The health care overhaul effort may be sputtering in key Senate and House committees, but White House senior adviser David Axelrod told House Democrats today to focus how far Congress has already come — and on the potential for a “historic” breakthrough after the August recess to pass badly needed fixes to the health care system.

After a two-hour meeting with the House Democratic caucus, Axelrod played down the fights in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where the conservative Blue Dogs have forced changes to the bill and some liberal Democrats think their leaders have given away too much. Instead, he said the White House and congressional Democrats will be able to deliver the same message over the recess — uniting over the need to end insurance practices such as denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and limiting how much they’ll pay to cover serious illnesses.

“We’re very close to doing something historic that will give stability and security to people who have health insurance now as well as people who don’t,” Axelrod said. “And we need to go out and make an aggressive case over August. And we just talked that through.”

The Blue Dogs aren’t the only House Democrats who can derail a health care bill. This afternoon, several members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus held a press conference to complain about all the concessions Democrats have made to the Blue Dogs — and threatened to vote against the House bill if it doesn’t have a stronger government-run health plan option.

“Many of us favor a single-payer system. We have compromised,” caucus co-chair Lynn Woolsey of California said to applause from health care activists. “We can compromise no more.”

The caucus has released a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and the chairmen of the three House health care committees — signed by 57 liberal House Democrats — threatening to vote against a bill that includes the changes to the “public option” that Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry A. Waxman of California made to win the support of four of his committee’s seven Blue Dogs.

Just weeks ago, President Obama characterized a public insurance option as an almost essential component of any health care overhaul and an important tool with which to discipline insurance companies. Nevermind that a government-sponsored alternative to private health plans was already emerging as a stumbling block to serious health care overhaul. The president, at a June 23 White House press conference, said an government-run plan that isn't profit-driven, provides quality care and keeps down administrative costs simply "makes sense."

"The notion that all these insurance companies who say they're giving consumers the best possible deal, if they can't compete against a public plan as one option, with consumers making the decision what's the best deal, that defies logic, which is why I think you've seen in the polling data overwhelming support for a public plan," Obama said.

Fast forward to today. With health care talks bogged down in the House and Senate, the administration appears more receptive to fallbacks to the government-run option, including a consumer-owned "co-op" health plan that's being discussed in the Senate Finance Committee. But aides don't appear to be in a rush to learn all the messy details.

Somehow, the House got 158 Republicans — including nearly all members of the leadership — to vote for a resolution last night that declares President Obama was born in Hawaii. But it appears that the resolution wasn’t intentionally aimed at the fringe movement plaguing the Republican Party these days: the people who insist Obama isn’t actually a citizen of the United States.

Instead, aides to Democratic Rep. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii — the sponsor of the resolution — say the impact on the “birther” movement was just an amusing sideshow to a resolution that was just supposed to be a simple celebration of the 50th anniversary of Hawaii’s statehood.

“When we realized that it might stir them up, we just kind of smiled,” said Abercrombie spokesman Dave Helfert.

The resolution, adopted last night on a vote of 378-0, notes that “the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961.” To Abercrombie, who was friends with Obama’s father and knew the president when he was a toddler, any resolution celebrating Hawaii’s anniversary would naturally mention Obama because “it is a matter of great pride in Hawaii that Barack Obama is a native son,” Helfert said.

Now we know how much energy President Obama can spend on eliminating those wasteful federal programs that he expects to reduce the government’s ocean of red ink. With health care, climate change and stimulus questions all competing for his time, the answer is: not much.

In May, Obama proposed killing the Even Start family literacy program, just as President George W. Bush had tried to do. It was one of the highlights of his budget hit list. The Obama administration argued that studies show Even Start didn’t work, just as the Bush administration had claimed. The Obama team even used the same studies the Bush administration had used, which meant they were really, really out of date.

So today, the House is considering its spending bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. And guess what? Even Start survives. In fact, in its committee report on the bill, the House Appropriations Committee “strongly recommends” the $66.5 million the program would receive in the bill (the same amount it got last year).

President Obama campaigned as someone who wouldn’t use signing statements to get around provisions of new laws. But this morning, four top Democratic lawmakers accused him of doing exactly that — in a recent statement rejecting conditions on funds for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank — and warned that he might not get any more money for those institutions unless he stops.

