We’ve watched her reality TV show. We’ve followed her around the country. We’ve meticulously combed through years of her emails. We have found no more hidden shadows, unplumbed depths, or secret dark sides. There comes a time where we must face the fact that we already know absolutely everything there is to know about Sarah Palin. That time may very well be now.

Related: The GOP Presidential Field Keeps an Even Lower Profile

The recent Newsweek boasts a brand-new, blockbuster profile of Sarah Palin that, like so many profiles and investigations before it, tells us very little about Palin that we don’t already know. “I believe that I can win a national election,” Palin declares, like so many other almost-candidates for the GOP 2012 primary. If she doesn’t run, it will be because of “family,” she says — though all members would support her — once again offering the favored response of politicians who have dropped out and likened the decision to some sort of noble sacrifice.

Related: Bachmann’s Presidential Campaign Is ‘Beyond Speculation’

“We don’t advertise where we’re going,” Palin describes. Boyer, the author of the profile, calls this “the understatement of the political season.” It depends on how one reads the word “advertise,” of course. Palin did after all travel around the country in a bus with her name massively painted on the outside, and spoke to the media throughout the tour. She just didn’t give any advance notice, leaving the press to scramble after her. Likewise, the profile covers Palin’s appearance at the screening of the documentary film homage to her, The Undefeated, which she agreed to attend a week before the premiere, leaving the devoted director five days to plan the event. Without word, she didn’t show up when she had agreed, leaving hired security forces waiting for her in an airfield and the organizers in at a loss. She finally turned up an hour before, “signing autographs and posing for photographs with admirers.” In that story, her not “advertising” is depicted as being less about maintaining privacy than just acting inconsiderately.

Related: Adorable Piper Is the Where’s Waldo of Palin’s Bus Tour

Any other details from the piece? The Palins rent Chevy Malibus. Todd Palin buys Slim Jims, a fact which Sarah Palin uses to describe the effect of inflation: “every time I walk into that grocery store, a couple of pennies more…” she says. But beef jerky aside, we’re given the same portrait of Palin she has steadfastly maintained from the outset. She maintains her distance from the Republican party, and they maintain their distance from her: “I went out there and I supported them in their campaigns, and I put some of them on the map. And to this day, we have not heard from them…” She is unafraid of taking on the media, where she thinks that they have lied about her. And her devoted fans “burn through” their savings in support of what they believe will be a Palin run for the presidency, while she won’t admit whether or not she has even made a decision: “But we’re still thinking about it. I’m still thinking about it.” As she has said time and again, “We don’t advertise where we’re going.”

By Coral Davenport

National Journal

House GOP leaders are ginning up excitement for Monday’s high-wattage vote to roll back lightbulb efficiency standards—or, as Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, likes to call it, the “Save the Lightbulb” bill.

The bill, and the rallying cry of “Save the Lightbulb!” have become unlikely hallmarks of the tea party movement, touted by presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann and talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Tea party conservatives have targeted an obscure lightbulb efficiency provision tucked into a broad 2007 energy law as symbolic of what they call government overregulation. They passionately decry the law as a “ban” on the familiar incandescent lightbulbs that Americans have used for most of the last century.

Despite all the political crossfire over lightbulbs, it’s unlikely that Republicans will succeed: Monday’s House vote will take place under a procedural rule requiring a two-thirds majority, which makes it uncertain whether it will pass—while it is certain to die in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The provision requires that by 2012, lightbulb manufacturers produce bulbs that generate the same amount of light, but use less electricity to do it. It would not outlaw incandescent bulbs, nor mandate production of the curlicue-shaped compact fluorescent bulbs. The new energy-efficient bulbs, which hit hardware and drugstore shelves this year, are similar in appearance from the old bulbs—they have the familiar “bulb” shape and cast the same warm light. They are more expensive than the old bulbs but last longer and have the net effect of saving consumers money, according to the Energy Department, which estimates that the bulb law will save Americans $6 billion annually in energy costs.

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At the time it was introduced, the legislation was championed by Democratic and Republican leaders alike. The original 2007 lightbulb efficiency language was co-sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., and then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Ill. It passed easily through the House Energy and Commerce Committee and was added as an amendment to a bill that passed the Senate by a vote of 86-8, the House by a vote of 314-100, and was signed into law by President George W. Bush.

So how did Republicans get from there to here on the lightbulb law?

The answer has very little to do with energy policy, and everything to do with tea party politics.

Barton, the bill’s sponsor, turned his attention to the lightbulb law last fall, when he found himself pitted in a bitter contest with Upton for chairmanship of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. The rivalry played out in the weeks after the November elections, when Republicans were giddy with excitement over their tea party-fueled takeover of the House.

The conservative Barton, who has declared that he was “tea party before tea party was cool”, rode that wave in his campaign against Upton, digging up pieces of his opponent’s record that he believed would show that Upton was too moderate to hold a prominent leadership post. Among them: Upton’s sponsorship of the lightbulb standards.

ANALYSIS: Why This Default Debate Is Different

Barton turned Upton’s support of the lightbulb standard into one of his key pieces of ammunition against the moderate Michigander, launching the “Save the Lightbulb” campaign. It was promptly picked up by Beck, Limbaugh, and Bachmann. Barton ultimately lost the contest for Energy Chairman, but his lightbulb campaign became a top talking point for conservatives.

By February, it had gained steam and a Senate companion bill, introduced on February 17 by Sen. Michael Enzi, R-Wyo. In a sign of its momentum, 27 other Republicans signed on to the bill that day.

All of that alarmed manufacturers, who had begun producing the new bulbs, and feared the rollback of the standards would undermine their investments in developing energy-efficient bulbs. Bulb-maker Philips began an aggressive lobbying campaign, meeting with lawmakers and staffers on Capitol Hill, urging them not to roll back the lightbulb law. They brought along samples of the new bulbs, similar in appearance from the old bulbs.

“The new energy efficient incandescent bulbs look and feel just like the old lights that consumers are used to. The only real difference Americans will notice with the new lightbulbs is their lower electricity bills. Electricity savings per family will be about $100 per year,” said Randy Moorhead, Vice President of Government Affairs for Philips Electronics, reprising the pitch he’s been making tirelessly to GOP lawmakers.

After meeting with Philips, some Republican energy policy staffers privately admitted that rolling back the lightbulb law seemed like a bad idea, especially when they saw that the efficient bulbs looked exactly like the old bulbs, and learned that manufacturers feared they would hurt their bottom line.

Despite the quiet heartburn that the bill is now generating in some moderate Republican offices, GOP leaders are still driving it forward, in hopes that Monday’s House floor debate will generate campaign talking points for tea party candidates across the country—including Bachmann.

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And in a sign that all this has generated concern in the highest quarters in Washington, Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Friday held a press call with former Republican Sen. John Warner, R-Va., in hopes of shoring up support for the law.

“Right now many families around the country are struggling to pay their energy bills and leaders in the house want to roll back these standards that will save families money,” said Chu.

Under the current law, “You’ll still be able to buy halogen incandescent bulbs. They’ll look and feel the same, but the only difference is that they’ll save consumers money,” he said.

Of tea partiers’s philosophical argument that the law would deprive consumers of the choice of lighting products, Chu said, these standards are not taking choices away, its putting money back in the pockets of American families.”

Warner, who now lobbies his former colleagues on energy issues, said rolling back the law would freeze up business growth. “If I were a financier trying to help the small business community, I would say, ‘wait a minute—if congress is going to start stripping out provisions of this landmark legislation, then there’s no regulatory certainty—and I’m not going to lend you the money.’ “

Visit National Journal for more political news.

“The Undefeated” is the best feature-length campaign commercial ever for a candidate who isn’t even running for office.

Or is she?

The story of Sarah Palin’s unlikely rise from workaday Wasilla mom to vice presidential candidate remains a fascinating one, more than enough to power a documentary which doesn’t for a moment pretend to be balanced.

Even by the tilted standards set by Michael Moore and Alex Gibney (“Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer”) “Undefeated” is a biased affair, at least from the rough cut seen by The Daily Caller.

The voices here are all on Team Palin, be they radio talkers like Mark Levin or members of her Alaskan administration. There’s not a single voice of consequence against Palin, no one to besmirch the image being painted.

That’s ends up being “The Undefeated’s” greatest strength and weakness. The media narrative paints Palin as a dim, divisive bulb. But Governor Palin rubbed both parties the wrong way during her abbreviated time as her state’s chief executive, wrestling bipartisan deals when she needed them most.

“The Undefeated” is a bracing corrective to a media which seizes on her every misstep, real and imagined. It’s also a reminder that she can give one heck of a speech, something that shouldn’t be discounted as talk of her presidential aspirations mount. (Palin movie sparks a changing media narrative)

But making her a quasi-saint doesn’t do anyone, including herself, much good. And it renders “The Undefeated” both predictable and too easy to dismiss.

Director Stephen K. Bannon sees greatness in his subject matter, a Reagan-esque figure who doesn’t mind being unpopular if it means getting the job done.

Bannon takes great pleasure in his bold visual cues, showing snarling dogs when the attacks on Palin intensify and people hiding weapons behind their backs to illustrate the nasty nature of politics.

A cheap but effective gimmick opens the film. After hearing celebrities like Matt Damon, Sharon Osbourne and Howard Stern bash Palin in often crude fashion we see images of Palin as a toddler, bright faced and eager to please.

Palin’s political ambitions first flared in the wake of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. The tragedy opened her eyes to both abuses of power and the balance required to keep the country’s power supply coming.

She started her career as Mayor of Wasilla, but parlayed that role to become chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and, later, governor of her beloved home state.

She was greeted in the governor’s office by an ungainly budget and brickbats coming from all sides. She ended up coaxing Democrats to vote for her key issues while refusing to give fellow Republicans a pass.

In short, she didn’t feel beholden to either party. This was a woman who gave up her lucrative gig with the aforementioned energy commission to do what she saw was the right thing.

Does any of this roll off the tongue? If Tina Fey didn’t say it, or it didn’t appear in the governor’s emails The New York Times begged readers to pore over a few weeks back, then to many news consumers it didn’t happen.

Yet “The Undefeated” does a poor job of detailing the media bias surrounding her. It’s not enough to show snippets of liberal talkers like Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann shredding her.

Bannon has little material to work with during Palin’s mayoral days, so he cranks up the melodramatic music to keep us engaged. These sequences let Palin, heard from snippets of the audio version of her autobiography “Going Rogue,” show her wonky side.

The film blames McCain suspending the campaign during the the country’s financial crisis for allowing Obama to regain the momentum for good. That’s about as far as “The Undefeated” goes toward explaining how the McCain/Palin ticket lost. The race is given less attention than her now iconic introduction at the Republican National Convention.

Watching “The Undefeated” reminds us of one incontrovertible fact. Palin gives great speeches. Yes, that accent isn’t for everyone. But her delivery, combined with a blend of sass and steel, make her a formidable political player.

Her explanation for quitting as Alaska’s governor feels more complete here than in her book, “Going Rogue.” A flotilla of faux ethical complaints threatened to bankrupt her and prevent her from getting anything done as governor. That begs the question about her future political ambitions. Won’t her enemies attempt a similar strategy? What will be different next time?

Palin didn’t directly participate in this documentary, but it’s hard to believe she’d complain about anything included here. (Palin: ‘I believe that I can win a national election’)

“She owned what she was saying, that’s what we don’t see in other politicians,” says radio talker Tammy Bruce in one of many spirited defense of Palin the politician.

“The Undefeated” is a narrative buster and choir preaching event all in one. The media may believe Palin lacks the brains and experience to be the nation’s next Commander in Chief, but she doesn’t look so stupid addressing complex energy matters or rocking approval ratings north of 80 percent.

But it still seems unlikely to impact Palin’s 2012 presidential plans – assuming she even has one.

Read more stories from The Daily Caller

“The Undefeated” is a narrative buster and choir preaching event

Palin movie sparks a changing media narrative

Obama huddles with Hispanic groups to woo support for 2012 race

This week in history: July 10-16 [VIDEO]

Meet Andrew Marshall, the unknown but immensely influential figure behind American national security strategy

The Tim Pawlenty-Michele Bachmann feud continues.

When Pawlenty criticized Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman and fellow GOP presidential candidate, Sunday for having a “non-existent” record of accomplishment in Congress, the big question was: would he do it again?

He did.

On Fox and Friends Monday morning, Pawlenty, the former governor Minnesota, said the next president needs to have executive experience getting results, “and not just talking about it, not just giving speeches at rallies, but leading as an executive and getting results in that kind of setting.”

“And with all due respect, she doesn’t have that kind of experience,” Pawlenty said about Bachmann.

“And secondly her record in Congress, as I’ve mentioned before, is again, great remarks and great speeches, but in terms of results and accomplishments, non-existent.”

Bachmann on Sunday called for Pawlenty to not focus on the negatives, citing her accomplishments as being vocal against legislation like Obamacare, cap-and-trade agenda and bailouts.

Also on Monday, Pawlenty maintained that he needs to improve from his sixth place finish in a recent Des Moines Register poll of Iowa voters at next month’s Iowa Straw Poll to stay in the race.

“I don’t think we need to win it, but I think we need to show good progress.” (MICHELE BACHMANN: What ‘constitutional conservatism’ means to me)

Pawlenty on Monday saw some improvement in a new The Iowa Republican poll, which has him in third place behind Romney and Bachmann.

Read more stories from The Daily Caller

Pawlenty-Bachmann feud continues

TheDC Morning: PETA vs. Zookeeper

“The Undefeated” is a narrative buster and choir preaching event

Palin movie sparks a changing media narrative

Obama huddles with Hispanic groups to woo support for 2012 race

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta let his frustration about Iraqi officials’ indecision on whether to request that U.S. troops stay in the country past the end of the year show while talking to troops in Baghdad on Monday, saying, “Damn it, make a decision.”

Panetta’s remarks came ahead of meeting with Iraqi officials where he was expected to push them to make a formal request for some troops to stay beyond Dec. 31. Some Iraqi officials have already said they want U.S. forces to stay, but must request the Pentagon to do so.

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POLITICO 44

Almost all of the 46,000 American troops still there are set to leave in the coming months, and though many Iraqi leaders agree there’s a need for some continued U.S. presence, they’ve been unwilling so far to make a formal request.

Arriving as a rocket attack hit Baghdad’s protected Green Zone, Panetta said the United States would “push the Iraqis to take on the responsibility” of fighting Iran-backed insurgents but would also “do what we have to do unilaterally” to protect Americans.

U.S. forces will meet Iran “head on” to stop its efforts to arm Iraqi insurgents and destabilize the country, Panetta said.

“We’re very concerned about Iran and the weapons they’re providing to extremists in Iraq,” he said, ahead of a meeting with Iraqi officials to discuss keeping troops in the country beyond the planned pullout at the end of the year.

The new defense secretary – a week and a half into the job – visited Baghdad as three rockets fired from a Shiite neighborhood hit the city’s Green Zone, and he acknowledged that U.S. and Iraqi forces still face challenges.

“We cannot sit back and simply allow this to continue to happen,” he said of Iran’s efforts to arm Iraqi insurgents. “This is not something we’re going to walk away from. It’s something we’re going to take on head on.”

