Hoping to pull together the needed Democratic support to get health care reform through the House of Representatives, President Barack Obama urged members to look at the results of New York's special congressional election for inspiration.

The president, according to a senior Democratic aide who attended his discussion, told House Dems that newly-elected Rep. Bill Owens proved that members could run on a platform of comprehensive reform and still be elected to Congress.

"He said to look at Bill Owens," the aide recalled. "There is a House seat that's been in Republican hands for more than one hundred years. But Owens didn't run away from reform. He campaigned on it. And he still got elected."

The remarks were part of a broader political push on the president's behalf to buck up recalcitrant Democrats nervous about backing health care legislation. Obama also told members that they shouldn't expect simply not to be attacked by Republicans if they voted against the reform package.

"He certainly talked about the politics and he said that the Republicans want us to fail and no one should feel if they as a Democrat helped us to fail that they would be [free of their attacks]," said Rep. Henry Waxman, chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee.

House aides said they believe the president helped persuade a handful of fence-sitting Democrats to support the bill. Though they cautioned that the whip count was fluid, especially as the House considers an amendment to tighten restrictions on the coverage of abortion by insurers.

One strategist off the Hill, who is plugged into the debate, proclaimed at 1:15 p.m. that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did now have the votes for passage. The number of yeas, the source said, was roughly 220 - just two more than is needed for passage.

"The caveat," the source said, "is that Pelosi isn't going to let it get higher than that. She's whipping enough to win the vote but going to release the rest of the caucus to vote no."

In a final push to get health care reform through the House of Representatives, President Barack Obama warned lawmakers on Saturday that a vote against the legislation would not immunize them from Republican attacks.

The president, according multiple attendees, played the role of political prognosticator during his roughly 30 minute address before Democratic caucus members on Capitol Hill. Addressing, implicitly, those conservative Democrats who are worried about voting for a nearly trillion dollar health care overhaul, he insisted that they would not be safe from partisan attacks even if they opposed the bill.

"He certainly talked about the politics and he said that the Republicans want us to fail and no one should feel if they as a Democrat helped us to fail that they would be [free of their attacks]," said Rep. Henry Waxman, chair of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee.

"None of you can expect the Republicans not to go after you if you vote against this bill," Waxman continued, channeling the president. "They want this bill to go down for their own partisan reasons."

Another high-ranking Democratic Hill staffer briefed on the meeting put it this way: "Obama's main message was that the GOP won't go any easier on you if you vote against the bill. It's a tough vote, yes, but they're going to take heat either way."

While politics took up much of the discussion, policy took up very little. Obama, according to several lawmakers, did not talk about the public option or the controversial amendment to make abortion restrictions much tighter. He discussed, primarily, the momentous nature of the vote and the need for the party to be on history's right side.

"This is the moment," said Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) That this is what we all went into politics for, that this was a historic moment, that seven presidents have tried to pass health care and haven't done it, and that this was a moment like civil rights or Social Security or Medicare."

In particular, Obama singled out Rep. John Dingell -- the longest serving member of the House -- who, on Saturday, presided over chamber for first time since the 1965 House vote to pass Medicare.

"He thanked all the chairs [of the committees involved in developing the health care bill]," said Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y). "He thanked all leadership and he mentioned specifically John Dingell."

By the meeting's end, the vast majority of the attending lawmakers seemed confident of health care reform's passage -- though certainly there is the potential for flare-ups as the abortion amendment introduced by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) comes to consideration.

"We are feeling pretty optimistic that we can defeat this," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a primary opponent of the amendment.

"Democracy is not pretty but it works," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), another opponent of the Stupak amendment. "I was here in 1993 when the ship went down," she said, referencing the Clinton administration's failed attempt to pass health reform. "This thing isn't going down."

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) criticized conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, on Friday, for drawing comparisons between President Obama and Adolph Hitler. And, in a sequence that seems rare in modern Republican politics, the Virginia Republican seems eager to publicize his rebuke.

Cantor's office sent over a write-up of the congressman's interview with Bloomberg News, in which he praised Limbaugh as a voice of the conservative movement but condemned his use of Nazi imagery and analogies to chastise the president.

"Do I condone the mention of Hitler in any discussion about politics?" Cantor said. "No, I don't, because obviously that is something that conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful."

Speaking out against the Hitler comparisons -- even when they are made by conservative voices -- would seem like an utterly non-controversial posture for a Republican leader (and a Jewish one at that) to make. But Cantor and his colleagues in the House have, to this point, walked a fine line in rebuking Rush -- fretting about the pushback they might receive from his listeners. The Congressman is the lone Jewish Republican in the House. And aides stress that he has consistently lamented any use of Hitler or Nazism to make a political point.

