The administration had hoped enactment of a domestic cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions would send a strong signal to its negotiating partners, and enable it to strike a global-warming deal that's acceptable to both houses of Congress.

Officials are eager to avoid repeating the experiences of the Clinton administration -- which backed the Kyoto pact but never submitted it for ratification to the Senate after the chamber in 1997 passed a resolution stating it would only sign a deal that included commitments to cut emissions levels from developing countries like China and India.

The White House is in a real bind. On one hand, it can't really come up with a coherent negotiating position without concrete emissions targets. And if negotiators in Copenhagen fail to reach any substantive agreement, Congress will probably be more reluctant to move cap-and-trade legislation next year, right before the mid-term elections. The House in June narrowly passed a bill (HR 2454) that would limit emissions at 17 percent below current levels in 2020, 42 percent in 2030 and 83 percent in 2050.

At a business forum in the Black Sea city of Sochi, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin praised Obama's decision to cancel plans to deploy interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic "correct and brave," then pressed for U.S. trade concessions -- particularly the repeal of the so-called Jackson-Vanik amendment to a 1974 trade bill (PL 93-618) that links exports to human rights. The measure -- a long-running source of friction in Washington-Moscow relations that's named for its sponsors, former Sen. Henry Jackson, D-Wash. and Rep. Charles Vanik, D-Ohio, -- was enacted to pressure the Soviet Union to liberalize Jewish emigration.

The Bush missile plan had been viewed as a threat by the Russians. Officials there hope Obama's turnabout is part of a larger thaw in relations between the countries that they can turn to their economic advantage.

All without committing much money.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced her department would award $25 million in grants to states and health care systems to test new patient safety and medical liability measures and review existing state laws that discourage malpractice suits, by channeling claims through screening panels or out-of-court mediation.

At a White House briefing, Sebelius echoed the administration's line, by saying she didn't think malpractice suits were really driving health costs off the rails -- as some conservatives in Congress claim. But she allowed that the threat of litigation was chilling professionals in specialties like obstetrics and neurosurgery, by forcing them to order more diagnostic tests and take other potentially costly precautions.

The EPA on Wednesday said it would reverse a Bush administration policy and propose new national smog standards by December to ensure that the benchmarks are scientifically sound and protect public health.

The action comes on the heels of Tuesday's unveiling of new mileage and tailpipe emission standards for cars and trucks and amounts to a rejection of 2008 EPA decision to tighten air pollution standards for smog -- also known as ground-level ozone -- to 75 parts per billion from the old standard of 84 ppb.

But there were several important political statements embedded in the several hundred-page proposal.

The first is that even more sweeping regulations addressing global warming are on the way. Within weeks, the EPA is expected to issue an "endangerment finding" that would trigger a requirement for the federal government to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act (PL 101-549) -- even without new legislation. This wouldn't just cover emissions from "mobile sources" like cars and trucks, but from power plants, factories and other large facilities. That puts pressure on the Senate to begin moving a climate change bill and protect its favored industries, or watch from the sidelines while the EPA writes new rules.

A report issued late last week by the Brookings Institution projects that the national poverty rate will continue to climb because of the recession, peaking at 14.4 percent in 2011 or 2012 — up from 12.5 percent in 2007 — as more people are thrown out of work. That means another 8 million people could be thrown into poverty, in addition to the 37 million people who were poor in 2007.

Don’t look to Brookings for any “light at the end of the tunnel” rhetoric. “This recession will cast a long shadow on those at the bottom of the ladder — a group that was not doing well before the recession arrived and which will be disproportionately affected long after it has ended,” the report stated.

The president has a health care rally in Minneapolis Saturday, and our colleague Emily Cadei reports state Republicans are ready.

Rep. John Kline plans to offer a "prebuttal" to the president at a 10:30 a.m. press conference. And the Republican Party of Minnesota is spending $25,000 buy local TV ads urging the president to take time developing a common-sense health care reform plan, instead of rushing a partisan plan through the Congress.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama plans to use the rally to reiterate key points from Wednesday night's speech to a joint session of Congress. And there's more to come. The president will hold another health care rally on Sept. 17 at the University of Maryland in suburban College Park, Md. and is likely to discuss the issue at the AFL-CIO convention on Sept. 15 in Pittsburgh, and at a fundraiser for Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., that night in Philadelphia

Local TV stations who've lost money during the recession must be quietly hoping this debate will drag on.

Obama will appear at Federal Hall, on Wall Street, to discuss the need for new rules governing the trading of financial derivatives and new structures that protect consumers by approving mortgage products and imposing new disclosure rules. He'll also likely repeat his pitch to give the Federal Reserve the power to regulate systemic risk, a proposal that's aroused substantial ire from Fed critics in Congress.

