President Obama’s Got “No New Friends”

President Obama has earned a reputation of not playing well with others. And while House Republicans have long been vocally frustrated – now even Senate Democrats are speaking out about their inability to work with President Obama.

In a recent New York Times article, several Senate Democrats – including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) – were interviewed about their relationship with President Obama.

“With Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, sitting a few feet away, Mr. Reid complained that Senate Republicans were spitefully blocking the confirmation of dozens of Mr. Obama’s nominees to serve as ambassadors. He expected that the president would back him up and urge Mr. McConnell to relent.

“Mr. Obama quickly dismissed the matter.

“‘You and Mitch work it out,’ Mr. Obama said coolly, cutting off any discussion.”

Ouch. That’s not a very nice way to treat your co-workers or fellow leaders. And Senator Reid agreed:

“After his return to the Capitol that afternoon, Mr. Reid told other senators and his staff members that he was astonished by how disengaged the president seemed.

“But the impression the president left with Mr. Reid was clear: Capitol Hill is not my problem.”

Other Democrats spoke out about the lack of communication and compromise coming from the White House:

“Asked to characterize his relationship with the president, Mr. Manchin, a centrist Democrat who has often been a bridge builder in the Senate, said: ‘It’s fairly nonexistent. There’s not much of a relationship.’”

Senator Angus King (I-ME) said:

“In order to work with people, you need to establish the relationship first before you ask for something, and I think one of the things the White House has not done well and the president has not done well is the simple idea of establishing relationships before there is a crisis.”

But this isn’t the first time President Obama has opted out of compromising friendship – this behavior has been going on for a while. The Wire broke down a timeline of President Obama’s inability to make friends, from the recent border crisis to complaints from foreign ambassadors. Often, the word “aloof” arises when lawmakers describe the President.

President Obama’s behavior has created a trickle-down affect, and his inability to compromise is echoed in the Senate chambers. House Republicans have passed dozens of bills that would put Americans back to work – many of them with bipartisan support. Yet they remain stuck in a stubborn Democratic controlled Senate. And now even his allies there are catching on to the fact that President Obama isn’t interested in helping anyone. In the words of hip-hop artist Drake, Obama is making “no new friends – no, no, new.”

House Republicans will continue to pass bills that empower Americans to make their lives better – and will push against the obstacles of an imperial Presidency.

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Obama’s Strategy Shows Misunderstanding of Terrorist Threat, Republicans Say

Republican lawmakers on Sunday criticized President Obama’s vision for winding down the war on terrorism, using talk show appearances to accuse him of misunderstanding the threat in a way that will embolden unfriendly nations.

“We show this lack of resolve, talking about the war being over,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “What do you think the Iranians are thinking? At the end of the day, this is the most tone-deaf president I ever could imagine.”

In his first major foreign policy address of his second term, Mr. Obama said last week that it was time for the United States to narrow the scope of its long battle against terrorists and begin a transition away from a war footing.

In addition to renewing his call to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he said he would seek to limit his own war powers. He also issued new policy guidelines that would shift the responsibility for drone strikes to the military from the Central Intelligence Agency, and said there would be stricter standards for such attacks.

Mr. Graham, a strong supporter of the drone program, said he objected to changing the standards. Separately, he called for a special counsel to investigate both the Justice Department, which has come under scrutiny for seizing journalists’ phone records, and the Internal Revenue Service, which has acknowledged that it unfairly targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

Democrats, including Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, praised Mr. Obama for what they said was a necessary rebalancing of civil liberties and national security interests. “We have to balance our values,” Ms. Wasserman Schultz said Sunday on the ABC News program “This Week.”

But at least two lawmakers — the current and former chairmen of the House Homeland Security Committee, Representative Michael McCaul of Texas and Peter T. King of New York — complained specifically about the president’s remarks about Guantánamo Bay.

Mr. McCaul warned against closing the detention center, especially if it meant moving prisoners to the United States. “Name me one American city that would like to host these guys,” he said on the CNN program “State of the Union.”

More than half the remaining 166 detainees at Guantánamo Bay are Yemeni; of these, 56 have been cleared to go home. Mr. Obama has proposed repatriating detainees when he can, but will still face the thorny question of what to do several dozen men who cannot be prosecuted and who have been deemed to be too dangerous to release.