The issue, nevertheless, emerged once again on Thursday after a tea party protest that Cantor attended featured several signs equating health care reform with the Holocaust. Democrats jumped on the imagery -- alongside Cantor's presence -- by insisting that the extremist elements of the party had taken over the event.

On a more emotional and honest level, decorated writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel tweeted (yes, he's on Twitter) that the signs at the Capital Hill protests were an "indecent and disgusting" form of "political hatred."

Cantor, of course, can't be held responsible for the actions of a widely attended health care protest. But clearly, both he and his advisers saw the need to demonstrate some distance.

"The Republican Party in its roots is a party of inclusion and we ought to be promoting that and making sure that voices are heard," Cantor said in his interview with Bloomberg Television.

One of the next great conservative hopes seems likely to be a California Republican who has already taken on Senate Republicans, has ties to birthers and tea-partiers and is virtually unknown by the mainstream media establishment.

Chuck DeVore, a Republican member of the California State Assembly, is positioning himself as the ideologically pure alternative to Republican Carly Fiorina in the party's effort to take Sen. Barbara Boxer's Senate seat in 2010. This past week, he got the seal of approval from the party base: an endorsement by the Senate Conservative Fund and the explicit backing of conservative darling Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). Among the right-wing netroots, his race against Fiorina has been elevated to top-tier importance: alongside Marco Rubio's primary bid against Florida Governor Charlie Crist.

But who, exactly, is he? Not many people beyond Republican devotees and California political watchers know the guy. The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza -- who is more plugged into local politics than most D.C.-based reporters -- copped to not really having a clue about DeVore just last week.

The assemblyman does check off the majority of boxes on the conservative purity test. He has a full pro-life record, opposed the stimulus package and the bank bailout, and has never met a tax cut he didn't like. His most famous moment in office may, in fact, have occurred when he resigned from his position as Chief Republican Whip out of anger over a tax increase agreed to by California's Republican leadership.

"We need to shake up the Republican Party," DeMint said, when announcing his endorsement. "He's gonna join the country, and not the club."

In addition to fiscal discipline, however, DeVore's closet includes some weird and potentially damaging associations. As pointed out by a Republican source, the assemblyman is connected to noted birther Floyd Brown. Brown, who is famous for creating the 1988 Willie Horton ad and, more recently, pushing an effort to impeach Barack Obama, was supported by DeVore in his efforts to attack Democratic candidates in the 2008 presidential primary.

"Poll after poll shows it works," DeVore said of Brown's deeply controversial product.

All of which is not to say that associations like these -- and his relative obscurity -- will trip DeVore up in a primary race. Indeed, he likely relishes his current frame as a man of the conservative fringe.

Eight Senate Republicans announced on Thursday that they would be backing Fiorina's bid for the nomination. The next day, the assemblyman put out a web advertisement that contained a direct dig at one of Fiorina's endorsers -- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) -- for his ghastly efforts at working with a Democrat on climate change legislation.

With the House of Representatives set to vote on health care reform during a session on Saturday, the White House announced its support for the legislation on Friday and even singled out the public option as a laudable aspect of the reform effort

Below is the statement of administration policy issued by the Executive Office of the President:

The Administration strongly supports House passage of H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, a bill that represents a critical milestone in the effort to reform our health care system. H.R. 3962 will provide needed insurance reforms for Americans with insurance, expand coverage for those who do not have insurance, lower costs for families and businesses, and begin to reduce the Nation's deficit. It meets the President's criteria for health insurance reform: it assures that all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care that is there when they need it and does so without adding a dime to the deficit.

This legislation is the product of unprecedented cooperation and countless hours of hard work by Members of the House of Representatives who share the President's conviction that the Nation cannot wait another year for health insurance reform. They have forged a strong consensus that represents an historic step forward.

The House legislation includes critical reforms to the insurance industry, so that Americans will no longer have to worry that they will be denied coverage, or that their coverage will be dropped or watered down when they need it most. It covers virtually all Americans and ensures that all Americans with health insurance are protected against high out-of-pocket spending. The Administration is pleased that the bill includes a public health insurance option offered in an exchange. As the President has said throughout this process, a public option that competes with private insurers is one of the best ways to ensure the choice and competition that are so badly needed in today's market.

