Administration

"After it's all over, when your insurance rates go down, then you'll vote for me in 2016," Biden tells voter.

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President Obama holds a slight lead over Mitt Romney in Florida, according to a new poll released Tuesday.

The Suffolk University/WSVN-TV Miami poll released Tuesday found Obama leading Romney 46 percent to 43 percent among likely voters. The poll's findings come as Obama takes a slight lead over Romney in a number of key battleground states.

While voters slightly favor Obama over Romney, voters are also split evenly on Obama's job performance. According to the poll, 48 percent approve of Obama's performance as president and 48 percent disapprove.

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Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) told the NRA that the Obama administration uses the race card "to stifle honest debate."

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Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has no chance of securing the GOP presidential nomination, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Friday, just one day before she won the Ames Straw Poll.

"She doesn't stand a chance to win the Republican nomination," Reid said.

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A Thursday night meeting with congressional leaders yielded no deal; Obama expects "an answer" on Friday morning.

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The president's weekly address seeks to clarify the White House's plan for acting against Gadhafi.

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Hedge funds will face a more aggressive approach from the federal government in months and years to come, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairwoman Mary Schapiro said Friday, adding that she'd like the agency to expand to meet those needs.

"I think it's necessary to regulate hedge funds," Schapiro said during an interview on the Fox Business Network. "I think they are too big of a part of the marketplace for the SEC and the federal government to not have a handle on the impact they're having on the markets, the strategies they're employing -- it's time for that to happen."

Schapiro said she wanted the funds, which have traditionally been only lightly regulated relative to other parts of the financial services sector, to have to register with the SEC, face more stringent reporting requirements, and be more transparent with their records and business practices with the SEC.

"We need information, so that to the extent they could be engaged in manipulative activity or insider trading," Schapiro said.

The SEC chairwoman also pressed her case for more funding for the financial oversight agency, which she said would have to "expand very significantly" in coming years.

"The agency is not as big as it needs to be, and we don't have all of the tools we'd like to have," she explained. "We could be multiple times larger than we are. So over the next few years, I would like to see the agency expand very significantly."

President Obama should fire Attorney General Eric Holder for appointing a special prosecutor to investigate potential CIA abuses of terrorist detainees, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) wrote Friday.

Gingrich, in an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, said that the president should dismiss Holder unless the attorney general resigns.

"In the latest skirmish in the Democratic Party's war on the CIA, Attorney General Eric Holder has failed to uphold this fundamental public trust. And for that, there should be consequences," Gingrich wrote. "If Holder and his senior team won't do the right thing and resign their positions, Obama should do the right thing and fire them."

Holder had attracted Republican ire earlier this week for appointing a special prosecutor to investigate abuses that had taken place during the Bush administration.

The White House had emphasized that although the president believes that CIA officials shouldn't face prosecution for following the advice of the prior administration's lawyers, Holder would be able to decide on the special prosecutor independently.

"In the latest skirmish in the Democratic Party's war on the CIA, Attorney General Eric Holder has failed to uphold this fundamental public trust," Gingrich said. "And for that, there should be consequences."

(Hat tip: GOP12)

The Senate FInance Committee should be able to craft a bipartisan healthcare bill, as long as they're not "overruled" or "undercut" by President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Thursday.

Grassley told Iowa reporters during a regular press call that he believes Senate Democrats could probably pass a bill using budget reconciliation rules requiring only a simple majority vote, but that bipartisanship could succeed if given time.

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) will be able to eventually reach a bipartisan agreement on a healthcare bill "if he doesn't get overruled by the leader or the president," argued Grassley, the ranking member of that committee.

"Sen. Baucus has always been talking about 70 or 80 votes," Grassley later added. "We're still going down that direction, but we could be undercut by anybody."

Both Baucus and Grassley have worked throughout August with the so-called "group of six" centrist senators on healthcare reform, though Baucus -- backed up by Senate Democratic leaders -- has imposed a September 15th deadline by which a bipartisan bill must be reached.

After then, Democrats have left the door open to using the budget reconciliation process to pass a preliminary healthcare bill, which may be a version including a public (or "government-run") option as written by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee.

Grassley said he believed Democrats could be able to pass a bill in that circumstance, but not any one he or any other Republican would support.

"I think the Democrats could pass one under a process called reconciliation," he said. "If they do that, one would pass for sure without any Republican support whatsoever, and I couldn't vote for it."

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leads an early field of potential Republican challengers to President Obama in 2012, a new poll found, though Obama maintains an early lead over all would-be GOP opponents.

30 percent of Republicans prefer Romney in an early test of the 2012 Republican primary field, according to a survey conducted earlier this month by the Clarus Research Group.

The Massachusetts conservative leads a potential field including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), according to the poll.

22 percent of Republicans prefer Huckabee, 18 percent like Palin, 15 percent want Gingrich, and four percent support Jindal, according to the poll.

Still, President Obama maintains a comfortable lead over all the Republicans tested in the poll.

Obama leads Romney 47-38, Huckabee 48-38, Gingrich 52-34, and Palin 53-34.

Of all Republican candidates, Romney fares the best with independent voters -- claiming a two point edge over the president -- while Palin fares the worst, with Obama enjoying a 15 point margin above Palin.

The poll, conducted by live telephone interviews between August 14-18, has a 3.1 percent margin of error.