Mr. King, appearing with Ms. Wasserman Schultz on “This Week,” said the detention facility had been a success. “Many experts believe it did work,” he said, adding that he was “very concerned about sending detainees back to Yemen.” Noting that Mr. Obama had campaigned on a promise to close the prison, he said the president “could have done a lot more than he has done if he was serious about it rather than just moralizing.”

In calling for a special counsel, Mr. Graham said the Justice Department had begun to “criminalize journalism” and had engaged in “an overreach” in investigating leaks of classified national security information. He also complained of an “organized effort” within the I.R.S. to target political opponents of the president. “I think it comes from the top,” he said, although current and former I.R.S. officials have said Mr. Obama did not know of the targeting.

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Obama’s Labor Nominee Faces G.O.P. Critics in Senate

WASHINGTON — Responding to sharp criticism from Republicans for his work on housing discrimination and voting rights at the Justice Department, Thomas E. Perez, President Obama’s choice to head the Labor Department, on Thursday defended his record and said that if confirmed, his focus would be on tackling the nation’s high unemployment rate.

Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the ranking Republican on the labor committee, cited a scathing report from other Republican lawmakers as he questioned Mr. Perez about a deal he helped broker with officials in St. Paul for the city to drop a housing discrimination lawsuit in exchange for the Justice Department’s declining to join two whistle-blower complaints against the city.

“That seems to me to be an extraordinary amount of wheeling and dealing outside the normal responsibilities of the assistant attorney general for civil rights,” Mr. Alexander said.

He later added that he expected Mr. Perez to respond in full to a subpoena from Representative Darrell Issa of California, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, for personal e-mails believed to contain more information about the deal.

Mr. Perez countered that not only had he sought the guidance of ethics experts on the agreement, his had not been the final word.

“The senior career people in the civil division kicked the tires on this case. They looked at it very carefully, they made a very considered judgment that it was a weak case,” he said.

Democrats were eager to voice their support for Mr. Perez, who, if confirmed would be the only Hispanic member of the cabinet.

Anticipating questions about the deal, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, the committee chairman, opened the questioning by leading Mr. Perez through a series of largely yes-or-no queries designed to rebut the Republican report.

“As I said, we have gone through this with a fine-tooth comb, with our lawyers, with our staff,” Mr. Harkin said. “And everything I can see is that you acted appropriately and ethically to advance the interests of the United States.”

Questioning the role of politics in Mr. Perez’s challenges to voting laws, Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, brought up the Justice Department’s move to block that state’s voter identification law in 2011 on the grounds that it would discourage minority voters.

“As I look at your management style, it seems to have a political perspective, a political bias in the management style,” Mr. Scott said. “It seems not to be open and not to be balanced and certainly not to be fair.”

Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, released a statement in March vowing to block Mr. Perez’s nomination pending a response from the Justice Department on his accusations of uneven enforcement of voter registration rights in his state.

As expected, many of the questions focused on job creation, with senators from both parties asking about his commitment to the Job Corps, a training program for young people, among others.

“Jobs, jobs, and jobs,” Mr. Perez said, summing up his top priority as labor secretary. “I believe it’s critically important to get Americans back to work, and I believe the Department of Labor can play a critical role.”

The committee plans to take up the nomination again next week.

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Prominent Republicans Criticize Obama's Executive Actions

Prominent Republicans are accusing President Obama of abusing his executive power by taking 23 executive actions on gun violence at the same time that he asked Congress to pass legislation.

While Mr. Obama’s legislative proposal was sweeping — he asked lawmakers to ban the sale of military-style rifles and close a loophole that allows many gun buyers to avoid background checks — his unilateral actions were smaller. They included ordering federal agencies to share more information with the background-check system; nominating a director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and directing subordinates to “launch a national dialogue” on mental health issues.

Soon after the White House news conference, Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who is considered a potential contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, denounced Mr. Obama as flouting the role of Congress for taking some actions on his own.

“Making matters worse is that President Obama is again abusing his power by imposing his policies via executive fiat instead of allowing them to be debated in Congress,” Mr. Rubio said. “President Obama’s frustration with our republic and the way it works doesn’t give him license to ignore the Constitution.”

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, also accused the president of exceeding the limits of his executive authority.

“Using executive action to attempt to poke holes in the Second Amendment is a power grab along the same pattern we’ve seen of contempt for the elected representatives of the American people,” he said. “Some of these directives clearly run afoul of limitations Congress has placed on federal spending bringing the president’s actions in direct conflict with federal law.”

