Obama Unveils $1.5 Billion Plan to Help Homeowners and Democrats

President Obama is unveiling $1.5 billion in housing help, a boost timed to his appearance in the city with the worst foreclosure crisis in the nation.

Obama's move, detailed by aides in advance of his town hall here Friday, is the latest by a White House determined to show it is helping families rebound from a deep recession. The downturn is taking an election-year toll on Obama's party as voter frustration builds.

Obama was to announce that housing finance agencies in the five hardest-hit states in the housing crisis will receive $1.5 billion to help spur local solutions to the problem. Those five are Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan and Nevada.

The policy wrinkle comes during a two-day Western trip with different agendas for the president. He will be back in town-hall mode, a venue that aides say allows him to connect with people and distance himself from the messy process of Washington governing.

The president is also out to help vulnerable senators protect their seats and, in turn, gain as much legislative leverage as he can. - FOX News Story

Las Vegas Mayor says No to Obama

Tensions between President Obama and Nevada elected officials over the president's anti-Sin City remarks escalated Thursday when Las Vegas's mayor refused an invitation to meet with Obama when he arrives in town, FoxNews.com has confirmed.

"I've got other things to do quite frankly for my constituents here in Las Vegas who rely on me to do the right thing as a mayor," Mayor Oscar Goodman told KTNV Action News.

Goodman was invited by the White House to meet the president on the tarmac when he arrives Thursday night and to the town hall event scheduled for Friday, Goodman spokesman Jace Radke told FoxNews.com, adding that the mayor would consider the invitation if Obama promised to apologize for his remarks.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Goodman is still smarting from comments Obama made suggesting that people saving money for college shouldn't blow in it Las Vegas.

Obama told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, in a letter that he wasn't saying anything negative about Las Vegas. But it was the second time since taking office that Obama singled out Las Vegas as a potential example of spending excessively.

The comments sparked a firestorm of criticism as the city struggles to find its footing amid a two-year meltdown of foreclosures, bankruptcies and unemployment.

Obama will be in Las Vegas to campaign for Reid, who is facing a daunting re-election bid.

Goodman has said that Obama is no friend to Vegas and would not be welcomed there if he visits.

"I'll do everything I can to give him the boot," Goodman said. "This president is a real slow learner."

Goodman told KTNV that he was a bit surprised to receive an invitation after his widely reported reaction to Obama's comments. But the invitation hasn't softened his anger.

"We are hurting, we have people in foreclosures, we have people having a hard time feeding their families and we can't stand to have a flippant statement made," Goodman told the news channel.

"I haven't heard an apology, I haven't heard a response. All I do is get invitations," he said. - FOX News Story

Republicans Challenge Dems to Televised Debate on Jobs

House Republicans are taking a page from the president's playbook by challenging Democrats to a televised debate about job creation.

The top two Republicans in the House sent a letter Wednesday daring their counterparts — Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer — to engage in a public discussion over ways Congress can provide a boost to the economy.

Their call comes as Democrats struggle to find consensus on a job creation package and in advance of the Feb. 25 bipartisan health care summit.

"Clearly, we need a different approach to developing legislation that will get Americans back to work," Republican leader John Boehner and party Whip Eric Cantor wrote to Pelosi and Hoyer. "Therefore, in the interest of complete transparency on the single most important issue of the day for most Americans, we ask that you join us for an open discussion so that we can begin to change a process that has not only polarized this Capitol building but this country as well."

Their call for an open discussion echoes President Barack Obama's invitation to congressional leaders to hold a health care debate next week at Blair House. That event stems from a recent back and forth between Obama and House Republicans. The president earned praise from the left and the right for his lengthy, candid exchange with Republicans during their annual issues conference in Baltimore late last month.

The White House caught Republicans off guard by asking the GOP to open the normally closed-door question-and-answer session to television cameras and reporters who are normally ushered from the room after the president speaks. - Politico Story

Programs that Received Stimulus Funds now Receiving Budget Cuts?

Billions of dollars in stimulus money is now going to programs that the administration plans to ax or cut down in its new budget, according to USA Today, which reported Wednesday that the total comes to more than $3.5 billion

Among the programs facing elimination or reduction are:

-- The Army Corps of Engineers' drinking-water project, which has received $200 million in the stimulus package.

-- The Department of Agriculture's flood-prevention program, the recipient of $290 million.

-- The Forest Service, which is getting $100 million less for maintenance and construction in national forests even though it received $650 million in stimulus money.

-- The Interior Department's budget to thin trees and brush to fight wildfires, which is slated to get $44 million less in the Obama budget than last year. It had gotten $15 million in stimulus money.

While defenders would say the budget cuts are balancing out the early stimulus money, Tom Schatz of the nonpartisan budget watchdog Citizens Against Government Waste told the newspaper the proposed cuts show the programs shouldn't have received money from the stimulus package in the first place.

"It would have been better to have this realization a year ago," he is reported saying.

On Wednesday, Vice President Biden presents the president with a 27-page report on how the stimulus package is helping the economy, including creating or saving 2 million jobs in the private and public sector.

Republicans are also marking this one-year anniversary of the stimulus bill being signed into law, pointing to the 9.7 percent unemployment rate as evidence that the plan is not working.

Click here to read the article at USA Today. - FOX News

Budget Deficit Skyrocketing and Obama Blames Bush

American political and economic leaders have sounded the alarm for years about the red ink rising in reports on the federal government's fiscal health.

