1. IRAN CAUTION. In an exclusive interview with National Journal, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S.-led push to force Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions through steadily increasing economic and diplomatic pressure is beginning to show results and it would be "premature" to resort to military force. Dempsey said he delivered a similar message of caution to Israel's top leadership during a visit there last week, but conceded that the two allies see the threat -- and how soon to act against it -- very differently. Read more.
2. A VICTORY FOR OBAMA? Two days after President Obama delivered a populist State of the Union address squarely aimed at independent voters, and one day after a poll showed Obama's approval ratings rising into safe re-election territory, National Journal Editor-in-Chief Ron Fournier concludes Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich played to their worst stereotypes in Thursday night's GOP debate: Romney will say anything to get elected, and Gingrich will attack anybody to get elected. Read more
3. GOP EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. After arriving in Florida like a rolling ball of butcher knives, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is looking less edgy and more flabby by the hour. That's at least in part, National Journal's Major Garrett writes, because Republicans -- some conservative, some semi-conservative, and some conveniently conservative -- are attacking Gingrich as a walking, talking party menace, a flu-like contagion who will lose the presidency and contaminate down-ballot Republicans with erratic extremism. Read more
4. THE SECOND-GUESSING PRESIDENT. In an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer on Thursday night, President Obama said, "I second-guess myself constantly." He admitted, "I make a mistake, you know, every hour, every day.” But Obama said he is a better president today than the day he first took office. He said he does not watch the Republican debates, but he did not pass up the opportunity to put down Newt Gingrich for his associating race and food stamps by calling Obama the "food stamp president." Obama said that people qualify for food stamps, he doesn't put them on food stamps, and that Gingrich’s connecting welfare with race is "tapping into some of our worst instincts."
5. SOTU RATINGS DOWN. Obama apparently was not as exciting as the NFC Championship game. While 57.64 million people watched the New York Giants beat the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, 37.569 million watched the president's State of the Union address on Tuesday. That's the lowest rating for a State of the Union speech by Obama. Read more.
6. STOCK ACTION. By next week, the Senate may pass a bill banning insider trading by members of Congress after Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., filed cloture on the bill Thursday. The legislation, cheered on by President Obama in his State of the Union on Tuesday, was drafted after a CBS News 60 Minutes segment many lawmakers considered overhyped, but that view doesn't mean the bill won’t pass easily next week. In moving it quickly, Democrats hope to place pressure on House Republican leaders.
7. K STREET RECESSION? Maybe the bad economy finally reached Washington. For the first time since 1999, overall spending on lobbying declined last year, according to a study from the Center for Responsive Politics. The decline may be largely due to the dearth last year of major legislation, which usually causes heavy lobbying. In 2010, the lobbying industry spent a total of $3.51 billion as the health care and financial overhaul battles raged. That fell to $3.27 billion last year, CRP said, with some fourth-quarter receipts still outstanding.
8. BILL GATES WANTS HIGHER TAXES. Following Tuesday's State of the Union address in which President Obama called for a 30 percent tax rate on households worth more than $1 million, the billionaire founder of Microsoft offered support for such an idea, saying that the wealthy should pay a greater share of taxes. Bill Gates also told Fox News that, in his mind, job creation and tax policy are not closely linked. "There is no strong correlation between job creation and what the tax environment has been at any point in time," Gates said. "If something’s a profitable activity, you're going to engage in it." Read more.
9. OBAMA CAMPAIGN TIES ENERGY MESSAGE TO STRATEGIC POLICY MOVES. The State of the Union broadcast President Obama's campaign message on energy loud and clear: fight GOP attacks on the Keystone pipeline by turning the tables with calls for new drilling; fight attacks on Solyndra by doubling down on a defense of clean energy. Obama kicked off his energy message tour on Thursday with events touting natural gas in Nevada and clean energy in Colorado. Over the coming months, the White House will roll out a series of energy moves -- such as new Arctic drilling and a new green jobs report -- timed to coincide with the campaign timeline and projected rises in gasoline prices. Read more
10. EPA CLIMATE RULES EXPECTED NEXT FRIDAY. The Environmental Protection Agency is likely to issue a proposed new rule next Friday that would attempt to counter climate change by regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, sources familiar with EPA's deliberations tell National Journal. But the rules are likely to apply only to new power plants, sparing the nation’s existing plants from regulations. That's a move which will anger environmentalists -- who are still urging the administration to rein in pollution from existing plants. But it may defuse industry criticism of the regulation -- and postpone possible power bill increases until long after the November election.

