gore and the left wing of the blogosphere — are all yanking the Democratic Party hard to the left.

4.  Hamas Faces Crisis If Funding Dries Up – Wall Street Journal
For nearly a decade, the Palestinian Authority has leaned heavily on donations from Western governments to stay afloat. But with that lifeline threatened by Hamas's electoral victory and the U.S. and EU states threatening to turn the spigot off as long as Hamas is in charge, it remains to be seen where its quasigovernment will get the money to survive.

5.  Tasting Victory, Liberals Instead Have a Food Fight – Washington Post Columnist Dana Milbank
A new poll finds congressional Democrats in the best position they've held in 14 years, which can mean only one thing: It is time for the Democrats to eat their own.

For previous issues of the Morning Murmur, go to www.GOPsecretary.gov

FULL ARTICLES BELOW:

1.  Bush to push for health reforms – Chicago Tribune

President's speech to the nation is expected to address `a major source of anxiety for middle-class Americans'--medical insurance

By Judith Graham
Tribune staff reporter
Published January 31, 2006

President Bush's expected push for health reform in Tuesday's State of the Union address could face significant political obstacles, but the president is counting on the public's deepening frustration with mounting medical costs to overcome the resistance.

Bush's proposals include an extension of tax breaks for individual medical spending and an expansion of tax-free health savings accounts, sources say. The goal is to make medical markets more efficient and give consumers an incentive to shop more carefully for health care.

"I think the White House is picking up on a major source of anxiety for middle-class Americans: feeling insecure about health insurance," said Grace-Marie Turner, who heads the Galen Institute, a conservative health-care think tank.

The $2 trillion medical industry has stymied every serious effort at change over the past 30 years. And Democrats are arguing that Bush's proposals would benefit the wealthy, not low-income Americans.

These challenges help explain why Bush has largely shied away from significant health reforms until now. But big and small businesses have been complaining more forcefully about the cost of coverage for their employees, and ordinary voters are increasingly upset.

It is not clear how Bush's plan will be received. Widespread confusion and frustration over the rollout of Medicare's new drug program may color consumers' perceptions and fuel critics' attacks.

Ultimately, critics argue, Bush's policies could erode employer-based medical coverage by prompting healthy workers to exit employers' group insurance policies, leaving sicker, more expensive workers in these plans. That would push the cost of group insurance up, making it even less affordable, critics say.

The president's proposals will "shift more costs onto consumers and potentially worsen problems of access to care for people with chronic illness," said Dr. David Baker, chief of internal medicine and co-director of the Institute for Healthcare Studies at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.

The health-care issue resonates with the public; a survey last year by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly 40 percent of Americans were "very worried" about paying more for medical care or health insurance. And between 2000 and 2005, health insurance premiums rose by 73 percent, compared to a 15 percent gain in workers' income.

Bush's approach is to rein in health spending by promoting insurance policies with high deductibles paired with tax-free health savings accounts. Deductibles--the amount consumers pay before insurance kicks in--are typically several thousand dollars for a family in these arrangements.

Consumers would have an incentive to watch medical spending and shop for care because more of their own money would be on the line, according to the reasoning behind this proposal. Meanwhile, businesses could benefit because high-deductible policies presumably would be less expensive for them to purchase for their employees.

Physicians would respond by competing aggressively on price, which would holding down costs, predicted John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Texas think tank that helped pioneer the health savings account idea.

Not everyone agrees. The idea is sound in principle, but "I'm not sure Americans are ready for it yet," said Mark Pauly, professor of health-care systems and public policy at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Since health savings accounts were introduced in 2004, 3 million Americans have signed up.

Another proposal Bush is likely to advance calls for expanded tax breaks for personal health-care spending. Currently, consumers qualify for tax relief if they spend more than 7.5 percent of their income on medical care. Proponents of the approach Bush is considering want to make out-of-pocket health spending tax-deductible.

They argue that because employers get a tax break for spending on health insurance, individuals should get a comparable break.