Speaking to troops on Monday, Panetta stressed that he is focused on making sure that Al Qaeda is never again able to attack the United States on its own soil.

“The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked,” he said. The Associated Press reported that he later clarified that he wasn’t referring to the rationale for invading Iraq in 2003, but about the need to go after Al Qaeda in Iraq after it developed a strong presence there.

First it was Iowa. Now, NH Journal reports:

Multiple Republican sources tell NH Journal that [Rick] Perry is calling top-shelf Republican leaders in the Granite State. One Republican state Senator who received a call from the Governor confirmed that he has been discussing his entry into the presidential sweepstakes with leading state Republicans for the past few days.

Continue Reading

Another Republican who spoke to Gov. Perry told NH Journal it sure sounds like he’s planning to run.

It’s worth noting that Perry’s senior political adviser, Dave Carney, sits on the editorial board of NH Journal, along with several other Republican consultants in the state.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama convened a second consecutive day of crisis national debt talks Monday, but a polarized Washington appeared far from a deal to stave off a catastrophic default.

Obama met Sunday evening with congressional leaders, including Republican House Speaker John Boehner, but 75 minutes of talks failed to unblock an impasse that reaches right to the heart of America’s ideological divide.

Republicans are refusing to raise the $14.29 trillion US debt limit unless Obama first agrees to curb the ballooning budget deficit, in part by cutting costly government-funded social welfare programs.

The president and Democrats say they are willing to make some cuts to the so-called entitlement programs but want the Republicans to meet them half way by allowing tax hikes for millionaires and billionaires to increase revenue.

The White House said shortly after Sunday’s discussions concluded that Obama would meet congressional leaders again on Monday — at a time to be decided — after holding a 1500 GMT press conference on the crisis.

Asked as he went into Sunday’s talks if the warring politicians would reach a deal in the next 10 days to prevent the US from defaulting on its debt obligations, Obama replied: “We need to.”

But statements issued after the talks by the parties’ respective Senate leaders, Mitch McConnell for the Republicans, Harry Reid for the Democrats, offered no clue as to how that breakthrough might be achieved.

“It’s baffling that the president and his party continue to insist on massive tax hikes in the middle of a jobs crisis while refusing to take significant action on spending reductions at a time of record deficits,” McConnell said through his spokesman.

“Senator Reid believes the stakes are too high for Republicans to keep taking the easy way out, and he is committed to meeting every day until we forge a deal, however long that takes,” his spokesman said.

Before Sunday’s White House meeting, Boehner and McConnell warned they might abandon efforts to reach a larger, comprehensive debt reduction deal because Obama and the Democrats insisted on raising taxes on the wealthy.

The Republican move would leave negotiators aiming at a less ambitious framework, striving to save about $2.4 trillion over the next decade instead of the $4 trillion still sought by the Democrats.

The talks are part of a final major push to reach a deal to raise the congressionally determined limit on US borrowing, now set at $14.29 trillion, in the face of a budget deficit expected to hit $1.6 trillion this year.

The US hit the ceiling on May 16 but has since used spending and accounting adjustments, as well as higher-than-expected tax receipts, to continue operating without impact on government obligations.

By August 2, though, the government will have to begin withholding payments to bond holders, civil servants, retirees or government contractors, and the White House has urged a deal by July 22 to have time for Congress to pass it.

Economists warn that if the United States defaults, it could lose its ability to borrow, souring fraught financial relations with creditors like China and sending the already sour global economy into a tailspin.

The warning was repeated Sunday by New IMF chief Christine Lagarde who told ABC News that a US debt default “would jeopardize the stability at large.”

But Boehner faces pressure from Republicans close to the archconservative “Tea Party” movement to reject any compromise that raises taxes, something he has already publicly ruled out.

Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina said he believed the negotiators should not attribute excessive importance to the August 2 deadline.

“There would certainly be disruption, but this is not a deadline that we should rush and make a bad deal,” DeMint said on “Fox News Sunday.

Obama faces pressure from Democrats outraged he might agree to cuts in the fraying US social safety net, notably to the Medicare health program for the elderly and disabled, and to Social Security retirement benefits.

The discussions are sure to shape Obama’s 2012 reelection bid, which will likely turn on voters’ assessment of his handling of the economy as it claws its way out of the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

On Friday the US Labor Department said the ailing US economy, still digging out from the 2008 global meltdown, had generated a paltry 18,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate had ticked up to 9.2 percent.

BRUSSELS (AFP) – The European Union’s top economic officials raced Monday to head off fears of debt crisis contagion to Italy and beyond by seeking to swiftly iron out differences over a new Greek rescue package.

Amid signs of a knock-on effect to Italy, the eurozone’s third largest economy, EU president Herman Van Rompuy has called talks with Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker and European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet, ahead of a same day gathering of finance ministers from the 17-nation eurozone.

“This is not a crisis meeting, but to coordinate positions,” said Van Rompuy’s spokesman, Dirk De Backer.

“The agenda is Greece, not Italy,” he added of the 1000 GMT prepatory talks.

Meanwhile in Milan, Italy’s financial regulator imposed temporary curbs on short selling after shares plunged on fears of contagion from Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, and in Asia the euro fell further on the same concerns.

Held on the back of a roller-coaster week for the single currency, Monday’s talks — to be expanded to the full EU 27 the following day — will focus on the prickly issue of private-sector involvement in a second bailout of Greece, a deal not expected before September.

WASHINGTON – The pullout of major U.S. combat units from Afghanistan may not start until the peak fighting season ends in late fall, U.S. military officials said Wednesday, although 800 National Guard soldiers will go home this month.

Details of the U.S. drawdown are still being worked out, but thus far the only major combat unit designated to depart Afghanistan and not be replaced is a Marine infantry battalion set to leave in late fall, officials said. That means the military could retain virtually all its current combat power until the fighting goes into a seasonal lull and still meet President Barack Obama’s order to reduce the force by 10,000 by year’s end.

It is possible, though unlikely, that new U.S. commanders arriving in Kabul this month will speed up the drawdown.

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon from his headquarters in Kabul, Army Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez said the full plan for reducing the U.S. force will not be worked out until autumn.

Beyond the 10,000 troops this year, a further 23,000 troops are to be brought out by September 2012.

There currently are about 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan as part of an international coalition.

Rodriquez, the second-in-command in Kabul, said the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, from Twentynine Palms, Calif., would return home by September. Later, his staff said he had misspoken. Officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive details said the Marines would leave in late fall.

The battalion has about 800 Marines in Helmand province, a heavily-contested area in the heartland of the Taliban insurgency. The province’s capital of Lashkar Gah is one of several areas that are being transitioned this month to Afghan control, beginning a process intended to have the entire country under Afghan control by the end of 2014. At that point, all U.S. and other foreign combat forces are to have been withdrawn.

Rodriguez, who has spent more than 40 months in Afghanistan over the past 4 1/2 years, said he believes the Obama pullout plan for 2011 and 2012 can be carried out without undue risk to the military’s mission of gradually handing over security responsibility to the Afghans. The troop withdrawal plan has been criticized by some Republicans as too fast and risky, while some Democrats have complained that it is too slow and cautious.

“The decision’s been made and now it’s our turn to execute the decision,” Rodriguez said. “And we can do that without a significant change in risk that puts any of the mission at risk at this point in time.”

When he announced June 22 that all 33,000 reinforcements he had sent to Afghanistan last year would be brought home, Obama said the pullout would begin in July but he left it to his commanders to decide the details. That has given commanders flexibility in figuring out which units to send home and on what schedule.

Rodriguez said it will begin with the departure this month of two Army cavalry squadrons: the Nebraska Army National Guard’s 1st Squadron, 134th Cavalry Regiment, from Lincoln, and the Iowa Army National Guard’s 1st Squadron, 113th Cavalry Regiment, from Sioux City.

The 1-134th has about 300 soldiers in Kabul and the 1-113th has about 500 in Parwan province north of Kabul.

Rodriguez himself is finishing his tour this month and will be replaced next week by Army Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti.

In his final scheduled news conference before returning to the U.S., Rodriguez said violence levels in Afghanistan are up slightly over last year, and he doubted it would go down until 2012. And he said the international military coalition plans to shift its main counterinsurgency focus from the south of the country to the east, where violence has been on the rise. He said the timing of that shift is yet to be determined.

___

Robert Burns can be reached at http://twitter.com/robertburnsAP

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration’s decision to suspend $800 million in aid to the Pakistan’s military signals a tougher U.S. line with a critical but sometimes unreliable partner in the fight against terrorism.

President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, William Daley, said in a broadcast interview Sunday that the estranged relationship between the United States and Pakistan must be made “to work over time,” but until it does, “we’ll hold back some of the money that the American taxpayers are committed to give” to the country’s powerful military forces.

The suspension of U.S. aid, first reported by The New York Times, followed a statement last week by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, that Pakistan’s security services may have sanctioned the killing of Pakistani journalist Saleem Shahzad, who wrote about infiltration of the military by extremists. His battered body was found in June.

The allegation was rejected by Pakistan’s powerful military establishment, including the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, which has historic ties to the Taliban and other militant groups and which many Western analysts regard as a state-within-a-state.

George Perkovich, an expert on Pakistan with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said Mullen’s comments and the suspension of aid represent “the end of happy talk,” where the U.S. tries to paper over differences between the two nations.

Daley, interviewed on ABC’s “This Week,” suggested the decision to suspend military aid resulted from the increasing estrangement between the U.S. and Pakistan. “Obviously there’s still a lot of pain that the political system in Pakistan is feeling by virtue of the raid that we did to get Osama bin Laden,” Daley said.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters traveling with him to Afghanistan on Saturday that the U.S. would continue to press Pakistan in the fight against extremists, including al-Qaida’s new leader, Ayman al-Zawahri.

“We have to continue to emphasize with the Pakistanis that in the end it’s in their interest to be able to go after these targets as well,” Panetta said. “And in the discussions I’ve had with them, I have to say that, you know, they’re giving us cooperation in going after some of these targets. We’ve got to continue to push them to do that. That’s key.”

The U.S. has long been unhappy with Pakistan’s evident lack of enthusiasm for carrying the fight against terrorists to its tribal areas, as well as its covert support for the Taliban and anti-Indian extremist groups.

But tensions ratcheted up in January, when CIA security contractor Raymond Davis shot and killed two Pakistanis who he said were trying to rob him. They spiked in May, when U.S. forces killed bin Laden during a covert raid on a home in Abbottabad, the location of Pakistan’s military academy.

In the U.S., there was anger at the possibility that some Pakistan officials had harbored the terrorist leader. In Pakistan, there was outrage that the U.S. operation had violated its sovereignty.

The $800 million in suspended aid represents 40 percent of the $2 billion in U.S. military aid to Pakistan, and according to the Times includes money for counterterror operations.

The report said some of the money represented equipment that can’t be set up for training because Pakistan won’t give visas to the trainers. About $300 million was intended to reimburse Pakistan for the cost of deploying 100,000 troops along the Afghan border, the newspaper said.

A senior U.S. official confirmed that the suspension came in response to the Pakistani army’s decision to significantly reduce the number of visas for U.S. military trainers. “We remain committed to helping Pakistan build its capabilities, but we have communicated to Pakistani officials on numerous occasions that we require certain support in order to provide certain assistance,” a senior U.S. official told The Associated Press. The official was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told senators that “when it comes to our military aid, we are not prepared to continue providing that at the pace we were providing it unless we see certain steps taken.”

California Rep. Howard Berman, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Sunday that he agreed with the administration’s decision. “I have repeatedly expressed concern over sending assistance to Pakistan’s military as elements of it actively undermine the country’s democratically elected government and institutions, and I’m relieved the Pentagon shares my concerns,” Berman said.

Pakistan army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas declined comment on the suspension. He pointed to comments by Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who last month said U.S. military aid should be diverted to civilian projects.

Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a Pakistani political and defense analyst, said the U.S. decision to suspend aid is an attempt to increase pressure on Pakistan, but he believes it could hurt both sides.

“The Pakistani military has been the major supporter of the U.S. in the region because it needed weapons and money,” said Rizvi. “Now, when the U.S. builds pressure on the military, it will lose that support.”

Rivzi said the move could make it harder for the U.S. to push the Taliban into peace talks, in preparation for its withdrawal from Afghanistan. At the same time, he said, the Pakistani military relies on U.S. aid in its fight against militant groups.

“This kind of public denunciation needs to stop, and they need to talk,” Rivzi said. “They shouldn’t go to the brink because both will suffer.”

But Abbas, the Pakistani military spokesman, said the loss of aid would have no effect on military operations. “In the past, we have not been dependent on any external support for these operations, and they will continue,” Abbas said.

Perkovich, the Carnegie Endowment expert, called the suspension of U.S. aid “overdue.”

“We’ve been trying for years to get, persuade, push the Pakistani army to conduct military operations on their border with Afghanistan, especially in North Waziristan, and they’ve said it’s not in their interest, that they’re overstretched already,” Perkovich said in a telephone interview from Paris. “I think it’s smart to say, `We hear you.’ … If the army doesn’t want the support, we hear them and we’ll withdraw the support.”

Perkovich said if billions in U.S. financial aid didn’t change the behavior of the Pakistan military, then withdrawing it probably wouldn’t either. The shift in the administration’s policy was prompted by recent tensions, he said. But it also grew out of the U.S. decision to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.

“That decision to withdraw from Afghanistan finally enables us to focus on Pakistan, and basically confront the reality that Pakistan’s the bigger problem,” he said.

Perkovich said he doesn’t think Pakistan will shift its policies in order to restore U.S. military aid. But he said the suspension could have some positive effect in the long run, by forcing Pakistan to take a hard look at the dominant role the security services play in Pakistan.

“Internally in Pakistan, there’s going to be a much more intense debate now on whether the Army has put the country on a good course,” he said.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Sebastian Abbot in Islamabad contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration’s decision to suspend $800 million in aid to the Pakistan’s military signals a tougher U.S. line with a critical but sometimes unreliable partner in the fight against terrorism.

President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, William Daley, said in a broadcast interview Sunday that the estranged relationship between the United States and Pakistan must be made “to work over time,” but until it does, “we’ll hold back some of the money that the American taxpayers are committed to give” to the country’s powerful military forces.

The suspension of U.S. aid, first reported by The New York Times, followed a statement last week by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, that Pakistan’s security services may have sanctioned the killing of Pakistani journalist Saleem Shahzad, who wrote about infiltration of the military by extremists. His battered body was found in June.

The allegation was rejected by Pakistan’s powerful military establishment, including the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, which has historic ties to the Taliban and other militant groups and which many Western analysts regard as a state-within-a-state.

George Perkovich, an expert on Pakistan with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said Mullen’s comments and the suspension of aid represent “the end of happy talk,” where the U.S. tries to paper over differences between the two nations.

Daley, interviewed on ABC’s “This Week,” suggested the decision to suspend military aid resulted from the increasing estrangement between the U.S. and Pakistan. “Obviously there’s still a lot of pain that the political system in Pakistan is feeling by virtue of the raid that we did to get Osama bin Laden,” Daley said.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters traveling with him to Afghanistan on Saturday that the U.S. would continue to press Pakistan in the fight against extremists, including al-Qaida’s new leader, Ayman al-Zawahri.