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1. THE SECOND-GUESSING PRESIDENT. In an interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer on Thursday night, President Obama said, "I second-guess myself constantly." He admitted, "I make a mistake, you know, every hour, every day." But Obama said he is a better president today than the day he first took office. He said he does not watch the Republican debates, but he did not pass up the opportunity to put down Newt Gingrich for his associating race and food stamps by calling Obama the "food stamp president." Obama said that people qualify for food stamps, he doesn’t put them on food stamps, and that Gingrich’s connecting welfare with race is "tapping into some of our worst instincts."
2. SOTU RATINGS DOWN. Obama apparently was not as exciting as the NFC Championship game. While 57.64 million people watched the New York Giants beat the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, 37.569 million watched the president's State of the Union address on Tuesday. That's the lowest rating for a State of the Union speech by Obama. Read more.
3. OBAMA LOVES NATURAL GAS. And he wants to make sure you know it. Continuing his post-State of the Union tour, Obama stopped in Las Vegas, Nev., and Aurora, Colo., on Thursday to talk about his "all-of-the-above" approach to domestic energy production. Most of all, he talked about the possibilities for U.S. natural gas production. "We are the Saudi Arabia of natural gas," Obama told troops gathered at Buckley Air Force Base. But critics say the surge in natural gas production can be credited more to private industry than government investment. Read more. 
4. END OF THE ROAD. Obama returns to Washington today after a three-day trip through mostly swing states. But first, he'll be in the Detroit area to follow up on the State of the Union with another speech. He and Vice President Joe Biden are also heading to the gathering of the House Democrats in Cambridge, Md., to give keynote addresses.
5. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. In the ABC interview, Obama said his exchange with Arizona's Republican Gov. Jan Brewer earlier this week was "really not a big deal." Press pool reporters described the incident as "tense" after the president took issue with the way he was described in her book. At one point, Brewer waved her finger in his face. In later interviews, Brewer said Obama was "thin skinned,” and walked away before she was finished speaking. Read more.

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1. A VICTORY FOR OBAMA? Two days after President Obama delivered a populist State of the Union address squarely aimed at independent voters, and one day after a poll showed Obama's approval ratings rising into safe re-election territory, National Journal Editor in Chief Ron Fournier concludes Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich played to their worst stereotypes in Thursday night’s GOP debate: Romney will say anything to get elected, and Gingrich will attack anybody to get elected. Read more.
2. GOP EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. After arriving in Florida like a rolling ball of butcher knives, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is looking less edgy and more flabby by the hour. That's at least in part, National Journal’s Major Garrett writes, because Republicans – some conservative, some semi-conservative, and some conveniently conservative – are attacking Gingrich as a walking, talking party menace, a flu-like contagion who will lose the presidency and contaminate down-ballot Republicans with erratic extremism. Read more.
3. BLAMING OBAMA FOR THE POOR. To hear some GOP presidential hopefuls tell it, the person most responsible for keeping low-income Americans poor and on government assistance is President Obama. National Journal’s Naureen Khan reports that antipoverty advocates say that the rhetoric at best is counterproductive to a substantial policy discussion about poverty in America, and at worst demonizes people who turned to government assistance in the worst economic downturn since the Depression. Read more.
4. SANTORUM INSISTS HE’S IN. Rick Santorum says he plans to compete full force in Florida’s primary on Tuesday, but may soon turn his attention to less expensive primary states. A campaign spokesman says it’s not inconceivable that Santorum may move into other upcoming primary states like Nevada, Colorado, or Minnesota. Read more.