The House bill also includes important health care delivery system reforms, and would extend the solvency of Medicare's hospital insurance trust fund. Its Medicare and Medicaid policies promote integrated care, quality care, and primary care. It invests in research on the most effective treatments, prevention, and the health care workforce. It also makes critical improvements for Medicare beneficiaries including closing the coverage gap in the Medicare drug benefit known as the donut hole. In addition, it provides new options for long-term care. Moreover, the House bill is fully paid for and will help to reduce the deficit in the long-term.

This bill provides the necessary health reforms that the Administration seeks - affordable, quality care within reach for the tens of millions of Americans who do not have it today, and stability and security for the hundreds of millions who do. The Administration appreciates the hard work of the House on this bill, which contributes to transforming the health care system. The Administration looks forward to continuing to work with the Congress on this legislation and urges quick action on this landmark bill.

Few, if anyone, doubted that the president would end up supporting the House of Representative's final health care package. The question has always been how much would the president go to bat for a public plan and how concerned was the administration that including such a provision would doom legislation's passage.

Democratic strategists are interpreting Friday's statement as one of the surest recent signs that the public plan has the president's endorsement. But obviously, questions remain. And they'll begin with Saturday's vote. As of now, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says leadership is close (but not quite there) to getting the 218 votes needed to get the bill passed. Once that hurdle is skipped, the spotlight will shift back to the Senate, where a public plan (with an opt-out clause for states) still does not have the 60 votes needed to cut off a Republican filibuster.

The only thing more frightening than being caught in an angry mob of health care protesters is revealing to that angry mob that you work for the Huffington Post.

On Thursday, I ventured down to Capitol Hill with a professional death wish. I was going to mingle with a group of tea partiers to get a sense of what, exactly, keeps their clocks ticking. For two-and-a-half hours, I got the Glenn Beck treatment -- accused of, among other things, subverting freedom, working for a communist propaganda outlet, and having a soulless devotion to slander and scandal.

One woman picked up her items and moved away -- taking her family with her -- after I settled down on the Capitol's front lawn. At another point a man, who seemed generally concerned about my safety, whispered in my ear: "You're a sheep amidst the wolves in this crowd, son."

And yet, a funny thing happened on the way to Rep. Michelle Bachmann's (R-Minn.) "Super Bowl of freedom." I was adopted -- in a way -- by a group of tea baggers. Sure, the politics they spoke seemed dripped in abject paranoia. But there was, at the very least, a sense of mutual respect. How else, after all, should one feel about people so devoted to a cause that they would skip work and travel hundreds of miles for a milquetoast protest?

Getting to that point, however, involved some harrowing moments. I was admittedly too frightened to reveal my profession to one group of people after a man, pointing to the Capitol building, insisted that the crowd would "tar and feather these members" if they "voted for this health care bill." I did strike up a conversation with a physician named David Marx who quickly relayed that he was not related in any way to Karl. But the conversation fell flat after that.

Walking closer to the Capitol building, I happened upon a group of interesting signs: one pictured the president next to Hitler, another had Obama's face below the words "No Marx, No Mao," and another announced the forthcoming "Attack of the Astroturf."

"So," I asked a woman standing nearby, "who does Obama resemble more: Hitler or Mao?"

I was bracing myself for some enthusiastic dissertation on 'All the President's Communists.' What I got, instead, were daggers. My reporter's notebook was conspicuously open.

"The media is filled with liberal hate," she said. "Take it someplace else." Her husband, clearly not paying attention, started talking, only to be told to "zip it" by his wife. After I didn't move from my spot of grass, they did, bringing their two children and signage with them. Zero for two.

I walked closer to the Capitol as Bachmann was now whipping the crowd into a freedom-loving frenzy. By the time I settled down, however, Jon Voight had taken the stage.

"This country is showing signs of his failed stimulus programs," the famed actor said. "His only success in his one-year term as president is taking America apart, piece-by-piece. Could it be, he has had 20 years of subconscious programming by Reverend Wright to damn America?"

"THAT'S RIGHT!" screamed the protesters.

I turned to a woman next to me. "So Obama has been indoctrinated?" I asked. "Oh yeah," she replied. "He sat in that church every Sunday. It's called Black Liberation Theology. Look it up."

To my left, an Asian-American woman named Sarah noticed that I was writing down the response. "Are you a journalist?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Who do you work for?"

"The Huffington Post."

"No way."

"Yes way."

She demanded a business card, which I produced.

"Oh. You're a Jew," she declared after reading my name.

I was a bit taken aback. "Yep." A few seconds passed with only silence. "I'm a Jew too," she added. Relief.