Ultimately, 6 million to 20 million of America's 46 million uninsured residents could end up buying medical coverage because it would be cheaper with tax-favored treatment, R. Glenn Hubbard, former chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, suggested in a recent book.

Uwe Reinhardt, a professor of political economy at Princeton University, doubts that. Furthermore, he complains that medical care would become "cheaper in absolute dollars for high-income Americans than for low-income Americans" because the wealthy would enjoy larger tax deductions.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0601310163jan31,1,7365261.story

2.  Republicans on the rebound – Washington Times, Tod Lindberg

By Tod Lindberg
Published January 31, 2006

On the day of the state of the union message, we might summarize the state of political play as follows: President Bush has fought his way back — from a catastrophic collapse of job approval all the way up to historic lows of job approval. And at this writing Monday morning, I can't really tell if Democrats are filibustering the confirmation vote for Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court or not.

Let's start with Mr. Bush. It's now abundantly clear what happened to him politically in the fall: He began to lose Republican support. It probably began over Hurricane Katrina, but it became serious with the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. At first, as the GOP legal establishment and conservative intellectuals took exception, I thought it was possible that the elite allergic reaction would fail to spread and would peter out by the time of confirmation hearings. Instead of letting up after a week or so, however, the opposition grew. It didn't ever really extend to the party rank-and-file, but among the more ideological set that cares deeply about judicial philosophy, the damage escalated. And Mr. Bush's already low job approval rating took a dip into undiscovered country as, for the first time, some of the party faithful expressed doubts. This was a route to disaster.

Mr. Bush fought his way back with the withdrawal of Miss Miers and the nomination of the formidable Judge Alito, as well as more robust defenses of his Iraq policy and his handling of the economy. Whether he likes them or not, and indications are he does, Mr. Bush makes big bets. Sometimes it takes a while to see how they come out. His Iraq policy is hanging in there as the political process goes forward.Hisbiggest medium-term problem is the economy. Fourth quarter GDP growth was alarmingly weak, and lower growth yields ballooning deficits. That complicates his domestic agenda.

Still,beforeus tonight, we have a president who claims the united loyalty and affection of members of his party. He is accordingly positioned to play for the center of the electorate, provided he keeps his base with him. Which takes us to the Democrats. What a mess. First they persuaded themselves (yet again) in the fall that Mr. Bush was done for, his administration having expired under the permanent and righteous collapse of his job approval ratings. No, really, the cover of the December 2005 edition of the American Prospect proclaiming the end of "the 9/11 presidency"declared,"HE'S DONE," with a fork stuck in him. They also persuaded themselves that they had only to wait until November 2006, when they would come roaring back to control Congress.

OK, so he's not done. He has three more years to drive them crazy. And as for Congress, it was bound to occur to people who write about politics that the equation Democrats were peddling, "Bush down in November 2005 equals Democratic victory in 2006," was about as self-serving and reckless as, well, the GOP notion that the Clinton administration had come to a swift conclusion with the Republican win in the 1994 election. Then again, these are some of the same people who peddled (and bought) the line that an invisible army of Democratic voters was going to rise up in November 2004 to cast the perfidious Mr. Bush into outer darkness. That fantasy lasted through election night, thanks to exit poll "results" that mysteriously confirmed the invisible army thesis.

So, is there a filibuster of Samuel Alito going on or not? Some Democrats seem to be of the view that while a filibuster will not succeed (true, and not only because Republicans would eliminate the filibuster if they had to, but also because filibuster enthusiasts don't have the 40 votes to sustain one in the first place), it would be worthwhile as a statement of their opposition to the conservative judicial views of the judge. In this, they are being egged on by the hyperpartisan left-wing blogosphere. The pain of Sen. Hillary Clinton seems especially acute. The obvious front-runner for 2008, she has been positioning herself to make a claim on the political center. But recent weeks have seen her virtual tarring and feathering on-line, where the keystroke Robespierres regard her as insufficiently true to the cause. So she, too, now sort of supports a filibuster.