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1. STOCK ACTION. By next week, the Senate may pass a bill banning insider trading by members of Congress after Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., filed cloture on the bill Thursday. The legislation, cheered on by President Obama in his State of the Union on Tuesday, was drafted after a CBS News 60 Minutes segment many lawmakers considered overhyped, but that view doesn't mean the bill won't pass easily next week. In moving it quickly, Democrats hope to place pressure on House Republican leaders.
2. K STREET RECESSION? Maybe the bad economy finally reached Washington. For the first time since 1999, overall spending on lobbying declined last year, according to a study from the Center for Responsive Politics. The decline may be largely due to the dearth last year of major legislation, which usually causes heavy lobbying. In 2010, the lobbying industry spent a total of $3.51 billion as the health care and financial overhaul battles raged. That fell to $3.27 billion last year, CRP said, with some fourth-quarter receipts still outstanding.
3. RECESS DIVISIONS. Senate Republicans remain sharply divided over how to respond to President Obama's recess appointments made this month while the Senate remained in session. GOP senators want to assert their view that appointments were unconstitutional while avoiding steps like widespread holds on nominations that would fuel Democrats' election-year effort to highlight Republican obstruction. While the conference continues to debate how to do that, GOP senators are undertaking their own action plans. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said on Tuesday that he will object to many judicial and executive nominations. Read more
4. SWISS MITT: Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat whose Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations specializes in exposing tax shams and shelters overseas, chuckles at the notion that the Swiss bank account used by Mitt Romney was just an ordinary family account, as the Romney campaign has suggested. Take it from him, Levin told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast, "there is no such thing as an ordinary Swiss bank account." Read more
5. FAA EXTENSION: The Senate on Thursday passed what lawmakers swear is the very last short-term Federal Aviation Administration extension bill moved while Congress haggles over long-term FAA reauthorization. The House passed the short bill, which will extend the funding authority until Feb. 17, this week. Now the transportation gurus in each chamber, after breaking an impasse on labor issues last week, will hammer out the rest of the details. They include funding levels, long-distance slots at Reagan National Airport, and rural airport subsidies. Read more

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1. RED STATES SEEN MAKING EXCHANGE PROGRESS. Joel Ario, former director of the Office of Insurance Exchanges at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said that even when Republican governors say they oppose health exchanges, they are making more progress toward building them than they publicly acknowledge. “There is a big gulf between what we hear in the political class and what’s actually going on on the ground,” Ario said at a National Academy of Social Insurance conference on Thursday. Many Republican governors have said they will not build their own insurance exchanges, which are meant to serve as a tool in 2014 and beyond to enroll uninsured people in federal and private health plans. Read more.
2. NEW CHALLENGES LAUNCHED AT CARE INNOVATIONS SUMMIT. Six health care innovation initiatives were launched on Thursday at the Care Innovations Summit in Washington. Initiatives included private sector competitions to improve diabetes care and to make it easier to coordinate care for patients who have recently left the hospital, and the launch of new online toolkits for improving care for HIV-positive patients. The Department of Health and Human Services also launched a new challenge, calling on software developers to submit Web tools that could improve follow-up appointment scheduling after a patient leaves the hospital.  Read more.
3. DEMS CALL FOR MEDICARE ADVANTAGE CUTS. Several leading Democratic lawmakers lauded a Government Accountability Office report released on Thursday that suggests Medicare is overpaying private insurers to cover seniors in Medicare Advantage plans. The report suggests that the formulas used to calculate the severity of sickness experienced by enrolled seniors is skewed because private plans are more diligent about marking every illness than the traditional Medicare program. GAO suggests that Medicare could save more than $1 billion a year by adjusting the formula. The 2010 health care reform law calls for cuts to Medicare Advantage plans, but the GAO report suggests there is “more to be done,” said Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Read more.
4. DOCTORS SPELL OUT STATE OF THE NATION’S HEALTH CARE. The American College of Physicians says that the country’s health care system is imperiled by looming budget cuts and political discord. In a report, the internists’ group suggested axing the sustainable growth rate and undoing mandatory budget cuts that will affect health care programs. To pay for it, the doctors suggest tapping the overseas contingency fund and instituting policy reforms including medical liability reform and health insurance taxes. The doctors applaud health care reform for expanding access, but say that many Americans still can’t get affordable care and costs are likely to keep rising without further action.

