DXPG

Total Pageviews

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Campaigns\' Rapid Response Efforts Get a Little More Rapid

By JENNIFER PRESTON

Mitt Romney's campaign began a new Twitter account, @RomneyResponse, and Tumblr blog on Wednesday to quickly point out online what it views as false information promoted by President Obama and his campaign team, along with inaccuracies made in reports from mainstream news media organizations.

“We are committed to using these tools to communicate accurate information to our supporters and to reporters quickly,” said Ryan Williams, a spokesman for Mr. Romney's presidential campaign.

As part of the campaign's rapid response operation, the Twitter account got to work shortly after its first post at 7 a.m. Eastern, raising questions about Mr. Obama's visit and speech in Ohio.

The Twitter account posted an update about the airfield where the president was landing, with a link to the campaign's new Tumblr page, noting that 700 jobs at the base are threatened under proposed defense cuts.

Updates on the Twitter account also tried to refute a newly released report that Mr. Obama cited in his speech, which concluded that Mr. Romney's tax proposal “would provide large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle and/or lower-income taxpayers.”

As the campaign works on putting together a detailed response, the Twitter account said that Mr. Obama incorrectly referred to an analysis of Mr. Romney's tax proposal as being independent when one of its authors is a for mer White House staff member.

In the world of real-time responses, Lis Smith, who leads the rapid response team for the Obama campaign, wrote to Mr. Williams on Twitter, saying one of the other authors had worked in the Bush administration.

Then, Danny Kanner, the deputy director of Mr. Obama's rapid response team, jumped in, posting on his Twitter account that the Romney campaign had cited the Tax Policy Center in an attack on Gov. Rick Perry of Texas last November.

The two campaigns have been aggressively using Twitter to woo supporters, deliver messages and raise money. And now Twitter is tracking voter sentiment every day, called the Twitter Political Index. In its initial finding, the “#Twindex,” for short, shows Mr. Obama with a score of 34 and Mr. Romney with 25, based on tweets posted on Tuesday and analyzed by Topsy.

The Romney campaign's beefed-up Twitter presence comes after some supporters complained that Mr. Romney did not do enough to push back on criticism of his recent trip to Europe and Israel or fight hard enough against a Newsweek magazine cover calling him a “wimp.”

In a post on Breitbart.com, the columnist John Nolte offered the Romney campaign some suggestions on how to effectively use the ac count, starting with getting up at 4 a.m. to begin reshaping the daily narrative driven by the mainstream news media and enlist the army of Republicans on Twitter to jump in and help.

“Reward your army with links and retweets,” Mr. Nolte suggests. “Once you flood the zone with your predicted narratives, cover-ups, and challenges for the day, throw some love to those online who help you get the truth out. This can start a snowball effect that spreads the truth far and wide.”

The Twitter account, however, was silent about a new video, titled “#RomneyShambles: Welcome Back, Mitt” and posted on YouTube by the Democrat-run response team. It features clips from local news organizations, highlighting Mr. Romney's missteps during his trip abroad.

Mr. Williams dismissed the YouTube attack as another example of the Obama campaign's attempts to “distract from the president's record and to make this race about anything other than his failed record on jobs and the economy.”



Who Would Gain in a Romney Tax Overhaul

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

A tax system overhaul along the lines that Mitt Romney has proposed would give big tax cuts to high-income households and increase the tax burden for middle- and lower-income households, according to a new analysis from economists at the Brookings Institution.

The researchers did not analyze the exact Romney plan, since it is incomplete and the researchers were reluctant to make assumptions.

Instead they modeled a revenue-neutral income tax change that incorporates some of Mr. Romney's proposals, which include lowering marginal tax rates, eliminating both the alternative minimum tax and taxation of investment income of most taxpayers, eliminating the estate tax and repealing the additional high-income taxes passed with the Affordable Care Act.

On their own, these cuts to personal income and estate taxes would reduce total tax revenue by $360 billion in 2015 relative to what is expected of current policy, acc ording to the Brookings scholars.