By that point, however, news of my professional affiliations had spread through the adjacent crowd. Expecting to be treated like a strand of H1N1, I found, however, that most people were simply curious. They all wanted my business card. A woman named Carolyne from Pennsylvania explained why she was there. "You can't fix stupid but you can vote them out." A Vietnam veteran named James pulled me close. "I have four words for you," he said (gulp). "Emperor has no clothes, sir."

"That's five words," I responded, jokingly before thanking him for his service.

"Drop the sir," he responded. "The point is I'm offering Obama clothes. I'm praying every night that he'll take the clothes."

At that juncture, conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin took the stage and on cue, the crowd produced copies of his book -- "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto" -- and pointed them up to the bright mid-day sun.

"Mark Levin is my mentor," said Sarah, the Asian-American Jew. "I listen to him for three hours every day, 6 to 9 a.m."

There was no apparent recollection that we had just discussed Obama's own supposed indoctrination. A sermon-like back-and-forth ensued between audience and speaker.

"Having ruined the banking system," Levin screamed.
"That's right!" the crowd yelled back.

"The auto industry and the housing market"
"That's right!"

"Energy production"
"That's right!"

"Education system"
"That's right!"

"Having robed the social security trust fund"
"That's right!"

"The Medicare trust fund"
"That's right!"

"The highway trust fund"
"That's right!"

"Now they are telling us to trust them"
"NOOOOO!!!"

"Now they have their sights on the mother of all entitlements," Levin concluded. "They want to control you. They want to control your children, your parents, your doctors, your nurses... You in the press, are you getting all this down?"

At least six sets of eyes turned to me. "He's talking to you," said a slyly smiling Carolyne. I was, indeed, taking notes. And continued to do so as the event progressed. There was some additional freak show weirdness. One woman asked whether I'd rather have a single apple pie to divide between a bunch of people, or apples, sugar, cinnamon and crust to make my own apple pie. I think it was a metaphor for the job market. Later a guy would walk by me with Lipton tea bags tied around each ear demanding that the government take its hands off his stethoscope.

But, by and large, the conversation was genial. Was health care reform unconstitutional? You bet. Did it promote the rationing of care for the elderly? Of course. Were Republicans in Congress doing a good job promoting alternatives? Not really. Was Sarah Palin the answer? Too soon to tell. Was the government the enemy? Without a doubt.

By 2:30 p.m. I had had enough. Hungry, I trekked through the crowd and into the actual Capitol building -- which protesters had earlier pledged they would storm. On my way in, I crossed paths with personnel from the Capitol physician's office -- an entity that, as The Washington Post's Dana Milbank would put it "could, quite accurately, be labeled government-run health care." Some protesters, apparently, had been trampled or sickened and required treatment. One person had had a heart attack. The government was needed.

Hours after 13 soldiers were shot to death in a massacre at Fort Hood, a Republican candidate for Congress (and former Fort Hood commander) is warning that terrorists are infiltrating the military and brainwashing U.S. soldiers.

Lt. Col. Allen West (Ret), who is running for Congress in Florida's 22nd District, released a statement on Friday morning that heavily insinuated that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- the soldier responsible for the Fort Hood killings -- was a Muslim extremist.

"This enemy preys on downtrodden soldiers and teaches them extremism will lift them up," West said, in a statement titled "Terrorists Are infiltrating Military". "Our soldiers are being brainwashed."

While admitting that more information was needed about Thursday's tragedy, West nevertheless called for a renewed effort on the part of the military to prevent Islamic extremism from penetrating its ranks.

"The most importantly thing right now is that we objectively assess this situation," West said. "But it is imperative that we take steps to make sure this does not happen again."

In releasing his statement, West appears to be the first politician to claim a link between Malik Hasan's shooting rampage and Islamic extremism or terrorism. Reports on the incident aren't 100 percent clear. But they generally suggest that Malik Hasan was acting out of intense stress over a pending deployment to Iraq. That said, authorities have not ruled out that Hasan was acting on the behest of an unidentified radical group. Hasan was a lifelong Muslim who worked at a psychiatric hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.

A veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, West ran and lost a race for the 22nd Districts House seat in 2008. In 2003, he was forced to resign from the army, just shy of 20 years of service, after soldiers under his supervision (and he himself) were accused of assaulting an Iraqi detainee. West claimed his actions (which included firing a 9mm pistol close to the man's head) helped prevent a planned ambush by Iraqi insurgents.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced new legislation on Friday that should, he claims, solve the phenomenon of massive and failing financial institutions holding the nation's economy captive.

It's all of two pages long.

The Vermont Democrat-Socialist unveiled the "Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act" -- which he billed as a succinct remedy for tackling financial risk and avoiding a repeat of the taxpayer-funded bailouts that occurred just one year ago.