And Reince Priebus, the chairman of the National Republican Committee, said Mr. Obama’s series of unilateral steps “amount to an executive power grab” that “disregard the Second Amendment and the legislative process,” violating principles of representative government.

Asked which of Mr. Obama’s 23 executive steps Mr. Rubio had specifically been referring to as an abuse of power that ignored the Constitution, a spokesman for the senator, said in an e-mail: “I think his point generally is that the president should be looking to work with the Congress, not around it.”

By contrast, a spokeswoman for Mr. Grassley, responding to the same question, pointed to two specific steps: Mr. Obama directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the causes and prevention of gun violence and he sent a letter to health care providers saying that a provision in his health law does not prevent doctors from asking patients about guns in their homes.

Those steps, Mr. Grassley’s office contended, ran afoul of federal statutes because a C.D.C. financing restriction “effectively keeps it from conducting any research or analysis related to gun violence” and the health care law bars wellness programs from requiring the disclosure and collection of information about firearms in homes.

Obama administration officials countered, however, that the health care law provision bars the creation of a database, not individual questions by doctors about potentially dangerous situations. And, they said, the plain text of the C.D.C. financing restriction says no funds “may be used to advocate or promote gun control,” which is different from conducting public health research.

“For a long time, some members have claimed that that prohibits them from conducting any research on the causes of gun violence,” a senior administration official said during a briefing call with reporters. “Our lawyers looked at it and thought that the definition didn’t really encompass public health research on gun violence, which really isn’t advocacy.”

Mr. Grassley’s office also flagged three other steps announced by Mr. Obama as potentially running afoul of federal statutes, saying it was difficult to know for sure without seeing their details.

They included reviewing regulations that protect the privacy of health information to ensure that they do not prevent states from submitting information about mentally ill people to the federal background-check system, improving incentives to get states to participate in the system, and sending a letter to health care providers clarifying that federal law does not prevent them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.

In the days leading up to the news conference, conservative commentators and media outlets had pressed a theme that Mr. Obama was threatening to take potentially tyrannical anti-gun action by executive order.

On Jan. 9, The Drudge Report ran the large headline “WHITE HOUSE THREATENS ‘EXECUTIVE ORDERS’ ON GUNS,” illustrated with pictures of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. And on Tuesday the radio host Rush Limbaugh told his listeners that the Obama administration cannot get “the gun laws that they prefer” to pass Congress, “so they’re just going to do it unilaterally with the executive order. Now I’m not lying to you when I tell you that is not what executive orders permit.”

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What to Watch For in Obama's Speech

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — President Obama takes the stage Thursday night competing against a formidable array of convention speakers: Mitt Romney, Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton — and Barack Obama.

Not easy. Still, one thing Mr. Obama has proved over the years is that he can deliver the big speech, particularly when he might be backed into a corner. And Mr. Obama has a big advantage here: He is going last.

Here are a few things to watch out for when Mr. Obama takes the stage.

• One of Mr. Romney’s most effective arguments last week was directed at Obama voters of 2008. The president, Mr. Romney said, was a perfectly nice man who was over his head in the White House, and it was O.K., he said, to vote against him as expression of disappointment. Nothing personal. Mr. Obama is going to have to find a way to turn that back. He might argue to disappointed supporters that they should stick with him through this election, appealing to their reservoir of personal affection. But he could also try to simply demonize Mr. Romney.

• Speaking of which, how much will the name “Mitt Romney” be heard Thursday night? Mr. Obama has attacked Mr. Romney, harshly and often, on the campaign trail over the last few weeks, particularly on his business background and his refusal to release more years of tax returns. Many Democrats have warned that Mr. Obama risked dragging himself down with those kinds of partisan attacks, and some suspect that they have pushed down his unfavorable ratings in some polls. And a national television audience is a different venue than a campaign rally, so there is a pretty strong argument not to reprise them here, particularly because so many previous speakers have already taken on Mr. Romney.

Still, Mr. Obama has a rare opportunity to draw the contrast between himself and Mr. Romney on issues and what they will do as president, and turn this fall campaign into the kind of election he has always said he wanted: a starkly different choice between two visions of government’s role in America’s future. On Wednesday night, Mr. Clinton offered Mr. Obama a road map on how to present that choice, and Mr. Obama is not too proud to take such advice from the last Democratic president.