“We have to continue to emphasize with the Pakistanis that in the end it’s in their interest to be able to go after these targets as well,” Panetta said. “And in the discussions I’ve had with them, I have to say that, you know, they’re giving us cooperation in going after some of these targets. We’ve got to continue to push them to do that. That’s key.”

The U.S. has long been unhappy with Pakistan’s evident lack of enthusiasm for carrying the fight against terrorists to its tribal areas, as well as its covert support for the Taliban and anti-Indian extremist groups.

But tensions ratcheted up in January, when CIA security contractor Raymond Davis shot and killed two Pakistanis who he said were trying to rob him. They spiked in May, when U.S. forces killed bin Laden during a covert raid on a home in Abbottabad, the location of Pakistan’s military academy.

In the U.S., there was anger at the possibility that some Pakistan officials had harbored the terrorist leader. In Pakistan, there was outrage that the U.S. operation had violated its sovereignty.

The $800 million in suspended aid represents 40 percent of the $2 billion in U.S. military aid to Pakistan, and according to the Times includes money for counterterror operations.

The report said some of the money represented equipment that can’t be set up for training because Pakistan won’t give visas to the trainers. About $300 million was intended to reimburse Pakistan for the cost of deploying 100,000 troops along the Afghan border, the newspaper said.

A senior U.S. official confirmed that the suspension came in response to the Pakistani army’s decision to significantly reduce the number of visas for U.S. military trainers. “We remain committed to helping Pakistan build its capabilities, but we have communicated to Pakistani officials on numerous occasions that we require certain support in order to provide certain assistance,” a senior U.S. official told The Associated Press. The official was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told senators that “when it comes to our military aid, we are not prepared to continue providing that at the pace we were providing it unless we see certain steps taken.”

California Rep. Howard Berman, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Sunday that he agreed with the administration’s decision. “I have repeatedly expressed concern over sending assistance to Pakistan’s military as elements of it actively undermine the country’s democratically elected government and institutions, and I’m relieved the Pentagon shares my concerns,” Berman said.

Pakistan army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas declined comment on the suspension. He pointed to comments by Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who last month said U.S. military aid should be diverted to civilian projects.

Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a Pakistani political and defense analyst, said the U.S. decision to suspend aid is an attempt to increase pressure on Pakistan, but he believes it could hurt both sides.

“The Pakistani military has been the major supporter of the U.S. in the region because it needed weapons and money,” said Rizvi. “Now, when the U.S. builds pressure on the military, it will lose that support.”

Rivzi said the move could make it harder for the U.S. to push the Taliban into peace talks, in preparation for its withdrawal from Afghanistan. At the same time, he said, the Pakistani military relies on U.S. aid in its fight against militant groups.

“This kind of public denunciation needs to stop, and they need to talk,” Rivzi said. “They shouldn’t go to the brink because both will suffer.”

But Abbas, the Pakistani military spokesman, said the loss of aid would have no effect on military operations. “In the past, we have not been dependent on any external support for these operations, and they will continue,” Abbas said.

Perkovich, the Carnegie Endowment expert, called the suspension of U.S. aid “overdue.”

“We’ve been trying for years to get, persuade, push the Pakistani army to conduct military operations on their border with Afghanistan, especially in North Waziristan, and they’ve said it’s not in their interest, that they’re overstretched already,” Perkovich said in a telephone interview from Paris. “I think it’s smart to say, `We hear you.’ … If the army doesn’t want the support, we hear them and we’ll withdraw the support.”

Perkovich said if billions in U.S. financial aid didn’t change the behavior of the Pakistan military, then withdrawing it probably wouldn’t either. The shift in the administration’s policy was prompted by recent tensions, he said. But it also grew out of the U.S. decision to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.

“That decision to withdraw from Afghanistan finally enables us to focus on Pakistan, and basically confront the reality that Pakistan’s the bigger problem,” he said.

Perkovich said he doesn’t think Pakistan will shift its policies in order to restore U.S. military aid. But he said the suspension could have some positive effect in the long run, by forcing Pakistan to take a hard look at the dominant role the security services play in Pakistan.

“Internally in Pakistan, there’s going to be a much more intense debate now on whether the Army has put the country on a good course,” he said.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Sebastian Abbot in Islamabad contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. says pro-government demonstrators in the Syrian capital threw tomatoes, eggs and rocks at the U.S. Embassy to protest Ambassador Robert Ford’s visit to the besieged rebel stronghold of Hama.

There were no reports of injuries, but a senior U.S. State Department official said two embassy employees were pelted with food during the 31-hour demonstration. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of sensitivity of the issue.

Ford on Thursday visited the central city of Hama, where he was greeted by friendly crowds who put flowers on his windshield and olive branches on his car, chanting, “Down with the regime!” The State Department said Ford made the trip to express support for the right of Syrian people to demonstrate peacefully.

The Syrian government denounced Ford’s visit, saying the unauthorized trip was proof that Washington was inciting violence in the Arab nation. The main headline of state-run daily Al-Thawra read, “Ford in Hama and Syrians are angry.”

According to the U.S. official, supporters of President Bashar Assad’s government organized a raucous demonstration outside the embassy in Damascus that began Friday and continued until Saturday evening.

The official said the demonstration broke up only after an embassy security officer appealed to Syrian contacts, who sent additional forces to quell the protests.

The Obama administration has criticized Assad’s government for its violent crackdown on peaceful protests against his 11-year rule. Clashes between protestors and Assad’s supporters have resulted in the deaths of 1,600, in addition to 350 members of the security forces.

But the White House has so far refrained from calling for an end to the Assad family’s four decades of rule, leery of pressing too hard as it tries to wind down wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and faces criticism for being part of the coalition battling Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.

Congressional Republicans have pressed the administration to withdraw Ford from Syria, an ally of Iran that supports the Islamic militant groups Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The U.S. did not send an ambassador to Damascus for five years in protest of Syria’s alleged role in the assassination of a political leader in Lebanon.

The U.S. official said Ford registered his “displeasure” with the protests during a meeting Sunday with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, who pledged to protect the embassy.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. says pro-government demonstrators in the Syrian capital threw tomatoes, eggs and rocks at the U.S. Embassy to protest Ambassador Robert Ford’s visit to the besieged rebel stronghold of Hama.

There were no reports of injuries, but a senior U.S. State Department official said two embassy employees were pelted with food during the 31-hour demonstration. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of sensitivity of the issue.

Ford on Thursday visited the central city of Hama, where he was greeted by friendly crowds who put flowers on his windshield and olive branches on his car, chanting, “Down with the regime!” The State Department said Ford made the trip to express support for the right of Syrian people to demonstrate peacefully.

The Syrian government denounced Ford’s visit, saying the unauthorized trip was proof that Washington was inciting violence in the Arab nation. The main headline of state-run daily Al-Thawra read, “Ford in Hama and Syrians are angry.”

According to the U.S. official, supporters of President Bashar Assad’s government organized a raucous demonstration outside the embassy in Damascus that began Friday and continued until Saturday evening.

The official said the demonstration broke up only after an embassy security officer appealed to Syrian contacts, who sent additional forces to quell the protests.

The Obama administration has criticized Assad’s government for its violent crackdown on peaceful protests against his 11-year rule. Clashes between protestors and Assad’s supporters have resulted in the deaths of 1,600, in addition to 350 members of the security forces.

But the White House has so far refrained from calling for an end to the Assad family’s four decades of rule, leery of pressing too hard as it tries to wind down wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and faces criticism for being part of the coalition battling Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.

Congressional Republicans have pressed the administration to withdraw Ford from Syria, an ally of Iran that supports the Islamic militant groups Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The U.S. did not send an ambassador to Damascus for five years in protest of Syria’s alleged role in the assassination of a political leader in Lebanon.

The U.S. official said Ford registered his “displeasure” with the protests during a meeting Sunday with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, who pledged to protect the embassy.

After months of tough talk, House Republicans ran away from defense cuts last week –and that spells more trouble now for deficit reduction talks at the White House, already beset by differences over taxes.
In three days of floor debate, even modest reductions at the expense of military bands or the Pentagon’s sponsorship of NASCAR races to promote recruitment were opposed by the majority of GOP lawmakers. And the $649.2 billion appropriations bill, including $118.6 billion for wars overseas, sailed through Friday with only a dozen Republicans in opposition. 

When conservative freshman Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina proposed to freeze core Pentagon spending at 2011 levels, he was run over by almost three-quarters of his party. A bipartisan compromise, which would have preserved an $8.5 billion increase, fared no better, getting just 47 Republicans — less than half the number that voted to wipe out the entire Food for Peace program only weeks ago 

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POLITICO 44

“The military budget is not on the table,” said a frustrated Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). “The military is at the table, and it is eating everybody else’s lunch.”

As White House talks resumed Sunday night, last week’s floor debate was a warning, too, for Republican leaders trying to reach agreement on an estimated $2.4 trillion, 10-year deficit-reduction package prior to an Aug. 2 deadline, when the federal debt ceiling must be raised.

Hopes of a much larger $4 trillion package were dashed over the weekend, as Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) pulled back Saturday night from a proposed deal with the White House. But as the target shrinks, defense spending cuts become more important because discretionary appropriations account for such a large proportion of the remaining savings.

Indeed, of the $1.7 trillion to $2 trillion savings already identified, more than half or $1.1 trillion is attributed to tighter limits on annual appropriations. This has set off alarms among Democrats, who want some firewall established to ensure that not all the cuts fall on domestic programs. But Republican leaders have resisted, preferring to gloss over the details for fear of setting off a revolt among pro-defense forces in their own caucuses.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) will argue that between the Democrats’ power in the Senate and Obama’s veto pen, they have nothing to fear. But last week’s House debate gave no reason for comfort. And though Cantor denies it, many believe that it was the defense issue — not just taxes — that led him to walk out last month from deficit talks led by Vice President Joe Biden.

Pro-defense lawmakers, including old friends of Boehner’s, are a key part of the House Republican Conference, and this plainly influenced the bargaining in April to avert a government shutdown. In fact, the administration played on this vulnerability by threatening defense cuts as a way to gain leverage with the speaker and House Appropriations Committee leadership and win more flexibility on domestic savings.

After months of tough talk, House Republicans ran away from defense cuts last week –and that spells more trouble now for deficit reduction talks at the White House, already beset by differences over taxes.
In three days of floor debate, even modest reductions at the expense of military bands or the Pentagon’s sponsorship of NASCAR races to promote recruitment were opposed by the majority of GOP lawmakers. And the $649.2 billion appropriations bill, including $118.6 billion for wars overseas, sailed through Friday with only a dozen Republicans in opposition. 

When conservative freshman Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina proposed to freeze core Pentagon spending at 2011 levels, he was run over by almost three-quarters of his party. A bipartisan compromise, which would have preserved an $8.5 billion increase, fared no better, getting just 47 Republicans — less than half the number that voted to wipe out the entire Food for Peace program only weeks ago 

Continue Reading

POLITICO 44

“The military budget is not on the table,” said a frustrated Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). “The military is at the table, and it is eating everybody else’s lunch.”

As White House talks resumed Sunday night, last week’s floor debate was a warning, too, for Republican leaders trying to reach agreement on an estimated $2.4 trillion, 10-year deficit-reduction package prior to an Aug. 2 deadline, when the federal debt ceiling must be raised.

Hopes of a much larger $4 trillion package were dashed over the weekend, as Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) pulled back Saturday night from a proposed deal with the White House. But as the target shrinks, defense spending cuts become more important because discretionary appropriations account for such a large proportion of the remaining savings.

Indeed, of the $1.7 trillion to $2 trillion savings already identified, more than half or $1.1 trillion is attributed to tighter limits on annual appropriations. This has set off alarms among Democrats, who want some firewall established to ensure that not all the cuts fall on domestic programs. But Republican leaders have resisted, preferring to gloss over the details for fear of setting off a revolt among pro-defense forces in their own caucuses.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) will argue that between the Democrats’ power in the Senate and Obama’s veto pen, they have nothing to fear. But last week’s House debate gave no reason for comfort. And though Cantor denies it, many believe that it was the defense issue — not just taxes — that led him to walk out last month from deficit talks led by Vice President Joe Biden.

Pro-defense lawmakers, including old friends of Boehner’s, are a key part of the House Republican Conference, and this plainly influenced the bargaining in April to avert a government shutdown. In fact, the administration played on this vulnerability by threatening defense cuts as a way to gain leverage with the speaker and House Appropriations Committee leadership and win more flexibility on domestic savings.

The clock is slowly ticking toward Aug. 2, the date on which the U.S. faces “fiscal Armageddon” — according to the Obama administration — unless Congress agrees to raise the debt ceiling. But would we?

The Obama administration, as well as much of the media and many economists, tend to equate failure to raise the debt limit with default. That’s not precisely true.

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POLITICO 44

The Treasury Department estimates that the federal government will collect a bit more than $203 billion in taxes during August — roughly $36 billion just in the first three days. But, during August, the federal government is expected to spend $307 billion. That is why we have a problem.

If the government is not able to borrow more money after Aug. 2, spending will have to be reduced to the amount of revenue that the government has. That would require roughly a 44 percent cut in federal spending.

This will almost certainly hurt. But it’s not the same as default. During August, interest payments on the federal debt will total roughly $29 billion, meaning that there will be sufficient revenue to meet our obligations to creditors. If the Obama administration is truly worried that we might not do so, they could always support legislation by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) that would require the Treasury Department to pay our creditors first.

In addition, some $467 billion in government bonds is expected to come due during August, and will have to be rolled over. Though this rollover requires Treasury to enter the debt markets to purchase new securities, it is not technically “new” debt, and so does not run afoul of the debt limit.

The concern is that the U.S. would end up having to pay higher interest rates on this rolled over debt. That’s not a trivial concern: A 1 percent increase in interest rates could cost taxpayers more than $100 billion per year.

Still, we should keep that in perspective — it’s less than the amount that the government expects to borrow this month. And that is sort of worst case scenario. In 1979, the federal government actually did briefly default on its debt as the result of a debt ceiling impasse (as well as technical problems). That resulted in just a 60-basis-point increase in interest rates.

The clock is slowly ticking toward Aug. 2, the date on which the U.S. faces “fiscal Armageddon” — according to the Obama administration — unless Congress agrees to raise the debt ceiling. But would we?

The Obama administration, as well as much of the media and many economists, tend to equate failure to raise the debt limit with default. That’s not precisely true.

Continue Reading

POLITICO 44

The Treasury Department estimates that the federal government will collect a bit more than $203 billion in taxes during August — roughly $36 billion just in the first three days. But, during August, the federal government is expected to spend $307 billion. That is why we have a problem.

If the government is not able to borrow more money after Aug. 2, spending will have to be reduced to the amount of revenue that the government has. That would require roughly a 44 percent cut in federal spending.

This will almost certainly hurt. But it’s not the same as default. During August, interest payments on the federal debt will total roughly $29 billion, meaning that there will be sufficient revenue to meet our obligations to creditors. If the Obama administration is truly worried that we might not do so, they could always support legislation by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) that would require the Treasury Department to pay our creditors first.