The act is straightforward. It would require that 90 days after its passage, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner "submit to Congress a list of all commercial banks, investment banks, hedge funds and insurance companies that the Secretary believes are too big to fail."

Subsequently, one year after the law is enacted, the Treasury Secretary would be required to "break up entities included on the Too Big To Fail List, so that their failure would no longer cause a catastrophic effect on the United States or global economy without a taxpayer bailout."

The rest of the details -- like, say, how to do that, how the broken-up entities would be structured, and what authorities would be granted for preempting institutions from becoming too big to fail in the first place -- would be filled in during the legislative process, Sanders's office said. The goal is simply to immediately preempt a duplication of last year's economic meltdown.

"Here is an example of amazing irony," the senator said in a video shot by Brave New Films accompanying the legislation's release. "Three out of the four largest financial institutions in the country who led us to this financial disaster are now bigger then they were before the collapse. So we have got to break these guys up so we don't see a recurrence of what we saw a year ago."

WATCH:

The brevity of the Sanders bill is, in some ways, its selling point. The Senator notes in the video that, "unlike the health care bill, which is 1,990 pages, this is all of two pages." An easier contrast, however, is between the senator's efforts to tackle Too Big To Fail and those being pursued by others in Congress and the White House.

Last week, Geithner, in cahoots with House Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank, released a proposal to not only structure a new system for bailing out failing institutions but also for improved regulations over those institutions. Clocking in at 253 pages, the plan would empower regulators to essentially shut down banks or firms that threatened the stability of the economy. Should a bailout be necessary, other financial firms and not the taxpayers would have to front the bill.

READ THE SANDERS BILL:

tbtf -

Arab and Muslim political groups are bracing themselves for a wave of anger and attacks after news broke on Thursday that the primary suspect behind the shooting deaths of twelve soldiers at Fort Hood had a Arabic and/or Muslim-sounding name.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a native of Virginia, is believed to have been responsible for opening fire on his fellow soldiers at the U.S. Army base.

It was not immediately clear whether Nidal Malik Hasan was, in fact, a Muslim, though reports surfaced that he had converted to the religion late in life. Late on Thursday a family member revealed that he had been a life-long Muslim.

By then, nevertheless, Arab-American and Muslim-American advocacy organizations were already readying themselves for a backlash. The Arab-American Institute said it received one threatening call from an unidentified male shortly after reports surfaced that the name of the alleged shooting suspect was Nidal Malik Hasan. The group, which condemned the massacre, said it was expecting more.

"We like to give people the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to being a reactionary thing," said Leigh O'Neill, director of government relations for the organization. "But there is a lot of hate out there and hate is hate. It is bipartisan and doesn't have geographic balance. We feel terrible for the victims today. And I wish people will understand when crime is crime and terrorism is terrorism."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil liberties organization for American Muslims, was, meanwhile, working fast to get ahead of a potential rise in anti-Muslim sentiment. The group was set to host a press conference at 8 p.m. on Thursday evening to condemn the attacks and "urge calm" in the aftermath of the shooting.

Ibrahim Hooper, the group's communications director, told the Huffington Post that they had not, as of 6:30 p.m. received any threatening calls, emails or other communiqués. The organization, he said, would be announcing publicly any such threats as they occurred - in hopes of dissuading people from making them in the first place.

At this juncture, it was believed that Nidal Malik Hasan was suffering from intense stress over a pending re-deployment overseas. He had been serving, ironically, in the Department of Psychology at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the Bethesda Naval Facility in Bethesda, Maryland. He is believed to be 39 or 40 years old.

Hours after Michael Steele warned moderate Republicans that they woud be targeted if they didn't support conservative principles, the RNC Chairman called discussion of intra-party feuding "stupid" and insisted that the GOP would lose if "we play politics amongst our own."

In a conference call with grassroots Republicans leaders to thank them for the work they did in winning two governor's seats in the 2009 election, Steele laid out a blueprint for expanding on the early success. The RNC chair stressed the need to avoid having Republicans target one another. "It is the first way to screw yourself," he said.

Reflecting on the lost House seat in New York's 23rd District, Steele insisted that the process had been flawed.

"We had some ugly hiccups and NY 23 was one of those hiccups," he said. "I was brought into it after the fact, when a nominee who did not fit that district was chosen for purely political reasons."

By not having a truly democratic primary process in place, Steele proclaimed, the GOP was left in a state of dissatisfied infighting over the chosen nominee. Going forward he pledged to host more "fair and open" primaries.

