Administration

A top labor official said Monday that President Obama and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel have indicated that they will not bring up "card check" legislation until after healthcare reform is done in Congress.

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, the expected incoming president of the influential union, pledged during a web chat on the liberal blog firedoglake that organized labor would work to pass healthcare reform in order to move onto one of its top priorities, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

"The President/and Emanuel have both said they dont intend to bring Employee Free Choice Act up until Health Insurance Reform is done," Trumka wrote on the blog. "Which gives us an additional reason to do Health Insurance Reform now!"

The remarks all but acknowledge that EFCA, one of labor's most prized legislative goals, will take a backseat to the Obama administration's most pressing priority for the meanwhile.

Obama has endorsed the union organizing bill, though he and other senior administration officials have spoken about it much less in public as centrist Democrats in the Senate have been reluctant to fully back the bill.

Republicans, for the most part, have opposed the bill as a threat to businesses.

Trumka also sent a message to allies in the White House and Congress that they expected eventual movement on EFCA, and that it could not be put off indefinitely.

"We WILL PASS EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT legislation, we will not allow our

Fear is the friend of Republican lawmakers looking to slow down or prevent healthcare reform legislation from going forward, one Democratic lawmaker asserted Monday.

"Fear is their friend," Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said in a conference call organized by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to respond to a "Seniors' Health Care Bill of Rights" released by their GOP counterpart this morning.

"The Republican Party has to take responsibility for their lies and their hypocrisy when it comes to seniors and healthcare reform," Schakowsky said. "The substance of this document uses false claims that have time and again been debunked."

The Republican National Committee's (RNC) "bill of rights" would, among other things, oppose cuts to Medicare to fund healthcare reform, preventing government involvement in end-of-life care, and "prohibit efforts to ration health care based on age."

Schakowsky accused Republicans of "doing nothing except saying 'no' and spreading lies" in the document, and accused the GOP of " carrying the water of the insurance companies, of the status quo."

"There may be Democrats who would like to see a bipartisan solution to this, but the Republicans are unwilling to compromise," she said, predicting that the House would return in September to pass legislation containing a public (or "government-run") option for consumers.

Attorney General Eric Holder will appoint a prosecutor to investigate allegations that CIA agents tortured detainees suspected of terror during interrogations, the Washington Post reported Monday.

Holder will name John Durham, a Justice Department prosecutor, to investigate whether a broader inquiry into CIA agents' tactics will be necessary, the Post reported.

President Obama had previously said that he doesn't support prosecuting CIA officials for having followed the advice of legal counsel during the Bush administration, but the White House emphasized Monday that Holder was acting independently.

"As the president has said repeatedly, he thinks that we should be looking forward, not backward," White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton told reporters following Obama at Martha's Vineyard.

"Ultimately the decisions on who is investigated and who is prosecuted are up to the attorney general," Burton added. "The president thinks that Eric Holder, who he appointed as a very independent attorney general, should make those decisions."

Also expected Monday is a report from the CIA's inspector general into potential detainee abuse.

The investigation and report come after the White House decided to take over the interrogation of high-level terrorist detainees through the National Security Agency.

The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Kit Bond (Mo.), criticized that move as a vote of no confidence in CIA Director Leon Panetta.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) signaled Monday that he may be reluctant to back a public option in healthcare reform legislation, but left the door open to other government plans that have been floated.

Warner, a centrist Democrat, laid out criteria during an interview with a Roanoke television affiliate for a bill that he could support.

"I want to make sure there are some competitive alternatives to the insurance companies," he said. "But I'm concerned that simply expanding Medicare and Medicaid without getting the financial incentives right -- it's going to again end up driving up the deficit costs."

Warner has been coy about whether he would support a public option, and, along with other recalcitrant Democrats, could even end up scuttling Democratic leaders' fallback plan of passing healthcare reform with a simple majority vote using budgetary rules.

"I don't think a single payer, government-run system ought to be the goal of healthcare reform," he said, adding that he was not eager to support any bill containing new taxes to finance the system.

The first-term Virginia senator also saved some criticism for President Obama for not having adequately communicated the stakes in the healthcare debate.

"One of the things that I've been disappointed in the president's approach is that he didn't make the case to the American people that if we do nothing, we're still headed toward a disaster," he said.

The Obama administration's move to start directly supervising interrogation of high-value terrorist detainees shows a "bizarre" lack of confidence in CIA Director Leon Panetta, Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) said Monday.

Bond, the top Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, condemned the decision by the White House to establish a new interrogation unit under the National Security Agency, first reported Monday by the Washington Post.

The jurisdictional shift would strip the CIA of oversight of such detainees, and move them more directly under White House control.