But now the problem of mounting national debt is worse than it ever has been before with -- potentially dire consequences for taxpayers, according to a report by the nonpartisan Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform.

"It keeps me awake at night, looking at all that red ink," said President Obama in Nashua, N.H., on Feb. 2. "Most of it is structural and we inherited it. The only way that we are going to fix it is if both parties come together and start making some tough decisions about our long-term priorities." - ABC News Story

Boston Globe Exagerates Sen. Brown's Condo

Newly sworn-in Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) has been renting former Sen. Fred Thompson's D.C. digs near Capitol Hill: Brown aides confirm their boss is temporarily living in the three-room condo within the Residences at Market Square.

But the size of the living space is a matter of some dispute.

On Monday, the Boston Globe reported that Brown was renting a six-room condo with underground parking appraised at more than $700,000.

Thompson scoffed at the claim on his radio program, The Fred Thompson Show. "I gotta say, if I've got a six-room condo somewhere, I demand to be told about it."

"They're making it sound like it's this big, grand 14-carat gold-encrusted [condo]," Thompson’s wife Jeri said. "It said six rooms!"

The couple heard about the exaggerated space when Jeri received an e-mail from friends who saw the report and who had previously resided in the apartment. She said they wrote her and asked: “Are they talking about your apartment? Because I stayed there and if they're counting six rooms, I think that includes the closet and the cupboard in the kitchen.”

Brown aides say the condo consists of one bathroom, one bedroom and a combined living room and kitchen.

Fred Thompson said the space served as his bachelor pad when he was in the Senate — until he married Jeri.

"I don't wanna say it's small, but I did have to go out into the hall in order to change a shirt," the former presidential candidate said.

"Let’s not characterize this as this big grand move to a palatial place because it ain't six rooms," Jeri Thompson added.

Still, the former senator quipped: “The nice thing about it is when you're in bed you can open up the refrigerator and get yourself a snack.” - Politico Story

No Global Warming in 15 Years?

The embattled ex-head of the research center at the heart of the Climate-gate scandal dropped a bombshell over the weekend, admitting in an interview with the BBC that there has been no global warming over the past 15 years.

Phil Jones, former head of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, made a number of eye-popping statements to the BBC's climate reporter on Sunday. Data from CRU, where Jones was the chief scientist, is key evidence behind the claim that the growth of cities (which are warmer than countryside) isn't a factor in global warming and was cited by the U.N.'s climate science body to bolster statements about rapid global warming in recent decades.

Jones's latest statements seemed to contradict the CRU's data.

In response to the question, "do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically significant global warming?", Jones said yes, adding that the average increase of 0.12C per year over that time period "is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods." - FOX News Story

Democrats Plan on Riding Obama Coat Tails in Election

President Barack Obama’s trip to Las Vegas later this week to campaign for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid shows how congressional Democrats will live and die on the president’s popularity as the midterm elections approach.

The president is still a huge draw in Democratic campaign circles, and Reid wants him in Nevada on Thursday, but Obama’s approval rating keeps dropping, and no matter what Democratic lawmakers accomplish, history shows they can’t divorce themselves from the president’s polls.

That’s bad news for Reid, who already trails virtually every GOP candidate in Nevada, whether or not Obama stumps on his behalf.

“The fate of Congress’s Democratic members and Obama are inextricably tied; there’s no question about that,” said Neil Newhouse, a GOP strategist. “And for those Democratic members who want to put distance between themselves and President Obama in an effort to save their own hides, they just need to look back to how successful that was for Republicans in 2006 and 2008. Which is to say: Good luck with that.”

Reid insists Obama is still the biggest asset Democrats have — despite intraparty squabbling about health care and jobs legislation.

“No one can deliver the Democratic message better than he can,” said Reid spokesman Jim Manley. “Polls go up, and polls go down.” - Politico Story

In Troubled Times - Dems Attack Messenger, Not Message

Frustrated by a series of polls detailing the electoral jeopardy faced by a handful of House Democrats, the party establishment in Washington is pushing back against liberal blogger Jane Hamsher, whose prominent blog Firedoglake commissioned the surveys.

This month, at the request of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz issued a memo slamming the design and composition of the Hamsher-commissioned polls, which reported that four vulnerable House Democrats were in serious trouble.

In late January, a prominent Democratic polling firm, Global Strategy Group — which has conducted extensive work for the DCCC — put out its own memo questioning the accuracy of the automated polling firm, SurveyUSA, that produced the results.

Establishment Democrats, including the incumbents who were the subject of the polls and party committee charged with reelecting them, have sharply criticized the SurveyUSA polls.

“Let me just say that with respect to those polls, they are totally off,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told POLITICO. “We had the opportunity to compare those polls with polls that have been done in a professional manner, [and] the others are very different. So they’re not credible.”

The methodology is not the only issue Democrats have with the polls. By surveying and then reporting on the fortunes of members targeted by the GOP, Washington Democrats believe, Firedoglake’s outspoken founder, Jane Hamsher, is advancing a debilitating narrative about the party’s November prospects that will only exacerbate the problem. - Politico Story

More Scientist Challenge Global Warming Findings

The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.

In its last assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was "unequivocal." It warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and that there could be 5C-6C more warming by 2100, with devastating impacts on humanity and wildlife.

New research casts doubt on such claims, however. Some even suggest the world may not be warming much at all.

"The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change," said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC. The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanization, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site. Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three different regions: east Africa, California and Alabama.

"The story is the same for each one," he said. "The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development." - FOX News Story