"The consequence of [not having that in place] is we are mired in a very stupid discussion about conservatives versus moderates and conservatives versus Republicans," he said. "When we play politics amongst our own, we lose."

Hours earlier, Steele was sounding a noticeably different tune -- all but calling on the party to ideologically purge itself of moderates. In an interview with ABC News, the RNC chairman warned those candidates "who live in moderate to slightly liberal districts" that they would have "to walk a little bit carefully" when it came time to vote.'

"[Y]ou do not want to put yourself in a position where you're crossing that line on conservative principles, fiscal principles, because we'll come after you," Steele said.

Those remarks were a nod, of sorts, to the growing political persuasion of the tea party movement -- which forced Dede Scozzafava, the Republican candidate in NY-23, to drop her bid for the House seat. But even those comments resembled a flip-flop of sorts for the RNC chair. Steele had, as the Huffington Post's Jason Linkin's noted, defended GOP moderate Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) just one day earlier after the Maine Republican came under attack by Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty for lacking the proper conservative bona fides.

Well before then, as the Washington Post's Ezra Klein recalled, Steele was pitching himself as the man who would bring the Republican Party to a more modern and moderate place.

"Do folks remember when Steele was the "anonymous Senate candidate" badmouthing George W. Bush to a room of reporters?" Klein writes. "The guy who was trying to come off as a moderate because, as he said, 'If this race is about Republicans and Democrats, I lose.' Whatever happened to that guy?"

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va) scoffed and downplayed the significance of two major health-care related interest groups endorsing Democratic authored legislation.

Calling the decision of AARP -- a senior citizens lobby -- to back health care reform "puzzling," Cantor insisted that it wouldn't affect a single Republicans vote

"I don't think the endorsement of a Washington-based group is going to sway members as much as what they are hearing from their constituents at home," the Virginia Republican told a crowd of reporters. "It is really puzzling as to why the AARP will endorse a bill that the CBO indicates will take almost 500 billion dollars out of Medicare. It is just, to me, something I can't quite understand why they would do that. I suspect that they will get a lot of push back from their members."

The House Minority Whip also teed off a bit on the American Medical Association -- a major doctor advocacy organization -- which also offered its support for reform legislation

"As far as the AMA endorsement is concerned," Cantor said. "I frankly do not think the AMA represents the wishes of the physicians in the communities throughout the ground in this country."

The remarks by the Virginia Republican position both he and the broader Republican Party against two of the most respected names in health care interest group industry. They also provide a reflection of just how far the debate over Democratic-produced reform has evolved. It was, after all, roughly five months ago that the AMA was raising concerns about the direction of health care reform -- in the process spurring critiques from progressive lawmakers and activists.

On Thursday, by contrast, Democratic lawmakers were eagerly touting the dual endorsements as the missing catalyst for passing reform. President Barack Obama, in a surprise trip to the briefing room at the White House, offered thanks to both organizations and urged "Congress to listen to AARP, listen to the AMA, and pass this reform for hundreds of millions of Americans who will benefit from it."

The president's message, in the end, was likely directed to only Democrats on the Hill. Hours later, while briefing reporters, Cantor all but etched in stone the number zero under the Republican vote column for health care legislation.

"We have 177 votes in the House and Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi is still not at 218," he said. "She will get no help from us in passing this gargantuan trillion-dollar overhaul."

The second-ranking Republican in the United States Senate acknowledged on Thursday that he has had conversations with Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn) about the possibility of filibustering health care legislation.

Sen. Jon Kyl, (R-Ariz.) told the Huffington Post that he and Lieberman have been talking "on occasion" about the Connecticut Independent's threat to join Republicans in filibustering a bill that includes a public option for insurance coverage. Asked to provide specifics about what was discussed, Kyl laughingly balked.

"You really think I'm going to tell you what I tell him and what he tells me," he said. "I'm actually going to go talk to him in about 25 minutes," he added, before saying it likely would not be on health care related matters.

The discussions between Lieberman and the Republican whip in the Senate come at a time when Majority Leader Harry Reid is frantically looking for ways to persuade Lieberman to drop his filibuster threat. The 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee could, potentially, derail the entire health care reform process if he declines to be the 60th vote to pass cloture on a bill.

While Kyl has been reaching out to his Senate colleague, the Obama White House has not. Earlier in the week, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that the president and Lieberman have not discussed the filibuster threat since it was issued.

Additionally on Thursday, Kyl suggested that Republicans in the Senate may, in fact, introduce an alternative health care bill of their own. Though, he stressed, no decision had been made and the party may simply be content to try to change the product through amendment.

