OPINION

We probably won't know for years whether Tiger's rehab work will pay off, but I was impressed with his statement today. He doesn't strike me as a guy who does humility or self-revelation well, so it wouldn't be natural for him to get up in public and acknowledge his mistakes. Cynics will say he's just doing it to get his money back from sponsors. Maybe so, but he came across as a guy who's trying to own his misdeeds. I see nothing wrong with that.

President Obama's selected two really good people to head his new debt-reduction commission: former GOP Sen. Alan Simpson and former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles.

Simpson comes out of the era when parties duked it out but still put together compromises, like the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration bill he passed. That was one controversial bill, but he worked it through with Reagan's support.

Bowles comes out of the centrist wing of the Democratic Party. He is a business guy more than a politician, which sometimes cost him as chief of staff. But he understands how deficits drive up interest rates and threaten the economy's growth.

Great picks by Obama. The next step is naming more members to the panel. Here are two suggestions: Former Texas Democratic Rep. Charles Stenholm and former comptroller general David Walker. Both are not shy about promoting reforms that could get us out of this hole.

Debra Medina's game-ending gaffe actually gives Kay Hutchison her last chance to get Rick Perry into a runoff.

Medina's comment to the effect that she really doesn't know if the government didn't have anything to do with 9/11 pretty much tops her vote off with the frustrated crowd. Ardent Tea Party folks will back her regardless, but the frustrated-but-not-truthers' portion of the electorate will not.

They are now shopping for an alternative. Hutchison can never win them on conservative purity grounds, but she perhaps could pick up enough to make a difference if she can prove that she's the change-agent in this race.

While Perry may be their natural fallback candidate, he's also been the guy presiding over a fractious Austin. If anything, today's frustrated voter seems mad at elected officials for not being able to get much done. Hutchison could present herself as the candidate who can do a better job than Perry. She could try to portray herself as the one who's more suited to working with both parties.

I concede this is a long shot. But yesterday's polls suggest she doesn't have many shots left. She should take this one and try to persuade those who were drifting to Medina to back her as the race's change agent.

Let me say upfront I didn't know Charlie Wilson. But like many people in Texas and Washington, I knew about the Democratic congressman, who passed away today at age 76. When I was living in D.C. in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, the East Texan was living proof of the color of Texas politicians of days gone by.

Now, some people have loved the bigger-than-life personalities of our Charlie Wilsons, Lyndon Johnsons and Bob Bullocks and some have loathed their flair, thinking their antics made us look we were nothing but a bunch of yahoos. But one thing you can't deny is that Texas has produced some darn interesting characters.

There was a time when you could walk by Charlie Wilson's Capitol Hill office and understand why he had earned his reputation as "Good Time Charlie" Let's just say Hugh Hefner would have appreciated the abundance of beautiful blondes in his employee. (I once flew back from Washington next to a woman with whom I was sharing my impression of his office when she quietly said "Yes, that sounds like Charlie." It turns out she was his ex-wife.) He also was known to enjoy a good libation from time to time, just as was the late John Tower.

In today's media-saturated world, Charlie Wilsons are almost hard to imagine. How could a guy who relished his swashbuckling ways also be such a consequential legislator?

He certainly became the latter when he famously helped arm rebels in Afghanistan so they could fight the Soviets who invaded their land in 1979. Millions of Americans learned about that cause in the book and film, "Charlie Wilson's War." And he took it on with the no-bull approach that's needed to cut through Washington's bureaucracy. Thanks largely to him, Afghans were able to beat back the Soviet army.

The politically correct usually don't have much use for Charlie Wilsons. They can't get past their warts to see their achievements. But that's the way it is with colorful politicians. Texas doesn't produce so many of them any more, but Charlie Wilson was one proud exemplar of the breed.

I thought that Bill White really helped himself last night. It wasn't just that Farouk Shami looked uninformed. White looked crisp and concise. He came across as a business-minded Democrat who also cares about the environment.

For him to win in November, that is the position he needs to take. Obama may have brought out suburban voters in the 2008 Texas Democratic primary, but he isn't a moderate Democrat. And, over time, the only way Democrats can rebound in the state is through running moderate Democrats who appeal to Texas' center/right voters.

White also needed to sound sharp last night because sometimes he can go on too long. And he can be too on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand, in his answers. I'm all for understanding that life is not black-and-white, but he needs to be an effective communicator to win.

He was last night. We will see whether he can keep it up.

Democratic gubernatorial frontrunner Bill White says he wants to take "aggressive action against diploma mills that offer a high school diploma with little education."

What does that mean?

I hope we find out in tonight's gubernatorial debate. And come on over to The Education Front for a fuller discussion.

Former comptroller general David Walker, who will be our Point Person this Sunday, has quite a few "gulp" facts in Comeback America, his new bestselling book about the rising debt. This one got me for how it will affect my kids, and I hope it gets the attention of 35-and-unders because this is your future unless we do something now about the debt:

Writes Walker:

Right now, on average, Americans pay about 21 percent of their income in federal taxes and another 10 percent to state and local governments. By 2030, to pay our rising bills, that amount could be at least 45 percent -- higher even than the avarege 42 percent that most Europeans pay. By 2040, it would be at least 53 percent and climbing.

In another 30 years, those of us who participate in this blog who are 50 or over may not be around, so his point won't pertain to us. But it will to others, especially those 35-and-unders. This is their future, unless we act.

If we don't, here's what else Walker predicts:

Come on over to The Education Front to see what Education Secretary Arne Duncan just told reporters on a conference call about the education budget for next year. Hint: It's going up, and I think that's a good thing.

Look, I don't think Obama's proposed three-year freeze on some aspects of the discretionary part of the domestic budget is the end-all, be-all. But I do think he is being unfairly pilloried over this idea.

He's talking about saving $250 billion over three years from just one-third of the budget. Folks are saying that's not much given that the deficit is $1.4 trillion, but neither is it chump change.

Consider the numbers. The domestic discretionary budget is about $450 billion a year. Multiply that figure by three and you get about $1.35 trillion in domestic spending over the next three years, if we hold it flat.

That's better than watching that same $450 billion grow by five percent or so a year, which has been the average annual increase in domestic discretionary spending since 1993. If that part of the budget continued growing at the five percent rate, we would spend $1.48 trillion over the next three years.

I concede he's not getting massive savings, but the White House isn't advertising it as such. It's rightly saying we have to start somewhere. I agree. And this seems a reasonable place to start with the domestic side of the budget.

If you think not, how would you realistically control domestic discretionary spending?

The trick before Obama in his State of the Union message is how he presents his agenda of child care tax cuts, capping student loan expenditures and giving families an incentive to put money in retirement accounts.These have little-to-nothing to do with stimulating the economy, as Michael posted earlier. So, I hope he doesn't sell them that way.

But they could bring some relief to families, and there is nothing wrong with that given today's economic realities. (I spent Saturday night at a friend's cabin with some pals and the expense of college for everyone's kids was a big subject.) These proposals won't get us back to a roaring economy, but there's a place for helping folks out. In fact, I wouldn't oppose extending unemployment benefits, even though that idea would add to the deficit. We're in a tough bind, and people need help.

This Supreme Court ruling striking down parts of our campaign finance laws really leaves me with conflicted feelings. I

First, I never thought McCain-Feingold was a perfect law, but it was a bulwark against corporations and unions directly dominating our politics. As someone who has covered a lot of campaigns, and has seen how easy it is for special interests to dominate, I always thought it was important to have an even-imperfect bulwark against them. It makes me kind of sick to see McCain-Feingold, the latest of our campaign laws, gutted.

Second, whatever happened to Justices Roberts and Alito upholding precedent? Didn't they talk over and over in their confirmation hearings about how much they love the stability that precedents bring to our legal system?

Well, if I read things right, they just overturned years of judicial rulings that were aimed at stopping corporations in particular from controlling our politics. I guess upholding precedent wasn't so important to those guys, after all, since they helped from the majority ruling.

Third, this is where I am most conflicted. After years of various laws aimed at keeping unions and corporations at bay, maybe it's just not possible to do that. Maybe we should let them give to the hilt and just insist that they disclose what they do.