Mr. Romney has said that his plan will include offsets to the revenue losses from his proposed lower tax rates, although he has not specified what kinds of policies would offset those cuts (that is, how he would come up with an additional $360 billion to offset the lost $360 billion in tax revenue).

The Brookings analysis assumes that those offsets would be achieved chiefly through reducing or altogether eliminating other tax breaks - like the mortgage interest tax deduction or the child tax credit - and does not factor in spending cuts as a means to offset lost tax revenue.

The Brookings analysis assumed that the first tax breaks to go would be those that primarily affected the highest earners.

But even if all possible loopholes for households earning more than $200,000 were eliminated, this group would still be a net gainer under Mr. Romney's plan, since the marginal tax rate decrease s and other changes lop off so much of its tax burden.

As a result, middle- and lower-income households - the 95 percent of the population earning less than about $200,000 annually - would have to make up the difference.

“It is not possible to design a revenue-neutral plan that does not reduce average tax burdens and the share of taxes paid by high-income taxpayers under the conditions described above, even when we try to make the plan as progressive as possible,” write the study's authors, Samuel Brown, William Gale and Adam Looney.

If the elimination of tax breaks starts with those affecting the top earners, the authors estimate, those earning under $200,000 a year will see their cash income fall by about 1.2 percent, as shown in the chart below. The very top earners - those earning more than $1 million a year - will by contrast see their cash income rise by 4.1 percent.



Obama, in Ohio, Attacks Romney Over Tax Cuts

By JACKIE CALMES

MANSFIELD, Ohio â€" As polls in this battleground state and nationally continue to show voters split over President Obama's stewardship of the economy, Mr. Obama on Wednesday attempted to contrast his vision for the nation's future with that of his Republican rival Mitt Romney.

At his first stop here in north-central Ohio, in a small park against a backdrop of small businesses, Mr. Obama faced more than 2,000 supporters and offered an attack on Mr. Romney's proposal to cut taxes for individuals and businesses by more than $5 trillion over the next decade. The president would take the same message next to Akron, and is to go to Florida on Thursday.

Mr. Obama cited a newly released study from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a joint effort of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, two Washington-based policy research organizations. It concluded that the sort of tax code that Mr. Romney has proposed “would provide large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle and/or lower-income taxpayers.”

Mr. Obama said: “Ohio, we do not need more tax cuts for folks that are already doing really well. We need tax cuts for working Americans.”

Speaking loudly and emphatically, Mr. Obama singled out the study's finding that if Mr. Romney erased enough existing tax breaks to offset the revenue loss from his proposed tax cuts, so that his plan did not add to budget deficits, the changes would shift $86 billion of tax burden away from the high-income taxpayers and onto everyone else. And the tax breaks to be reduced or repealed include the deductions and credits for mortgage interest, college tuition and health insurance.

“This wasn't my staff, this wasn't something we did,” Mr. Obama said. “Independent group ran the numbers.”

The Romney campaign quickly dismissed the study as partisan, noting t hat one of its three authors had been on the staff of the president's Council of Economic Advisers. The Tax Policy Center is widely respected, however, and is used often as a resource by members of both parties in Washington.

Mr. Obama was flying, literally, into a controversy in Mansfield that Republicans, led by Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, a potential running-mate pick for Mr. Romney, aggressively fanned. Before his arrival the local media noted that Air Force One was landing at an air base that is home to the 179th Air National Guard Wing, whose C-27J aircraft were being mothballed under the administration's proposed postwar reductions in Pentagon spending.

But en route to Mansfield, Mr. Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney, told reporters on Air Force One that the Pentagon would work to find a new mission for the roughly 800 guardsmen at the base â€" news that Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat facing re-election in Ohio, trumpeted in a news release but that t he Romney campaign attacked as a politically motivated flip-flop.

Mr. Obama repeated his call for Republicans in Congress to agree to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, which are scheduled to expire on Dec. 31, on annual income of less than $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for individuals, and to drop their insistence that the lower tax rates be extended as well for income above those thresholds. Higher taxes for the wealthiest taxpayers are central to Mr. Obama's broader deficit-reduction plan for the coming decade, along with reductions over 10 years in so-called entitlement programs like Medicare.