In addition, some $467 billion in government bonds is expected to come due during August, and will have to be rolled over. Though this rollover requires Treasury to enter the debt markets to purchase new securities, it is not technically “new” debt, and so does not run afoul of the debt limit.

The concern is that the U.S. would end up having to pay higher interest rates on this rolled over debt. That’s not a trivial concern: A 1 percent increase in interest rates could cost taxpayers more than $100 billion per year.

Still, we should keep that in perspective — it’s less than the amount that the government expects to borrow this month. And that is sort of worst case scenario. In 1979, the federal government actually did briefly default on its debt as the result of a debt ceiling impasse (as well as technical problems). That resulted in just a 60-basis-point increase in interest rates.

WASHINGTON – The United States and other Mideast mediators meet Monday in Washington, with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in shambles and an upcoming U.N. confrontation over whether to admit Palestine as an independent country only likely to make the decades-old deadlock even more intractable.

Modest goals have been set by the U.S., the United Nations, Russia and the European Union. Foremost is getting Israeli and Palestinian negotiators back to the table for direct talks after nine months of inaction. Even that seems an unlikely outcome from Monday’s meeting.

The mediators “will come together and will compare notes about where we are and plot a course forward,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said last week.

Despite furious U.S. efforts, American and other officials say neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians appear willing to commit to new discussions based on parameters that President Barack Obama outlined in a May speech: two states based on the territorial boundaries that existed before the 1967 Mideast war, with some territory swaps to account for population shifts and security concerns.

Repeated visits to Israel and the West Bank last month by U.S. envoys have produced no tangible results. And this past week, the new U.S. special Mideast peace envoy, David Hale, and White House adviser Dennis Ross pressed the chief Palestinian peace negotiator on one of the biggest points of contention, a Palestinian plan to win U.N. recognition as an independent state.

Israel and the U.S. support an eventually independent Palestine but oppose the attempt to establish one without negotiation with the Jewish state. The administration has tried to get the Palestinians to drop the idea, but negotiator Saeb Erekat said immediately after Wednesday’s talks that the Palestinians were more determined than ever to win recognition when the U.N. General Assembly meets in September. Erekat said those opposing the Palestinians need to “rethink their position.”

The measure probably will pass, providing the Palestinians with increased diplomatic power, even though independence still will need the U.N. Security Council’s approval. The U.S. would surely veto any such resolution.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential meetings, American officials invariably offered negative assessment of the overall atmosphere surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. They described it as gloomy and depressing, with one likening the recurrent problems and lack of solutions to a “Groundhog Day” scenario, referring to the movie in which the same day is repeated over and over.

And until last week, the United States wasn’t even sure it made sense to meet with the other mediators, believing there was nothing new to discuss. Eventually the administration relented to European calls to get together, but little of substance is expected.

Speaking on the Voice of Palestine radio station, Erekat said Monday the Palestinians were hoping for a strong statement from the “quartet” of Mideast peacemakers.

“The quartet needs not only to state that the negotiations should based on the 1967 borders but Israeli also needs to endorse that in order for us to resume the peace talks,” he said. He said that given Netanyahu’s opposition to these terms, “we demand the Quartet hold Israel responsible for the collapse of the peace process.”

The meeting itself is quite limited, with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton planning to hold a working dinner and then issue a written statement.

Concretely, the U.S. and the Europeans want direct Israeli-Palestinian talks to resume before the Palestinians bring their independence case to the United Nations.

Nuland said events in September could prove “detrimental to our ability to get parties back to the table.” She said it makes sense to “talk about the diplomacy that all of us have been having with the parties and see what we can do to work together to try to push them back to the table.”

Amid scarce signs of a breakthrough, Israelis and Palestinians have been entrenched in an international battle for and against the recognition effort. The Palestinians have sent officials to lobby governments around the world for support; Israeli officials from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on down have engaged in a determined counter-effort.

The Palestinians might be persuaded to withdraw the draft at the last minute. But with the peace process essentially frozen for the past two years, Washington has struggled to offer an alternative path and hasn’t even been able to get Israel to stop settlement building in areas the Palestinians hope to include in their state.

The Israelis are still fuming over Obama’s speech May 19. By endorsing language on territory that had long been a Palestinian goal as a basis for the talks, Obama upset Israel, which has maintained that all boundaries should be subject to negotiation.

Netanyahu is looking for a concession from the Palestinians in return. Diplomats say he hopes to secure an explicit statement that the Palestinians will recognize Israel as a Jewish state before entering talks.

Complicating matters is a unity deal between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, which controls the West Bank, and the militant Hamas movement in power in Gaza.

Netanyahu has rejected any talks with a Palestinian government including Hamas, which Israel and the U.S. brand a terrorist organization. Abbas has shown an apparent willingness to delay the formation of a unity government with Hamas, but once it happens it will likely jeopardize the process.

WASHINGTON – The No. 2 Senate Democrat is demanding that fellow lawmakers “stay, close the deal” on a new budget agreement to avert a government default in about three weeks.

Sen. Dick Durbin says “I’m disappointed” that White House talks led by President Barack Obama failed to make headway Sunday night.

Appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” the Illinois Democrat insisted that both Democrats and Republicans must “be willing to put things on the table and get this thing resolved.”

Durbin opposed a stopgap solution, saying “I am worried about this idea that we can lurch from week to week and month to month.” He said that if lawmakers don’t have the will to get a deal done, public outrage over economic conditions is going to “fall on our shoulders.”

WASHINGTON – The United States and other Mideast mediators meet Monday in Washington, with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in shambles and an upcoming U.N. confrontation over whether to admit Palestine as an independent country only likely to make the decades-old deadlock even more intractable.

Modest goals have been set by the U.S., the United Nations, Russia and the European Union. Foremost is getting Israeli and Palestinian negotiators back to the table for direct talks after nine months of inaction. Even that seems an unlikely outcome from Monday’s meeting.

The mediators “will come together and will compare notes about where we are and plot a course forward,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said last week.

Despite furious U.S. efforts, American and other officials say neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians appear willing to commit to new discussions based on parameters that President Barack Obama outlined in a May speech: two states based on the territorial boundaries that existed before the 1967 Mideast war, with some territory swaps to account for population shifts and security concerns.

Repeated visits to Israel and the West Bank last month by U.S. envoys have produced no tangible results. And this past week, the new U.S. special Mideast peace envoy, David Hale, and White House adviser Dennis Ross pressed the chief Palestinian peace negotiator on one of the biggest points of contention, a Palestinian plan to win U.N. recognition as an independent state.

Israel and the U.S. support an eventually independent Palestine but oppose the attempt to establish one without negotiation with the Jewish state. The administration has tried to get the Palestinians to drop the idea, but negotiator Saeb Erekat said immediately after Wednesday’s talks that the Palestinians were more determined than ever to win recognition when the U.N. General Assembly meets in September. Erekat said those opposing the Palestinians need to “rethink their position.”

The measure probably will pass, providing the Palestinians with increased diplomatic power, even though independence still will need the U.N. Security Council’s approval. The U.S. would surely veto any such resolution.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential meetings, American officials invariably offered negative assessment of the overall atmosphere surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. They described it as gloomy and depressing, with one likening the recurrent problems and lack of solutions to a “Groundhog Day” scenario, referring to the movie in which the same day is repeated over and over.

And until last week, the United States wasn’t even sure it made sense to meet with the other mediators, believing there was nothing new to discuss. Eventually the administration relented to European calls to get together, but little of substance is expected.

Speaking on the Voice of Palestine radio station, Erekat said Monday the Palestinians were hoping for a strong statement from the “quartet” of Mideast peacemakers.

“The quartet needs not only to state that the negotiations should based on the 1967 borders but Israeli also needs to endorse that in order for us to resume the peace talks,” he said. He said that given Netanyahu’s opposition to these terms, “we demand the Quartet hold Israel responsible for the collapse of the peace process.”

The meeting itself is quite limited, with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton planning to hold a working dinner and then issue a written statement.

Concretely, the U.S. and the Europeans want direct Israeli-Palestinian talks to resume before the Palestinians bring their independence case to the United Nations.

Nuland said events in September could prove “detrimental to our ability to get parties back to the table.” She said it makes sense to “talk about the diplomacy that all of us have been having with the parties and see what we can do to work together to try to push them back to the table.”

Amid scarce signs of a breakthrough, Israelis and Palestinians have been entrenched in an international battle for and against the recognition effort. The Palestinians have sent officials to lobby governments around the world for support; Israeli officials from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on down have engaged in a determined counter-effort.

The Palestinians might be persuaded to withdraw the draft at the last minute. But with the peace process essentially frozen for the past two years, Washington has struggled to offer an alternative path and hasn’t even been able to get Israel to stop settlement building in areas the Palestinians hope to include in their state.

The Israelis are still fuming over Obama’s speech May 19. By endorsing language on territory that had long been a Palestinian goal as a basis for the talks, Obama upset Israel, which has maintained that all boundaries should be subject to negotiation.

Netanyahu is looking for a concession from the Palestinians in return. Diplomats say he hopes to secure an explicit statement that the Palestinians will recognize Israel as a Jewish state before entering talks.

Complicating matters is a unity deal between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, which controls the West Bank, and the militant Hamas movement in power in Gaza.

Netanyahu has rejected any talks with a Palestinian government including Hamas, which Israel and the U.S. brand a terrorist organization. Abbas has shown an apparent willingness to delay the formation of a unity government with Hamas, but once it happens it will likely jeopardize the process.

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration will formally protest Monday’s attack on the American embassy in Syria and may seek compensation for damage caused when a mob breached the wall of the compound before being dispersed by U.S. Marine guard.

A U.S. official said the State Department would summon a senior Syrian diplomat to condemn the assault on the embassy and demand that Syria uphold international treaty obligations to protect foreign diplomatic missions. The official said Syrian security forces who are supposed to guard the mission were slow to respond to the attack by supporters of President Bashar Assad, which was allegedly incited by government affiliated media.

Because the Marine guard contingent at the embassy reacted quickly, the attackers were not able to break into any buildings on the compound and there were no injuries reported to embassy personnel, who are all accounted for, the official said. But the official said the attackers did damage the chancery building. The damage is still being assessed, the official said.

Witnesses said the protesters smashed windows and raised a Syrian flag on the compound. They also wrote anti-US graffiti referring to the U.S. ambassador as a “dog,” the witnesses said. The protests were over visits by the U.S. and French ambassadors last week to the opposition stronghold of Hama in central Syria.

On Sunday, the State Department complained that pro-government demonstrators threw tomatoes, eggs and rocks at the embassy over the weekend to protest Ambassador Robert Ford’s visit to Hama. There were no reports of injuries, but a senior department official said two embassy employees were pelted with food during the 31-hour demonstration.

Ford on Thursday visited Hama where he was greeted by friendly crowds who put flowers on his windshield and olive branches on his car, chanting, “Down with the regime!” The State Department said Ford made the trip to express support for the right of Syrian people to demonstrate peacefully.

The Syrian government denounced Ford’s visit, saying the unauthorized trip was proof that Washington was inciting violence in the Arab nation. The main headline of state-run daily Al-Thawra read, “Ford in Hama and Syrians are angry.”

The Obama administration has criticized Assad’s government for its violent crackdown on peaceful protests against his 11-year rule. Clashes between protesters and Assad’s supporters have resulted in the deaths of 1,600, in addition to 350 members of the security forces.

But the White House has so far refrained from calling for an end to the Assad family’s four decades of rule, leery of pressing too hard as it tries to wind down wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and faces criticism for being part of the coalition battling Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.

Congressional Republicans have pressed the administration to withdraw Ford from Syria, an ally of Iran that supports the Islamic militant groups Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The U.S. did not send an ambassador to Damascus for five years in protest of Syria’s alleged role in the assassination of a political leader in Lebanon.

WASHINGTON – Call it eliminating an unfair break, or removing an unjust loophole, or even “taking a balanced approach.” Just don’t call it raising taxes.

As they work toward a must-do deal with Republicans on paring trillions from the deficit in order to raise the nation’s debt limit, President Barack Obama and Democrats are saying almost anything to avoid the politically toxic pronouncement that they want to increase taxes.

Republicans, for their part, are just as quick to declare elimination of the most rarefied corporate benefit a job-killing tax hike on the American people.

It’s all about winning the public relations debate over the debt limit, and in turn, perhaps, gaining a more politically advantageous outcome in the resulting deal itself.

“We’re at a point where there’s no good tax,” said Joseph J. Thorndike, director of the Tax History Project at the nonprofit group Tax Analysts. “The sort of value proposition of a tax has been destroyed, so nobody wants to say it, nobody wants to say in any fashion that they support it except, because it polls well, taxing the rich.”

Taxes are hardly the only issue going through the partisan spin cycle — and emerging virtually unrecognizable — as the days tick down to an Aug. 2 deadline to raise the federal government’s borrowing limit or face unprecedented default. Take Social Security. Obama is insisting he won’t agree to “slash” benefits — a vague word the White House refuses to define, thus leaving room for benefits to be cut without ever saying it.

Then there’s the debt limit itself. Listen to Republicans, and the whole problem was created by out-of-control spending that now demands to be addressed. Democrats, on the other hand, are more likely to cast the issue as a question of whether or not the U.S. will make good on its obligations.

But it’s on taxes that the rhetoric is the most heated, and the most skewed. Analysts say that in recent decades Republicans have largely succeeded in turning taxes into a dirty word, and the government it pays for is increasingly viewed with disfavor, too. So that even while voters like some of the taxpayer-funded services they get — like Social Security — arguing in favor of taxes per se is a nonstarter.

For opponents, “it’s an easy argument to win because nobody wants to pay higher taxes,” said Brendan Daly, former spokesman to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and now a public relations executive at Ogilvy Washington.

Proposals under consideration include raising taxes on small business owners and potentially low- and middle-income families. You won’t hear about that from Obama. Instead the president focuses on the very rich, and speaks euphemistically. Here are a few of the phrases the president has used of late to talk about what amounts to raising taxes for some:

• “What we need to do is to have a balanced approach where everything is on the table.”

_”We need to take on spending in the tax code.”

_”The tax cuts I’m proposing we get rid of are tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires; tax breaks for oil companies and hedge fund managers and corporate jet owners.”

_”You can’t reduce the deficit to the levels that it needs to be reduced without having some revenue in the mix.”

And here’s how Republicans respond:

_”Tax hikes on families and job creators would only make things worse.” — House Speaker John Boehner.

_”The focus for us is to make sure that we are not increasing taxes on individuals who are the job creators, and like it or not, the job creators are those who can be successful in a small business context.” — House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

_”Democrats seem to think the solution to our debt crisis is to ask taxpayers and struggling businesses to reward their economic stewardship with even more money to spend as they please.” — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration will formally protest Monday’s attack on the American embassy in Syria and may seek compensation for damage caused when a mob breached the wall of the compound before being dispersed by U.S. Marine guard.

A U.S. official said the State Department would summon a senior Syrian diplomat to condemn the assault on the embassy and demand that Syria uphold international treaty obligations to protect foreign diplomatic missions. The official said Syrian security forces who are supposed to guard the mission were slow to respond to the attack by supporters of President Bashar Assad, which was allegedly incited by government affiliated media.