Who knows? It strikes me that at the speech tonight, Mr. Alito will either be down in the front with a robe on or up in the president's box, and that Sandra Day O'Connor will occupy whichever seat he isn't in. It's a political loser for Democrats.

The problem for the Democratic Party, which has been apparent since the Ralph Nader candidacy of 2000, is that it hasn't figured out since Bill Clinton how to move to the center without losing its left. I'd start by closing the browser window. More infantilism is not the answer.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20060130-093110-5614r.htm

3.  Suicide of the Dems:  Kerry’s Flopibuster – New York Post’s Deborah Orin

By DEBORAH ORIN

THE joke in Republican circles now is that if John Kerry didn't exist, Karl Rove would have to invent him.

Republicans loved 2004 loser Kerry's flop of a filibuster against Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito because it had Democrats tearing each other's eyes out — over a fight they couldn't win.

Not only did Kerry lose, he lost big time — just 25 Democrats were willing to join him as the party split apart over Alito, just as it has ripped apart over the Iraq war.
The vote was 72-25 against filibuster, so Team Kerry lost 3-1.

Worse yet, plenty of Democrats who did vote for the filibuster — like New York's Sen. Chuck Schumer — left little doubt that they were livid at Kerry's stunt, since it turned into a dream come true for Bush political guru Rove.

Senate Democrats had already huddled and agreed that a filibuster would be dumb: They lacked the votes — and Americans backed Alito by 2-1, so it could alienate the desperately needed swing voters.

But then Kerry, hobnobbing with hotshots in posh Davos, Switzerland, got his marching orders from The New York Times and the left-wing blog Daily Kos (which can be hard to tell apart these days). Presto: Insta-filibuster, like it or not.

It's the latest example of how Kerry — plus 2000 loser Al Gore and the left wing of the blogosphere — are all yanking the Democratic Party hard to the left, instead of the center (where most of the votes are).

Among those who felt they had to follow Kerry was likely 2008 rival Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) — after all, liberal activists decide Democratic primaries, and Clinton can't afford to alienate that base after voting for the Iraq war. But she clearly wasn't happy — she didn't speak in favor of filibuster on the Senate floor and just issued a rather tame written statement.

Still, the fact that Kerry's filibuster lost by such a huge margin gives Republicans more ammunition to paint Clinton as out-of-the-mainstream, which is just where they want her.

Lest there be any doubt that centrists thought Kerry's stunt was a dumb idea, consider how many Democrats from red (Republican) states and — and even, like Florida's Bill Nelson, from swing states — voted against it.

Another worry for Democrats was the fact that the reaction on the lefty blogs wasn't to think that maybe they'd had a dumb idea but instead to vow revenge and political death to Democrats who opposed the unpopular filibuster.

"Moron and coward"; "Primary challenge"; "Take down their names and kick their a-- in the next election" — just a few of the angry messages for Democrats posted on the Daily Kos site as his bloggers realized the filibuster was going down.

In fact, Kerry's allies seemed so angry at Democrats that they almost forget to attack Republicans.

It's the second warning for Democrats over the past few weeks about tilting too far to the angry left — the other being Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean's stunning failure at fund-raising.

Dean's team has just $5.5 million cash on hand, according to the latest reports, while the Republican National Committee has $34 million — a $29 million advantage for Bush's team. Anger doesn't seem to fill the coffers.

"The liberals in the party are marching like lemmings into the sea again," laments a veteran Democratic activist. "Sometimes I think the left wing is turning into a cult. It just doesn't allow for disagreement. If you disagree, you're a traitor."

It certainly seems a long time since the days right after the '04 election, when Democrats seemed to agree that they should pay more attention to swing voters and middle Americans who eat at Applebee's (as Clintonista Doug Sosnik once put it).

In the end, Kerry's stunt turned out to be like Howard Dean's infamous "yeaaargh" scream when his 2004 presidential bid blew up — a self-indulgent shriek of rage at losing.