"Obviously [House Republicans] don't have the opportunity for a lot of amendments," he said. "They have to do it all in one shot because Pelosi won't give them an opportunity to amend the bill."

"Both [introducing a stand alone bill or amending the Democratic variety] are possibilities," he concluded. "And no decision has been made yet."

Striking a decidedly populist tone, Vice President Joseph Biden on Thursday reaffirmed the administration's commitment to bolstering the middle class and observed that "an awful lot of people have been stripped of their dignity" by the current recession.

Speaking at an economic panel at the progressive think tank, the Center for American Progress, Biden said the White House is not pleased by the current state of the nation's economy.

"Don't get me wrong," he said. "Don't get me wrong. We are extremely happy that the GDP grew 3.5 percent last quarter as opposed to 6-point-something percent minus GDP the day when we lowered our hands. So we are making progress. But, like I've been saying for a long time, the GDP cannot by itself loosen the middle class squeeze. It is a necessary but not full precondition to recovery."

Biden covered a host of kitchen-table concerns and his talk, to an audience of economists and reporters, seemed designed to reemphasize the administration's commitment to economic issues.

"If the economy is growing but middle-class and low-income families are falling behind, then prosperity must be accruing at the very top of the scale" the vice president said at one point. "Quite simply put, the middle class families weren't sharing and haven't been sharing in the wealth they helped create."

But Biden insisted that the administration is not interested in redistributing wealth.

"We aren't talking about income redistribution," he said. "We are talking about a fighting chance to make a decent income... it's about fairness. It is about simple fairness. It is about an equality of opportunity. At least that's what we are searching for. We are searching for that Holy Grail. How do we establish that level playing field?"

The long-winded V.P. talked for nearly half an hour before a roundtable panel discussion began. And, unlike so many of the president's other advisers, who have a slight taint of Wall Street to them, he seemed utterly at ease addressing the topic of middle-class struggle. If not for his penchant for verbal gaffes (which is, generally, overstated) Biden would seem to be the ideal spokesperson for an administration trying to rediscover its populist appeal. And it wouldn't be a complete shocker if his public appearances became more frequent going forward.

With Reporting By Julian Hattem

Twenty-five top recipients of government bailout funds spent more than $71 million on lobbying in the year since they were rescued, an extensive review of federal lobbying records by the Huffington Post reveals.

A year after taxpayers forked over $700 billion to help rescue the biggest names in banking, insurance and the automotive industry, those same institutions are using portions of the cash to influence legislation with a direct impact on taxpayers.

In all, during the last quarter of 2008 and the first three quarters of 2009, those 25 institutions spent $71,199,000 on lobbying. The list includes General Motors ($11.95 million), Citigroup ($8.915 million), Bank of America ($6.427 million), J.P. Morgan Chase ($7.735 million), Goldman Sachs ($4.38 million) and AIG ($3.47 million). Some of these companies have paid federal money back. Not all of the top bailout recipients, meanwhile, spent money on lobbying.

The amount that was spent, however, is nearly identical to the lobbying expenditures these same companies made during the year preceding the federal bailout. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, bailout recipients paid approximately $76.7 million for the services of lobbyists in 2008. All of which has sparked angry pushback from good government groups and lawmakers on the Hill, who ask whether the expenditures are appropriate after these institutions took the nation's economy to the brink of collapse.

"It creates a bizarre feedback loop where taxpayer money is being used by beneficiaries of the bailout to, in some cases, thwart taxpayer protections and even to score more taxpayer money, things that taxpayers themselves will likely find quite distasteful," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. "The question is where does it end?"

Much of the lobbying money spent by bailout recipients has been devoted to influencing legislation that has direct impact on taxpayers. Among the eight recipients who spent more than $3 million lobbying since the bailout, the most common specific items of interests included the Credit Card Holders' Bill of Rights Act, the Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2009, Credit CARD Act of 2009, the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, and the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act.

Specifically, bailed-out institution have fought efforts to give bankruptcy judges the power to renegotiate mortgages. They have worked against legislation that would lower the fees merchants are charged when their customers use credit cards. They have also worked against legislation that would put more restrictions on how they spend taxpayer funds.

"The biggest problem is that they are lobbying for more bailouts," said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Cali). "In particular they want to make sure that future bailouts do not involve votes in Congress because Wall Street is convinced that Congress is not a reliable bailout partner. They want all bailout decisions made by the executive branch because all elements of the executive were very pro-bailout throughout the process."

Officials representing bailout recipients insist that their lobbying expenditures are neither untoward nor exceptional. They stress that the Capital Purchase Program portion of the TARP -- the program in which many of the failing banks are participating -- was "forced" on those institutions by the federal government, meaning that the banks shouldn't be held to a different standard of good-governance.