Mr. Obama has a six-percentage-point advantage over Mr. Romney in Ohio, according to new polls of several battleground states for Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News. But while independent voters strongly support Mr. Obama in next-door Pennsylvania, those in Ohio and in Florida â€" where the president will campaign on Thursday â€" split between the candidates a nd just over half of independents in Ohio and Florida say they disapprove of his job performance.

Even so, more voters in Ohio also said Mr. Romney's experience as a private-equity manager had been too focused on making profit for investors and not enough on creating jobs. That reflects the abundance of negative ads that the Obama campaign and a “super PAC” supporting it have run in the swing states to define Mr. Romney as an out-of-touch multimillionaire who puts personal profits over jobs for average Americans.

In time for Mr. Obama's latest visit â€" his ninth in 2012 and his 25th in his presidency, according to the count of the CBS White House reporter Mark Knoller, who keeps such records â€" his campaign is running a new ad titled “Worried” that draws parallels between Mr. Romney's agenda for increased military spending and tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations and the major policies of the Bush administration in the past decade.

†œYou watched, and worried,” a voice says in the ad, which also is running in Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and Colorado. “Two wars. Tax cuts for millionaires. Debt piled up. And now we face a choice.” The ad then segues from those Bush-era policies to Mr. Romney's military spending and tax cut proposals.

But the Romney campaign also was running a new ad, only in Ohio, that sought to turn against Mr. Obama an issue that has been a big help to the president to date â€" the government's successful rescue of the auto industry â€" and to blunt the disadvantage Mr. Romney has for having opposed that bailout.

The ad featured a man in Lyndhurst, Ohio, whose auto dealership was among those that General Motors closed as part of its downsizing. “It was like the dream that we worked for and that we worked so hard for, was gone,” the man says.

Local media in Ohio reported on Tuesday that voters were lined up for blocks to get tickets from campaign field offices for Mr. Obama's appearances. Also on hand Wednesday in Mansfield was a large Romney bus in which volunteers made phone calls to potential supporters, according to Chris Maloney, a spokesman for the Romney campaign in Ohio. And about 30 protesters supporting both Mr. Romney and the former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul heaved anti-Obama signs and chanted “Shame on you, Barack Obama.”



The Electoral Map: Pennsylvania Now Leaning Democratic

By JEFF ZELENY

Pennsylvania, whose 20 electoral votes have long been among the most closely watched states in the race for the White House, is now rated as Leaning Democratic, according to the latest New York Times ranking of presidential battlegrounds.

The state had previously been ranked as a Tossup. But so far, neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney has invested considerable money on television advertising in the state and a new Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll of likely voters in Pennsylvania found that Mr. Obama has an advantage of 11 percentage points.

The poll, with a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points, affirms what both campaigns have already discovered: Pennsylvania â€" for now, at least â€" is not among the top tier of battlegrounds.

The state has voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in the last five elections. Mr. Romney is still waging an aggressive fight, but the terr ain is likely more difficult than in the eight other remaining Tossup states in the Times' rankings: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.



Wind Credit on the Block

By JONATHAN WEISMAN

A longstanding tax credit for wind power that has broad bipartisan support was caught Wednesday in presidential politics when Senate Republicans removed it from a usually routine package of business tax breaks to show their loyalty to their presumptive presidential nominee, Mitt Romney.

Mr. Romney on Monday came out in favor of letting the wind production tax credit lapse at the end of the year, just as Senate Finance Committee members were nearing completion of a hard-fought package of business tax breaks they hope to pass out of the committee on Thursday. Those negotiations were largely about paring back the package, which routinely passes without much scrutiny.

The Senate Finance Committee chairman, Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, has pledged to put the credit back when the committee takes up the plan, at a cost to the Treasury of about $3.3 billion over two years. Ultimately, even Republicans believe he will pr evail.

But for now, according to committee sources, Republicans who had favored the credit believed that they needed to unite against it for Mr. Romney's sake.

President Obama's re-election campaign has been using Mr. Romney's announcement to hammer him in the swing state of Iowa, where wind power is a growing industry. Conservatives, however, have praised his stand for fiscal rectitude and against what some say is corporate welfare.