The funny thing is that, back in '04, Kerry was the anti-Dean. That didn't work — so now he's trying to be the New Dean, frantically currying favor with the same liberal activists who once backed the man with the scream.

It's as if Kerry and his party are determined to expose their own vulnerabilities, instead of President Bush's. Lucky guy, that Karl Rove.

Deborah Orin is The Post's Washington Bureau Chief

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/62585.htm

4.  Hamas Faces Crisis If Funding Dries Up – Wall Street Journal

By KARBY LEGGETT, Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 31, 2006; Page A7

JERUSALEM -- For nearly a decade, the Palestinian Authority has leaned heavily on donations from Western governments to stay afloat. But with that lifeline threatened by Hamas's electoral victory, it remains to be seen where its quasigovernment will get the money to survive.

Last year the PA's total expenditures reached about $1.6 billion, and revenue totaled about $1.1 billion, according to estimates from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and private economists. That would have left the PA with a deficit of about $500 million. In fact, because foreign countries, including the U.S. and European Union, suspended budgetary aid late last year, the actual deficit surpassed $700 million. The PA covered the gap by borrowing heavily from commercial banks.

Now, in the wake of Hamas's ascent, many foreign nations -- most prominently the U.S. and EU states -- are threatening to turn the spigot off for as long as Hamas is in charge.

That has put Hamas, a militant Islamist group that is on U.S. and EU terrorist blacklists, in a tricky spot. With some 160,000 civil servants on the government payroll and an increasing budget deficit, the PA could slip into bankruptcy if Western aid comes to a halt. That, coupled with Israeli security blockades that stifle economic activity, could set the stage for an economic decline that many fear could lead to chaos in the West Bank and Gaza. Nearly half of all Palestinians live on less than $2 a day.

Last year foreign countries pledged to contribute nearly $1.1 billion to the PA, including direct budget support and other aid programs such as poverty-relief works. That was up 20% from the year before. Of that total, the U.S. pledged more than $500 million, though not all the money was delivered, officials say. European countries committed a similar amount, though it is unclear if all those funds were delivered.

The PA also received remittances on taxes Israel collected on Palestinian exports and other services. At times, these reached $40 million to $50 million a month, although it remains unclear how many months those payments were actually delivered.

Funds from Arab League countries last year fell to about $200 million, accounting for 18% of total foreign donations last year, according to an IMF report. That is down from the $388 million Arab countries contributed in 2001. Of the Arab donors, Algeria kicked in more than $100 million and Saudi Arabia about $50 million last year, mostly in direct budget support. Many Arab states make smaller donations that aren't captured in the official data.

Funding for Hamas -- or where it comes from -- is far less clear. According to estimates, the group's annual budget is in the neighborhood of $50 million to $100 million. The bulk of those funds is channeled to the group in small amounts via overseas Muslim charitable organizations to avoid detection by Israel and Western governments.
Though some of the money supports militant activity, Hamas uses most of it to pay for charity programs such as medical and educational services. For years, foreign charities that finance Hamas operated openly in Europe and the U.S. Many have been shut down as part of the U.S. battle against terrorist groups. Even so, large charities in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait continue to send money regularly to Hamas, according to Israeli officials and media reports.

The PA has largely itself to blame for its fiscal crisis. During the 1990s peace process, foreign donors poured money in at a record clip. A large but unknown amount was siphoned off into the pockets of senior officials.

Before last week's election, foreign donors were talking about increasing disbursements this year. Under a U.S.-backed plan, there was hope that total contributions could reach $3 billion for the next three years. That talk has been replaced by threats to halt funding.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113867254271160519.html?mod=politics_primary_hs

5.  Tasting Victory, Liberals Instead Have a Food Fight – Washington Post Columnist Dana Milbank

By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, January 31, 2006; A02

The new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds congressional Democrats in the best position they've held in 14 years, besting President Bush and Republican lawmakers on Iraq, the economy, health care, immigration, ethics and more.

All of which can mean only one thing: It is time for the Democrats to eat their own.