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1. OBAMA CAMPAIGN TIES ENERGY MESSAGE TO STRATEGIC POLICY MOVES. The State of the Union broadcast President Obama's campaign message on energy loud and clear: fight GOP attacks on the Keystone pipeline by turning the tables with calls for new drilling; fight attacks on Solyndra by doubling down on a defense of clean energy. Obama kicked off his energy message tour on Thursday with events touting natural gas in Nevada and clean energy in Colorado. Over the coming months, the White House will roll out a series of energy moves -- such as new Arctic drilling and a new green jobs report -- timed to coincide with the campaign timeline and projected rises in gasoline prices. Read more
2. EPA CLIMATE RULES EXPECTED NEXT FRIDAY. The Environmental Protection Agency is likely to issue a proposed new rule next Friday that would attempt to counter climate change by regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, sources familiar with EPA's deliberations tell National Journal. But the rules are likely to apply only to new power plants, sparing the nation's existing plants from regulations. That's a move which will anger environmentalists -- who are still urging the administration to rein in pollution from existing plants. But it may defuse industry criticism of the regulation -- and postpone possible power bill increases until long after the November election.
3. BATTERY COMPANY BANKRUPTCY ROUSES CLEAN-ENERGY CRITICS. Thursday's news that another company has filed for bankruptcy after receiving funds from Obama's economic stimulus in 2009 brought a new round of attacks from Republicans against the administration's green-energy initiatives. Ener1, an Indiana maker of lithium batteries, which received a $118.5 million grant from the Energy Department’s stimulus program, filed for Chapter 11 protection on Thursday in federal bankruptcy court in New York. Though there's a big difference between Ener1's filing and the bankruptcy last year of solar-panel maker Solyndra, Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla. has already jumped on the news, saying Obama’s remark that "some technologies don't pan out; some companies fail" in his State of the Union address was prophetic. Read more.
4. SHOULD GOP GIVE UP PUSHING KEYSTONE MEASURES? Congressional Republicans want so badly to pass legislation that would force approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. But no consensus exists yet about what specific measure to run with and what legislative vehicle to attach it to. Given the lack of consensus and the fact that Obama has apparently  made the political calculation that it’s OK to reject the pipeline, some lobbyists and energy strategists say Republicans would be best to let the legislative push go and focus instead on pushing the issue in the presidential campaign. Read more.
5. PANEL CALLS FOR FIXING 'BROKEN' NUCLEAR WASTE PROGRAM. A White House commission tasked with finding long-term solutions for storing the nation’s spent nuclear fuel said on Thursday that the government needs to fix its "broken" nuclear-waste management policy and begin the simultaneous development of at least one permanent geological repository and at least one centralized interim storage facility. "Progress on both fronts is needed and must be sought without further delay," the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future said in a final report. The call for a long-term solution is reviving the battle over Nevada's now-defunct Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository site. House Energy and Commerce Committee members will have the chance to bemoan the administration’s decision to shutter the site in a hearing next week.  Read more.

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1. JOBLESS CLAIMS LOWEST IN FOUR YEARS. The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits dropped to a four-year low last week, surprising economic forecasters and offering heartening evidence that the U.S. job market is slowly improving. According to data released on Thursday by the Labor Department, jobless benefit claims fell to 352,000 in the week ending Jan. 14, marking a 50,000 decrease from the previous week.
2. CARTOONISH. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich got more than 1.4 million hits on YouTube when, displaying unheralded skills as a cartoonist, he sketched the populist “Truth About the Economy.” Now Reich is back, with his magic marker and pad of paper, showing how today’s campaign finance system allows wealthy interests to “drown out the voices of average Americans.” Reich is chairman of Common Cause, and the new video is part of the group’s push to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision via a constitutional amendment.
3. DEMOCRATS ASK GAO TO REFEREE FORECLOSURE REVIEW. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Reps. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Brad Miller, D-N.C., and Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., are asking the Government Accountability Office to ensure that a foreclosure review project by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is fair. The lawmakers are concerned that banks involved are able to pick and pay for their own third-party consultants to conduct audits of their processing, and they want the GAO to investigate. “A toothless foreclosure review is simply not enough,” Menendez said in a release. “We need the GAO’s independent assessment to ensure the process is fair to homeowners—especially since regulators are letting the big banks pick their own auditors. That’s like letting the fox watch the henhouse.”