I hate thinking of that as the answer, but corporations and unions have found ways around even good laws like McCain-Feingold. And now that our highest court has kind of emaciated even that law, maybe we should rethink the entire approach.

Again, I don't like saying that. But that's kind of how I feel. For many reasons, the world of campaign finance law seems hopeless.

Some folks are predicting doom for Democrats in 2010, pointing to the exits this week of Democratic senators Chris Dodd and Bryan Dorgan and Democratic Governor Bill Ritter. I don't doubt that Democrats will follow historic patterns and lose seats in the mid-term elections, but I don't see what the big deal is. Democrats have solid majorities in both chambers. They can afford to lose a few Dodds and Dorgans and still be the nation's majority party.

If I were advising the Obama White House, I'd tell them not to sweat the exits. In fact, the White House should privately like closer margins. As has been discussed on this blog before, the worst thing that can happen to an administration is to have such a slam-dunk majority in Congress that it doesn't have to court independent voters.

Obama's at risk of losing independents because his majorities are eager to expand government's reach into health care, the financial world and other parts of our economy. There's a case for some of that, but there's also a point at which the normally cautious American public grows anxious about an expansive government and the costs attached to its growth.

Polls show we're getting closer to that point, and Obama would benefit from seeing his party lose a few seats. Democrats are still going to control Congress, but closer margins would require him to reach beyond Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, who are no more in the mainstream than Tom DeLay and Dick Armey were.

Before we let go of the last decade, it's fair to say that China kind of got a pass over the last 10 years. America's attention shifted -- understandably -- to the threats posed by radical Islamists. Meanwhile, China was left mostly on its own, growing its economy, making investments in places like Mexico, producing engineers and scientists by the bushel and generally operating without being front-and-center in our foreign policy.

If you will recall, there was a U.S./China spat over an American spyplane at the beginning of the Bush administration. It looked like Sino/American relations were going to turn sour. But the dispute simmered down, 9/11 came along and soon China was on the backburner.

That's not going to be the case this decade. If you are wondering how to look at the next 10 years, expect China to occupy a central role in our foreign policy, competing with terrorism for Washington's attention.

Here are three reasons:

Christy Hoppe had a good report in Sunday's paper on the GOP governor's race, which is now in full swing. What made me sick reading the piece was how the two sides are basically trying to pulverize the other.

Negative campaigns are nothing new, as Rodger mentioned in our meeting today. But what on earth does the ability of one campaign to demolish another on the air, in emails and on the stump have to do with average folks in Muleshoe, Dallas or Texarkana?

Nothing. But it has everything to do with the political class, which has become way too consumed with how campaigns are run versus the larger point of an election.

The New York Times ran a front-page obituary yesterday that should get all of us Anglo Texans to pause a second and think what we lost by our preoccupation with racial segregation in the first 60-70 years of the last century.

The piece was about Percy Sutton, a legendary New York Democratic political leader and successful businessman. Sutton was a figure I had read about before, but I never knew he was from Texas.

It turns out that he was from San Antonio, spent his youth in Texas and, I believe, went to Prairie View. But, like many African Americans in the South, he headed North after serving in the military in World War II. There, he made his mark and it was quite a big one. Along with his business interests, he had been Manhattan borough president, a former NYC mayoral candidate and an ally of David Dinkins and Charles Rangel.

Whether you like everything Sutton stood for or not politically, he was an impressive figure. And he embodied the kind of political talent Texas lost because it didn't create a home for all its people. Leaders like Sutton and Willie Brown (former S.F. mayor and California House speaker) left here for New York and California because this was not a hospitable place for minorities.

Fortunately, quite a bit has changed since then, but Texas lost out on a lot of natural leaders. I've often wondered where we would be as a state if we hadn't driven away so many aspiring African-Americans in the early and middle parts of the last century...

Have the Tea Partiers lost their minds? Apparently.

They're rallying today against Sen. Kay Hutchison at her Texas offices because the Republican voted late Friday for a defense bill that some Republicans had threatened to filibuster. While they may have points they didn't like in the Pentagon bill, the real reason for the threatened filibuster was to slow down the health care bill. Hence, the Tea Partiers' anger at her.

C'mon. What was Texas' senior senator supposed to do? Oppose a vote for a defense bill that our troops need?

And, by the way, her office says she voted for the defense bill after she knew Democrats had the 60 votes to pass a health care bill. What was the purpose of a filibuster then?

None. Hutchison made the right call. And the Tea Partiers are the ones who are making the wrong call. They're attacking her for a bill that supports the troops. If they want to oppose the health care bill, which she is against, go after it, not her.

For many reasons, I would like the Senate to pass its health care bill this week. Expanding coverage so fewer people have to rely upon emergency rooms. Taking the fear out of families who worry about a loved one's preexisting condition keeping them from getting health coverage. Lifting the cap on lifetime benefits. And freeing workers to take their policies from job to job.

Each of those reforms would take the pressure off many families. And if we only had to deal with this bill in isolation, meaning we wouldn't have to worry about its impact in the future when our fiscal condition is projected to be worse than today, expanding such services would be a no-brainer. If we were just starting out as a nation and had no prior obligations, I would go with these changes in a second.

But we aren't starting out anew. And we can't consider this bill in isolation. It needs to be seen in the context of the times. And the fact is there are parts of this bill that could worsen our load as a nation, not improve it. If we don't deal with those parts now, we may never deal with them legislatively.

Like immigration, health care is best taken up as a whole. If not, Congress is likely to pass the easy parts but never get to the hard aspects.

Come over to The Education Front, where university presidents across North Texas are discussing how colleges can help students graduate on time. Public Agenda reported last week that more and more students are taking six years to graduate, if they graduate at all. See what the heads of area universities say. And share your thoughts over at The Education Front.

David Brooks had a good explainer about President Obama's Christian realism in the NYT yesterday. Texas Faith panelists are also debating this subject over here, where they are looking at the themes the president discussed in his Nobel Prize speech last week. Join in.

With some polls showing people are now more worried about the deficit than about expanding health care, I bet President Obama would -- upon further review, as they say in the NFL -- like to take back these words, which the NYT reports he said in a meeting this week with Democratic senators on health care:

"This is why people run for public office, to be here at the creation of something really big."

That's not probably not the most reassuring thing to say to a country that is worried about government getting too big. Perhaps he was trying to say everyone gets elected to do something monumental, which is certainly reasonable. Who wants to get elected to pass just pork bills? But these weren't his best choice of words.

I didn't get a chance to hear much of President Obama's Nobel speech until this morning, nor did I get I chance to read some of it until now. So, I'm late here, but I want to echo what Clayton said yesterday: That was a marvelous address in both substance and politics.

On substance, I love his line that we need more "moral imagination" to see our way through world problems. I couldn't agree more. We will run out of people, money and weapons if we rely only on the military to take on international challenges. We can talk another day about what moral imagination could mean, but he is absolutely right to call us to higher realms of thinking to imagine answers for our problems.

But he just didn't leave it there. If he had, he would have sounded like the folks in peace movements who lead you to think the lion and the lamb will lie down together if only we imagine a better world. He couldn't have been more clear about the "limits of reason" and the fact there is evil in the world. Because of those conditions, force must be used -- and used judiciously and wisely -- on occasion.

As has been mentioned, this was a very Niebuhrian speech. The president has been an avid reader of the late theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's works. And it shows. Niebuhr was both an idealist and a realist. He was a liberal with a pacifist streak who equally understood there are limits to the role of both "rational" and "religious" resources in the world, as he wrote about in books like Moral Man and Immoral Society.

Politically, Obama hit the right strokes, too. He reminded me of JFK, who could speak to liberal, moderates and conservatives. Kennedy was an idealist, as his New Frontier inaugural address revealed. But he was a hawk, too. Sometimes too much of one, but he understood that great nations must show resolve. I've always loved that duality in Kennedy, and Obama showed it yesterday. He gave a speech that appealed to different audiences, but at the same time challenged each.

Now, if he only would give a speech like that about the debt -- and do something about it!

Just teasing. This was a great moment for the president.