The tax package â€" known as “extenders” â€" has victories for both parties. Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican, successfully fought efforts to cut out a longstanding, often-ridiculed tax break for Nascar track owners. He also helped defeat efforts by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, to enlarge the package with an expanded tax break for tuition and higher education costs, which was included in the 2009 stimulus law but is set to lapse.

The two-year package would cost nearly $152 billion, but most of that, $92 billion, would stop the expansion of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel income tax system designed to force the rich to pay more but that is encroaching on the middle class. Other big-ticket items would continue the research and development tax credit for businesses, allow small businesses to write off investments, provide a deduction for state and local sales taxes for residents of states without income taxes and extend an existing tax deduction for education tuition.

Some provisions were pared, like a credit for plug-in electric motorcycles and three-wheeled vehicles, charitable deductions for computer and book inventories and a credit for extracting more energy from depleted oil wells.

A final package could be held up, however, by Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, who Finance Committee aides say will press for more of the tax breaks to be removed before it reaches the Senate floor.

 



After Dustup Over Churchill Bust, an Apology From the White House

By PETER BAKER

Winston Churchill has been gone for a few decades, but he returned for a small cameo role this week in Washington as the overheated campaign season continues.

The White House was forced to apologize late Tuesday after incorrectly insisting that it still had a Churchill bust on loan from the British government that in fact was sent back during the presidential transition between George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Why does it matter? Because the return of the Churchill bust has become a symbol in the eyes of Mr. Obama's critics that the president does not hold the same values as Britain's iconic wartime prime minister or adequately appreciate the “special relationship” between London and Washington.

The issue was revived last week when Mitt Romney told supporters during a stop in London that “I'm looking forward to the bust of Winston Churchill being in the Oval Office again.” The next day, Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist, mentioned the return of the statue as part of a critical assessment of Mr. Obama's foreign policy.

“Obama started his presidency by returning to the British Embassy the bust of Winston Churchill that had graced the Oval Office,” Mr. Krauthammer wrote.

Within hours, Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, issued a pointed denial to what he called “this ridiculous claim” by Mr. Krauthammer. “This is 100 percent false,” Mr. Pfeiffer wrote on the White House blog. “The bust still in the White House. In the Residence. Outside the Treaty Room.” To prove his point, he attached a photograph showing Mr. Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron admiring a Churchill bust in the White House residence.

The only problem is it was a different bust, one that has been in the residence for decades. The one that had been in the Oval Office had been lent to Mr. Bush by Tony Blair, then t he British prime minister, in July 2001 before a presidential visit to London (not “shortly after 9/11,” as Mr. Krauthammer would later write). That one was in fact returned to the British Embassy after Mr. Bush's departure in January 2009. Mr. Krauthammer followed up with an online item citing an embassy statement and demanding an apology.

Mr. Pfeiffer obliged late Tuesday, saying that he did not realize they were separate busts and never intended to deceive. “I clearly overshot the runway in my post,” he wrote. He added: “A better understanding of the facts on my part and a couple of deep breaths at the outset would have prevented this situation.”

Mr. Pfeiffer is not the only one to make that mistake. Several news organizations have inaccurately reported that the bust in the residence was the same one that Mr. Bush had in the Oval Office.

In any case, Mr. Pfeiffer said that Mr. Obama and his staff had nothing to do with the decision to return the lent bust. The White House curator's office, he said, cleared out all lent artwork from the Oval Office as Mr. Bush took his leave as a matter of course. That was “not something that President Obama or his administration chose to do,” Mr. Pfeiffer wrote.



Obama Heads to Ohio Battleground, Again

By JACKIE CALMES

MANSFIELD, Ohio â€" As polls in this battleground state and nationally continue to show voters split over President Obama's stewardship of the economy, Mr. Obama on Wednesday is making his ninth visit this year to Ohio to contrast his vision for the nation's future with that of his Republican rival, Mitt Romney.

In stops here in Mansfield and in Akron in north-central Ohio, an area that Mr. Obama only recently visited during a campaign bus tour, the president planned to “discuss the choice in this election between two fundamentally different visions of how to grow the economy, create middle-class jobs and pay down the debt,” according to his campaign.

