The American Spectator,

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, seeking to console liberal activists who were disappointed by the final version of the national health care law, assured them that there would eventually be a public option.

“We’re going to have a public option,” Reid said. “It’s just a question of when.”

Reid’s general comments reflected the same overall message to progressives that President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered earlier today. It essentially boils down to: We’ve done a lot of stuff, but we still have a lot of unfinished business, so campaign for us again.

AP,

Rep. Charles Rangel, who has spent half of his 80 years as a member of Congress, says he looks forward to fighting ethics charges. Other Democrats won’t be so pleased.

The ethics trial sought by the New York congressman and former Ways and Means Committee chairman will coincide with campaign season. Democrats will have to defend their party’s conduct. If enough of them lose, the party could cede control of the House.

Republicans are already going negative, reminding voters that Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to “drain the swamp” of ethical misdeeds in Congress.

Rangel had a choice.

His lawyer had been negotiating with the House ethics committee to settle his case. But to end it, Rangel would have had to accept the allegations. Rangel had been willing to accept some, but that didn’t satisfy the committee, according to a person familiar with the talks but not authorized to be quoted by name.

The Hill,

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will bring a limited package of oil spill response and energy measures to the floor next week, delaying action until at least this fall on a broader proposal that would impose greenhouse gas limits on power plants, senior Senate Democratic aides said.

Aides insisted Reid’s decision is a nod to the packed floor schedule the Senate faces before it leaves in two weeks for the August recess, and that he has not abandoned plans to try and bring up a broader climate and energy plan later in the year.

But other legislative priorities and election-year politics might scuttle the wider climate and energy plan altogether.

Gallup,

Gallup’s 2010 Confidence in Institutions poll finds Congress ranking dead last out of the 16 institutions rated this year. Eleven percent of Americans say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress, down from 17% in 2009 and a percentage point lower than the previous low for Congress, recorded in 2008.

The Gallup poll was conducted July 8-11, shortly before Congress passed a major financial regulatory reform bill, which President Obama signed into law this week.

Underscoring Congress’ image problem, half of Americans now say they have “very little” or “no” confidence in Congress, up from 38% in 2009 — and the highest for any institution since Gallup first asked this question in 1973. Previous near-50% readings include 48% found for the presidency in 2008, and 49% for the criminal justice system in 1994.

President Obama plans to press Congress today to pass pay-equity legislation that would make it easier for women to sue employers who pay them less than their male counterparts, the White House said Monday.

“Women deserve equal pay,” White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said in an interview, citing government statistics that show women earn 77 cents for every dollar men earn. “It’s a very fundamental right.”

Obama will announce his support for the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that has languished in Congress for several years. In 2007, President Bush warned he would veto the bill, and it has been stalled by opposition from some Republicans and business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Fox News,

Prodding Republicans to get onboard, President Obama on Thursday called on Congress to tackle a comprehensive immigration overhaul and warned that a failure to do so could trigger a harmful “patchwork” of local laws similar to the one recently passed in Arizona.

While Arizona lawmakers defend their law as necessary to patrol the border, Obama described it as “unenforceable” and a vehicle for civil rights abuse. He said a “national standard” is needed and that he won’t “kick the can down the road” any longer.

“I’m ready to move forward, the majority of Democrats are ready to move forward, and I believe the majority of Americans are ready to move forward,” Obama said.

Fox News,

President Obama declared victory Friday after congressional negotiators reached a dawn agreement on a sweeping overhaul of rules overseeing Wall Street.

Lawmakers shook hands on the compromise legislation at 5:39 a.m. after Obama administration officials helped broker a deal that cracked the last impediment to the bill — a proposal to force banks to spin off their lucrative derivatives trading business. The legislation touches on an exhaustive range of financial transactions, from a debit card swipe at a supermarket to the most complex securities deals cut in downtown Manhattan.

Speaking to reporters as he left the White House to attend an economic summit of world leaders in Toronto, the president said he was “gratified” for Congress’ work and said the deal included 90 percent of what he had proposed. He said the bill, forged in the aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown, represents the toughest financial overhaul since the Great Depression.

Bundling has become a cornerstone of the money game in Washington, allowing lobbyists and other fundraisers to funnel multiple contributions to campaigns without running afoul of individual donation limits. The practice is a frequent target of criticism from reformers, and President Obama proposed new limits on lobbyist contributions and bundling earlier this year.

The new FEC records come as the result of 2007 legislation, also supported by Obama, requiring reports of contributions of $16,000 or more that are bundled by lobbyists. The process is riddled with loopholes, however: The reports do not identify the specific contributors whose donations were bundled, and under FEC rules some recipients don’t have to file at all if they don’t already keep track of bundlers.

Even so, the new data provide a revealing look at the central role of lobbyist-fundraisers in channeling money to candidates, particularly to Democrats, who currently control the levers of power in Washington. About three-quarters of the contributions documented in the reports went to Democratic committees or candidates, with the DCCC ($2.4 million) and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ($1.1 million) topping the list. (The Democratic National Committee, following Obama’s lead, does not accept contributions from registered lobbyists.)

The Washington Post article continues here.

Senate Democrats managed Thursday to block deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, but the proposal still garnered a majority of senators, showing widespread support for a border-security-first strategy and underscoring why President Obama is having difficulty trying to win an immigration-legalization bill.

The vote flustered Democrats, who seemed uncertain how to handle the proposal and were reluctant to defy Mr. Obama, who just this week proposed that a much smaller 1,200-troop force be deployed.

In the end, 12 Democrats joined 39 Republicans in voting for the deployment – though that still fell nine votes shy of the 60-vote supermajority needed for passage.

Washington Times article continues here.

Tongue firmly in cheek, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) on Tuesday afternoon called on reporters to demand to see the birth certificate of new Rep. Charles Djou (R-Hawaii).

As Djou (pictured here) was being sworn into office, Frank walked the hallway of the Speaker’s Lobby off the House floor calling on the media to “do your job” and review Djou’s papers.

It was a small bit of payback for the enormous amount of attention some conservatives (and the media) paid to the is-the-president-really-from-America controversy.

The Hill article continues here.

Responding to the massive BP oil spill, Congress is getting ready to quadruple—to 32 cents a barrel—a tax on oil used to help finance cleanups. The increase would raise nearly $11 billion over the next decade.

The tax is levied on oil produced in the U.S. or imported from foreign countries. The revenue goes to a fund managed by the Coast Guard to help pay to clean up spills in waterways, such as the Gulf of Mexico.

The tax increase is part of a larger bill that has grown into a nearly $200 billion grab bag of unfinished business that lawmakers hope to complete before Memorial Day. The key provisions are a one-year extension of about 50 popular tax breaks that expired at the end of last year, and expanded unemployment benefits, including subsidies for health insurance, through the end of the year.

Breitbart article continues here.

About one-third of employers subject to major requirements of the new health care law may face tax penalties because they offer health insurance that could be considered unaffordable to some employees, a new study says.

The study, by Mercer, one of the nation’s largest employee benefit consulting concerns, is based on a survey of nearly 3,000 employers.

It suggests that a little-noticed provision of the law could affect far more employers than Congress had assumed.

The New York Times article continues here.