"[The banks] were brought to Washington and told they were going to take this money," said Peter Garucci, a spokesman for the American Bankers Association. "It was billed, and is still regarded by Treasury, as an investment program in healthy banks as a means to spur greater lending."

Asked if spending $71 million on lobbying was a form of "greater lending," Garucci replied: "No. I wouldn't make that contention."

But Garucci, and other officials at various bailed out institutions, insist that it would be overly restrictive and perhaps unconstitutional to apply restrictions that limited or simply barred institutions relying on taxpayer money from lobbying.

"We are faced with new proposals and new ideas almost every day," said Garucci. "It is very well understood that fundamental reform of the entire financial system is under consideration. And from our perspective, we work with members from both sides of the aisle to discuss how that is going to progress."

Still, for others, it is difficult to justify institutions spending any money -- let alone $71 million -- just one year after needing a historic lifeline from the American public. That bailed-out companies could spend so much simply on influencing legislation, they argue, is reflective of how stacked the political deck truly is in favor of the financial sector. As the Service Employees International Union reported, all Wall Street institutions -- banks and insurance companies, TARP recipients and non-TARP recipients -- have spent $321 million on lobbying in the first nine months since the bailout.

"It's obscene that banks are using tax payer money to lobby against reforms that would protect consumers and the country from banks crashing the economy again," said Stephen Lerner, director of the private equity project at SEIU. "They have plenty of money for lobbying and bonuses while they cut off lending to small business and are again raising credit card interest rates."

Some unexpected results in Tuesday night's four high-profile elections raise the question of which pollsters got the races right and which got them wrong.

The races that tripped up the polling community the most were the two big ones in New York. Not a single poll had Democrat Bill Owens, who won his congressional race in New York's 23rd district, garnering more than 37 percent of the vote, according to Pollster.com. He ended up with 49 percent.

Siena Poll came close to nailing the support behind the Conservative Party's Doug Hoffman -- putting his backing at 41 percent, four points shy of his actual result. But the same pollster drastically missed Owens' backing -- putting him at 36 percent. Public Policy Polling declared "Hoffman primed for dominant victory," and it projected him winning 51 percent of the electorate, with 34 percent for Owens.

The problem, in the end, was the fluidity of the race. Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava dropped out days before the election and there was a mad dash among statistical scientists to figure out who would get her voters. As PPP wrote in a post-election blog post, its findings were "way off the mark" and "very embarrassing," likely due to the "bizarre machinations in the race..."

The next worst showing among pollsters was in New York City's mayoral race, which turned out to be way closer than projected. Every single poll over the last month showed incumbent Michael Bloomberg with an advantage of at least 11 points. Quinnipiac had 50 percent of the electorate favoring Bloomberg -- which ended up being correct -- but had his challenger, Democrat Bill Thompson, at 38 percent (eight percentage points below where he ended). Marist, meanwhile, had Bloomberg with a 15-point advantage.

In the New Jersey governor's race, some pollsters ended up missing the mark. Pre-election polls showed Republican Chris Christie up by a few points. But the overall average compiled by Pollster.com had the race tied. The end result was a four-percentage point victory (49 percent to 45 percent) for Christie, pulling the rug out from under two firms that had him losing. Monmouth/Gannett and Democracy Corps, projected incumbent Jon Corzine emerging victorious by two and five points respectively.

In the Virginia gubernatorial election, the pollsters called the winner correctly, but slightly understated his margin. The Pollster.com average heading into the election had Democrat Creigh Deeds winning 41 percent of the vote to Republican Bob McDonnell's 54.7 percent. Deeds ended up right at that 41 percent mark. But McDonnell outdid expectations, gathering 58.6 percent of the vote. Survey USA hit the nail on the head when it locked McDonnell in at 58 percent and Deeds at 40 percent in its last survey on November 2.

In the end, of course, polling is an inexact science designed to give viewers a sense of where the electorate stands at a given time and not, necessarily a pitch-perfect prediction of what the result will be. And, like in every other campaign, it will be some time before one can properly assess which pollsters had a strong (or weak) cycle in 2009.

"Yes, there are several good stories about what went right and what went wrong with yesterday's polling, including some important lessons about the value of automated polling," wrote Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com. "Some pollsters certainly did better yesterday than others. And I'm hoping to have something written and posted on that subject later today, provided that I don't get bogged down by the calls and emails from reporters wanting me to tell them, 'who was the most accurate pollster yesterday?'"