Charges that President Obama and House Democrats want to authorize "death panels" in their health care overhaul evoke a debate 19 years ago in which lawmakers first took up sensitive right-to-die issues.

The catalyst then was a controversial Supreme Court case, Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, in which a 5-4 ruling upheld a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that it was acceptable to require "clear and convincing evidence" that a young woman in a persistent vegetative state would not want to remain on life support for years. The court held "that the evidence adduced at trial did not amount to clear and convincing proof of Cruzan's desire to have hydration and nutrition withdrawn."

Then as now, lawmakers who wanted to make sure people knew about their rights to execute "living wills" or other advance directives clarifying their wishes in such a situation tried to insert language in a sweeping bill dealing with Medicare and Medicaid policy. And opponents quickly charged that the effort would inject government into sensitive personal care decisions.

President Obama moved his previously scheduled remarks on the economy from a gym at Fort Myer, Va. to the Rose Garden on Friday after the Labor Department reported that unemployment fell in July for the first time since April 2008, to 9.4 percent, in another sign the recession might be easing.

Sunshine, singing birds and colorful flowers surely evoke better times ahead, and helped put an exclamation point on a jobs report that exceeded the expectations of most economists and even the White House.

Obama took a victory lap of sorts, crediting the economic stimulus package (PL 111-5) and other Democratic initiatives for bringing the nation back from the brink. And he again plugged overhauling the health system, creating green jobs and bolstering education as necessary for building a sustained recovery.

"We have a lot further to go. As far as I am concerned we will not have a true recovery as long as we are losing jobs," Obama said. The president went on to rhapsodize about Americans he's met who are facing adversity but managing to keep their faith in the country and the future.

Such lofty talk doesn't mean Obama is finished playing the blame game, however.

By all accounts, President Obama didn’t use yesterday’s White House meeting with Senate Democrats to pressure Finance Chairman Max Baucus of Montana to hurry up and finish his health care bill. And the second-ranking Democrat on the committee, John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, said this afternoon that he doesn’t think Baucus will ultimately win the votes of the three Republicans he’s negotiating with.

But Rockefeller said Obama “very skillfully handled” a discussion of the most likely scenario: that sometime in September, Baucus will have to give up and the Democrats will have to try to pass the health care bill by using budget reconciliation procedures, which only require a 51-vote majority.

At a press conference on the health care bill, Rockefeller — who is not part of the negotiations on a bipartisan bill, even though he chairs the health care subcommittee — made it clear he doesn’t think Baucus will get anything except a weaker health care bill. “You just watch as the bill diminishes in its scope and its coverage and its ferocity to try to attack the problem,” Rockefeller said of Baucus’s talks with Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, and Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming.

President Obama has gone out of his way to defer to Congress on some his biggest legislative priorities in the areas of health care, energy, education and immigration. And his detached position on the political upheaval in Iran prompted skeptics on Capitol Hill to wonder if the president was leading or allowing events to dictate a response.

Time, then, for the commander-in-chief to bring out the stick hidden under his desk and silence those questioning his resolve.

On Wednesday, Obama issued the first veto threat of his presidency, stating he would refuse to sign the House's version of the fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill (HR 2647) if it includes either of two provisions: $369 million in advanced fiscal 2011 procurement funds for the F-22 aircraft or $603 million for development and procurement of the alternative engine program for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

President Obama continues to enjoy strong public approval ratings in virtually every category, except when it comes to spending and the deficit.

And though White House strategists swear they don't fixate on day-to-day blips in public opinion, they surely are concerned that the administration's budget proposals are projected to swell the deficit above $1.8 trillion this fiscal year -- a record in dollar terms and also the biggest deficit as a percentage of the gross domestic product since the end of World War II.

So it was hardly coincidence that Obama on Tuesday took a high-profile vow of fiscal responsibility by calling for a return to statutory "pay-as-you-go" treatment for legislation. The deficit-control rules were first written into law in the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 (PL 101-508), but Republicans who controlled Congress for most of the current decade allowed them to lapse at the end of fiscal 2002, preferring to require offsets for new entitlement spending but not for tax cuts.

Friday's news that the economy shed another 345,000 jobs in May triggered one of those "good news, bad news" moments at the White House and sent critics and supporters of the economic stimulus package (PL 111-5) into heavy spin mode one more time.

The job losses were lower than had been feared, which almost qualifies as a cause for celebration for an administration increasingly intent on demonstrating that its $787 billion pump-priming of the economy is working.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who's minding the store while President Obama travels in Europe, met with Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romer and his chief economist, Jared Bernstein, then tried to sustain the administration's careful management of public expectations in remarks to reporters.

The mass pledge by health care providers today to reduce $2 trillion of spending reflects some cold political calculations by hospitals, doctors and other key players about President Obama's to reshape the U.S. medical system.

Chief among these is that Obama is likely to prevail in his efforts to expand access to public insurance and allow the government to negotiate Medicare outpatient prescription drug prices.

In speeches and policy pronouncements, Obama has successfully twinned an overhaul of the health system with the broader economic recovery. And with fortified Democratic majorities in both houses, the administration is working hard with Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and other allies to move legislation in the next two months.

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama fairly ridiculed his Republican opponent John McCain's crusade over congressional earmarks, saying the targeted spending only accounted for about $18 billion of the federal budget.

How then to explain the scene on Thursday, where President Obama proudly portrayed $17 billion worth of program terminations and reductions in his fiscal 2010 budget plan as a substantive step toward fiscal sanity?

"We can no longer afford to spend as if deficits don't matter and waste is not our problem," Obama declared. "We can no longer afford to leave the hard choices for the next budget, the next administration -- or the next generation."

President Obama’s budget hit list is out today, and it includes a notable leftover from the Bush administration’s hit list: Even Start, a family literacy program created by a former Republican chairman of the House education committee.

Like the Bush administration before it, the Obama administration says it’s time to get rid of the Even Start program, currently budgeted at $66 million a year, because it doesn’t work. “The most recent evaluation found no difference between families in the program and those not in it across 38 of 41 outcomes,” Office of Management and Budget chairman Peter Orszag notes in a blog post on the White House Web site.

It certainly doesn’t sound promising. Here’s the catch, though: According to the administration’s Terminations, Reductions and Savings volume, the “most recent evaluation” was done in 2003.

With April 15 tea party protests breaking out across the country, President Obama on Wednesday sought to reassure Americans that he's working hard to make the tax code fairer and simpler.

Fairer by eliminating tax breaks for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. And simpler by directing his economic team to recommend ways to overhaul the tax code, close loopholes and recover hundreds of billions of dollars in uncollected revenues. A panel headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker is due to report back by December.

"We'll make it easier, quicker and less expensive for you to file a return, so that April 15 is not a date that is approached with dread every year," Obama declared during a White House meeting with working families.

But some experts believe it will be quite difficult for Obama to make good on his promises, let alone convince Americans to feel better about filing their returns.