Here's what I hate about what's going on in the Senate today: Senators are having a(nother) red-hot debate over abortion. They're discussing whether or not abortions should be funded under health coverage the Senate bill would offer.

I hate this because here is yet another debate where abortion threatens to take all the oxygen out of the room. Sure, I recognize that abortion is important. And I know that it must be discussed to determine whether federal subsidies can help pay for an insurance plan that offers abortion as a service.

But let's face it: Taking such time out to debate abortion, an issue that causes deep divisions, risks poisoning the larger health care discussion.

It's like when my denomination debates whether or not gay clergy can be ordained. It dominates everything. And the truth is, abortion as a health care worry is tiny compared to the more demanding problems of how we cover more people, how we pay for their coverage and how we control health costs.

Maybe it's best that the debate take place now so we can get past it. But I hate this, knowing that both sides will use this sideshow to score points in the next election..

i was talking to someone the other day who said Dallas County would be ground zero in next year's governor's race if it's Bill White v. Rick Perry. White, the popular mayor of Houston, will almost surely carry his hometown and Harris County. And Travis and Bexar will go Democratic, just as Tarrant will very likely remain Republican. That leaves Dallas County, if Perry and White square off.

Dallas will be less important if Kay Hutchison wins because she will almost surely carry her hometown and county. if she does get the nomination, it will be intersting to watch the two of them campaign knowing that each other has locked up their respective megacities. What will be the battleground then?

I don't know, but for today, let's concentrate on what happens if White and Perry duke it out in Dallas County. White would have the advantage, given the recent "blue" nature of Dallas County in judicial and local races.

But I wouldn't give him too much of an advantage. There are still plenty of Republican voters, particularly in North Dallas. And there is a theory that Democrats have done well here because Republicans were down in the dumps nationally in 2006 and 2008. They just couldn't get their folks inspired enough to go vote.

What's more, White is not Barack Obama, who did inspire many Dallasites. White can't count on that same appeal.

In writing this, it makes me realize that Dallas County would really be up for grabs in a Perry/White race. I'd give White the advantage, but not much of one. We'd have one fascinating race to watch up close and personal. The ads, robocalls and visits would be noo-stop.

John McCain had a point in introducing an amendment today that would have required the Senate to send its health care bill back to the Senate Finance Committee to come up with something other than about $400 billion in Medicare cuts to help fund the $829 billion bill.

McCain was right because Congress has rarely had the stomach to cut payments to Medicare providers. As recently as last month, the House voted to not proceed with $200 billion in previously-pledged cuts to Medicare providers. Hence, McCain's amendment, which lost 58-42. He thinks this bill is going to end up with a big hole in its funding mechanism if it relies on future Medicare cuts.

I couldn't agree more, but here's where I part company with Republicans. GOP senators are now up on the floor bemoaning how Democrats would cut Medicare, just as Republicans have done in previous floor debates. Talk about crass politics.

These Republicans know there is no way we can keep Medicare solvent without dealing with the growth in the program's costs. At some point, folks are either going to have to pay more for Medicare or some services may either be limited or not expanded. I don't know exactly how that will be done, but something will need to change to preserve this very important program.

For Republicans, who consider themselves fiscal conservatives, to take the tack of "how could Democrats touch Medicare?" is nothing but pure opportunism. They want seniors to turn against Democrats and put the GOP back in power in 2010.

If this is all the leadership they can provide, Republicans really don't deserve coming back into power in 2010.

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I hate to be a skeptic here, but it's not very encouraging to see that the first amendment to the Senate's health care bill would add about a $1 billion to the costs of the proposal. There are folks in both parties who would like to see the bill do a better job of controlling health costs and who worry it may add to the deficit over time. But the first shot out of the box, 61 senators voted to add more costs to the bill.

The amendment was offered by Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland. Her proposal is aimed at shrinking or eliminating copayments or deductibles for women when they get screenings for cancer, heart disease, diabetes or other conditions.

Like many parts of this bill, her proposal could make a difference in people's lives. I don't dispute that.

But we should remember this: It's always easy to add services. It is much harder to pay for them or control costs. Sooner than later, we have to get to that part of the bill.

If President Obama thinks 30,000 troops is what it will take to stabilize Afghanistan, then I hope he is right. I think we need more than that for a successful counter-insurgency, like Gen. McChrystal suggested. But I will give the president the benefit of the doubt because we all have a lot at stake on his decision being correct.

Where I part company with the president is his announcement of an exit strategy. He wants us withdrawing troops by mid-year 2011.
All military planners should have an exit strategy in mind before they go into any war, but why we should announce it upfront is beyond me. Doesn't that signal your opponents that, if you just wait long enough, we will be gone?

Like everyone, I hope we can get out of Afghanistan fast. But I don't see how tailoring our exit does us any good. It just tips off the Taliban how long they have to wait us out.

We had a great editorial board meeting this afternoon with Mark McClellan, who led Medicare under George W. Bush. McClellan, who now works for Brookings, is a walking encyclopedia when it comes to health care. And the good news is that he can speak plain English.

The walkaway from today's meeting is that the health care summit that's taking place in Dallas today with leading hospitals, insurers and employers is the type of action we need if we are ever to control costs. It's increasingly unlikely that Washington will do enough legislatively to rein in health care costs, so collaborative efforts locally will be very important down the road.

That means such changes as your primary care doctor and, say, your heart specialist sharing medical information about you electronically so duplicate tests aren't ordered. In the end, changes like that will help you and the bottom line.

The local effort will require each of us to buy into changes in the way we get health care. But, as McClellan said, we're not talking about a reinvention of managed care. Instead, we're talking about changing the delivery of health care so it can lead to better quality as well as lower costs. Managed care lowered costs, but it didn't necessarily improve quality.

With Tom Schieffer getting out of the 2010 Democratic gubernatorial race, speculation has intensified about Bill White getting into the Democratic primary. If that happens, and Houston's popular mayor captures his party's nomination, Kay Hutchison will have upended this contest in one more jolting way.

Here's what I mean:

The Senate health care bill that 58 Democrats and two Independents voted Saturday to move to the full Senate for debate contains several reforms that every American should like.

It would lead to more people being insured, which means fewer people relying upon public hospitals for emergency care. It would keep insurers from turning down patients with preexisting illnesses, which means people don't have to worry about their diabetes or heart condition stopping them from getting insurance. And it would give subsidies to people with low-to-moderate incomes to purchase insurance, which means they actually could afford coverage.

These are all part of the goal of insuring more Americans, which has been an important aim of the reform effort.

But, as with the House's health bill, this legislation falls short in serious ways, most of which have to do with controlling long-term health costs. Without greater control of health costs, we will only be spending more and more on health care in the future.

Texas Comptroller Susan Combs announced this week that the state's down about a billion in tax collections. Perhaps no surprise there given that the economy remains in the dumps.

But those numbers should get our attention. Over on The Education Front today, we are having a discussion about how the state already was heading into its next Legislature about $6 billion to $10 billion down. Put the billion on top of that $6 billion to $10 billion, and we have troubles ahead for the 2011 session. (Go to The Education Front to see an explanation of the $6 billion to $10 billion gap.)

What are the solutions? Use some of the Rainy Day Fund. Cut spending. Raise the rate on the new business tax, if only for a year. Or maybe some combo of the three.

Funny, we don't hear many of our gubernatorial candidates talking about this. We should. This budget shortfall, which the comptroller's estimates this week could worsen, is going to play havoc with the 2011 session.

President Obama was really good at Fort Hood today. I don't have his remarks in front of me, but he showed genuine empathy to the families of the fallen, reminded the rest of us that the killer would face justice in this life and addressed the uncertainties many Americans feel at a moment like this.

That's what a president is supposed to do, you may say. Yes, but Obama has no long record of political or military service to draw from for a moment like this. That he can do so well on the spot, being both a pastor-in-chief and a commander-in-chief, shows that he has some enormous talents to draw upon.

Of course, today's ceremony wasn't really about Obama. It was about the dead.

The fact the slain soldiers were someone's brother, daughter, husband, wife, grandson or granddaughter came home when a 20-something woman started grasping for the photo of her fallen husband or brother. At that moment, the last few days became real.