Because the Marine guard contingent at the embassy reacted quickly, the attackers were not able to break into any buildings on the compound and there were no injuries reported to embassy personnel, who are all accounted for, the official said. But the official said the attackers did damage the chancery building. The damage is still being assessed, the official said.

Witnesses said the protesters smashed windows and raised a Syrian flag on the compound. They also wrote anti-US graffiti referring to the U.S. ambassador as a “dog,” the witnesses said. The protests were over visits by the U.S. and French ambassadors last week to the opposition stronghold of Hama in central Syria.

On Sunday, the State Department complained that pro-government demonstrators threw tomatoes, eggs and rocks at the embassy over the weekend to protest Ambassador Robert Ford’s visit to Hama. There were no reports of injuries, but a senior department official said two embassy employees were pelted with food during the 31-hour demonstration.

Ford on Thursday visited Hama where he was greeted by friendly crowds who put flowers on his windshield and olive branches on his car, chanting, “Down with the regime!” The State Department said Ford made the trip to express support for the right of Syrian people to demonstrate peacefully.

The Syrian government denounced Ford’s visit, saying the unauthorized trip was proof that Washington was inciting violence in the Arab nation. The main headline of state-run daily Al-Thawra read, “Ford in Hama and Syrians are angry.”

The Obama administration has criticized Assad’s government for its violent crackdown on peaceful protests against his 11-year rule. Clashes between protesters and Assad’s supporters have resulted in the deaths of 1,600, in addition to 350 members of the security forces.

But the White House has so far refrained from calling for an end to the Assad family’s four decades of rule, leery of pressing too hard as it tries to wind down wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and faces criticism for being part of the coalition battling Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.

Congressional Republicans have pressed the administration to withdraw Ford from Syria, an ally of Iran that supports the Islamic militant groups Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The U.S. did not send an ambassador to Damascus for five years in protest of Syria’s alleged role in the assassination of a political leader in Lebanon.

WASHINGTON – Call it eliminating an unfair break, or removing an unjust loophole, or even “taking a balanced approach.” Just don’t call it raising taxes.

As they work toward a must-do deal with Republicans on paring trillions from the deficit in order to raise the nation’s debt limit, President Barack Obama and Democrats are saying almost anything to avoid the politically toxic pronouncement that they want to increase taxes.

Republicans, for their part, are just as quick to declare elimination of the most rarefied corporate benefit a job-killing tax hike on the American people.

It’s all about winning the public relations debate over the debt limit, and in turn, perhaps, gaining a more politically advantageous outcome in the resulting deal itself.

“We’re at a point where there’s no good tax,” said Joseph J. Thorndike, director of the Tax History Project at the nonprofit group Tax Analysts. “The sort of value proposition of a tax has been destroyed, so nobody wants to say it, nobody wants to say in any fashion that they support it except, because it polls well, taxing the rich.”

Taxes are hardly the only issue going through the partisan spin cycle — and emerging virtually unrecognizable — as the days tick down to an Aug. 2 deadline to raise the federal government’s borrowing limit or face unprecedented default. Take Social Security. Obama is insisting he won’t agree to “slash” benefits — a vague word the White House refuses to define, thus leaving room for benefits to be cut without ever saying it.

Then there’s the debt limit itself. Listen to Republicans, and the whole problem was created by out-of-control spending that now demands to be addressed. Democrats, on the other hand, are more likely to cast the issue as a question of whether or not the U.S. will make good on its obligations.

But it’s on taxes that the rhetoric is the most heated, and the most skewed. Analysts say that in recent decades Republicans have largely succeeded in turning taxes into a dirty word, and the government it pays for is increasingly viewed with disfavor, too. So that even while voters like some of the taxpayer-funded services they get — like Social Security — arguing in favor of taxes per se is a nonstarter.

For opponents, “it’s an easy argument to win because nobody wants to pay higher taxes,” said Brendan Daly, former spokesman to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and now a public relations executive at Ogilvy Washington.

Proposals under consideration include raising taxes on small business owners and potentially low- and middle-income families. You won’t hear about that from Obama. Instead the president focuses on the very rich, and speaks euphemistically. Here are a few of the phrases the president has used of late to talk about what amounts to raising taxes for some:

• “What we need to do is to have a balanced approach where everything is on the table.”

_”We need to take on spending in the tax code.”

_”The tax cuts I’m proposing we get rid of are tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires; tax breaks for oil companies and hedge fund managers and corporate jet owners.”

_”You can’t reduce the deficit to the levels that it needs to be reduced without having some revenue in the mix.”

And here’s how Republicans respond:

_”Tax hikes on families and job creators would only make things worse.” — House Speaker John Boehner.

_”The focus for us is to make sure that we are not increasing taxes on individuals who are the job creators, and like it or not, the job creators are those who can be successful in a small business context.” — House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

_”Democrats seem to think the solution to our debt crisis is to ask taxpayers and struggling businesses to reward their economic stewardship with even more money to spend as they please.” — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

BAGHDAD – The U.S. will not “walk away” from the challenge of Iran’s stepped-up arming of Iraqi insurgents who are targeting and killing American troops as they prepare to leave Iraq, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday.

Panetta also pointedly pressed Iraqi leaders to appoint a defense minister, after more than a year of indecision, and to make up their minds about asking the U.S. to keep a military presence here beyond December.

“Damn it, make a decision,” he told a group of soldiers on his first visit to Iraq as Pentagon chief. He was responding to a soldier who asked whether Iraqi leaders are ready to properly govern their country. Panetta said the Iraqi indecision was frustrating to the American government, but added that political complications are part of being a democracy.

Panetta and the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, expressed worry about increasingly deadly attacks on U.S. troops by Shiite militias using weapons that Panetta and others assert are supplied by Iran.

“We’re very concerned about Iran and the weapons they’re providing to extremists in Iraq,” Panetta said.

“We cannot simply stand back and allow this to continue to happen” he said. “This is not something we’re going to walk away from. It’s something we’re going to take on head-on.”

Panetta said Iraq must more aggressively go after the Shiite militias that are using what he called Iranian-supplied weapons. And he said the U.S. is determined to act on its own to “go after those threats” from Iranian weapons.

“We’re doing that,” he said.

Asked later in an interview with a group of American reporters what unilateral action U.S. troops had taken against the Iranian-armed militias, Austin suggested that the emphasis was on defensive actions such as patrolling the perimeter of U.S. troop positions.

“We’ll do what we need to protect ourselves,” Austin said. Pressed to say whether Panetta was correct in saying the U.S. was acting unilaterally against the Iranian problem, he said, “I won’t discuss our operations.”

Three rockets fired from a mainly Shiite neighborhood hit Baghdad’s Green Zone during Panetta’s visit, Iraqi police said. No casualties were reported.

Panetta was visiting the U.S. military’s Camp Victory on the capital’s western outskirts at the time of the attack on the Green Zone, the heavily secured district in central Baghdad that is home to the U.S. and other embassies as well as Iraqi government offices.

In his pep talk to the troops on the sprawling compound outside of Baghdad that houses the U.S. military headquarters, Panetta appeared to slip on the politics of the Iraq war, which was started by the Bush administration in March 2003 on grounds that then-ruler Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Some in the Bush White House also suggested a Saddam link to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. by al-Qaida — a connection that President Barack Obama and other Democrats have called wrong and unproved.

Panetta told the troops he is firmly focused on ensuring that al-Qaida never again is able to attack the U.S. homeland.

“The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked,” he said.

Asked later to explain that remark, he said he was not talking about the rationale for the U.S. invasion of Iraq but instead the need to go after al-Qaida in Iraq once it developed a lethal presence in the country following the invasion. He has said there are about 1,000 al-Qaida fighters in Iraq. That compares with an estimated 50-100 in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden’s group was sheltered by the Taliban until the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.

Panetta will also huddle with the top U.S. military and diplomatic representatives in Baghdad before meeting with Iraqi leaders to discuss the possibility of keeping some U.S. troops in Iraq beyond 2011. He will also press Iraq for stronger action to stop stepped-up attacks on U.S. forces.

Panetta was meeting separately with Austin and with Ambassador James Jeffrey.

Later, he was to talk with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani.

The Obama administration believes Iraq needs a slimmed-down U.S. military presence beyond 2011, when virtually all U.S. troops are scheduled to depart. Many Iraqi leaders agree, but they’ve been unwilling to make a formal request.

There are now 46,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

WASHINGTON – With the clock ticking toward an Aug. 2 deadline, congressional leaders return to the White House Monday for another round of budget bargaining with President Barack Obama, who has warned top lawmakers he will call daily meetings until they break their partisan stalemate.

Monday’s discussion will focus on formalizing the tentative agreements lawmakers reached in talks led by Vice President Joe Biden. Republicans say the Biden group identified more than $2 trillion in cuts, but Democrats put the true figure significantly lower — in large part because many of their concessions on spending cuts relied on the assumption Republicans would accept some new tax revenues.

The two sides appear to be no closer to a deal to stave off a potentially disastrous first-ever default on U.S. obligations than they were when the Biden talks hit an impasse last week on the tax issue.

Obama will give his take on the status of negotiations during a news conference at the White House Monday morning.

The president convened a rare Sunday meeting with lawmakers in the White House Cabinet Room, where he continued to push for a “grand bargain” in the range of $4 trillion worth of deficit cuts over the coming decade, but momentum is clearly on the side of a smaller measure of perhaps half that size. Obama continues to press for revenue increases as part of any agreement but Republicans remain stoutly opposed — despite some private hints to the contrary last week by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

A Republican congressional aide said the White House is proposing between $1.4 and $1.7 trillion in tax increases, a total unlikely to garner any support from GOP lawmakers.

Last week, Boehner and Obama had private talks that led Democrats to believe the House speaker was willing to entertain revenue increases as part of a full overhaul of the tax code later this year in exchange for Democrats agreeing to stiff curbs on the growth of Medicare and lower increases in Social Security cost-of-living adjustments. But Boehner recoiled and abandoned the idea Saturday night in a move that rattled the talks.

Sunday’s sometimes testy session was shorter than some had anticipated and it’s clear neither side is willing to budge on taxes. Democrats say tax increases are a prerequisite for big spending cuts; Republicans rule out the idea unless taxes are lowered elsewhere.

“The sides are at loggerheads,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in a nationally broadcast interview Monday morning.

The Biden talks that will be featured Monday resulted in tentative agreements on cuts to farm subsidies, student aid, federal workers’ pensions and domestic agency budgets, among others. But the Biden group was bitterly divided over taxes, as Republicans like House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia repulsed Democratic demands to shut down tax breaks for oil and gas companies and deductions enjoyed by the wealthy. And Republicans resisted Democratic attempts for a mechanism to guarantee the Pentagon would contribute to cuts.

Van Hollen blamed Republicans, saying “they refuse to eliminate any of these tax breaks for corporate special interests — corporate jets, oil and gas companies and folks at the very high end of the income scale.”

South Carolina’s Sen. Jim DeMint, a Republican, argued that Obama “still has not given us a proposal we can accept or reject.”

“We’re not going to default. We’ve got the money. We don’t need to panic,” DeMint said.

Sunday’s meeting featured some tense exchanges, officials briefed on the talks said, as Democrats accused Republicans of being inflexible. And officials briefed on the talks said Obama sharply rebuked Republicans for saying there’s no time for a “grand bargain” blending new revenues with big spending cuts — including curbs to Social Security and Medicare.

“If not now, when?” Obama asked, according to a Democratic official requiring anonymity because the session was private.

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said a big $4 trillion bargain is off the table.

“Everything they told me and (Boehner) is that to get a big package would require a big tax increases in the middle of an economic situation that’s extraordinarily difficult, with 9.2 percent unemployment,” McConnell said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We think it’s a terrible idea. It’s a job-killer.”

The lower $2 trillion-plus figure is noteworthy because it’s what’s needed under GOP-imposed ground rules to solve the issue until after next year’s elections and avoid another politically toxic vote before then. Boehner is insisting that any increase in the so-called debt limit be matched by larger cuts in spending, though the spending cuts would accumulate over the coming decade while the debt increase would last perhaps 1 1/2 years.

Democrats continue to press for a larger agreement, arguing that it may be just as easy to achieve as a medium-sized deal.

And on Monday, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, implored fellow lawmakers to “stay, close the deal” on a new budget plan.

Durbin opposed a short-term or stopgap measure, saying “I’m worried about this idea that we can lurch from week to week and month to month.” He said that if Democrats and Republicans cannot come to an accord, public outrage will be “on our shoulders.”

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner cautioned Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that a package about half the size of the one Obama prefers would be equally tough to negotiate because it, too, could require hundreds of billions in new tax revenue — anathema to Republicans.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund’s new chief, Christine Lagarde, said that if the U.S. fails to raise its debt limit, she foresees “interest hikes, stock markets taking a huge hit and real nasty consequences” for the American and global economies.

“I would hope that there is enough bipartisan intelligence and understanding of the challenge that is ahead of the United States, but also the rest of the world,” she said.

Durbin appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Van Hollen was interviewed CBS’s “The Early Show” and DeMint was interviewed on NBC’s “Today” show.

___

Associated Press writers Jim Kuhnhenn, Laurie Kellman and Julie Pace contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s chief of staff confirms that the U.S. is suspending $800 million in military aid to Pakistan.

William Daley says the U.S. relationship with Pakistan is “difficult” and must be made “to work over time.” But Daley tells ABC’s “This Week” that until “we get through that difficulty, we’ll hold back some of the money that the American taxpayers are committed to give” the U.S. ally.

Daley says the countries are trying to work through issues that have strained ties.

The New York Times reported that the U.S. is upset with Pakistan for expelling American military trainers and wants tougher action against the Taliban and others fighting American soldiers in Afghanistan.

Tensions between the countries have surged since U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May.

WASHINGTON – House Republican budget negotiators have abandoned plans to pursue a massive $4 trillion, 10-year deficit reduction package in the face of stiff GOP opposition to any plan that would increase taxes as part of the deal.

House Speaker John Boehner informed President Barack Obama Saturday that a smaller agreement of about $2 trillion was more realistic.

In a statement issued Saturday evening, Boehner said: “Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes.”

The White House responded that Obama will continue to push to make as much progress on deficit reduction as possible.

Boehner’s statement came a day before he and seven of the top House and Senate leaders were scheduled to meet at the White House in a negotiating session and lay out their remaining differences.

A deficit reduction deal is crucial to win Republican support for an increase in the nation’s debt ceiling. The government’s borrowing capacity is currently capped at $14.3 trillion and administration officials say it will go into default without action by Aug. 2.

Obama tried to build political support for an ambitious package of spending cuts and new tax revenue that would reduce the debt by $4 trillion over 10 years. But from the moment he proposed it, Republicans said they would reject any tax increases and Democrats objected to spending cuts in some of their most prized benefit programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Vice President Joe Biden had already identified, but not signed off on, about $2 trillion in deficit reductions, most accomplished through spending cuts.

But after holding a secret meeting with Boehner last weekend, Obama and his top aides said they believed an even bigger figure was attainable if both parties made politically painful, but potentially historic, choices.

In the end, the pressure from both sides was pushing against Obama’s bigger goal.

“I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt limit increase,” Boehner said.