• The so-called peanut gallery — strategists, columnists, contributors and the like — have not shied from offering their suggestions on what Mr. Obama should put in the speech. One of the most striking suggestions was to use this speech to lay out a detailed and politically ambitious plan to deal with the deficit. That seems unlikely, but you never know.

• Mr. Obama’s campaign has, not surprisingly, tried to keep a lid on details of the speech. But he put out a Web-only video on Thursday that offered a bit of a preview of what he will say, called “Promises Kept.” “From cutting taxes for middle-class families to bringing about comprehensive health care reform to reinvesting in education and infrastructure, President Obama has kept his promise to rebuild America for millions of families,” the video said.

• This convention has been notable for the repeated focus, every night, on social issues: There has been talk about abortion rights, contraception, same-sex marriage and the lifting of the ban on gays serving openly in the military. The issues play well inside the convention; but perhaps not as well across the country. Will Mr. Obama feel a need to spend much time talking about these issues, or has that box already been checked?

• Latino voters have been one of the main targets of this convention — witness the lineup of speakers — but Mr. Obama has had at times rocky relations with these voters because of what many saw as his delay in pushing an overhaul of the immigration law and the administration’s aggressive crackdown on illegal immigrants. He helped himself by issuing an executive action delaying deportation proceedings against many young immigrants who are in this country illegally. Still, immigration seems like one topic that is going to be hard for Mr. Obama to avoid.

• Mr. Obama’s aides said this would be a forward-looking speech, and Mr. Clinton certainly helped a lot by making the case against Republicans and their conduct over the last four years. But watch to see the extent to which Mr. Obama blames Republicans for struggles during his first term. Might Mr. Obama acknowledge some errors over his first four years?

• Thursday night’s speech was originally supposed to be in a stadium — a reprise of Mr. Obama’s triumphant convention speech in Denver four years ago — but fear of bad weather prompted convention organizers to move it back inside. That means a smaller crowd and, at least, potentially less energy. It also means that unlike last time, this will look like just another convention speech in an arena. Whether anyone outside the arena will notice is another question.

One big loss (unless convention planners pulled off a miracle Wednesday night): Not enough time to string up the balloon drop that photographers so love.

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Obama's 'gift' stuns Arpaio

(PNI) Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio owes President Barack Obama a pizza.

It's his preferred way of returning favors.

I asked the sheriff this week if he would place an order for the commander-in-chief.

"Only with anchovies," he said, before adding, "No. Not really. I only send pizzas to reporters."

I've received several.

The sheriff occasionally ships over an anchovy pie (he knows I don't like anchovies) as a way of saying thanks for a negative article, which he believes makes him more popular.

Late last week it was President Obama's Justice Department that presented Arpaio with a belated 80th birthday gift, however, when it closed its years-long investigation into the Sheriff's Office and that of former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas. No charges will be filed.

"Did they play bagpipes over there (at The Arizona Republic) last Friday?" asked Arpaio spokeswoman Lisa Allen, who was on the speakerphone with Arpaio.

The sheriff seemed stunned by the timing of the announcement.

He has fought bitterly with the Obama administration. If officials there had held the Justice Department announcement until after the election, Arpaio's opponents could have used the investigation against him in the coming election. Instead, the news Friday was a big sloppy wet kiss that Arpaio didn't see coming.

"You've got a lot of connections," the sheriff told me. "Why did they come out with this now and not wait until after the election? They could have waited two more months."

Then, he added, "I'm an ex-federal official myself. Have you seen my (campaign) ad on TV? I have some faith in the federal system, believe it or not, even though I disagree a little bit with them on illegal immigration. So, I had confidence. They did a good job. It took them four years. The FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Justice Department did a thorough investigation, and they came out with the decision, just like when I investigate people."

I told the sheriff that the administration (and Democrats in general) are afraid of him.

"Why would they be scared of me? I'm just a little old sheriff," he said.

He knows why. Minority voters may despise him, but Arpaio's popularity remains high among many others. I hear from a lot of them.

"I'm happy for you guys at Gannett because, since they (Justice officials) made the announcement at 5 o'clock at night on a Friday before a holiday weekend, I figure you guys made a little overtime," Arpaio said. "So, they did you guys a big favor."

I spoke to the sheriff before he traveled to Charlotte, N.C., to speak at a Republican Party fundraiser.

"I'll be talking at the same time that (former President Bill) Clinton is giving his speech (at the Democratic National Convention)," Arpaio told me.