But Mr. Obama was flying, literally, into a controversy in Mansfield that Republicans, led by Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, a potential running mate for Mr. Romney, were only too happy to fan. According to local media, Air Force One was landing at an air base that is h ome to the 179th Air National Guard Wing, which would be mothballed under the Obama administration's proposed postwar reductions in Pentagon spending.

Mr. Obama is expected to repeat his call for Republicans in Congress to agree to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, which are scheduled to expire on Dec. 31, on annual income of less than $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for individuals, and to drop their insistence that the lower tax rates be extended as well for income above those thresholds. While higher taxes for the wealthiest taxpayers are central to Mr. Obama's broader deficit-reduction plan for the coming decade, Mr. Romney is calling for an additional $5 trillion in tax reductions over 10 years beyond the Bush tax cuts and has not said how he would offset the revenue loss to reduce the federal debt.

Mr. Obama has a six-percentage-point advantage over Mr. Romney in Ohio according to new polls of several battleground states for Quin nipiac University/New York Times/CBS News. But while independent voters strongly support Mr. Obama in next-door Pennsylvania, those in Ohio and in Florida â€" where the president will campaign on Thursday â€" are split between the candidates and just over half of independents in those states say they disapprove of Mr. Obama's job performance.

Even so, more voters in Ohio also said Mr. Romney's experience as a private-equity manager has been too focused on making profits for investors and not enough on creating jobs. That reflects the abundance of negative ads that the Obama campaign and a independent “super-PAC” supporting the president have run in swing states to define Mr. Romney as an out-of-touch multimillionaire who puts personal profits over jobs for average Americans.

In time for Mr. Obama's latest visit â€" the 25th in his presidency, according to the count of CBS White House reporter Mark Knoller, who keeps such records â€" his campaign is broadcasti ng a new ad titled “Worried” that draws parallels between Mr. Romney's agenda for increased military spending and tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations, and the major policies of the Bush administration in the past decade.

“You watched, and worried,” a voice says in the ad, which also is running in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire. “Two wars. Tax cuts for millionaires. Debt piled up. And now we face a choice.” The ad then segues from those Bush-era policies to Mr. Romney's military spending and tax cut proposals.

Local media in Ohio reported on Tuesday that voters were lined up for blocks to get tickets from campaign field offices for Mr. Obama's appearances.



New Romney Ad Hits Obama on Layoffs After Auto Bailout

By SARAH WHEATON


The Obama campaign often sums up the president's accomplishments like this: “Osama bin Laden is dead. General Motors is alive.”

But Mitt Romney, whose campaign has struggled to overcome his “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” op-ed, is no longer ceding the bailout ground. In an ad running in Ohio to coincide with President Obama's trip there Wednesday, the Romney camp contends that “in 2009, under the Obama administration's bailout of General Motors, Ohio dealerships were forced to close.”

The spot, financed in part by the Republican National Committee, features Al Zarzour of Lyndhurst, Ohio, voice shaking as he recounts receiving “a letter from General Motors. They were suspending my credit line. We had 30 some employees that were out of work.”

The Obama campaign did not struggle to craft a response.

“Let's get this straight - the very person who argued for the U .S. auto industry to go bankrupt, something that would have caused more than a million jobs lost and utter economic devastation in the Midwest, is now trying to attack the president on how it was handled?” said Frank Benenati, a regional spokesman for the Obama campaign, in an e-mailed statement loaded with statistics about the industry's recovery. He added that there are “now 2,200 more Ohioans employed in dealerships than when the president took office.”

How would Mr. Zarzour's dealership have survived under Mr. Romney's approach? There's no way to know.

“The course I recommended was eventually followed,” Mr. Romney argued in a February 2012 op-ed. “GM entered managed bankruptcy in June 2009 and exited it a month later in July.” However, he argues that “crony capitalism” related to the bailout dictated the terms of the bankruptcy proceedings.

Meanwhile, a new spot released Tuesday by the Obama campaign shows Mr. Obama being bullish on a point where Republicans are typically stronger. Titled “Worried,” the ad seeks to tie Mr. Romney not only to George W. Bush's economic policies, but also to the former president's hawkishness.