“The president believes that solving our fiscal problems is an economic imperative. But in order to do that, we cannot ask the middle-class and seniors to bear all the burden of higher costs and budget cuts,” said White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer. “We need a balanced approach that asks the very wealthiest and special interests to pay their fair share as well, and we believe the American people agree.”

Pfeiffer said: “Both parties have made real progress thus far, and to back off now will not only fail to solve our fiscal challenge, it will confirm the cynicism people have about politics in Washington. “

A Republican official familiar with the discussions said taxes and the major health and retirement entitlement programs continued to be sticking points.

Earlier Saturday, in his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama appealed to Democrats and Republicans to “make some political sacrifices” and take advantage of an extraordinary opportunity to tackle the government’s budget crisis.

He said that it will take a “balanced approach” that mixes limits on domestic programs and the Pentagon, curbs to Medicare and elimination of some tax breaks for the wealthy.

But even as the negotiators sought a deal to bring the deficit under control, Obama’s Democratic allies and GOP rivals seem to find their options limited by months of angry rhetoric and political posturing.

HOUSTON – Gov. Rick Perry rebuffed criticism Friday from the United Nations and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Texas’ execution of a Mexican man whose lawyers said he was not informed he could have sought legal help from the Mexican government after he was arrested for the murder of a San Antonio teenager.

“If you commit the most heinous of crimes in Texas, you can expect to face the ultimate penalty under our laws,” Perry’s spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger said a day after convicted killer Humberto Leal was put to death in Huntsville.

In Geneva, the U.N.’s top human rights official said Leal’s execution amounted to a breach of international law by the U.S.

The Texas governor has the authority in execution cases to issue a one-time 30-day reprieve, an authority Perry and other governors in the nation’s most active capital punishment state rarely have invoked.

“After reviewing the totality of the issues that led to Leal’s conviction, as well as the numerous court rulings surrounding the case, including the most recent Supreme Court ruling on Thursday, Gov. Perry agreed that Leal was guilty of raping and bludgeoning a 16-year-old girl to death,” Cesinger said.

Adria Sauceda was killed in 1994 in a gruesome attack in which her head was bashed with a 30- to 40-pound piece of asphalt and she was raped, strangled, bit and then left nude on a dirt road with a piece of wood stuck in her.

From the Texas death chamber Thursday evening, Leal, 38, took responsibility for the slaying, asked for forgiveness and wrapped up his comments by twice shouting: “Viva Mexico!”

He was born in Monterrey, Mexico, and moved with his family to the U.S. when he was about 1 1/2 years old.

Mexico’s government, President Barack Obama’s administration and the State Department were among those asking the Supreme Court to stop the execution of the former mechanic to allow Congress time to consider legislation that would require court reviews for condemned foreign nationals who weren’t offered the help of their consulates.

The high court rejected the request 5-4.

“The secretary herself is quite disappointed in the outcome in this case,” Clinton’s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said Friday. “You know that the U.S. government sought a stay of Leal’s execution in order to give the Congress time to act on the Consular Notification Compliance Act, which would have provided Leal the judicial review required by international law.

“Frankly if we don’t protect the rights of non-Americans in the United States, we seriously risk reciprocal lack of access to our own citizens overseas,” Nuland said. “So this is why the secretary is concerned. … We’ve got to treat non-Americans properly here if we expect to be able to help our citizens overseas.”

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said the punishment “raises particular legal concerns,” including whether Leal had access to consular services and a fair trial.

Pillay also cited a 2004 International Court of Justice ruling saying the U.S. must review and reconsider the cases of 51 Mexican nationals sentenced to death, including Leal’s. In 2005, President George W. Bush agreed with the ruling but the U.S. Supreme Court later overruled Bush.

“Texas is not bound by a foreign court’s ruling,” Cesinger said. “The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the treaty was not binding on the states and that the president does not have the authority to order states to review cases of the then 51 foreign nationals on death row in the U.S.”

In its ruling Thursday about an hour before Leal’s execution, the Supreme Court’s majority opinion pointed to the IJC decision, saying it’s been seven years since then and three years since the previous Texas death penalty case that raised similar consular legal access issues.

If a statute implementing the provisions of the international court ruling “had genuinely been a priority for the political branches, it would have been enacted by now,” the majority ruling said.

Had the White House and dissenting justices been worried about “the grave international consequences that will follow from Leal’s execution … Congress evidently did not find these consequences sufficiently grave to prompt its enactment of implementing legislation, and we will follow the law as written by Congress,” the ruling continued.

Leal’s appeals lawyers had pinned their hopes on legislation introduced in the Senate last month that applied to the Vienna Convention provisions and said Leal should have a reprieve so the measure could make its way through the legislative process.

Similar bills have failed twice in recent congressional sessions.

“Our task is to rule on what the law is, not what it might eventually be,” the court said.

Rick Perry has started calling Iowa Republicans and a former RNC finance chairman is helping to convene a meeting of national donors later this month in Austin to discuss financing a potential 2012 campaign — signs that the Texas governor and his allies are stepping up their exploratory efforts.

The developments come as Perry is being watched by a string of donors, early-state voters and elites who say they’re disenchanted, and in search of a stronger candidate.

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Republican activist Joni Scotter told POLITICO she got a surprise phone call this afternoon from Perry, asking about the political landscape as it relates to him. 

“It was just a surprise,” said Scotter, of Marion, who’s well-known for her frequent appearances at Iowa Republican events and is a coveted worker bee on presidential campaigns. She said she didn’t know how Perry got her number.

“He sounded great and just asked if he should run,” she said. “And I said, of course.” She said he said he hadn’t made up his mind.

Scotter declined to reveal more about the roughly 20-minute conversation, saying, “I feel like I am violating a trust…it is an honor that he even considered calling. It was a wonderful conversation.”

Dave Carney, Perry’s top strategist, confirmed that the governor had been reaching out to Republican caucus-goers.

“He is calling some folks, returning some calls and listening to what folks have to say,” said Carney.

Asked if it was activists or elected officials, he described the calls as going to “a mix of folks.”

At the same time, Peter Terpulek, a top bundler who President Bush appointed as ambassador to Luxembourg, has begun planning a gathering of some of the party’s top uncommitted donors for later this month in the Texas capital.

It’s unclear if Perry will attend the get-together, but a well-connected Texas Republican confirmed that the meeting was taking place and said it was part of an ongoing effort among the governor’s allies to determine “what is available on the financial side.”

“This isn’t the first or last meeting,” this source said, noting that there are also “other meetings in other states” in the works.

Terpeluk declined to discuss, or even confirm, the meeting.

At the same time, although not coordinated with Perry or any of his advisers, a pro-Perry group is trying to gather support for the Texas governor at next month’s Ames Straw Poll. The group has hired Craig Schoenfeld, who until recently was with Newt Gingrich and is a veteran operative in the state, to lead the effort.

Speculation about Perry’s plans has reached a fever pitch within the GOP. Increasingly, Republican insiders believe that the Texan will run. But those close to him say he has not yet decided and isn’t rushing toward a decision.  

Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann may represent competing visions of the direction of the Republican Party, but both their presidential campaigns are relying on legal advice from partners at Patton Boggs, the Washington power law firm that pioneered innovative fundraising strategies for 2008 GOP White House hopefuls that left advocates for reducing the role of money in politics crying foul.

The moderate Jon Huntsman and the libertarian Ron Paul, meanwhile, have entrusted legal work from their campaigns to lawyers at a white shoe firm with a less aggressive, more bipartisan political law practice – Arent Fox.

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POLITICO 44

Then there’s President Barack Obama’ re-election campaign, which will rely again on Bob Bauer, the famously pugnacious Perkins Coie partner who was credited – or blamed, depending on who you’re talking to – with facilitating Obama’s decision to opt out of the public financing system in 2008 and setting a $750-million fundraising record.

The selection of a lawyer can reveal a lot about a presidential campaign, not only its ideology but also its strategy and the resources it has to pursue that strategy since elite firms’ legal bills can cost campaigns as much as $50,000 a month during the primaries.

And, in the 2012 presidential race, lawyers figure to play a bigger role than ever, thanks to recent court and regulatory decisions that have empowered outside groups to play a perhaps unprecedented role in campaigns — and put a handful of elite Beltway lawyers in the tricky position of sometimes advising outside groups and candidates or parties that are legally barred from coordinating with one another.

Navigating such increasingly complex rules is just one way in which campaign lawyers have become political players in their own rights. Their fingerprints can be found on sensitive campaign decisions related to not just fundraising and Federal Election Commission compliance, but candidates’ personal finances, ballot access issues, and shaping opposition research.

And law firm signings are as closely watched as those of top campaign operatives or pollsters.

Take Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman initially written off by some handicappers as a fringe anti-establishment candidate whose appeal was limited to tea party activists.

It turned some heads when she retained as her presidential campaign lawyer Patton Boggs partner Bill McGinley, a well-regarded and cautious establishment Republican who had served as general counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and deputy counsel to the Republican National Committee.

McGinley had helped Bachmann set up her congressional campaign and leadership political action committees, and, with his help, she has built a surprisingly robust presidential campaign apparatus that has helped her surge in the polls.

Bachmann spokeswoman Alice Stewart called McGinley “one of the best in town,” adding that “a firewall has been established at Patton Boggs between Bill and attorneys for Mitt Romney.”

Campaign finance insiders had expected Bachmann might end up with Cleta Mitchell, a partner at the mega firm Foley Lardner, who in 2010 developed a niche representing tea party Republicans including Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and unsuccessful Senate candidates Sharron Angle of Nevada, Joe Miller of Alaska and Christine O’Donnell of Delaware.

But Mitchell, who represents a host of conservative advocacy groups, has so far waded into the presidential race only to advise former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum on the early stages of his campaign.

It’s tough to imagine Santorum or Bachmann — both of whom have emphasized their social conservatism — selecting as their lawyer Craig Engle, an Arent Fox partner and moderate Republican who last year was recognized by the gay conservative group Log Cabin Republicans for helping “champion the fight for creating a more inclusive Republican Party.”

NEW YORK – America’s cities are beginning to grapple with a fact of life: People are getting old, fast, and they’re doing it in communities designed for the sprightly.

To envision how this silver tsunami will challenge a youth-oriented society, just consider that seniors soon will outnumber schoolchildren in hip, fast-paced New York City.

It will take some creative steps to make New York and other cities age-friendly enough to help the coming crush of older adults stay active and independent in their own homes.

“It’s about changing the way we think about the way we’re growing old in our community,” said New York Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs. “The phrase `end of life’ does not apply anymore.”

With initiatives such as using otherwise idle school buses to take seniors grocery shopping, the World Health Organization recognizes New York as a leader in this movement.

But it’s not alone.

Atlanta is creating what it calls “lifelong communities.” Philadelphia is testing whether living in a truly walkable community really makes older adults healthier. In Portland, Ore., there’s a push to fit senior concerns such as accessible housing into the city’s new planning and zoning policies.

Such work is getting a late start considering how long demographers have warned that the population is about to get a lot grayer.

“It’s shocking how far behind we are, especially when you think about this fact — that if you make something age-friendly, that means it is going to be friendly for people of all ages, not just older adults,” said Margaret Neal of Portland State University’s Institute on Aging.

While this fledgling movement is being driven by nonprofit and government programs, New York aims to get private businesses to ante up, too.

Last year, East Harlem became the city’s first “aging improvement district.” Sixty stores, identified with window signs, agreed to put out folding chairs to let older customers rest as they do their errands. The stores also try to keep aisles free of tripping hazards and use larger type so signs are easier to read. A community pool set aside senior-only hours so older swimmers could get in their laps without faster kids and teens in the way.

On one long block, accountant Henry Calderon welcomes older passers-by to rest in his air-conditioned lobby even if they’re not customers. They might be, one day.

“It’s good for business but it’s good for society,” too, he said.

The size of the aging boom is staggering. Every day for the next few decades, thousands of baby boomers will turn 65. That’s in addition to the oldest-old, the 85- to 90-somethings whose numbers have grown by nearly one-third in the past decade, with no signs of slowing.

By 2050, 1 in 5 Americans will be seniors. Worldwide, almost 2 billion people will be 60 or older, 400 million of them over 80.

That’s almost always viewed as a health issue, preparing for the coming wave of Alzheimer’s, or as a political liability, meaning how soon will Social Security go bust?

“We think this is something we should be celebrating,” says Dr. John Beard, who oversees the World Health Organization’s Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities. “They need to live in an environment that allows them to participate.”

In East Harlem, a yellow school bus pulls up to a curb and 69-year-old Jenny Rodriguez climbs off. The bus had already dropped a load of kids at school. Now, before the afternoon trip home, it is shuttling older adults to a market where they flock to fresh fruits and vegetables.

Rodriguez usually goes shopping on foot, pulling along a small cart. It can be a hike. Supermarkets aren’t too common in this lower-income part of the city, and there’s less to choose at tiny, pricier corner bodegas.

“You can only buy so much. Some streets, the cracks are so bad, you’re pushing the shopping cart and almost go flying,” Rodriguez said, examining sweet potatoes that she pronounced fresher and cheaper than at her usual store. “This is so much easier.”

More than 200 times, school buses have taken older adults from senior centers to supermarkets in different neighborhoods. It’s just one of a variety of initiatives begun in 2009 by the New York Academy of Medicine and the city’s government to address the needs of older residents. Already, they’re showing results.

A city report found the number of crashes has dropped at busy intersections in senior-heavy communities where traffic signals now allow pedestrians a few more seconds to cross the street.

Benches have been placed in nearly 2,700 bus shelters to give waiting seniors a place to rest.

The city’s aging taxi fleet is scheduled to be replaced by a boxier model designed to be easier for older riders and people with disabilities to open the doors and slide in and out.

On the Upper West Side, seniors snapped up a report card of grocery stores deemed age-friendly because they offer deliveries, have public bathrooms — a rarity in the city — and sell single portions of fresh meat, poultry or fish, important for people who live alone.

Artists volunteer to teach at senior centers in return for space to work on or display their own creations.

And a “Time Bank” is letting hundreds of people of different ages and with different skills essentially barter services. A retired English teacher may do some tutoring, for example, and use the credit she earns to get computer help from another volunteer.

Aging expert Andrew Scharlach of the University of California, Berkeley, sees a common thread in these changes and the work of other cities. Combat the social isolation that too easily sneaks up on older adults and it has a huge impact not just on how many years they will live, but how well they live them.

Cities and suburbs were designed for younger people, full of stairs and cars, he explained. As they become increasingly difficult to navigate, older people gradually retreat.

Revamping a lot of infrastructure may not happen in a tough economy. But some communities are building age-friendly changes into planned upgrades or maintenance, such as New York’s street crossings, or into requirements for future development.

The WHO’s Beard says some changes aren’t that costly, noting that seniors around the world say more benches and access to bathrooms will help them get out and about.

Among other cities’ work:

_The Atlanta Regional Commission’s Lifelong Communities Initiative is pushing communities that help people age in place. Efforts are under way in six metro areas, including work to adapt zoning codes to allow more of a walkable mix of housing and retail. The Mableton community of suburban Cobb County is planning that kind of a town square, and has opened a farmers market — on a weekday morning when seniors preferred to shop — and intergenerational community garden. To the east, DeKalb County is building a library near a senior center, planned senior housing and a bus stop. One town pilot-tested a shuttle for seniors to supplement bare-bones public transit.