He remains a big draw. One Republican official said of Arpaio's appearance at an event at the Republican convention in Tampa, "It was just astounding to see how eager so many people were to actually meet him in person and shake his hand and tell him what a great job he's doing in Arizona."

Arpaio's campaign boasts having more than $7million in its war chest. The money is one reason Arpaio is relatively dismissive of the two candidates trying to unseat him, former Phoenix police Officer Paul Penzone, a Democrat, and Scottsdale police Lt. Mike Stauffer, an independent. Arpaio already is running TV ads. He knows he can get his message across without positive media coverage or political endorsements.

"I'm not going to bad-mouth you or The Republic (in campaign ads)," he told me. "Last time I threw it (the paper) in the wastebasket. Remember that ad? Biggest ad in history. I'm not going to do that this time. Even though the paper will not endorse me. They will endorse you before they endorse me."

(I doubt that.)

What do you believe will get you re-elected this time around? I asked the sheriff.

"My history of 20 years (in office)," Arpaio said.

Funny, that's exactly what the other guys are hoping will get him out.

Reach Montini at 602-444-8978.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Romney's Fund-Raising Outpaces Obama's Again in July

The fund-raising machine behind Mitt Romney and the Republican Party once again bested President Obama’s effort last month, raising $25 million more in July than the president and his Democratic allies did.

Mr. Romney and the Republican National Committee raised $101.3 million in July, his campaign announced Monday, as Republican donors rallied behind their presumptive nominee with the national convention only a few weeks away.

The president’s campaign announced on Twitter on Monday morning that his July fund-raising topped out at about $75 million. “Every bit helps,” the campaign tweeted, noting that 98 percent of the contributions were under $250.

Mr. Obama’s advisers have all but conceded the money race to Mr. Romney. Fund-raising e-mails from the campaign have taken a more urgent tone over the summer, repeatedly warning supporters of the financial advantage that the Republicans will hold going into the final weeks of the presidential campaign.

More detailed information about the July fund-raising has not yet been released by the two candidates. All campaigns are required to report their fund-raising to the Federal Election Commission by Aug. 20.

But the Republican figure keeps Mr. Romney and his party on pace to bring in $800 million for the cycle, the target set by Mr. Romney’s team in April. Roughly a quarter of the Republicans’ haul, $25.7 million, came in donations of under $250, as Mr. Romney worked to increase his appeal among small donors.

The campaign, the Republican National Committee, and a joint fund established by the Republicans to raise presidential campaign cash ended July with $185.9 million in cash on hand. They did not disclose what proportion of the money would end up in Mr. Romney’s campaign coffers, which can only accept $5,000 from each donor every election cycle, and how much to the R.N.C., which can accept 10 times that amount from each donor.

The strong fund-raising puts renewed pressure on President Obama to bring in more cash and underscores the near-certainty that Mr. Romney will remain financially competitive with an incumbent whose fund-raising prowess has long been a hallmark.

While Mr. Obama steadily raised more than Mr. Romney in 2011 and early this year, he has also spent far more, amassing a campaign tab of more than $400 million with the Democratic National Committee through the end of June.

Follow Michael D. Shear on Twitter at @shearm.

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Obama's critics lose sight of big picture with Syria

The war faction in the Republican Party is stirring again, this time over Syria.

There is a rising chorus of Republican voices criticizing President Barack Obama's handling of the Syrian civil war and basically saying that the United States should do whatever is necessary to ensure that the rebels oust Bashar Assad.

Certainly, Syria is a heartbreaking wreck. Since the conflict began, 17,000 have been killed. More than 300,000 have become external or internal refugees.

The U.S. has a strategic interest in seeing Assad gone, goes the argument, because he is an ally of Iran. And if the United States were to take a leadership role, he could be ousted with less bloodshed.

The same claim was made regarding Libya, that Moammar Gadhafi could be ousted with less bloodshed if the U.S. took the military lead.

It's not clear where this notion that the United States does war neat and tidy comes from. The last dictator the United States took the lead in ousting, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, resulted in more than 115,000 civilian war-related deaths and 2.7million displaced persons.

Chasing the Taliban from Afghanistan was neat and tidy. Basically, all the U.S. did was tip the balance of power from one ragtag militia, the Taliban, to another, the Northern Alliance.