Here was a flesh-and-blood person reaching out to touch her loved one for the last time, and breaking down in tears when she realized she could only reach for his picture. I may be able to put down the TV clicker and not think of this for a while, but that young woman will deal with this tragedy for the rest of her life. How awful.

As expected, the House took the first swing Saturday at passing a plan to overhaul the nation's health care system. The bill includes some long-needed reforms, such as preventing insurers from turning down patients with preexisting conditions. But it misses the mark in numerous other ways, including the risk the proposal poses to the deficit over the next two decades.

The House plan will not be the final bill, of course, and that's a good thing. The more liberal House really didn't need to worry about its moderates to pass a plan.

Fortunately, the Senate can't afford to take that course. Its more powerful moderates will have a broader say over that chamber's bill, which is why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is still struggling to get the 60 votes to offset a filibuster of the Senate proposal.

Reid almost surely will get his 60 votes. But before he does, we all should hope that moderate Democratic senators like Evan Bayh of Indiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas amend the final product so that it can better contain health costs.

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation recently analyzed the Senate's bill and concluded that it falls way short in curbing medical expenses. For example, the foundation discovered that:

New Jersey's Gov-elect Christopher Christie told the New York Times today that "Other than taxes and funding issues, the most important issue to me is fixing our urban education problem."

My heart jumped when I read that. Here's a Republican that wants to solve problems and not just critique President Obama. And here's a guy who gets the importance of big urban districts.

But I sure hope he does more than promote charter schools, embrace vouchers and oppose unions. There's a place for each of those on any governor's reform agenda, but they are only the starter issues. Reform goes way beyond that. Come to the Education Front to read more and share your views.

So, where were you when the Berlin Wall came down? And what do you remember about that moment?

Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but you could argue that yesterday's election results were a triumph for moderation and balance.

Wayne Slater posed a counter-intuitive question to our Texas Faith panelists this week. Since many people consider the death penalty immoral, Wayne asked, does that mean Texans who favor the death penalty are immoral?

There's an interesting discussion going about this over at Texas Faith. Join in.

Here's my prediction: After the health bill that Congress will pass this fall has been operating for five or six years, we will start to see stories about how the public plan that the legislation set up wasn't such a drag on the deficit after all. People signed up for the public plan, they paid their premiums and the deficit didn't go over the cliff.

That's the story we will see in 2019 or 2020, I am almost sure of it. And I will be glad.

But the story that matters is the one that comes in a decade or two after that, when the public plan has had time to operate.

There was a period in the middle 1990s when the Texas Legislature really hummed. And while top figures like then-Gov. George W. Bush, Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock and Speaker Pete Laney helped make that happen, there was a cohort of legislators that equally made the place work.

In the Senate, Republicans Teel Bivins, Bill Ratliff and David Sibley and Democrat John Montford operated like the Four Horsemen. Bullock could give them an assignment, and, chances were, they would get the job done.

Sadly, one of those Four Horsemen, Teel Bivins, passed away yesterday after a debilitating illness. At 62, he was way too young to die. Before he died, though, Bivins made his mark.

All along, I've thought that Barack Obama's biggest problem is not the right, but his own party's leaders. Today's move by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to include a public option in the health care bill only confirms that view.

We don't know yet whether Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst will return in 2011 to preside over the Texas Senate, but we do know the chamber will be different in at least two ways. Senate veterans Steve Ogden and Eliot Shapleigh have announced they will not seek another term.

If you wonder why it pays to be skeptical about how Congress tries to finance a health reform bill, the debate on Capitol Hill this week gives you a good reason.

Legislators are considering restoring proposed reductions in Medicare payments to doctors. Known as the "doc fix," lawmakers are looking at taking back a pay cut scheduled for January 1.

Normally, this issue wouldn't cause much alarm. In fact, rollbacks of Medicare cuts to doctors over the last several years haven't received much ink.

But the "doc fix" is a big deal now. If Congress can't hold the line against the doctors today, lawmakers almost surely won't hold it in the future. And if they can't hold it in the future, you can say adios to any hopes of a health care bill being deficit neutral.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke warned today that Washington should get serious about reining in the deficit. In case you've missed recent numbers, the deficit -- not our long-term federal debt -- is at $1.4 trillion for the fiscal year that ended on September 30.

That figure puts the deficit at its highest peak as a percentage of GDP since World War II. That $1.4 trillion is also about one trillion higher than the deficit on September 30, 2008.

The collapse of the economy obviously has ballooned up that figure. And I don't blame President Obama for going with a big stimulus package when he came in, although I'm sorry he didn't put the lion's share of it in a deep payroll tax cut.

Now, though, Obama wants to hand out $250 to seniors to help them cope with not getting a cost-of-living-adjustment in their Social Security checks over the next year. COLAs are based upon the Consumer Price Index, and Social Security trustees have assessed that index shows no increase in costs.

Naturally, this has sparked an uproar. Capitol Hill is scrambling to do something.

Well, here are two suggestions.

President Obama faces the most important decision of his presidency as he determines what to do about Afghanistan.

He's getting plenty of military and political advice, but our Texas Faith panel offers some moral advice. Read and comment here about what the panelists suggest.

What is Rick Perry doing?

That's the question of the day in Texas politics. He's been leading Kay Hutchison in most polls since summer, but he keeps using strongman tactics to get his way in state government. And that has folks scratching their heads. I regularly run into people who wonder "what is he doing?"

In recent weeks, he has ousted the chairman of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, who happened to be his appointee. He also did not reappoint two other board members.

Before that, a Texas Tech regent appointed by Perry said a former Perry staffer essentially told him to get off the board since he had endorsed Hutchison. That story was followed by a couple of UT regents acknowledging that Perry had urged them to vote for his candidate for chancellor of the UT System. And months before that, Perry caught flak, including from Aggies, for letting his former chief of staff push out A&M's president.

Most recently, we had a story about Perry not releasing memos and meeting schedules. He even answers some emails from a personal computer so they can't be considered state business.

To be fair, Perry has arguments for each decision. And I will get into some in a moment. But when you put all these stories together, plus all the scuttlebutt you hear in Austin about Perry and/or his people going after opponents in the Legislature and agencies, the pattern starts to look very heavy-handed. One critic even likened his decision about the Forensic Commission to a "Saturday Night Massacre."

I don't know, but if I were running to extend my governorship to 13 years, I don't think I would want to be compared to Nixon. Politicians sometimes get hit with images they can never shake. (See Jerry Ford and his bumbler image.)

So, why is Perry doing this? I will offer three theories, and I confess I don't know which is right.

Olympia Snowe was right on two fronts yesterday. The Maine Republican was smart to back the Senate Finance Committee's health care bill. And she was correct to remind Democrats she may not vote for it on the Senate floor.

First, why she was right to back it.

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President Obama now knows where he must put his weight. And that's behind Democratic Sen. Max Baucus' health plan, which the Congressional Budget Office just re-scored as "deficit neutral."
Earlier this morning, I put up a post saying that any bill still could explode the deficit because most of the savings in all of them come from future savings in Medicare and other health costs. And there's no guarantee at all that those savings will materialize. (Experts I interviewed for this column agreed that a bill may not necessarily be neutral just because CBO says it is. That's because CBO scores bills on the assumptions they make. CBO doesn't get into whether the assumptions are likely to occur.)

That said, CBO's scoring of the Baucus bill is politically significant. The president, Baucus and others have a bill they can sell to moderates as a way to insure more Americans, restrain health costs and, CBO says, not worsen the deficit.

My hunch is that Senate Democrats won't add a bunch of spending amendments on the floor that would balloon up the costs of the Baucus bill. But House Democrats are another issue. The great political unknown is whether the more liberal House will insist in a conference committee on adding a public plan, more subsidies to help poor Americans afford insurance and other reforms that could jack up costs.

If they're smart, they won't. CBO has just given the president and his party a pathway to victory. You'd think House Democrats would want to get on that road.

The bureaucracy of food stamps is hardly a show-stopper first thing in the morning. But the difficulties eligible Texas families run into when trying to get food stamps is not a yawner to them. It's a story about whether they can put food on the table for their kids.