The Atlanta Housing Authority is working with the commission to retrofit high-rise apartments that house a lot of older residents, with the goal to improve access to the surrounding community. At one site under construction, changes include a ramp entrance, safer sidewalk to the bus stop and more time for pedestrians to cross the street.

The overall move isn’t without controversy.

Sometimes younger residents misunderstand and say they don’t want to live in a retirement community, said commission urban planner Laura Keyes.

She said boomers, who are classified as being born from 1946 to 1964, and millenials, the children of baby boomers who came of age in the new millennium, ultimately want the same things: access to shopping, green space, more freedom from the car. The idea is a mix of ages but where older residents don’t need to move if their health fails.

Keyes became interested in age-friendly communities when visiting friends in nursing homes built in commercial districts — and saw that they had nowhere to take a walk.

_Philadelphia is the oldest of the nation’s 10 largest cities, with 19 percent of its residents over age 60 — and lots of multi-story rowhouses where seniors are stuck on one floor. “They become prisoners in their homes,” said Kate Clark of the nonprofit Philadelphia Corporation for Aging.

In redesigning the city’s zoning code, proposals are being debated that would allow seniors to rent out their upper floors, and to require that a certain amount of new housing be what’s called “visitable” — with such things as ramp entrances, wide hallways and at least a half-bathroom on the main floor, she said.

With funding from the National Institutes of Health, the aging group’s Allen Glicksman is studying if seniors who live in a walkable neighborhood really are healthier as a result. He has found that social capital — think friendly neighbors, low crime and good sidewalks that encourage getting out — is as important to older residents as access to supermarkets, public transportation and good housing.

Also, there are calls for age-friendlier parks, with safer steps and places to walk apart from bikers.

To sustain momentum, Clark created GenPhilly, a network of 20- and 30-somethings interested in shaping the city they’ll age in by raising senior issues in varying professions.

_Portland was part of WHO’s initial study of what makes a city age-friendly, an initiative that helped bring about more handicapped-accessible cars for the city’s light-rail system, Neal said.

Now, aging experts are among the advisers as the city develops a master plan for the next 25 years. One issue, Neal said, is how to develop more accessible housing when the city’s anti-sprawl policy means a lot of narrow, multistory houses are being squeezed into empty city lots — near transportation but still not age-friendly with all the stairs.

Integrating senior-friendly changes into everyday city policies is less visible than, say, a new retirement home but it’s ultimately the goal, says Scharlach, the aging expert.

New York also hopes for some economic return.

Consider La Marqueta in East Harlem. Fifty years ago, it was a bustling, five-block market, a weekly gathering spot for families. But economic downturn left the city-owned building mostly empty for years. Now, as part of a $1.5 million economic revitalization project, an industrial kitchen in the building will train low-income women to start their own food businesses. It joins the fish and butcher shop, a farmer’s market, and a high-end food importer — and busing in the seniors once a month boosts the still thin customer traffic.

But it’s more than a shopping day. A quick check from a health department nurse reassured 73-year-old Maria Ilarraza that her blood pressure was OK, and she sat to catch up with friends over coffee. In another corner, a crowd listened as a university nutritionist explained how to safely freeze and thaw meat.

Art teacher Piedad Gerena showed off some of the bold landscapes and modern images her students at a nearby senior center learned to paint, and, to her delight, sometimes sell for up to $200 apiece. “Many of these people have no families,” Gerena said. “The art makes them feel happy.”

___

Online:

World Health Organization’s Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities: http://tinyurl.com/3kdkp6q

Portland State University’s Institute on Aging: http://www.pdx.edu/ioa

New York City’s Aging Improvement Districts: http://tinyurl.com/3h5fo7a

New York Academy of Medicine: http://www.nyam.org/urban-health/healthy-aging

Atlanta Regional Commission’s Lifelong Communities Initiative: http://tinyurl.com/3gz9lfv

Philadelphia Corporation for Aging: http://www.pcacares.org

GenPhilly: http://www.genphilly.org

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is appealed to Democrats and Republicans to “make some political sacrifices” and take advantage of an extraordinary opportunity to tackle the government’s budget crisis.

Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday that it will take a “balanced approach” that mixes limits on domestic programs and the Pentagon, curbs to Medicare and elimination of some tax breaks for the wealthy.

Obama spoke a day before hosting top lawmakers in both parties for a negotiating session at the White House.

Even as the negotiators seek a grand deal to bring the deficit under control, Obama’s Democratic allies and GOP rivals seem to find their options limited by months of angry rhetoric and political posturing.

Sharp divisions persist over increasing taxes and cutting public benefit programs. As a result, hopes have diminished for a deal on an ambitious plan to cut spiraling deficits by $4 trillion or more over the coming decade. Officials now say a smaller, $2 trillion agreement, appeared more doable.

“The good news is, we agree on some of the big things,” Obama said. “We agree that after a decade of racking up deficits and debt, we finally need to get our fiscal house in order. We agree that to do that, both sides are going to have to step outside their comfort zones and make some political sacrifices.”

On Friday, Obama’s most important negotiating partner, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said that the two sides were far apart.

“It’s not like there’s some imminent deal about to happen,” said Boehner. “There are serious disagreements about how to deal with this very serious problem.”

Obama cited a bleak jobs report Friday in hopes of prodding Congress toward a swift agreement. But the higher unemployment numbers hardened the views of partisan lawmakers who think a weak economy can’t tolerate added taxes or cuts in spending, essential parts for the broad deal that Obama seeks.

White House and congressional negotiators and their aides continued to work on deficit-cutting ideas to add to a set of proposals tentatively agreed to in talks led by Vice President Joe Biden in May and June. The earlier proposals would shave $2 trillion or so off the deficit. Obama has asked the top eight leaders of Congress to come to the White House on Sunday to assess progress in the talks.

A budget agreement is central to increasing the nation’s borrowing limit, currently capped at $14.3 trillion, by Aug. 2.

If that deadline isn’t met, there could be a potentially catastrophic government default on obligations to bondholders, government contractors and people relying on Social Security and other government programs. That deadline and a new unemployment rate of 9.2 percent heightened the pressure for a deal, uniting the two most high-profile challenges facing Obama’s presidency.

Obama urged Congress to move quickly to raise the debt ceiling, saying the uncertainty over a potential default has hindered hiring in the private sector.

He later made his case privately to House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California during a half-hour meeting at the White House.

Both parties and private economists agree that if Washington does not raise the debt ceiling by early August, the economy could slip back into recession.

The White House and Congress are seeking common ground on a budget deal that would trim 10-year deficits by as much as $4 trillion. Obama has urged lawmakers to strive for that number, but some officials on Friday said they believed that a smaller, $2 trillion deal appeared more realistic.

The larger package would require new tax revenues and significant spending reductions in large government benefit programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

But liberal Democrats whose votes will be needed to balance GOP defections and get a deal passed recoiled over the possibility that Obama would endorse cuts to Medicare or Social Security. For example, the administration and lawmakers are looking at less generous adjustments for inflation, which would reduce future Social Security payments.

“I’m a Democrat. I got elected to Congress to protect Social Security and Medicare, not dismantle them,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. “Yes, we do need entitlement reform, but we need to do this thoughtfully, not come to a deal in a weekend.”

Republicans played down media reports suggesting that Boehner was willing to entertain the possibility of higher tax revenues as part of a “grand bargain” that included cuts to benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare.

“Conservatives are just not going to vote for a tax increase on this economy,” Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., said, reflecting a common view among his GOP colleagues. “It’s just not going to happen.”

On health care, negotiators have been closing in on cuts of about $200 billion over 10 years, about equally divided between Medicare and Medicaid, with most of the burden falling on individual industries such as hospitals, drug manufacturers and nursing homes.

One Social Security proposal on the negotiating table would lower annual cost-of-living increases, reducing the retirement benefits for older Americans over the long term.

___

Online:

Obama address: www.whitehouse.gov

GOP address: http://www.youtube.com/RepublicanConference

WASHINGTON – The United States on Saturday recognized the Republic of South Sudan, the world’s newest nation, as a sovereign and independent state.

President Barack Obama said in a statement that, “This historic achievement is a tribute, above all, to the generations of southern Sudanese who struggled for this day.”

South Sudan became independent after civil wars that spanned more than 50 years. Millions of people died in the conflicts as the black African tribes from the south battled the mainly Arab north for independence. The warring sides reached a peace deal in 2005.

The country’s flag was officially raised for the first time over Juba, South Sudan’s capital, on Saturday after the speaker of the legislature made a formal proclamation of independence from Sudan..

Obama said the people of South Sudan and Sudan “must recognize that they will be more secure and prosperous if they move beyond a bitter past and resolve differences peacefully.”

“Lasting peace will only be realized if all sides fulfill their responsibilities,” he said.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. will remain a “steadfast partner” as South Sudan seeks to build a free, democratic and inclusive society.

“The strong ties between our peoples go back many decades, and we are committed to continuing to build on the partnership we have already established in the years ahead,” she said.

Clinton commended the government of Sudan on its decision to be the first to recognize South Sudan’s independence.

WASHINGTON – Immersed in an intense struggle to cut the national debt, President Barack Obama faces a dilemma that will stay with him even if he succeeds in striking a grand deal with Congress: convincing Americans that the entire effort will do anything to create desperately needed jobs.

Obama ties deficit reduction to jobs, on the basis that trying to balance the nation’s books will promote economic stability and give businesses more confidence to hire. But that’s a tough sell to the millions of Americans out of work right now. And the communications problem just got harder.

The latest snapshot of the economy, out Friday, was a body blow that showed employers added a meager 18,000 jobs in June. The leaders of the country, meanwhile, are consumed with negotiating a major debt-reduction deal built upon cutting spending and raising taxes. It is not directly aimed at boosting jobs.

Obama’s challenge is to link all this in meaningful terms and to get faster results. At stake are the country’s economic recovery and his re-election chances.

The debt is the urgent problem for Obama and a divided Congress because they have no choice. Reaching a deal has become the key to winning Republican support for raising the nation’s debt limit, a politically noxious vote that Congress must take by Aug. 2 to keep the nation from risking default for the first time ever.

“There’s no question that this is a complex, almost impenetrable issue,” said David Axelrod, a longtime Obama adviser and now a senior strategist to the president’s re-election campaign. “It’s not just the issue of the potential default, but it’s the larger issue of what he’s trying to get at, the opportunity of trying to do something big about the deficits and the debt. Big things are at stake, but they’re hard to penetrate, so the process of dealing with them is painstaking.”

Republicans, too, face the challenge of explaining and defending how cutting debt will create jobs in the short term. They won control of the House last year in large part because of voter anxiety about government spending and jobs. But it is Obama who bears the largest burden, as any president does.

In addressing the dismal jobs report, Obama made plain he knows what the country is thinking.

“The debate here in Washington’s been dominated by issues of debt limit,” Obama said. “But what matters most to Americans, and what matters to me most as president in the wake of the worst downturn in our lifetimes, is getting our economy on a sounder footing so the American people can have the security they deserve.”

As an imperative unto itself, deficit reduction is embraced by all parties as vital for stabilizing the nation and shrinking the debt passed on to the next generations. And a failure to extend the nation’s borrowing limit could cause a kind of enormous economic breakdown that would only worsen the employment picture.

Now under deadline pressure, Obama and congressional leaders of both parties were to hold a rare weekend negotiation session on Sunday on a debt-cutting package that remains far from certain. It could cut the deficit by roughly $4 trillion over 10 years or so, which even by Washington spending standards would be considered a big deal.

Yet it is joblessness itself that cuts to the heart of the American struggle. Obama said people “pour their guts out” when they write him letters about it.

So he is pushing jobs ideas distinct from the debt talks. The president is prodding Congress to pass three pending trade deals, create construction jobs by repairing the nation’s infrastructure, extend a payroll tax cut that could keep money in people’s pockets, and make it easier for entrepreneurs to get patents.

But the debt discussion is taking up Washington’s bandwidth. And not everyone is so sure it will help speed job creation.

“Washington seems tone deaf,” said Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a sector of the economy Obama has been actively promoting. “The metric for President Obama and congressional leaders must now be the number of jobs we create, rather than the amount of deficit reduction we see.”

The White House says the priority is both the deficit and jobs and that people understand that.

A Pew Research Center poll in June found that more people favored cutting the deficit than spending to help the recovery. That mood varied widely, though, by political constituency. Independents, who will be key to Obama’s bid for a second term, favored deficit cutting over economic spending by 54 percent to 39 percent.

“The key is making sure that you’re communicating the importance to the future of the country of dealing with our deficit, without slipping into inside-the-Beltway lingo,” said Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s communications director. “If communicated incorrectly, it can feel removed from day-to-day life. On the other hand, there’s an element of common sense to why this is important that I think people in the country get that sometimes eludes folks in this town.”

The debt limit remains an obscurity to people. An Associated Press-GfK poll in June found more Americans opposed raising it than supported that idea.

Obama has tried to make the case that calamity awaits without action by Congress.

“I want everybody to understand that this is a jobs issue,” he pleaded in a news conference last week. “This is not an abstraction.”

The struggle has drawn Obama again into a reality of his job: time-eating negotiations with Congress on matters that resonate little with voters. After a bruising midterm election season last year, he conceded that meeting his White House responsibilities cost him some connection with the people.

The president has since made a point to get out of town more regularly. Not this month, though. He is expected to keep meeting with congressional leaders at the White House until a deal can be reached, just as he did, day after day and night after night, earlier this year on a budget deal that prevented a government shutdown.

Irrespective of the jobs element, Obama stands to gain if he emerges with a package that genuinely shrinks the debt in a way most Americans think is fair.

“What’s fundamentally at stake here are economic issues. And barring any surprises, that’s what the election will be about,” said Robert Shapiro, a Columbia University professor who studies public opinion. “Getting out in front is something that would play well publicly, if things fare well. Taking the lead on the economy is probably a very good use of his time.”

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration’s furious efforts to relaunch stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks this summer are going nowhere, and a looming U.N. confrontation could further set back prospects for a negotiated settlement any time soon.

Despite attempts to get the parties back to the table based on parameters that President Barack Obama outlined in a May speech, U.S. and other officials say neither side appears willing to commit to new discussions.

Senior officials from the international group of Mideast peacemakers — the U.S., the U.N., the European Union and Russia — planned to meet Monday in Washington. The goal is to revive the process by increasing pressure on the two sides to return to talks.

The mediators “will come together and will compare notes about where we are and plot a course forward,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Friday.

Yet repeated visits to Israel and the West Bank last month by U.S. envoys have produced no tangible results. That’s been the case, too, in recent talks in Washington between U.S. officials and their Israeli and Palestinian counterparts.

This past week, the new U.S. special Mideast peace envoy, David Hale, and White House adviser Dennis Ross pressed the chief Palestinian peace negotiator on one of the biggest points of contention, a Palestinian plan to win U.N. recognition as an independent state.

Israel and the U.S. support an eventually independent Palestine but oppose the attempt to establish one without negotiation with the Jewish state.

In a sign of the intractability of the decades-long deadlock, negotiator Saeb Erekat said immediately after Wednesday’s meeting that the Palestinians were more determined than ever to win recognition when the U.N. General Assembly meets in September. Erekat said those opposing the Palestinians need to “rethink their position.”