The ad opens with a narrator saying, “You watched, and worried: Two wars. Tax cuts for millionaires. Debt piled up.”

The spot, which is running in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and Ohio, then notes Mr. Romney's plans to cut taxes for the wealthy and “increase military spending,” both of which, the campaign claims, would increase the deficit.

Likewise, the Romney campaign had no trouble drafting a response, which noted trillion-dollar deficits before adding: “President Obama's plans to raise taxes and cut the military won't create jobs or make us safer. As president, Mitt Romney will revive our economy, strengthen our military and repair the damage done to the middle class by President Obama's failed policies.”



Credit Cards With the Best Extended Warranties

By ANN CARRNS

One of the benefits of shopping with a credit card is that many cards offer free, extended-warranty protection for purchases that come with an existing manufacturer's warranty. But a new survey from the card comparison site CardHub.com finds that there are significant differences in the perk, depending on which network sponsors the card.

All four card networks - MasterCard, Visa, American Express and Discover - offer programs that extend existing manufacturer's warranties on at least some of their cards, generally for up to 12 months and for amounts up to $10,000. (Rules for warranty extensions are set by the card networks, rather than the issuing banks, said Odysseas Papadimitriou, chief executive of CardHub.)

But only American Express and Discover offer extended warranties to all cardholders, the study found. Those networks ranked first and second, respectively, in CardHub's overall rankings for that reason.

The survey ranked cards on a 100-point scale, with a maximum of 55 points awarded for “likelihood of coverage,” which includes the general availability of the extended warranty benefit within the network, and the range of eligible purchases; 35 points maximum for the “scope of warranty,” meaning the length of the extension and the coverage limit; and 10 points maximum for the claims process.

American Express was the best overall for extended warranty coverage, Mr. Papadimitriou said. It is the only card that extends the manufacturer's warranty on refurbished items, like computers, which are becoming increasingly popular.

Plus, American Express offers 12 months of extended coverage for items with an original, manufacturer's warranty of up to five years. That means you get six years of coverage.

The other cards are less generous. MasterCard ranked last because, while it also extends coverage for 12 months, the perk only applies to purchases with an original warranty of 12 months or less. (Its corporate cards cover existing warranties up to five years.)
MasterCard also has a particularly lengthy list of exclusions that may make coverage doubtful, Mr. Papadimitriou said, like “mechanical failures caused by normal wear and tear.”

In general, cardholders don't have to sign up ahead of time to receive the warranty protection. But they do have to provide documentation of the purchase, including receipts, credit card statements and copies of the original manufacturer's warranty. So it makes sense to save those items for future use when making major purchases that may be covered.

Have you ever filed a claim for an extended warranty provided by your credit card? What was your experience?



Republicans Would Interrupt Recess, On Their Own Terms

By JONATHAN WEISMAN

House Republican leaders â€" on the verge of a month-long August recess â€" told Senate they stand ready to pull the House back into session to reach agreement on legislation to avert the expiration of tax cuts and the imposition of across-the-board defense cuts set to begin in January.

But they again declined to accept tax increases as a part of the solution, referring instead to “common sense spending cuts and reforms.”

“Congress must take action to eliminate both the threat to our economy posed by the looming small business tax hike and the threat to our security posed by the defense sequester,” House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and the three other top Republican leaders wrote. “By the end of this week, the Republican-led House will have acted to eliminate both threats. The Democratic-controlled Senate must follow suit. In the event the Senate takes action, we stand ready to bring the House back into session for the purpose of enacting solutions.”

Republicans in recent days have been raising alarms about the “fiscal cliff” next year, when $235 billion in tax cuts lapse and about $100 billion in automatic defense and domestic spending cuts kick in â€" trying to make sure Democrats get the blame if the nation goes over the cliff. The legislation that created the automatic spending cuts was passed last year with bipartisan support â€" including the votes of the Republican leadership â€" to resolve the impasse over raising the nation's borrowing limit. The Bush-era tax cuts were structured intentionally in 2001 and 2003 to expire all at once.