"What does the White House have against Leon Panetta?

The current H1N1 "swine flu" epidemic is unlikely to reach pandemic proportions last seen during the 1918-19 global influenza strike, a White House report concluded Monday.

A report by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology said that while the swine flu isn't as virulent as the flu of the early 20th century, the virus "poses a serious health threat to the United States," and could result in the infection of up to 30 to 50 percent of the U.S. population.

The council's report anticipates an uptick in swine flu infections this fall, and predicts between 30,000 and 90,000 deaths from the flu, concentrated amongst children and young adults.

"The fall resurgence may well occur as early as September, with the beginning of the school term,
and the peak infection may occur in mid-October," the report's executive summary said.

The council urged the Obama administration to bolster coordination between agencies to respond to a number of potential health scenarios. Among the key variables to monitor would be surveillance of flu cases, the government's response to an outbreak, and the barriers to the spread of the disease.

"The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, and Food and Drug Administration, has already made some important progress on the recommendations found in the PCAST subcommittee report and we plan to adopt others to ensure we are doing everything we can to keep Americans healthy and safe," said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

"HIN1 influenza has the potential to affect virtually every aspect of our lives, from our economy and national security to our education system," said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. "It may not be possible to stop influenza, but we can reduce the number of people who become severely ill by preparing well and acting effectively."

The White House distanced itself Monday from suggestions made by New York Gov. David Paterson (D) that President Obama would be targeted for media scrutiny because of his race.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton told reporters in Martha's Vineyard, where the president is vacationing, that the president doesn't agree with Paterson's assertion that African-American politicians are victimized by "orchestrated" campaigns by the media.

"In terms of media coverage and the media, he thinks there are a lot of people who disagree with him in the media, a lot of people who agree with him in the media, and some who just play it straight," Burton told reporters. "Whether or not race plays into that...the president doesn't think that's the case."

"We're not in the post-racial period," Paterson told the New York Daily News last week. "The reality is the next victim on the list -- and you can see it coming -- is President Barack Obama, who did nothing more than trying to reform a health care system."

Paterson also suggested that Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D) has been the victim of a racially biased media.

Burton said that the White House hadn't been following Paterson's uphill reelection bid in New York with much "granularity."

The White House press office might be forgiven for taking a few victory laps Sunday afternoon after its official Twitter feed surpassed 1 million followers.

The feed reacted pretty casually to crossing the threshold, tweeting Sunday:

A million followers

It's still possible for President Obama to work with Republicans to achieve bipartisan healthcare reform, one liberal House lawmaker suggested Sunday.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), who earlier this week said he's willing to "push the reset button" on healthcare legislation, urged the president to "make haste slowly" on reform, while staying "immovable" on introducing a plan to encourage competition with the private sector.

"I think that there is the possibility that the president can work with some Republicans," Cleaver said Sunday on CNN. "And I think he works with the ones who are interested in trying to get something accomplished."

Cleaver said that while Congress still needs to make progress on advancing reform, the process should be slow enough to try to ameliorate centrist Democrats and some Republicans' concerns.

"I think we've got to move slow enough to bring them along," he explained. "But I think we don't move so slowly that the American public says, well, it's over; we've lost another battle."

"I think now is the time, but I think we make haste slowly," Cleaver added.

Cleaver reserved praise for the president, though.

"He's not doing anything wrong. In fact, he should be praised for being audacious enough to bring this contentious issue to the public," Cleaver said. "And I think that he has done a yeoman's job in trying to articulate what this health care bill will do."

Americans are foolish to believe rhetoric about so-called "death panels" determining end-of-life care being in healthcare reform legislation before Congress, one Democratic lawmaker said Sunday.

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) scoffed at concerns about end-of-life provision in healthcare bills under consideration, and defended the public (or "government-run") option, a centerpiece of the proposed law, as "hardly a radical idea."

"Some people have foolishly fallen for the myth that a 'death panel' would somehow decide when you must die, or that the new plan would provide coverage for illegal aliens," Slaughter wrote in an op-ed for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. "None of that is true."

Some Republicans, most notably former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, had described end-of-life care provisions in the bills as establishing "death panels" to mandate rationed care for elderly Americans.

Slaughter is a strong proponent of the public option, but said it is "too early" to pledge to vote against any bill that doesn't contain the plan, backed by the Obama administration and liberals in Congress.

Some of Slaughter's colleagues, including many more liberal members of the New York congressional delegation, have threatened to jilt President Obama on healthcare if he backs a bill lacking a public plan.

Still, the veteran lawmaker from western New York defended the public option as a mainstream -- and already effective -- solution for healthcare problems in the U.S.

"t