The Weekend Word: Exposed

By JADA F. SMITH

Today's Times

• Despite warnings of a potentially crippling cyberattack, a group of lawmakers led by Senator John McCain has successfully weakened bipartisan legislation that the White House said was crucial to protecting computer systems responsible for much of the nation's critical infrastructure, Michael S. Schmidt reports. The changes have raised new questions about the legislation's effectiveness, but Mr. McCain says that forcing industries to comply with “government red tape” is not the answer to fighting threats.

• Complications with Mitt Romney's weekend schedule in Israel are examples of the challenges politicians face whenever American and Israeli politics intersect, Jodi Rudoren and Ashley Parker report. The trip is a critical opportunity to show statesmanship and to highlight Mr. Romney's relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, but the timing has turned out to be both auspicious and fraught.

• Throughout the election cycle, Mitt Romney's team has tried to build a low-risk campaign, resulting in an operation that is often scrambling to catch up rather than making its own news and controlling the narrative, Ashley Parker writes.

Though revenues have fallen, federal spending has been reduced as well, leading to a projected deficit of $1.2 trillion in fiscal year 2012 rather than $1.3 trillion, Jackie Calmes reports. While such reductions would have been heralded as significant not many years ago, in the post-recession era the amounts are widely seen as woefully insufficient for addressing the country's budgetary imbalance.

• President Obama used his weekly address to discuss a proposed extension on middle-class tax cuts, saying that “everyone in Washington says they agree on this.” The Senate has passed legislation already, but he says that Republicans in the House are holding the tax cuts hostage un til there is an extension for wealthy Americans as well. “You see, Republicans in Congress and their nominee for president believe that the best way to create prosperity in America is to let it trickle down from the top,” he said. “They're wrong. And I know they're wrong because we already tried it that way for most of the last decade. It didn't work.”

Happenings in Washington

• Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia's nonvoting Democratic delegate in Congress, will celebrate National Dance Day on the Mall with personalities from the television show “So You Think You Can Dance.”

• Spy artifacts from the Cold War will be on display at the Fairfax County Army Navy Club.