FACTBOX-Jobs, health care top U.S. Congress agenda

With voter anxiety over the economy remaining high, Democrats hope to bring down the 10 percent unemployment rate before the November congressional election. The House of Representatives passed a $155 billion bill last month that aims to stimulate the job market through infrastructure projects and helping states pay the salaries of public employees.

In the Senate, Democrats Byron Dorgan and Dick Durbin have been paring back 121 job-related proposals into a package they are expected to unveil in coming weeks. Their proposal is likely to differ substantially from the House version, with provisions that boost small businesses and renewable energy efforts, aides said.



The Senate might not pass a jobs bill until March, which would have to be reconciled with the House version before President Barack Obama could sign it into law.



HEALTHCARE



Democrats are seeking to iron out differences between sweeping bills passed by the Senate and House to revamp the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system, Obama's top domestic priority. Polls show a public backlash against the plan. But Democrats say they expect polls to be more supportive once they strike a deal that Obama can sign into law.



FINANCIAL REGULATION



Financial regulation reform, another top Obama priority, will dominate debate in the Senate Banking Committee in coming weeks, with a bill likely to emerge as early as next month.



The House approved a measure in December that cracks down on big banks, hedge funds, executive pay and the derivatives market, while setting up new government bodies to deal with financial risks to economic stability.



Republicans and banking lobbyists want to block or weaken a bill, offered by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, that in some ways is tougher than the House bill.



Dodd's recent decision to retire at the end of the year has complicated the measure's outlook.



CLIMATE CHANGE



Senator John Kerry is trying to break a deadlock over climate-control legislation that he and his fellow Democrats want to put to a vote during the first half of the year. Obama says climate control is another of his priorities, and he led negotiations last month in Copenhagen at an international summit on the topic. But with the November election, it's unclear whether enough senators will be willing to vote for a bill that could end up raising energy and other consumer prices during hard economic times.



DEBT LIMIT AND DEFICIT CONTROL



Lawmakers raised the country's debt limit to $12.4 trillion in December, but they will have to hike it further when the Treasury Department reaches that limit in coming weeks.



Democratic leaders have said they want to raise the limit by at least $1.8 trillion so they won't have to revisit the issue before the election.



The Senate plans a vote to increase the debt limit on Wednesday and could lessen the pain by coupling it with action on two measures that backers say could bring spending under control.



One proposal would create a commission that would give lawmakers political cover to back spending cuts, tax hikes or other measures to reduce the deficit.



The other, known as "paygo," would require new spending to be offset with tax hikes or spending cuts elsewhere, although there could be a wide range of exceptions.



Both measures face substantial hurdles, but lawmakers are in talks with the White House to hammer out a compromise. One possible outcome: a tougher paygo law, combined with a budget commission set up by the White House.



AFGHANISTAN



Lawmakers are awaiting a request from Obama for money to pay for his decision to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. The administration is expected to ask Congress for $33 billion for the troop increase announced by Obama in December.



Congress appears certain to approve funding, but it will be a tough vote for many. Democrats are divided over Obama's decision. Republicans largely back it and are expected to provide the needed votes to clear the funds.



IRAN



Democrats and Republicans are eager to give Obama more tools to sanction Iran for refusing to stop its nuclear work.



Before senators went home for the holidays, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he wanted to hold a vote after the break on a bill that directs the president to sanction companies that supply gasoline to Iran. A similar measure already has passed the House.



But it is unclear whether the Senate will go ahead with its vote because the administration has grown cool to broad-based sanctions. It is looking instead at focused sanctions against Iran's leadership

Source:reuters.com/a

U.S. a house divided on terrorism

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- We're only a week into the New Year and, already, Yemen is this year's Afghanistan.

Yemen is a mess made more so by its al-Qaida problem but we knew that before the would-be Christmas Day underwear bomber turned up with a profile that included training in Yemen with al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

The biggest news isn't that Yemen is a problem, that it was a Nigerian child of privilege who tried to blow up a plane or that so many red flags were missed before his pants were extinguished by a fellow passenger.

Since 9/11, everyone thinks about such a scenario every time they walk down the aisle of a jet, checking the seat assignment on their boarding pass against the numbers above the rows and the people in them. It's impossible for even a failed terrorist attack to remain impersonal and un-emotional.

The biggest shock this time, aside from the intelligence failures the president outlined yesterday, has been the level of politicization of the personal and emotional, with the former vice-president accusing the current president of pretending we're not at war and critics reviewing the administration's response based on theatrical criteria such as insufficient panic and inadequate levels of emoting.

If you try, just as a strategic exercise, to process this narrative through the lens of its perpetrators, it's hard to imagine a better gift for al-Qaida than Dick Cheney using the underwear bomber as yet another tactic to de-legitimize this president and hoard political points for more earthbound battles yet to come.

IT'S GETTING EASIER

The big picture message to al-Qaida in all the Christmas week finger-pointing is that causing havoc in the most powerful nation on Earth is easier than it used to be.

The questions the perpetrators don't want asked aren't about the polarization-fueling domestic game. They're about how al-Qaida has adapted its political mission to a shifted market, how the mysteries of radicalization play out on Jihadi web sites and what targeted nations can do about it.

The belated, oversized spotlight on Yemen underscores the reality that this isn't a conventional war and, more and more, it's not being fought as one. Behind all the noise there's a reminder of that lesson from Afghanistan and Pakistan already reflected in the new U.S. approach.

There's also a caution that engaging al-Qaida as though you're fighting a life-size game of "Risk" on a big map of the world against a single, mobile villain could inspire under-governed, lawless countries to see an al-Qaida franchise as the key to a new kind of fear-based security development.

'THE BASE' IS A MINDSET

Al-Qaida means "the base" in Arabic but the base's base is not in Yemen or in Afghanistan or in Somalia and that's not because it keeps moving. It's a mindset sold by people who know how to manipulate by dangling the false promises of validation and power.

It's not about religion. It's about exploiting religion to package those false promises by twisting evil into good and wrong into right in a way that transcends geography.

Source:torontosun.com/