But what happened after that was far from neat and tidy. A decade and half-a-trillion dollars later, we still have nearly 90,000 troops there. Civilian war-related deaths just since 2007 are estimated at around 12,000. More than 300,000 Afghans are believed to be internal refugees.

The Republican war faction claims not to be calling for boots on the ground in Syria. But if the U.S. took the military lead and things got messy and disorderly, which is more likely than not, they would. They always do. And they always oppose withdrawing ground troops once deployed.

The present call is for the United States to arm the rebels and provide air cover. But it is far from clear that such a direct U.S. involvement is necessary to oust Assad.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar are committed to seeing him gone and are providing material assistance to the rebels. Combined, they have a GDP 25 times that of Syria's, and military expenditures 30 times as great. If Assad is to be ousted, U.S. taxpayers don't have to pay the bill.

The Republican pugilists, however, believe it is better for the U.S. to take the lead even if it isn't necessary. They are still grumbling about Libya even though, objectively, it seems preliminarily quite a success story. The dictator is gone. The country has elected the least Islamist government in the Arab Spring. No one in Libya is looking to the United States to provide security, electricity, roads, hospitals or schools. Other countries took the lead. The U.S. supporting role cost just $2billion and no U.S. casualties.

The problem with many Republican hawks is they actually prefer for other countries to depend on the United States and fail to discriminate between where U.S. involvement is necessary and where others can shoulder the burden.

Only the United States can lead the effort to put sufficient international pressure on Iran to abandon the development of nuclear weapons. But between the Sunni Arabs, Turkey and Israel, there's more than enough local opposition to manage its regional troublemaking without the United States.

There's a lot not to like in Obama's foreign policy. But one of the things he has done right is nudge other countries to take more of a role and responsibility in these kinds of regional conflicts.

Mitt Romney is running as a Republican tough-guy wannabe. His foreign-policy pronouncements are at least as bellicose as George W. Bush's. It's worth noting that Bush's approach to the rest of the world was soundly repudiated by voters in 2006 and 2008.

In any conflict, the Republican war faction can conjure up some U.S. interests at stake. We're a global power. Everything that happens everywhere affects us.

But the Republican war faction misses the bigger picture. Not everything that happens everywhere requires us. And it is decidedly not in the United States' interest to own all the world's messes.

Reach Robb at robert.robb

@arizonarepublic.com.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Parsing a Romney Alternative to Obama’s Health Care Law

With the Supreme Court on Thursday upholding President Obama’s health care law, Mr. Romney faces increased pressure to flesh out alternatives to the law that he and other Republicans despise.

Although Mr. Romney has repeatedly stressed his opposition to a federal mandate to buy insurance — a crucial provision of Mr. Obama’s law, modeled on a mandate Mr. Romney enacted as Massachusetts governor — he has devoted less time to describing his own health policies.

But in speeches in the past year, he has made clear that he favors tax breaks, increased competition and devolving decisions to states to make health care more affordable, proposals that reflect a consensus on health policy that has solidified in the last decade among Republicans.

Mr. Romney’s preferences, like those being proposed by Republicans in Congress, would put more emphasis on controlling health costs and less on reducing the ranks of the uninsured, the primary goal of the Obama plan. Conservatives say the new law does not seriously address rising health costs, a major factor in the high cost of insurance.

One of Mr. Romney’s chief proposals could shake up how the vast majority of Americans get health care — through employers. He would give a tax break to people who buy insurance individually on the open market, so they would enjoy the same advantage as workers who get insurance as a benefit at work, which is not taxed as income.

Aides to Mr. Romney said tax parity would introduce more consumer awareness of the costs of health insurance, and competition among insurers would drive down costs.

A tax incentive to buy insurance “has the potential to be significant,” said Lanhee Chen, Mr. Romney’s policy director. “It can be something that really moves our health care system in a good direction.”

Democrats warn that under such a system fewer employers will choose to offer health insurance, and older and sicker workers will be thrown into the market for individual insurance that they cannot afford.

When Senator John McCain proposed in 2008 to offer a $5,000 tax credit to families for health insurance, independent analysts estimated that the ranks of the uninsured would rise by one million, to 21 million people.

To make insurance affordable for low-income people or the chronically ill, Mr. Romney would encourage states to experiment with high-risk pools, offering subsidies to the poor and insurance-buying exchanges — in essence, harnessing the purchasing power of large groups.