Unfortunately, Texas continues to fall way behind other states when it comes to distributing food stamps. And the feds know this quite well. They suggest we need a czar to work out our problems.

Perhaps we do. I'd like to hear more opinions about that. Meanwhile, it's good that Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Joe Strauss stepped forward with some bucks to add more caseworkers. (They are key members of the Legislative Budget Board, which has the authority to meet limited spending requests when the Legislature's not in session.)

The extra staffers won't end the problem. But they can help more people get what they need.

The column I wrote earlier this week about all the health bills being likely to increase the federal debt wasn't my way of saying I don't want health care reform. Actually, I do. And, faced with the choices being presented on Capitol Hill, I like what I see in Democratic Sen. Max Baucus' bill in terms of insuring more people and controlling medical costs.

But I do worry a great deal that Congress will pass something that, intentionally or not, explodes the debt. And so far, none of the bills has air-tight financing.

I can understand why that doesn't bother some people. But it really bothers me because I think we sometimes forget the moral irresponsibility of passing on a debt of $11.9 trillion and counting to our kids. (It's actually much greater than that when you factor in promises made to Social Security and Medicare for which we have no funds.)

The Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners Fellowship was in this week talking, among other things, about health care and we had a good conversation with him about whether it is a moral issue. I don't quarrel with the debate being framed that way. I just want us also to think of the generational transfer of excessive spending as its own moral issues.

The way to connect these competing moral concerns is to come with a bill that helps working families buy insurance, keeps medical costs affordable and has a solid way of financing various. So far, we don't have that bill.

We had an editorial board meeting yesterday with Jim Wallis of Sojourners Fellowship and representatives from Justice Revival, which is hosting a news conference today in Dallas to announce a November "revival" that its supporters want to deal with poverty issues without getting sidetracked by partisan divides.

Wallis is a liberal evangelical minister in Washington, D.C. who has long edited Sojourners Magazine and, most recently authored books like "God's Politics." Justice Revival is a movement he and others have helped spawn to encourage people of faith to revitalize their communities. The concept is similar to a parish taking responsibility for the surrounding neighborhood.

After a year of work in Dallas with Christians from about 1,000 evangelical, Catholic, Pentecostal and Protestant churches, Wallis and the movement's local leaders will announce a campaign to improve Dallas schools and grow more affordable housing for the homeless.

Both parts are important, but come over to The Education Front to read and comment about the school element
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It's fascinating to watch the endorsements of Rick Perry or Kay Hutchison roll in. It's like a bidding war out there and each side wastes no time in highlighting their latest backers.

Today, she got the Texas Farm Bureau's support for the 2010 GOP primary. Moments later, the Perry campaign was touting his own ag backers and chiding her for not being a strong proponent for landowners.

The battle over farmers and ag interests is going to be an important one to follow as the GOP primary heats up. Perry's push to modernize our transportation system through the Trans-Texas Corridor has not sat so well with many rural Texans, to put it mildly. I think he was on to something with reshaping our transportation corridors, but rural interests have largely stopped it. And they still are mad at him for pushing the TTC.

Normally, you would think he would get the backing of the Farm Bureau, given his rural roots and socially conservative ways. (I'm not saying all farm folks are social conservatives, but rural Texas does have its fair share of cultural conservatives.)
But the fact the Farm Bureau opposes him puts in play at least some of the state's more conservative voters.

From Hutchison's perspective, that's a plus. She doesn't need to win every conservative. She just needs to win enough of them to make things difficult for Perry, who's apparently banking on winning the GOP nomination solely through capturing conservatives.

I'm glad that the Senate Finance Committee voted down two attempts to create a public health plan option. Premiums could perhaps pay for a public plan at first, but I worry -- a lot -- that the premiums wouldn't keep pace with the plan's costs over time. In other words, it wouldn't be self-financing and taxpayers in the future would have to pay serious bucks to bail it out, just like we will have to do to keep Medicare solvent.

Beyond the financing aspects of the public option, the politics of this part of the debate are fascinating. The Senate Finance Committee may have turned down a public option, but that is far from the last step. And I have no idea where this will end up.

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What's Obama doing going to Copenhagen to press Chicago's case for the Olympics? I really don't get this, even though I'd love Chicago to get them. Heck, I love that Obama loves his hometown enough to campaign for the Olympics.

But he's got health care, Afghanistan, Iraq, the deficit, the economy, Gitmo, education and a long list of other issues that he's facing. Now, he wants to fly to Denmark to argue for the Olympics in Chicago?

Don't get me wrong: It's better to have an ambitious president than a leave-me-alone Coolidge. But one thing that has bothered me about Obama is that he kind of has this approach that he's like Gary Cooper coming into town, doing what no one else has ever been able to do.

Well, this stuff is hard. And because issues like health care are hard, you have to dig in and really concentrate.

I thought Bush made a mistake going off in too many directions his last couple of years, when he should have stayed on task for just one or two issues, like the Mideast and an entitlement deal with the Democrats. Similarly, I think Obama is at risk going in too many directions at once. Presidents who multitask too much hurt their own agenda.

Longer school days? Do they make sense?

Barack Obama and Arne Duncan think so. And I'm with them, although there are limits to how far this reform should go. Read and comment at the Education Front.

John Conyn's been introducing controversial amendments to the Senate Finance Committee's health care bill this week.

Rick Perry and Kay Hutchison on the same stage? At the same time? And not for their showdown debate before the GOP gubernatorial primary?

Yes, it could happen, if both momentarily put aside their differences to campaign together for the constitutional amendment that would help Texas grow more nationally recognized research universities. They're known as Tier One schools, and Texas now only has three of them: UT, A&M and Rice.

Read more on The Education Front about why they should come together.

Here's what we're discussing this week on Texas Faith:

Talk show host Glenn Beck landed on the cover of Time Magazine this week, after a powerful start as a Fox News host. Beck is most famous these days for his updated version of American exceptionalism and for promoting a fear that the Constitution is being undermined by a conspiracy.

It's easy for liberals to dismiss such thinking as more nuttiness or groundless anger on the right. But the New York Times' conservative columnist David Brooks also talked about people being afraid because of their economic insecurity, which is very real. And liberal evangelical Jim Wallis put out a letter saying to Beck that progressives share a fear about tomorrow, although he believes hope should overcome fear. Liberal columnist Jim Sleeper issued his own warning to progressives, saying today's anxiety goes far beyond race.

So here's this week question:

What constructive thing would you say to people who are afraid in today's world so they don't fall prey to demagogues?

Read on to see how our panelists respond. And put your comments here.

The new Rasmussen poll is out and it has Kay Hutchison leading Rick Perry in the GOP gubernatorial primary 40-38 percent, with Debra Medina polling three percent.

Whether these Rasmussen numbers are right or not, I don't know. I'm not a pollster.

But they do raise an important point if the GOP governor's race remains close until the end. If these findings hold up over time, the culturally conservative Medina could cost Perry the race. Like Ralph Nader did to Al Gore in Florida, a protest candidate only needs to take a few points away from one of the major contenders to make a difference.

In this case, she would draw from Perry, who is doing all he can to ride the votes of social conservatives into securing the GOP nomination in March. Almost everyday the Perry camp sends out press releases touting their most recent endorsement by a socially conservative leader or organization. If Medina captures only a slender portion of this vote, she hurts Perry.

I haven't talked to her, so I don't know why she's running. She's cited issues like abolishing the property tax. But why would she be so upset with Perry, who arguably is as anti-tax as any movement conservative? And, heck, he's screeched so loudly about states' rights that he can look like a modern Lester Mattox.

I don't know, and it really doesn't make any difference why she's running. The fact is, she is and that could hurt Perry in a close race. The Medina factor could be one of the keys to the race.

I confess that Ted Kennedy's death led me to assume Congress would pass a health care bill, kind of like Congress passed several major pieces of social legislation after JFK's assassination. I tend to think that still will happen, but then there was this piece in the NYT yesterday about how Democrats are scrambling to get 60 votes for a health bill.

Because of Kennedy's death, Democrats have only 59 senators. And they would like to pass a bill with 60 votes so they aren't accused of using complicated parliamentary moves to pass a bill with less than the 60 needed to stave off a filibuster.