Press secretary Robert Gibbs on Friday said Obama was using the occasion to remind Americans how close the economy came to the abyss, and to sell a series of steps "to ensure what happened a year ago won't happen again." He declined to say who'll be in the audience at the site, where George Washington took the oath of office as the first president and where the first Congress, Supreme Court and executive branch offices were located.

So Boehner did what any congressional leader does in that position: He faced the music, clung to his talking points, and never admitted he was embarrassed. Even though he certainly looked embarrassed.

After a lengthy delay caused by some drawn-out House votes, Boehner walked into the press conference and cited his litany of policy objections to President Obama’s health care speech last night. If it had been any other week, the reporters might have asked him some policy questions. But not the day after Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., disrupted Obama’s speech, shouting “You lie!” when Obama claimed the health care bill wouldn’t extend coverage to illegal immigrants.

The panel that oversees another big and controversial government initiative — the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) — says the taxpayers probably won’t get a lot of their auto bailout money back, and no one can say for sure that that’s a failure because the Treasury Department was so unclear about what it was trying to achieve in propping up the nation’s failing automakers.

That’s a bit of a problem, given that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has been spending so much time arguing that the federal government is making an overall profit off of the TARP program.

According to the latest report from the Congressional Oversight Panel, which was set up to monitor the bailout program, about $23 billion in loans probably will have “much lower recoveries” than expected — out of the $81 billion the taxpayers are expected to pay for the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler — and about $5.4 billion in loans to the old Chrysler company probably won’t be recovered at all, out of the $14.3 billion Treasury is spending on that company alone.

During a 20-minute question and answer period with 32 students on Tuesday before his national back to school address at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., President Obama took a query from a student who identified himself as Sean.

Why, Sean asked from what appeared to be a prepared question, does the United States lack universal health care when 36 other countries have such a system?

The White House until now had adhered to the policies of previous administrations and kept visitor logs secret. That antagonized good government types, who've long suspected that lobbyists and former government officials wield outsize influence helping formulate policies. The matter reached a crescendo during President George W. Bush's first term, when environmentalists and watchdog groups unsuccessfully tried to gain access to the records of an energy task force chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney.

"For the first time in history, records of White House visitors will be made available to the public on an ongoing basis," President Obama said in a statement. "We will achieve our goal of making this administration the most open and transparent administration in history not only by opening the doors of the White House to more Americans, but by shining a light on the business conducted inside. Americans have a right to know whose voices are being heard in the policymaking process."

The administration said each month it will release online records detailing visits from the previous three to four months. It will withhold a small group of appointments deemed confidential for national security reasons, as well as confidential visits from figures such as possible Supreme Court nominees.

CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan called the decision "an important step in restoring transparency and accountability to our government."

The group had sued after the administrations of George W. Bush and Obama denied Freedom of Information Act requests for a series of records. Among other things, CREW was seeking details of visits to the Obama White House by health care and coal industry executives to determine the degree of their influence on health care and energy legislative proposals.

And no, he’s not happy about it.

In a question-and-answer session after his speech on the stimulus at the Brookings Institution this morning, Biden revealed a bit of irritation with Congress for writing the law in a way that gives the governors a large say in how the money is spent. Biden said he would have preferred to design it more like the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, created by the 1994 crime bill he co-sponsored in the Senate, in which the mayors could apply for the funds directly — making it easier for local officials to pressure the mayors directly to address their biggest needs.

Obama will travel to Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va. on Sept. 8 and deliver an address that will be aired on C-Span and the White House web site, whitehouse.gov. The White House says the message is intended to stimulate a discussion about persisting and succeeding in school. In a recent letter to school principals, Education Secretary Arne Duncan provided more details, stating, "The president will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning. He will also call for a shared responsibility and commitment on the part of students, parents and educators to ensure that every child in every school receives the best education possible so they can compete in the global economy for good jobs and live rewarding and productive lives as American citizens."

Sounds pretty innocuous. But the Education Department's decision to distribute lesson plans to accompany the address and essentially require students to watch the speech is sparking an outcry from commentators and officials on the political right, who accuse the president of staging a political rally disguised as a civics lesson.

Not singing it, but at this rate, that could be next.

On a conference call with reporters this afternoon, Alexander, the mild-mannered Senate Republican Conference chairman from Tennessee, warned Democrats that the nation would not sit still if they try to pass their health care bill through the reconciliation process, which would allow them to bypass a filibuster and approve the overhaul without any Republican support. If one party tried to rewrite the health care system on its own, Alexander said, “there would be a minor revolution in this country.”