Right on cue, liberal activists including Cindy Sheehan and Ramsey Clark gathered yesterday at the Busboys & Poets restaurant and bookshop at 14th and V streets NW for what they billed as a forum on "The Impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney." But the participants, while charging the administration with "crimes against humanity," a "war of aggression" and even "the supreme international crime," inevitably turned their wrath on congressional Democrats, whom they regarded as a bunch of wimps.

"Does the Democratic Party want to continue to exist or does it want to ignore what 85 percent of its supporters want?" demanded David Swanson, a labor union official who runs "Impeach PAC" and other efforts to remove Bush from office. Singling out Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (Nev.) for derision, Swanson said that Democrats who do the right thing "are exceptions."

Sheehan, just back from Caracas, where she praised Venezuela's anti-American president, Hugo Chavez, and called Bush a "terrorist," said she expects Democrats will "seriously screw up" the midterm elections in November. Besides, "we can't wait" for the election, said Sheehan, who is mulling a primary challenge to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

"Cindy for the Senate!" called out moderator Kevin Zeese, a Ralph Nader acolyte. "It's important for us to stop thinking as Democrats and Republicans and break out of this two-party straitjacket," argued Zeese, a third-party candidate for Senate in Maryland.

After the participants made their urgent calls for impeachment proceedings, John Bruhns, identifying himself as an antiwar Iraq veteran, rose for a clarification. If Democrats don't first "gain control of one of the houses" of Congress, he wondered, "how else can we impeach this monster?"

Swanson had a ready brushoff for Democrats who won't pursue impeachment because they're in the minority: "Just go home if you're going to talk that way." Offering the lessons of 1994, he said: "The way the Republicans got the majority was not by being scared. . . . It was by going out and speaking on behalf of their base and letting themselves be called radicals."

Bruhns, wearing a crew cut and business suit, disagreed. Somebody in the audience called for him to "shut up."

"They didn't answer my question," Bruhns protested after the exchange ended. "How do you get impeachment if you don't win elections? I'm being practical."

Elected Democrats and their liberal base are in one of their periodic splits between pragmatism and symbolism. Under pressure from blogs and liberal groups, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) yesterday attempted an obviously doomed filibuster against the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel Alito -- and Kerry got only 25 of the 60 needed votes.

Likewise, the chance of a Republican Congress moving to impeach Bush is close to zero. When one of the impeachment forum's sponsors posted an item on its Web site about news coverage of the event, a reader responded that, without conservative support, "this becomes a cartoon image of the old pinko commie left, and fair game for the wingnuts at Fox."

The lineup of speakers indeed could have been a Bill O'Reilly fantasy: Saddam Hussein's lawyer (Clark), Hugo Chavez's friend (Sheehan) and the man who denied Al Gore the presidency in Florida in 2000 (Ralph Nader).

Nader, as it happens, couldn't make it because of a death in the family. But Fox News was there -- and the other speakers did not disappoint.

Clark, on a stage decorated with portraits of Gandhi, the Dalai Lama and Martin Luther King Jr., said the administration is "the greatest threat to peace, to human rights, to economic justice worldwide." The former attorney general proposed a 75 percent cut in the military budget and complained that Democrats are just as warmongering as Republicans.

Marcus Raskin, the longtime antiwar activist, compared the Pentagon's "shock and awe" to the Nazis' blitzkrieg. "What we have now is nationalist triumphalism," he said.
Swanson announced that he will be forming a committee to pressure the D.C. Council to "send charges of impeachment to the House of Representatives."

Sheehan, in a sweet voice, condemned the administration's agenda "to spread the cancer of empire."

The first questioner, getting into the spirit of the forum, declared of the administration: "These criminals and gangsters, thugs as I regard them, I believe engineered 9/11."
Many in the crowd applauded. But others were skeptical. "I've heard a lot about accountability" from the panel, said one questioner. "Seems to me the first opportunity we had for accountability was in the last election."

"Elections," moderator Zeese replied, "are not the determining factor."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/30/AR2006013001319.html

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