They fear, legitimately so, that resorting to parliamentary techniques would make them look like they are playing by what we called as kids "Oklahoma rules." That was shorthand in Texas for making up the rules that would benefit you. (My apologies to all Sooner readers.)

So Democrats have to find one more vote, which means attracting one or two Republicans. That chore is even more difficult since Democrats have both a strong progressive wing and a strong moderate/conservative wing.

What one likes, the other doesn't, and vice versa. Finding a sweet spot between both sides, which Kennedy was often good at doing, is making it hard for Democrats to get enough of their own votes, much less a few GOP votes.

Of course, Massachusetts could pass a law that allows its governor to appoint an interim senator until a special election is held next year. That would give Democrats one more senator. But his appointed successor would have to get to Washington pretty fast because this health debate is getting ready to move. Plus, which wing would his successor come from? And would that person have the Kennedy-like skill to find the sweet spot?

What an irony that would be. The death of Ted Kennedy, the Senate's health care champion, makes it hard, if not impossible, to pass a health bill.

I'm not saying that will happen, but it's not inconceivable.

We had an engaging discussion this morning about health care, and I later thought that the point we don't hear much about from Capitol Hill is that we can't get from A to B without people feeling some kind of pinch.

I mean, you can't require insurers to stop discriminating against preexisting conditions without seeing insurance costs go up.

Nor can you finance a reform package without someone feeling the costs, whether it's businesses that receive subsidies for employee plans, insurers that get taxed for the health products they offer wealthier Americans, or some of us paying a greater share of our monthly health premiums because employers shift even more costs onto us.

And you can't expect to "bend the cost curve" without some kind of discomfort, whether that's getting fewer tests to see what's going on, different approaches to care than your doctor now uses or greater personal responsibility for your own fitness.

I understand why politicians don't like to say there is no free lunch. But that is the truth. What we hope to get, though, is more Americans insured, a curbing of medical costs and a better delivery of health care. Those are three important goals, along with keeping health costs from driving expenditures on Medicare and Medicaid into dangerous territory.

But we can't reach the mountain top without some sweat, maybe a lot of sweat. I wish this weren't so, but big problems don't get resolved without lots of folks having to experience some dislocation.

I confess to feeling vulnerable after reading about Jody Powell's death. Not that I am 65, which was how old he was when he died Monday. But because a guy who seemed so young not so many years ago is now gone.

When I first moved to D.C. in 1979, Powell and Hamilton Jordan were the young wunderkind of the Carter administration. They were the thirty-somethings who were everywhere in Washington in those days. At one point, they were looking courageous by challenging the lions of their party. At another, they were looking like they were in way over their heads.

Now, both are dead. Jordan died last year and Powell this week. For Jimmy Carter, I bet this is awful, like out-living two sons.

A year ago this week, the nation walked straight into a frightening economic collapse. Lehman Brothers fell, and soon thereafter Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was meeting with bank executives around the clock to stave off further damage.

Amidst all this turmoil, the country learned in detail about the complex deal-making that financial houses engaged in, including unfathomable derivative trading. At the same time, we found out just how much Wall Street executives were making, including taking home big, big bonuses. After all was said and done, Americans were left looking at an economic system that many felt was driven by greed and even gluttony.

All this was playing out amidst a presidential campaign, where the religious left was talking mostly about issues like torture and the environment while the religious right was largely decrying abortion and homosexuality.

But who was talking about greed and gluttony?

Not many, which is the subject of debate on Texas Faith this week. Read and comment on our panelists' responses here.

Eight months into the Obama years, we've already reached the point where an evil craziness is about to take off. Unless enough Republican leaders, conservative movement honchos and talk show jocks denounce it, we could see an uncontrolled hatred of Barack Obama run rampant. And who knows where that will lead.

Look at the last week.

To those who wanted President Obama to deliver specifics on health care, he did so tonight. And he did so with a clear, firm and passionate speech. For a leader who's only been in office eight months, and only in Washington four years, he delivered an address with the assurance of a veteran.

And he was right that Washington could easily reach consensus upon several areas. But he was wrong in several important ways.

Here's what I mean:

President Obama probably could pass a bill with enough left-of-center votes, especially since it looks like he is not backing off his preference for a public plan that could compete to cover uninsured Americans.

But he really doesn't have to go that route. There are ways for him to back a more moderate plan, if he chose to alienate the Democratic left.

Let's see. There are now three university systems where Rick Perry seems to have decided that state schools are his playground.

The health care debate really gets down into the weeds when it turns to discussions of controlling health costs. But it's important that we get down into those weeds to understand what's being proposed in Washington. We don't want to end up with the wrong set of reforms.

What I worry about is that Congress will give lip-service to controlling costs, but not really go far enough to "bend the cost curve." The House, for example, would wring savings out of Medicare by paying doctors less. But it doesn't do much to really change how doctors get paid. And the way they get paid is the real problem.

The Texas political news of the last several days is that Tom Schieffer, the Democratic gubernatorial hopeful, has received the endorsement of several Texas House Democrats, including Reps. Garnet Coleman and Jim Dunnam. Those two happen to be the House's most visible liberal Democratic spokesmen. The fact they are endorsing Schieffer, who other Democrats have been hammering at for supporting George W. Bush in 1994 and for serving in his administration as ambassador to Australia and Japan, give Schieffer the cover he needs in a Democratic race.

This article in today's DMN about Cigna and the Medical Clinic of North Texas is a perfect example of what policymakers are talking about when they discuss "bending the cost curve" in medicine. The insurer and clinic are rethinking how they care for patients with chronic conditions. Among other things, they are putting a premium on giving patients a "medical home."

As part of that effort, Cigna is hiring someone to work with the clinic and its doctors to coordinate a patient's case with other doctors who might be treating the same person for another condition. The thinking is that the coordination, which involves sharing of electronic records, will help eliminate duplicative testing and let all of a patient's doctors know what is going on.

As the DMN's Jason Roberson explains, Cigna and the Medical Clinic of North Texas didn't invent this idea. But it's the kind of local effort that we need if we are ever going to control health costs. There's a lot Washington can do through Medicare to control costs, but the feds aren't the only ones that can bend the cost-curve. Efforts like these can lead to both better -- and less costly -- care.

Kay Hutchison was pretty darn clear in answering a question today at the Dallas Friday Group about what she thinks about the GOP's direction. After her luncheon address, which was entirely about federal issues, a gentleman rose to state his concerns about the far right wing of the Republican Party taking over and what it would mean nationally if Texas goes that way in the upcoming gubernatorial primary.

I expected Hutchison to flinch a little because generally GOP politicians don't want to alienate social conservatives. She didn't directly mention the right, but she responded that she too thought the governor's race was a bellwether nationally and that she wants to show the country that the "biggest Republican state has enlightened Republican leadership."

Later, after stating what she thought were fundamental Republican principles, she said that "the difference between Rick Perry and me is that I want a big, welcoming Republican Party."

Those remarks are code for the GOP can't go so far right that it loses the mainstream. And she is exactly right. Just as Democrats went too far left until Bill Clinton repositioned the party in the middle, Republicans can't win with only the hard right.

Trying to broaden the GOP is also the way she can win the GOP primary.. Perry has the social conservatives locked up, so Hutchison ought to firmly put her foot down in the big-tent camp.

Like so many others have noted, Ted Kennedy was the real deal when it came to being a legislator. As a moderate who didn't always agree with his solutions, I always admired his passion for better schools, a saner health system and the struggle for disadvantaged Americans. And I especially came to appreciate his ability to achieve those goals, or get close to achieving them.

He struck up alliances with Republicans like George W. Bush, Orrin Hatch and Nancy Kassebaum. And he didn't waver when some in his party came at him for getting too close to Republicans.

I remember participants in the immigration debate talk about how he stood his ground against Democrats who thought he was getting too close to John McCain and other Republicans who wanted to also overhaul immigration laws. And I remember Margaret Spellings, the former Bush education secretary, talk about going to Sen. Kennedy's house for dinner on the same day that he had beat up the administration about Iraq. That was just the way he was. He could maintain friendships and alliances even when disagreeing with his allies on other points.

