Op-Ed

As work in our nation’s capital slowly grinds to a halt because of election-year politics, several members of Congress are quietly working on bipartisan legislation that will help patients, create jobs and save lives. 

This weekend, NATO leaders gather in Chicago to tackle an agenda dominated by Afghanistan, coping with defense budget cuts and global partnerships. These are key issues, yet alliance leaders cannot afford to ignore enlargement. The goal should be for this summit to advance, not set back, the candidacies of Macedonia, Montenegro, Georgia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

This weekend’s NATO summit in Chicago is cause for quiet celebration of the world’s most successful alliance. 

He’s the biggest sensation in the U.K. since Susan Boyle. He trounced the competition in winning the big prize on “Britain’s Got Talent.” And he accepted his £500,000 award on all fours.

Later this week in Chicago, NATO will unveil the Defense, Deterrence and Posture Review highlighting future threats to the alliance, and the operational requirements needed to respond to the evolving security challenges over the next decades.

If anyone needs more ammunition for the argument that Hillary Clinton is planning to run for president, add her silence on the issue of gay marriage as the subject monopolized the news last week.

It’s an election year, and the Senate can’t agree on how to keep the student loan interest rate from doubling on July 1 from 3.4 percent to 6.8. While both sides agree that it should be done, how to pay for it is the stumbling block. A party-line cloture vote failure has once again brought calls for changing the Senate’s rules by majority vote at the beginning of the next Congress, bypassing the two-thirds cloture requirement if there’s opposition.

Virtually every poll in the last two weeks — Gallup, Democracy Corps, USA Today, Rasmussen, New York Times/CBS — shows that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are in a dead heat nationally as well as in the nine battleground states. 

The electoral victory of François Hollande as president of France presents an opportunity to reflect on how far U.S.-France relations have evolved in recent years. This opportunity should also form the basis for a renewed commitment toward cooperation rather than a step backward.