The measure probably will pass, providing the Palestinians with increased diplomatic power, even if independence still will need the council’s approval. The U.S. would surely veto any such resolution.

One U.S. official privately described the overall atmosphere surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian peace process as gloomy. A second termed it depressing. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential meetings.

The deadlock had split the United States and its allies about how to restart the talks. Until last week, the U.S. had resisted European calls for the meeting Monday, believing there was nothing new to discuss, officials said.

The U.S. concluded that it wasn’t worth continuing to fight the meeting despite the poor prospects for success, officials said.

Little of substance is expected.

The principals are Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. They plan to a working dinner and then issue a written statement.

The U.S. and the Europeans want direct Israeli-Palestinian talks to resume before the Palestinians bring their independence case to the United Nations.

“We are facing concerns about September, proposals to do things in September that we think are not only not helpful but that could be detrimental to our ability to get parties back to the table,” Nuland said.

She said it makes sense to “talk about the diplomacy that all of us have been having with the parties and see what we can do to work together to try to push them back to the table.”

The Palestinians have sent officials to lobby governments around the world for support; Israel is engaged in a determined counter-effort.

The Palestinians might be persuaded to withdraw the draft at the last minute. But with the peace process essentially frozen for the past two years, Washington has struggled to offer an alternative path.

The Obama administration hasn’t even been able to get Israel to stop settlement building in areas the Palestinians hope to include in their state.

The U.S. is desperately trying to convince both sides that it is in their interest to begin negotiations quickly. Hale and Ross have held a series of meetings with Israeli, Palestinian, Arab and European officials over the past several weeks.

Still, it’s anyone’s guess when the Israelis and Palestinians might sit down together again, let alone hash out questions ranging from borders to security arrangements.

The Israelis are still fuming over Obama’s speech May 19. The president said new negotiations should use territorial boundaries that existed before the 1967 Mideast war as a starting point, with the sides swapping some territory to account for population shifts and security concerns.

By endorsing what had long been a Palestinian goal as a basis for the talks, Obama upset Israel, which has maintained that all boundaries should be subject to negotiation.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is looking for a concession from the Palestinians, such as an explicit statement that they will recognize Israel as a Jewish state, before entering talks, according to diplomats.

The Palestinians have embraced Obama’s speech and suggested they may drop their absolute demand for a halt to Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem as a condition for returning to negotiations. But they have pressed ahead with their drive for U.N. recognition, which could give them new forums to criticize Israel.

Complicating matters is a unity deal between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, which controls the West Bank, and the militant Hamas movement that controls Gaza.

Netanyahu has rejected any talks with a Palestinian government including Hamas, which Israel and the U.S. brand a terrorist organization. Abbas has shown an apparent willingness to delay the formation of a unity government with Hamas, but once it happens it will likely jeopardize the process.

KABUL, Afghanistan – The U.S. and its allies are within reach of defeating al-Qaida after killing Osama bin Laden and gaining new insights about the terrorist group’s other leading figures, new U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Saturday.

The former CIA director offered an upbeat assessment about the prospects for ending al-Qaida’s threat as he spoke with reporters flying with him on his first visit to Afghanistan since taking over as Pentagon chief July 1.

In the aftermath of the May 2 raid that killed bin Laden in Pakistan, the U.S. has determined that eliminating “somewhere around 10 to 20 key leaders” of al-Qaida would cripple the network, Panetta said. Those leaders are in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and North Africa, he added.

“We’re within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaida,” Panetta said, addressing reporters for the first time since succeeding Robert Gates as defense secretary.

“The key is that, having gotten bin Laden, we’ve now identified some of the key leadership within al-Qaida, both in Pakistan as well as in Yemen and other areas,” he said.

“If we can be successful at going after them, I think we can really undermine their ability to do any kind of planning, to be able to conduct any kind of attack” on the United States. “That’s why I think it’s within reach. Is it going to take some more work? You bet it is. But I think it’s within reach,” Panetta said.

He said the 10 to 20 top terrorist figures now the focus of U.S. efforts include Ayman al-Zawahri, the designator successor to bin Laden as al-Qaida’s leader.

Panetta said the U.S. believes al-Zawahri is living in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of western Pakistan.

The only other name he mentioned was Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born Muslim cleric living in Yemen. The U.S. has put him on a kill-or-capture list.

“Now is the moment, following what happened with bin Laden, to put maximum pressure on them because I do believe that if we continue this effort we can really cripple al-Qaida as a major threat” to America, he said.

Al-Qaida’s attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, triggered the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Taliban government that had sheltered bin Laden. But in the years since, the Taliban has reasserted itself and al-Qaida has managed to operate from havens in neighboring Pakistan.

Al-Qaida affiliates have emerged in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere. That’s led many in the U.S. to argue for a shift from fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan to targeting al-Qaida leaders in Pakistan and other places.

Asked whether he thought Pakistani authorities knew that bin Laden had been living in their country, Panetta said, “Suspicions, but no smoking gun.” The Pakistani government says it did not know bin Laden’s whereabouts when Navy SEALs attacked his compound not far from Islamabad.

While in Kabul, the Afghan capital, Panetta planned to meet with U.S. troops and their commanders, including Army Gen. David Petraeus. He will leave his post as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan this month to succeed Panetta at the CIA. Marine Gen. John R. Allen will replace Petraeus.

A central topic of their discussion is likely to be President Barack Obama’s decision on June 22 to withdraw 10,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan this year and 23,000 more by September 2012. The drawdown is to begin this month, but not all details have been worked out.

Panetta said he also intended to meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Karzai’s mercurial character and frequent public criticisms of the U.S.-led international military coalition have soured his relations with many U.S. officials, including the current U.S. ambassador. Karl Eikenberry.

Eikenberry is handing off that post this month to Ryan Crocker, a veteran diplomat and former U.S, ambassador to Iraq who was coaxed out of retirement. Crocker reopened the U.S. Embassy in Kabul after the 2001 toppling of the Taliban

Panetta said he believes he and President Barack Obama’s “whole new team” of U.S. leaders in Kabul have a good understanding of Karzai.

“Hopefully, it can be the beginning of a much better relationship than what we’ve had over the last few years,” he said.

On a lighter note, he said he has gotten a feel for his new job as defense secretary. He compared it to his official aircraft, a towering military version of the Boeing 747.

“It’s big, it’s complicated, it’s filled with sophisticated technology, it’s bumpy, but in the end it’s the best in the world.”

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Robert Burns is on Twitter (at)robertburnsAP.

WASHINGTON – A debt-busting deal on the scale that President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner are seeking all but guarantees that people on Medicare would feel at least some of the pain.

Low-income people on Medicaid wouldn’t escape totally, either. If a deal ultimately leads to overhauling taxes, workers and their families could be on the hook also, facing potential limits on the tax-free status of job-based health insurance.

Health care is a main ingredient on both the spending and tax sides of the elusive agreement that Obama and Boehner, R-Ohio, are trying to reach.

The president has scheduled a meeting Sunday with congressional leaders to keep pushing for a compromise that would reduce future deficits in exchange for lifting the $14.3 trillion cap on the national debt. Action is needed so the government can keep paying its bills beyond Aug. 2.

No decisions have been made. With Congress politically polarized and skittish about next year’s elections, it’s unclear whether there’s any combination of Democratic and Republican votes to pass major deficit reduction that cuts benefit programs and raises revenue.

“This is a Rubik’s cube that we haven’t quite worked out yet,” Boehner said.

But many of the health care options that negotiators are considering have been available for months. Proposals have come from the Obama administration, congressional advisers and bipartisan groups, such as Obama’s debt commission.

For Medicare, possibilities include higher premiums for upper-income retirees and new copayments and deductibles that affect all but the poor. For example, seniors do not currently face a copayment for home care. That might change if there’s a deal.

“It’s difficult to imagine a $4 trillion-plus budget package that doesn’t include significant measures affecting beneficiaries,” said economist Robert Reischauer, one of two public trustees who help oversee Medicare and Social Security finances.

Obama’s health care law already cut about $500 billion from projected payments to providers, and some experts say there’s not much fat left there.

“It might mean more individual responsibility or a restriction of choices,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., a member of a small bipartisan group that has been dealing with spending and taxes. An across-the-board increase in monthly premiums seems unlikely, Warner noted.

Still, the bigger a deficit-reduction deal, the more likely it is that older people will take a hit.

“We are particularly concerned that a broader deal could include cuts to Social Security benefits and higher costs for people in Medicare,” said David Certner, AARP’s legislative director.

Although Social Security previously had been considered untouchable, one measure under discussion would bring in close to $200 billion through a tweak that reduces benefits and increases the amount collected from payroll taxes.

A major proposal that would affect Medicare beneficiaries calls for changing the current cost-sharing rules, a hodgepodge of varying copayments and deductibles.

Older people would have to shoulder more of the expense of routine care. Under one version of the proposal, all but the poor would have to pay at least $550 of their annual medical bills.

The idea is to make people think twice before they schedule that test or exam that probably doesn’t add a whole lot of information to what a doctor already knows.

But they would get a new benefit from the change. For the first time, Medicare would have an annual limit on out-of-pocket spending, protection against a catastrophic illness.

Further cuts to providers, including drug companies, hospitals, home health agencies and nursing homes also are possible. One proposal calls for seeking billions in rebates from drug companies for medications used by 9 million people covered under both Medicare and Medicaid.

Advocates for the poor are concerned about possible cuts to Medicaid, a federal-state partnership that covers low-income children and parents, the disabled, and many nursing home residents.

The administration has proposed replacing an assortment of formulas for the federal share of the program with a single rate for each state. Officials say that could save $50 billion to $100 billion over 10 years, much of it from reduced administrative costs.

Governors are highly suspicious. They see a cut lurking behind the technicalities. Most of the governors believe the rate talk is budget-speak for dramatic cuts, said Washington state Gov. Christine Gregoire, a Democrat who heads the National Governors Association.

Still to be fleshed out is how a debt deal would affect the tax deductibility of job-based health care for workers and their families. The details might be left for Congress to work out later.

So far, Democratic lawmakers don’t see much that they can support from the information dribbling out of the budget negotiations.

The explosion in federal debt was caused by the recession, the George W. Bush-era tax cuts, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not by seniors or low-income Medicaid recipients, said Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif.

“I would not vote for something like that,” Becerra said of what he’s heard so far. “At this stage, unless we learn otherwise, House Democrats are pretty clear we should not balance the deficit on the backs of seniors, Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.”

WASHINGTON – Intent on delaying a new policy allowing gays to serve openly in the armed forces, the House voted Friday to prohibit military chaplains from performing same-sex marriages on the nation’s bases regardless of state law.

On a 236-184 vote, the House attached the measure to the defense spending bill, one of several steps the Republican-controlled chamber has taken this year to delay President Barack Obama’s new policy. Pentagon leaders have said they see no roadblocks to ending the 17-year ban, and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is likely to certify the change for midsummer after military training ends.

Still, opposition remains strong in the House.

Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., sponsor of the amendment, said he wanted to ensure that “America’s military bases are not used to advance a narrow social agenda.”

The measure would block funds to train the Chaplain Corps on the new policy. Huelskamp said the intent was to prevent chaplains from performing same-sex marriages, especially on Navy bases.

“What will happen to chaplains who decline to officiate over same-sex ceremonies?” Huelskamp asked. “The directive states that chaplains `may’ perform same-sex civil marriage ceremonies. I fear that chaplains who refuse to perform these ceremonies may find themselves under attack and their careers threatened.”

Last month, New York became the sixth state, joining Iowa, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts, to legalize gay marriage along with the District of Columbia.

Separately, a federal appeals court in California this week ordered the U.S. government to immediately cease enforcing the ban on openly gay members of the military.

Opponents of the amendment argued that more than a million members of the military have been trained on the new standard and Pentagon leaders see no adverse impact on the force.

Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., said the measure simply tries to delay implementation of the law. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., one of several openly gay members of Congress, said it was “an offense to the military to second guess their training for chaplains.”

The vote’s practical effect is unclear. The ban is likely to be lifted before Congress completes the defense spending bill for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.

The overall House bill must be reconciled with a still-to-be completed Senate version.

In a statement, Alexander Nicholson, executive director of Servicemembers United, said, “fringe lawmakers in the House are continuing to desperately try to slow down or undo a settled issue. Given that the majority of the American people, the military and our senior defense leaders support this policy change, these votes will be a stain on the legacies of those who cast them in the long run.”

Servicemembers United is the nation’s largest organization of gay and lesbian troops and veterans.

WASHINGTON – The top U.S. military officer is traveling to China this weekend just as a multinational Navy exposition wraps up in neighboring Brunei with a drill in the hotly contested South China Sea.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, left Friday and is expected to arrive in China on Sunday to begin four days of meetings with Chinese military officials and visits to military units in Beijing and along the eastern coast.

His visit is part of an effort to ease frosty relations with Beijing after a series of setbacks in recent years, including U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, repeated incidents of cyberattacks emanating from China and concerns about that nation’s growing military buildup.

But Mullen’s arrival will coincide with what Pentagon officials called a low-level, routine communications drill about six miles off the coast of Brunei in the southern edge of the vast South China Sea.

China regards the entire South China Sea and island groups within it as its own and interprets international law as giving it the right to police foreign naval activity there. The U.S. insists that its Navy has a right to transit the area and collect surveillance data and has supported multilateral negotiations to resolve the differences.

On Friday, Mullen spokesman Capt. John Kirby called the drill a “freedom of navigation exercise in international waters” and said it “poses no threat to any nation in the region and shouldn’t be taken that way.”

The naval exposition, known as BRIDEX2011, is taking place in Brunei and wraps up Saturday with a fleet review and what’s called a “passing exercise.” During that drill, ships practice communications with each other as they pass, and in some cases they will do brief exchanges of staff or aircraft. The USS Preble, a Navy destroyer, is slated to participate in the drill.

China is participating in the Brunei exposition, along with a number of other nations, including India, Thailand, Indonesia, New Zealand, Japan and Australia.

Activity in the South China Sea is a politically volatile issue, with China, Vietnam and the Philippines trading barbs over their overlapping territorial claims.

It sparked a tense exchange last month as China chafed at a U.S. Senate resolution criticizing Beijing’s use of force in recent incidents between Chinese vessels and those of other nations, including Vietnam and the Philippines.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the U.S. resolution “doesn’t hold water” and said the dispute should be resolved only by those nations directly involved.

Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton drew China’s wrath when she told a regional conference that the U.S. had a “national interest” in seeing territorial disputes in the South China Sea resolved through a “collaborative diplomatic process by all claimants.”

Military relations with China, however, were frozen when the weapons sale to Taiwan was announced. Taiwan is a self-governing island that China claims as its own territory and that the U.S. is committed to arming.

A thaw began when Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ traveled to Beijing in January, followed by a productive visit to Washington shortly afterward by President Hu Jintao.

In May, a Chinese delegation led by Gen. Chen Bingde, Mullen’s counterpart, came to Washington for meetings, then visited a number of military facilities, including Navy and Air Force bases. During that visit — the first of its kind in seven years — Chen invited Mullen for a similar tour through China.