But House Republicans have passed legislation this year to stop the first year of defense cuts by shifting them to domestic programs. And on Wednesday, the House is expected to pass legislation extending all the Bush-era tax cuts for a year.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader, has held firm , demanding that Republicans meet his terms for a deficit reduction deal that unwinds the defense cuts in part through tax increases on the rich.

“We can avoid these defense cuts tomorrow if Republicans have millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share,” Mr. Reid said Tuesday.



Wednesday Reading: A YouTube Introduction to College

By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.



Obama Supporters Barraged With Pleas for Cash

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Each plea for money from President Obama and his allies has become more urgent and desperate than the last.

His campaign's chief operating officer said on Monday that “we've gotten our behinds handed to us.”

Vice President Joe Biden warned on the same day that Mr. Obama would lose if “the other side spends us into oblivion.”

Michele Obama worried aloud about waking up on election day “wondering if I could have done more.” And Al Gore, the former vice president, said victories by the “extremist fringe” would “spell disaster” for the country.

The answer, according to all of them? A donation of $3 (or more) by midnight on Tuesday. (The e-mails don't say “Pretty please!” - yet.)

The urgent and repeated appeals, sent to millions of Mr. Obama's supporters via e-mail and text messages, are a vivid reminder that the president's campaign is likely to raise significantly less than Mit t Romney and Republicans for the third month in a row in July.

Neither campaign has released their fund-raising totals for the month yet. They are required to report those totals to the Federal Elections Commission by Aug. 15.

In the meantime, the result is a Democratic campaign that is trying to portray the sitting president as a financial underdog whose ability to stay in the White House depends on the largess of his army of everyday supporters.

“My upcoming birthday next week could be the last one I celebrate as President of the United States, but that's not up to me - it's up to you,” Mr. Obama said to his supporters in an e-mail late last week.

Accompanying the e-mail was a link to donate in exchange for a chance to attend his “birthday get-together” in August.

The dire hand-wringing is partly tactical for a campaign that is likely to have more than enough money to execute its strategy. By appearing des perate, Mr. Obama's campaign hopes it can persuade more of its supporters to donate now, rather than later.

But in fact, Mr. Obama is facing a quandary his 2008 campaign team never even contemplated: a rival whose fund-raising operation appears better positioned to tap into both the deep pockets of wealthy donors and the economic frustrations of average Americans.

In May, that translated into a $17 million edge for Mr. Romney. The next month, the Republican candidate and the party apparatus took in $37 million more than Mr. Obama and the Democratic party structure.

And that understates the advantage that Mr. Romney could have in the fall campaign as well-financed outside political groups pour hundreds of millions of dollars into ads against the president.

In briefings with reporters, Mr. Obama's campaign predicted total spending on Mr. Romney's behalf of $1.25 billion. “Make no mistake, we will be outspent,” a top adviser to Mr. Obama said at a Wa shington briefing for the media in July.

Regardless of the real impact on Mr. Obama's campaign operations, there's an image problem to worry about.

The appeals for donations occasionally recall the “Everything 80 percent off! Going out of Business” sales that try to entice customers into the store. And yet, Mr. Obama's campaign team has clearly calculated that it is willing to risk leaving that kind of impression if it means raising more money.

One of the many e-mails sent by the Obama campaign to supporters on Monday had the subject line: Romney defeats Obama?

The e-mail from Mr. Biden warned that such a headline might be possible on the day after the election if supporters don't dig deep into their pockets now.

“Don't let anyone convince you that this is a sure thing - our opponents have almost unlimited resources at their disposal, and we already know they'll outspend us by a good amount,” Mr. Biden warned. “What we do now decides t he headlines on November 7th.”

Not to be outdone, Mr. Romney's campaign manager forwarded Mr. Biden's e-mail to the Republican's list of supporters, describing the vice president's appeal as “quite telling.”

“We've had enough of the scare tactics and blame games from President Obama and the Democrat attack machine,” Matt Rhoades, Mr. Romney's campaign manager, wrote. “Americans want real solutions and a real leader - not more excuses and unmet promises.”