As a Texan, I confess feeling like an outsider writing about Kennedy. Not only was there a cultural gap between Massachusetts and Texas, but there was this whole Texas thing with the Kennedy family.

I don't have to belabor the obvious. It all stemmed from that horrid, dark day in November 1963. While the Kennedys understood that what happened on that day didn't reflect the entire state, nonetheless it felt odd looking at him close-up while I lived in Washington. I know that was many years ago, and times and Texas have changed. Still, the words "Kennedy" and "Texas" never seemed natural in the same sentence.

My bet is that his death will spark passage of a health care bill this fall. It will be largely a Democratic bill, but it will get passed just as JFK's assassination led LBJ and Congress to pass a bunch of civil rights laws and numerous Great Society programs.

What an irony that would be. His death leading to the goal that eluded him during his career: better health care for all.

Okay, here's my prediction: Rick Perry selects Dan Patrick to fill Kay Hutchison's Senate seat after she steps down this fall. There's scuttlebutt about this, and I think it's Patrick for four reasons:

President Obama's catching flack from the left and silence from the right about his administration's nod toward regional health cooperatives. But, as someone who hangs out in the middle of the political spectrum, I'm thrilled the president let administration officials go on the Sunday talk shows and mention that he is open to the coops.

This is an important move for financial and political reasons.

Kay Bailey Hutchison is off and running for governor, and one of the priorities the Republican ticked off yesterday in her announcement speech was Texas' sky-high tuition costs.

That line clearly resonates with parents and students who are heading back to college this month. Financing the bill each semester can be -- and often is --- tricky. (By contrast, when I attended the University of Texas in the middle 1970s, tuition for a 15-hour semester was about $225. What a steal that was.)

As much as complaining about tuition rates is a sure-fire applause generator, finding the right answer is much harder. The Legislature tried this year. Some wanted to take away the ability of universities to set their own rates. Others wanted to limit rate hikes to inflation. Basically, not a lot passed.

I think we're better off letting campuses set their own rates, and then putting some restrictions around that right. Here are a few reasons:

These paragraphs from Kay Bailey Hutchison's announcement speech today are the political take-away from her official entry into the 2010 GOP gubernatorial primary:

The most revealing political decision of the summer was State Sen. Kirk Watson's announcement that he will not seek the 2010 Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Some party members had been all but begging Watson to enter the race. Hard-core Democrats are not wild about Fort Worth businessman and Bush administration ambassador Tom Schieffer being the only serious contender in the race. (Sorry Kinky fans, but the Kinkster's not going to pull a Jesse Ventura or Al Franken and win the nomination or the governorship.)

Meg Greenfield, the late Washington Post editorial page editor, wrote a book that was published after she died in 1999 about her four decades in Washington. Among other things, she observed that when she came to Washington in the early 1960s, politicians had to kow-tow to powerful committee chairs. Otherwise, they would never get any place.

By the 1990s, she noticed, committee chairs still mattered but not as much as the Blob, which she defined as the great Opinion of Unknown, Unseen Others. Politicians had come to constantly answer to the Blob, whether through cable TV shows, radio talk shows or the latest grassroots technologies. (This was before the arrival of blogs, which have only fueled the power of the Blob.)

Here we are August 12 and Kay Hutchison still is not fully engaged in our gubernatorial race. I know she's slated to step down this fall, so presumably then she goes after Rick Perry's job full time.

I don't know, maybe waiting that long will pay off. But if it doesn't, her failure to engage Perry earlier in the race will be seen as Texas' equivalent of Howard Baker waiting so late to enter the 1980 GOP presidential primary race that he was knocked out in about three months. Baker wasn't guaranteed the nomination, but he sure had a great shot at it, until he waited too long to give his campaign juice.

What frustrates me about the health care protesters is that they are missing the real issues. They are off on predictable cries about funding abortions, which is only a remote possibility, and euthanasia, which is a complete misreading of the plans. They also are howling about socialized medicine, when indeed we've lived with Medicare for 45 years and doctors still are independent contractors.

What the protesters are missing is how we afford adding so many people to a public plan. We can barely afford Medicare's costs today, so how will future generations pay for a public plan that could serve up to 40 million people?

Also, the protesters are missing another fundamental problem: How exactly will these plans hold down health care costs? The Congressional Budget Office already has said the House bill will not. So, how does the Senate plan on "bending the cost curve?"

Those are the real problems with the ideas being discussed, not these sidebar issues. The critics ae doing a lousy job.

Mamzic challenged me to come up with a McKenzie plan for health reform. I've blogged in the past about the guidelines that should steer Congress and the White House. Now, let me present what I think are the best ideas so far:

For a while now, I've felt frustrated about how the health care debate is being framed. It seems mostly about whether you want to insure more Americans or not. Or whether you favor a government plan or not. Or whether you think such-and-such a method can hold down costs or not.

Those are often put as the choices, including the most recent one being framed by Nancy Pelosi: Are insurers the villains or not?

Not until I was doing some reading this weekend did it finally hit me what was missing: the larger picture.

Think of how we approach the energy debate. It usually isn't framed about whether we favor this alternative fuel over that one, or this kind of car over that one, or this emission control over that one. It almost always is framed as a way to make us more independent of foreign sources of oil.

Well, there's a similar question that can be posed in this health care debate. And it is this: Will the reforms help free us from the Chinese?

John McCain announced today that he will not vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor as a Supreme Court justice. I found that disappointing because McCain has been really good in pushing the GOP to reach more Hispanic voters. McCain says he still wants to do that, and that his vote is based on issues, not her ethnicity. I get that, but I still wish he had backed her.

Before the Dems start hopping all over McCain, they ought to remember that a young senator from Illinois voted against George W. Bush's nominees to the Supreme Court. Sen. Obama voted against John Roberts and Samuel Alito, citing a philosophical difference.

On this issue at least, Obama and McCain are no different. Obama's votes make it hard for him and/or his party to go after Republicans who vote against Sotomayor for philosophical reasons.

Join us over at The Education Front to discuss Latinos and education. Education Secretary Arne Duncan spoke to La Raza this week and said the nation needs more Latino teachers. Only five percent of teachers nationwide are Latino, while 20 percent of the student population is Latino. I think he's right. What are your thoughts? Come join the conversation.

Here's my take on the president's press conference:

Was there anything new?

Not necessarily, If you have followed many of President Obama's comments and speeches, he pretty much reiterated his views.

But that's not necessarily bad. He doesn't want to negotiate with the Hill on national TV. Plus, he was availing himself of the White House pulpit to explain to Americans why the system needs changing. I think that was his major point.

What were his best parts?

See above: He outlined why we need to change. His remarks were interestingly similar to what former Bush Medicare chief Mark McClellan made in an interview with me today, which will be in Points Sunday. Obama said -- rightly -- that the status quo will lead to a doubling of personal health costs and upward pressure on the deficit because of rising costs of Medicaid and Medicare. I think he spoke very plainly and directly, which should help people get the point.

He also did a good job embracing and explaining the kinds of health reforms we need to control costs. That includes more preventive care and creating incentives for patients to be discriminating consumers.

I also liked his declaration that he would veto any bill that is not deficit-neutral and does not control health costs. Without both of those, reforms will be meaningless.

What were his worst parts?

He didn't even nod toward eliminating some of the tax subsidies that employers get for employee health costs. The Senate Finance Committee is trying to go that route, and a nod could have helped.

Instead, he said nice things about Speaker Pelosi's ideas about taxing millionaires. Not only do I think that is bad policy, but it worries me that Obama may again go with the House on a big bill. Remember, he pretty much took the more liberal House's big wish-list stimulus bill, hook, line and sinker.

He didn't ask anyone other millionaires to sacrifice. He basically said the only sacrifice Americans must make is to give up paying for things that don't make them healthier.

Did the president help himself?

With the public, perhaps yes. With Capitol Hill, probably not. The parameters of the debate are pretty much where they were at the start of the day.

President Obama got some bummer news last week. The head of the Congressional Budget Office could not see how the House's health plan would yield any savings in health costs. In fact, he told Congress, the plan would increase costs.

