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Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to affect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.

Dems Ready Reconciliation Bill

President will post online "comprehensive" legislative proposal 72 hours before bipartisan health care summit. NYT: "'“It will be a reconciliation bill,' one Democratic aide said. 'If Republicans don’t come with any substantial offers, this is what we would do.'"

Politico reports full Dem leadership is behind a simple majority Senate "budget reconciliation" strategy: "President Obama, House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid are preparing to begin the reconciliation process after next week’s bipartisan White House health care summit ... Democratic leaders are considering a $200 billion reconciliation bill that includes more affordability subsidies, the union-tweaked Cadillac tax and filling in the gap in seniors’ drug coverage, which would be paid for primarily by additional Medicare cuts and an increase in Medicare payroll taxes above those in the Senate bill, an insider said. Still, Democratic sources stress that neither Pelosi nor Reid know if they have the votes to pass a reconciliation bill."

Bayh expresses openness to reconciliation. HuffPost: "In a Thursday interview with NPR, the Indiana Democrat ... said that he would be comfortable using reconciliation. But only if it was clear that no Republican votes ... were forthcoming."

18 Senators now have signed letter supporting public option to be included in any reconciliation bill, reports TPMDC.

The Treatment's Jonathan Cohn skeptical of public option effort: "Here's how one Senate leadership aide put it to me on Thursday ... 'Despite the flurry of press reports, nothing has changed over the last couple of days, except that maybe there are less votes for the public option that there were a few months ago.'"

House Minority Leader Boehner cites forthcoming Dem deal to attack summit. The Hill quotes: "We don’t need a six-hour infomercial for the latest Democratic backroom deal."

House Minority Whip Cantor will attend. The Plum Line: "The number two in the House GOP leadership has now become the second Republican leader — after Mike Enzi — to make it official that he’s attending."

NYT's Paul Krugman notes the massive Wellpoint rate hike is evidence of an "insurance death spiral": "...what WellPoint claims is that it has been forced to raise premiums because of 'challenging economic times': cash-strapped Californians have been dropping their policies or shifting into less-comprehensive plans ... And the result, says the company, is a drastically worsening risk pool: in effect, a death spiral ... What would work? By all means, let’s ban discrimination on the basis of medical history — but we also have to keep healthy people in the risk pool, which means requiring that people purchase insurance. This, in turn, requires substantial aid to lower-income Americans so that they can afford coverage ... something very much like the health reform bills that have already passed both the House and the Senate."

Insufficient federal aid forcing states to consider painful Medicaid cuts. NYT: "Because they are temporarily barred from reducing eligibility, states have been left to cut 'optional benefits,' like dental and vision care, and reduce payments to doctors and other health care providers. In some states, governors are trying to avoid the deepest cuts by pushing for increases in tobacco taxes or new levies on hospitals and doctors, but many of those proposals are running into election-year trouble in conservative legislatures.

Dodd Plans To Introduce Financial Reform Bill Next Week, Details Murky

W. Post reports Dodd to back Treas. Sec.-led council to regulate systemic risk: "It remains unresolved how much power that council would wield. But granting a Cabinet member a measure of regulatory authority would mark a significant departure from the current system, in which independent supervisors are granted autonomy and do not serve at the pleasure of the president." WSJ reports no endorsement yet from GOP Sen. Bob Corker.

WSJ also reports no deal yet on consumer protection, but talks renew with GOP Sen. Richard Shelby: "Lawmakers haven't reached agreement on how to best enforce consumer protections. Aides to Mr. Dodd and Sen. Richard Shelby (R., Ala.) have resumed discussions on the issue after talks broke down two weeks ago. Lawmakers are also split over whether to collect funds from the industry before or after the collapse of a financial company, to help pay for the cleanup."

Politico reports Sen. Shelby will introduce separate legislation: "Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) plans to unveil a new draft bill next week and has set the first week in March as the target date for committee review. The panel’s top Republican, Richard Shelby of Alabama, plans to bring his own bill to that meeting.

Newsweek reports that Henry Paulson's memoir blasts Republicans for their response to the financial crisis: "Meetings with Senate Republicans were 'a complete waste of time for us, when time was more precious than anything' (page 275). Ideas that Republicans do add are 'unformed,' like Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor's plan to replace TARP with an insurance program. In a rare moment of sarcasm, Paulson goes off on the minority Whip: 'I got a better idea. I'm going to go with Eric Cantor's insurance program. That's the idea to save the day' (page 285)."

Credit card reforms kick in Monday. McClatchy: "Instead of arbitrary rate hikes, exorbitant fees and murky calculations of interest charges, card companies must now be more transparent in establishing and disclosing the terms of their offerings, and, as a result, more prudent in the way they manage credit risk."

TARP funds steered to homeowner help. The Hill: "President Barack Obama on Friday will direct $1.5 billion from the $700 billion financial bailout to help boost the hardest hit housing markets in the country ... The money would be directed to state housing agencies for programs aimed at helping unemployed homeowners stay in their homes and to support borrowers who owe more on their homes than the current value.

President Creates Debt Commission

President signs executive order while jabbing liberals and conservatives. NYT quotes: "There are some on the left who believe that this issue can be deferred. There are some on the right who won’t enter into serious discussions about deficits without preconditions. But those who preach fiscal discipline have to be willing to take the hard steps necessary to achieve it.”

Besides chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, members yet to be named. NYT: "The commission will have 10 Democrats and 8 Republicans. In addition to the Republicans’ six picks, it will include six chosen by Democratic leaders and six by Mr. Obama. Besides Mr. Simpson and Mr. Bowles, Mr. Obama will name another Republican and three more Democrats."

Republicans won't boycott. W. Post: "...Republican leaders reluctantly consented Thursday to join Democrats on a bipartisan commission to address the government's budget problems. But they continued to reject any solution that involves higher taxes, and analysts in both parties said the effort faces a dauntingly poisoned political atmosphere."

Bowles-Simpson backer Jonathan Chait readily concedes deficit cutting is "a political and ideological question, not an uncontestable truth.": [But] this point of view is so widespread among elites, including the news media, that they fail to recognize it as a point of view at all."

"Left and Right Fire at Alan Simpson" reports WSJ: "In a blog post, Roger Hickey of the liberal Campaign for America’s Future termed Simpson’s appointment a 'very bad sign.' As a senator, Simpson 'hated defenders of Social Security and Medicare so much that he tried… to attack and intimidate AARP [a seniors advocacy group], holding hearings that could have affected the senior groups tax status,' Hickey wrote ... The conservative Americans for Tax Reform was even tougher, arguing that Simpson in past budget negotiations has been fooled by Democratic promises of spending cuts that later failed to materialize."

GOP Leadership Aims To Block Jobs Bill

Wonk Room's Pat Garofalo slaps Senate GOP leaders for obstructionism following lobbyist session: "...as Roll Call reported, the Senate Republican leadership is trying to persuade members to simply block the legislation. And this push comes after the GOP spent an afternoon huddled with more than 100 lobbyists, trying to figure out how to react to Reid’s bill ... this is not the first time that Republicans have organized a pow-wow with lobbyists in order to devise a strategy and gin up support for killing a significant Democratic initiative..."

Dem Sen. Chuck Schumer says no GOPer has signed on yet. The Hill: "'I don’t think anyone has committed to voting for the package, but there are a number of people who say they are interested in looking at it,' said Schumer ... Schumer also did not say if the entire Democratic Conference would vote on Monday to call up the legislation..."

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