Mr. Rhoades's solution: “Donate $10 or more to make sure the headlines read correctly in 100 days.”



The Early Word: Insurgency

By JADA F. SMITH

Today's Times

  • Ted Cruz, an insurgent backed by the Tea Party, defeated the candidate favored by Gov. Rick Perry of Texas on Tuesday in a runoff election for the Republican Senate nomination. Erik Eckholm writes that the contest revealed a wide rift in Texas between the party establishment and restless, anti-incumbent activists on the right.
  • President Obama and Mitt Romney draw fairly evenly among voters when it comes to matters of the economy, but Mr. Obama's empathy and personal appeals give him an edge over his opponent in three of the hotly contested battleground states, according to new Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News polling, Jeff Zeleny and Dalia Sussman report.
  • House and Senate leaders on Tuesday reached a tentative agreement that would pay for federal government operations through next March, averting the prospect of another messy showdown in an election year, Jen nifer Steinhauer reports. The emerging legislation, developed with little fanfare and no drama, stands in sharp contrast to previous occasions when the government came within 30 minutes of shutting down.
  • The high-profile fights about voter identification requirements highlight the deep flaws in the country's voting systems, with any prospect of fixing them mired in increasing levels of partisanship, Ethan Bronner reports.
  • Though criticizing Europe has become a standard part of Mr. Romney's stump speech, his recent trip overseas has been framed by conciliatory words for the continent, with his advisers telling officials that they should not read too much into statements made for a domestic political audience, Ashley Parker reports.
  • Julián Castro, the mayor of San Antonio, will fill the high-profile slot of keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in September, catapulting him to the national spotlight and provid ing Democrats an opportunity to highlight what they see as a stark contrast with Mr. Romney when it comes to Latino issues, Michael D. Shear reports.
  • The Postal Service is on the verge of its first-ever default on Wednesday, with Congress declining to act in helping stanch the losses, Ron Nixon reports.
  • The White House and Congress raced to impose more punishing sanctions against Iran on Tuesday, as Mr. Romney's pledge to back Israel in its confrontation with Iran reignited that country's nuclear ambitions, Mark Landler and Steven Lee Myers report.

Around the Web

  • Mr. Romney will embark on a “splashy” four-day bus tour starting Aug. 10, CNN's Political Ticker reports. Some in his party are expecting his vice-presidential pick to be announced then.
  • The Romney campaign is trying to mend its strained relationship with the press, The Hill reports.

Happenings in Washington

  • Represen tative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, will speak to more than 300 students participating in the National Conservative Student Conference.


Announcing a Ticket? There\'s an App for That

By JEREMY W. PETERS

The Romney campaign said Tuesday that it would reveal its vice-presidential pick not by e-mail, text message or online video, but through a first-of-its kind mobile phone app called “Mitt's VP.”

All anyone has to do is download the app and make sure the smartphone accepts incoming third-party messages. Whenever the Romney campaign decides to push the button, phones across the United States should buzz with the news. Already, tens of thousands of people had downloaded it on Tuesday, the campaign said.

Romney strategists wanted a way to make what could be the biggest announcement of the 2012 presidential campaign simply and quickly, without the potential hiccups of a mass text message.

When President Obama announced Joseph R. Biden Jr. as his running mate in 2008, he got the word out by texting some three million people who had given his campaign their mobile phone numbers. But many complained that the text came late or not at all. And some even had to pay a small per-message fee from their mobile phone companies.

With an app, mass delivery is much faster and free, said Zac Moffatt, the Romney campaign's top digital strategist. Notification will arrive just like any news bulletin or a reminder from Angry Birds that a software update is available. (The Romney campaign's technological sophistication is often overshadowed by the Obama campaign's digital efforts. Indeed, on Tuesday right before “Mitt's VP” was rolled out, the Obama campaign announced a new app to assist with canvassing.)

“Mitt's VP” is more than just a way to announce the No. 2 pick. The campaign is testing the app to see what other kinds of messages it can send âˆ' especially geographically specific ones. Those who provide their ZIP codes can be targeted with alerts offering information like when Mr. Romney is visiting in their area or where the nearest location is to receive an absentee ballot .



Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)