Mr. Obama’s law currently encourages states to establish similar exchanges, a page taken partly from a successful exchange in Massachusetts created by Mr. Romney. But as the presumed Republican presidential nominee, Mr. Romney opposes a federal requirement that all states follow the Massachusetts example. In state legislatures around the country, conservative Republicans have often resisted creation of health insurance exchanges.

Still, one of Mr. Romney’s top advisers, Michael O. Leavitt, the former secretary of health and human services, has advised a half-dozen states about how to set up exchanges.

“An exchange can greatly expand the number of insurance choices available to employees of small businesses,” said W. Brett Graham, a partner in Mr. Leavitt’s health care consulting business.

One of the most ambitious changes Mr. Romney would enact is to transform Medicaid, which insures more than 50 million poor and disabled Americans, into a program of block grants, or lump-sum payments, to states. Grants would be capped to rise at the Consumer Price Index plus 1 percent a year.

The block-grant system that Mr. Romney supports is similar to a proposal in the House Republican budget fashioned by Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin in an effort to slow rapid growth of the program.

Democrats argue that turning Medicaid into a block-grant program with a cap would force states to cut vulnerable people from the rolls or reduce services as health care costs spiral.

“The vast majority of people on Medicaid are children and mothers,” said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and a former health care adviser in the Obama administration. “I think it is cruel to drop coverage” for them.

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Republicans Apologetic After Raising Issue of Obama's Birthplace

Representative Mike Coffman of Colorado apologized at length on Wednesday for reviving unsubstantiated claims that President Obama was not born in the United States.

Although Mr. Coffman had issued a statement on May 16 expressing regret for remarks he said were misstatements, he faced continued pressure to explain why he told donors at a May 12 campaign fund-raiser that he didn’t know whether Mr. Obama was born in the United States and that the president was “not an American.”

In a video posted Tuesday by the NBC affiliate in Denver, Mr. Coffman declined to clarify his comments several times when pressed to do so by a reporter, saying repeatedly, “I stand by my statement. I misspoke, and I apologize.”

He relented in an opinion piece published Wednesday on The Denver Post Web site, where he wrote that his remarks were “boneheaded and inappropriate.”

“I have always viewed this matter as not only baseless, but as a distraction from the real issues facing our country. I believe that today,” he wrote.

Mr. Coffman also backed away from the part of his initial statement in which he maintained doubts about Mr. Obama’s view of America, saying the president did not believe in American exceptionalism.

“The president and I disagree on many issues — his approach to health care, jobs and energy independence, to name a few,” Mr. Coffman wrote. “But disagreeing on these issues was not license for me to question his devotion to our country.”

“I believe President Obama loves this country and wakes up every morning trying to do what is best for our nation, even if I disagree with his approach. To question the president’s devotion to our country based on the fact that we disagree over policy issues was wrong of me and I am sorry.”

The opinion piece was published on the same day Ken Bennett, Arizona’s secretary of state, apologized for any embarrassment he might have caused the state by requesting verification in March that Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii. Mr. Bennett is the Arizona co-chairman of Mitt Romney‘s presidential campaign and is exploring a run for governor in 2014.

Doubts about Mr. Obama’s birthplace have persisted among some conservatives despite the release in April 2011 of his long-form birth certificate. The White House has also made the document available online.

Mr. Coffman isn’t the first embattled Republican from a swing state to raise the so-called birther issue in the 2012 election cycle. Representatives Cliff Stearns of Florida and Vicky Hartzler of Missouri have publicly questioned Mr. Obama’s citizenship in recent months, only to apologize later. And The Charlotte Observer recently retracted an endorsement for Jim Pendergraph, who is running to replace Representative Sue Myrick in North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District, after he raised doubts about Mr. Obama’s birthplace.

When asked about the repeated episodes, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio said, “The Speaker has told his members repeatedly that this year is going to be a referendum on the president’s economic policies and that’s where our focus should remain.”

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Perry: Obama's lost standing on foreign policy (AP)

WASHINGTON – GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry says President Barack Obama hasn't listened to his commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that's cost him credibility as commander in chief.

Obama has announced that U.S troops would leave Iraq by the end of the year, effectively ending the war that began under the administration of President George W. Bush.

Perry tells "Fox News Sunday" that making those plans public endangers troops still in Iraq. The Texas governor says Obama has "lost his standing" as a commander in chief.

The president has said the death of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi and the end of the Iraq war are reminders of America's renewed leadership in the world.

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