The letter from House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank of Massachusetts, House Appropriations Chairman David R. Obey of Wisconsin, and Rep. Nita M. Lowey and Gregory W. Meeks of New York — who chair the two subcommittees that deal with international financial institutions — is a strongly worded rebuke of Obama’s continued use of the signing statements after he criticized President George W. Bush for using them to thwart the will of Congress.

Although the Obama administration has assured the lawmakers that it will comply with the funding conditions, “we request that you no longer assert the right to ignore provisions that Congress adds through the normal legislative process for funding for the international financial institutions,” the letter stated. If the lawmakers see that the administrations isn’t respecting the conditions imposed by Congress, they warned, “it will make it virtually impossible to provide further allocations for these institutions.”

When the same political party controls both the White House and Congress, oversight of the executive seems suddenly to vanish from the list of urgent congressional priorities. And that usualy increases pressure on Congress’ minority party to be more innovative in the way it pushes for oversight.

So lately, House Republicans have been making more use of what’s known as a “resolution of inquiry,” a way for the minority party to try to pry information out of the White House. Just today, in fact, the Financial Services committee approved one such request. That might look surprising coming from a Democratic House. But when you dig a little deeper into how these resolutions actually work, you realize that’s probably as far as it will go.

The resolution was sponsored by House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio, and it asks for various documents about the federal government’s aid to General Motors and Chrysler, the workings of President Obama’s auto task force, and the dealership closures both companies have announced. The closures have angered House members from both parties, but Boehner has a special stake in the issue, since GM closed a dealership in his district.

Grim news Thursday for backers of the foreclosure prevention program (PL 111-22) that the Obama administration promoted and Congress enacted in May. Midyear statistics compiled by the online marketplace RealtyTrac found a total of 1.9 million foreclosure filings were reported on more than 1.5 million properties across the country -- a 9 percent increase over the previous six months and a 15 percent jump over the first half of 2008.

The numbers were further proof that the real estate downturn hasn't ended, and that the administration's economic relief efforts have yet to tamp down a dramatic rise in default notices, auction sales and bank repossessions. The numbers were particularly disturbing because big lenders including Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Bank of America Corp. had agreed to suspend foreclosures while the administration worked out its plan to modify mortgages for troubled borrowers.

The program attempts to aid homeowners on the brink of foreclosure by helping them refinance into 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration. It changed the yearly insurance premiums that participating homeowners must pay to the FHA from 1.5 percent of the value of the mortgage to "up to 1.5 percent," essentially giving the government the flexibility to lower the premiums. And it extended through Dec. 31, 2013, an increase in deposit insurance coverage by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and National Credit Union Administration.

President Obama dropped a few hints about how he intends to lobby Congress on health care during a news conference Friday following the G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy. And if we're parsing his remarks correctly, lawmakers can expect firm prodding through the August recess, flexible timetables on a final agreement and one barnburner of a House-Senate conference.

Obama indicated he would continue to put cost on an equal footing with expanded coverage, by emphasizing that any health plan be budget neutral.

"Whatever bill is produced has to be paid for, and that creates some difficulties because people would like to get the good stuff without paying for it," Obama said.

Aides believe focusing on the dollars-and-cents aspect expands the health care debate beyond the approximately 48 million uninsured Americans, to those who have health coverage but are concerned about losing benefits during the economic downturn. The administration is wagering that economically stressed workers will appreciate a bottom-line approach that squeezes new efficiencies out of the health delivery system and doesn't reek of expensive social engineering.

Responding to a series of food-related health scares that killed several people and cost producers hundreds of millions of dollars, the Obama administration on Tuesday outlined a series of regulatory steps aimed at preventing outbreaks of E.coli, salmonella and other pathogens.

The recommendations from the Cabinet-level Food Safety Working Group are designed to dovetail with efforts in Congress to streamline and strengthen federal food regulation, which now has 15 separate agencies administering at least 30 laws addressing food-safety issues.

"Our food safety system must be updated. One in four people get sick every year due to food-borne illness, and children and the elderly are more at risk," Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said at a midday news conference during which he outlined the new steps with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.