That's exactly the opposite of what Obama has been saying would happen if we reform health care. He's banked part of his effort on the fact that taking on such a huge challenge now would lead to savings down the road.

The fact that the House plan will not save money puts tremendous onus upon the Senate Finance Committee to come up with a solid way to pay for any health plan so the deficit really doesn't explode. The Finance Committee is working fast to come up with an alternative.

First, the speed part.

Here's what you can glean about Sonia Sotomayor after this morning's hearings:

She will be a suitable replacement for the left-of-center David Souter. If that's what President Obama wanted, that's what he's getting.

I don't want to be a fear-monger, but I hope we all pause to read The Washington Post's Robert Samuelson's column about rising deficits and debt. Mike has put it on our Opinion homepage and these parts really hit me:

Day one in the Senate's Sotomayor hearing and the winner is....Al Franken. The newly-installed Democratic senator made his debut remarks as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and he showed a combination of liveliness, humility and balance.

Too many veteran senators appear wooden or shopworn. And too many freshmen legislators appear overwhelmed. Not Franken. While the comedian/writer didn't have time to say much, what he did say about balancing judicial restraint with compassion, along with his thoughts about being a non-lawyer on the committee, showed that he will not be a lightweight. I think the Minnesotan will be much more like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who moved from showbiz to politics with an easy manner and a serious purpose.

Franken should be refreshing to watch in the Senate. His Saturday Night Live past and Harvard degree should allow him to liven the place up while holding his own intellectually.

As for Judge Sotomayor, she was tightly scripted and, like most nominees, swore fidelity to the law. This was her day to listen to the senators make their opening statements, so we will learn more about her tomorrow.

Get ready. Gov. Perry has just called the special session for July 1. No surprise that it will focus on renewing the Departments of Insurance and Transportation.

He's smart to keep it focused and not get off into the voter ID issue again. But he could have included a redo on allowing local communities to decide whether to tax themselves to raise funds for roads and rails.

He evidently doesn't want to be close to a tax issue with next year's primary ahead. But this would have been a germane issue. And how's he going to explain his lack of interest in solving North Texans' mobility problems with something other than tolls? He's also opening himself up to criticism from Kay Hutchison for not being willing to deal with the most populous part of the state's transportation woes.

We've been discussing what the governor should include in his call for a special session. I'm in the camp of thinking that he should limit the call to germane issues because special sessions can get sidetracked on tangents.

For example, if Gov. Perry were to include voter ID in the call for the session, which some speculate he might, then, holy smokes, the place could burn down. The necessary bills, the ones that must get done or we lose our transportation and insurance departments, would get caught up in the nasty politics of voter ID. (Nasty, because Democrats and Republicans alike are using the debate about whether to require voters to show forms of ID to play to their strongest supporters.)

The must-dos could easily get held hostage to the tangential voter ID debate. And guess what? Thirty days later, nothing would have gotten done and we would need another special session.

Keep the agenda germane, governor.

News from Iran today may complicate Obama's handling of the situation there. But I think he has handled the election outcome superbly the last few days. I don't get all the conservative critique of him, that he hasn't stood up enough for democracy.

Number one, he has made it clear that he naturally prefers a valid election. But two, he would have only hardened the regime's resistance if he had come out swinging against it, which I deduce some conservatives would prefer.

Interestingly, James Baker spoke out in praise of Obama's handling of the situation. Obama may have to change strategies going forward, but so far he's hit the sweet spot.

The Washington Post's Dan Balz has done a great piece on Al From, the exiting founder of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. The story is worth reading just for a look back at the last 20 years of Democratic politics. But it also is an important read for what From has to say to both Democrats and Republicans.

Here are two hints:

Republicans: You'll never come out of the wilderness until you develop a set of values that the mainstream supports.

Democrats: The public wants to see problems solved, but watch how far you expand the federal government. The public has a limited appetite for big government..

Health care time has arrived in Washington. Both House and Senate committees are slated to put more meat on the bones of their health plans this week. I've been thinking about what parameters should guide Congress, so here are three basics:

Obama deserves credit for pulling an about-face and saying he's willing to consider doing away with the tax exemption on workers' health benefits. McCain proposed the idea last year as a way to pay for broader coverage, but Obama dissed him.

But having pivoted, Obama could run into trouble on using this as a way to pay for universal coverage.

Gail Collins has a column today in the NYT taking her New York Legislature to task for being a bunch of scoundrels. She also cites examples from Pennsylvania, Louisiania and Illinois, where state government has had its share of problems.

I love that she is writing about state government, and making it interesting. But I'm also glad that our state Legislature isn't the same as New York's.

I fully expect John Cornyn to vote against Sonia Sotomayor. The Texas Republican probably will even filibuster her nomination.

So far, though, I've been impressed with the tenor of his approach to her nomination. He called Newt on the carpet for his racist comment. And he seemed genuinely perturbed in our Point Person interview with him at the notion that Republicans wouldn't vote for her.

All in all, he's striking a pretty restrained tone. He's not becoming the modern equivalent of Nelson Rockefeller, but he has taken more practical stands elsewhere too.

Our new blog devoted to education issues is up and running, too. Come on over to The Education Front for a review of the Legislature's just-finished school accountability bill.

This week, the blog also is going to get into the revision of the state's 10 percent rule for college admissions, tuition deregulation and Education Secretary Arne Duncan's congressional testimony about Obama's education budget.

Depending upon how events proceed today, GOP State Sen. John Carona could launch a filibuster down in Austin. If he goes ahead with it, he will try to talk to death the rewrite of the law governing the state's transportation agency.

At least, that's what he will be doing in theory. What he really will be doing is protesting the stripping out of the provision in the bill that would have allowed North Texas and other regions to approve taxes to fund rail and road alternatives of their choice.

This being the last day, is it worth Carona doing this, even if his filibuster risks ending the session on a sour note?

Yes, he should go ahead. The death of the local option tax is worth a big-deal media event. Everyone knows we have serious congestion problems, but a combination of forces killed the best solution in the House. .Any hurt feelings will be gone by the next time the Leg meets.

Rick Perry's really showing some guts in the battle down in Austin to rewrite the way the state measures and holds schools accountable. Perry told the lead negotiators on the bill -- GOP Sen. Florence Shapiro and GOP Rep. Rob Eissler -- that he may veto any final version that does away with the state's ban against socially promoting students.

A decade ago, the Legislature decided that kids shouldn't be promoted without knowing their material. That's why lawmakers decided to require students to pass the state's achievement exam in grades three, five and eight before they move to the next grade.

Both the Senate and House bills would do away with that requirement, so the governor put his foot down. Good. Excellent.

Now, there may be a way to satisfy both sides in this debate over social promotion.

Here's some really fabulous news for Dallas and especially the southern half of the city:

According to Jerome Garza, DISD trustee, preliminary results on this year's TAKS test show that the number of exemplary or recognized campuses within the Dallas school district has increased from 103 last year to 126 this year. (Exemplary is the state's top ranking, recognized is the second top ranking.) Equally important, the number of unacceptable schools within DISD has declined from 21 last year to 14 this year.

What's particularly exciting is to see success in a number of schools in the neglected southern half of the city. According to Garza, Spruce H.S., which was "repurposed" this year after years of decline, has earned the recognized ranking. And Samuell H.S., which also was changed after consistent failings, is looking at an acceptable ranking. Better to be recognized than acceptable, but, man, Samuell's improvement would be like the Detroit Lions going from 0-16 last season to 8-8 this coming one.

Since my "base" in our project dealing with closing the gaps between the two halves of the city deals with a wide swath of Oak Cliff, I'm going to brag about some Oak Cliff schools.

Rodger and I were talking last week about how boring the state budget can sound to readers, but let's face it: The state's spending over the next two years matters immensely to classrooms, universities, roads, students, the environment and pretty much every aspect of Texas' life.

So, with apologies to those who think of this as boring stuff, here's a look at the two-year budget that House and Senate conferees voted unanimously yesterday to support. For the record, I would vote for this budget if I were the deciding vote, but I would vote against it if I were not. There are too many important items left unfunded, which the state could have done if it had borrowed just some from the nearly $7 billion Rainy Day Fund.