4. FED PREPARES COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY. Federal Reserve officials are preparing to roll out their new communications strategy when they meet next week. And one of the elements of the two-pronged strategy—a statement explaining the Fed’s inflation and employment objectives—could shape whether the central bank decides to undergo another round of bond-buying, The Wall Street Journal reports. Having clearly-defined objectives would make it easier for Fed officials to justify buying more bonds—or opt not to. Read more

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1. BILL GATES WANTS HIGHER TAXES. Following Tuesday’s State of the Union address in which President Obama called for a 30 percent tax rate on households worth more than $1 million, the billionaire founder of Microsoft offered support for such an idea, saying that the wealthy should pay a greater share of taxes. Bill Gates also told Fox News that, in his mind, job creation and tax policy are not closely linked. “There is no strong correlation between job creation and what the tax environment has been at any point in time,” Gates said. “If something’s a profitable activity, you’re going to engage in it.” Read more.
2. SENATE BLOCKS DEBT-CEILING DISAPPROVAL. The Senate on Thursday killed the House’s resolution disapproving of President Obama raising the debt limit by $1.2 trillion, on a 44-52 vote after about two hours of debate. The increase, the third and final phase of the debt accord reached in August, is expected to satisfy the country’s borrowing needs through the elections in November, but it is unclear if a lame-duck Congress will have to raise the ceiling again afterward.
3. SLOPPY RECORD-KEEPING LEADS TO PHANTOM MORTGAGE DEBT. Homeowners are increasingly saying that mortgages they thought had been paid off are returning in the form of phantom debt, damaging their credit and sometimes leading to foreclosures, Reuters reports. The problems stem from the slapdash record-keeping of the housing-boom era. “Now it's becoming clear just how dysfunctional and, according to several state attorneys general, how fraudulent the whole system was,” the article says, adding that the problems may only intensify as the industry continues wading through the mortgage morass. Read more.
4. EUROPEAN LEADERS RAISE OBJECTIONS TO 'VOLCKER RULE.' Michel Barnier, the European commissioner for the internal market, said he plans to talk to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner about concerns that the Volcker Rule could have negative consequences for Europe as it struggles to solve its debt crisis, The Wall Street Journal reports. The Volcker Rule, which stems from the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, bans banks from proprietary trading and investing in private equity and hedge funds. The European Union is concerned that the rule could hinder banks’ ability to trade European sovereign bonds, which could increase costs for Europe’s governments. Read more.

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1. IRAN CAUTION. In an exclusive interview with National Journal, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S.-led push to force Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions through steadily increasing economic and diplomatic pressure is beginning to show results and it would be "premature" to resort to military force.  Dempsey said he delivered a similar message of caution to Israel's top leadership during a visit there last week, but conceded that the two allies see the threat -- and how soon to act against it -- very differently. Read more.
2. DEMPSEY: NOT ABOUT COIN.  Dempsey also told National Journal that the new Pentagon budget was a broad attempt to prepare for the threats facing the country after Iraq and Afghanistan in the new era of fiscal austerity. "We've got to learn the lessons of the last 10 years of war," Dempsey said on Thursday. "This isn't about taking COIN [counterinsurgency] or taking stability ops and putting it on a shelf and saying, 'Wow, I hope we're not ever going to have to do that again.'" Read more.
3. PENTAGON BUDGET BURIES THE LEDE. A trio of comparatively small aspects of the Defense Department's new budget guidance -- BRAC, military pay raises, and health benefits—buried in a handful of paragraphs in the 15-page document, may wind up triggering just as much of a political fight as some of the more high-profile controversial cuts, and perhaps an even larger one. Read more.
4. DEMPSEY, POWELL, AND KISSINGER. Shortly after being named chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dempsey reached out to one of his best-known predecessors, Colin Powell. Why? Powell also presided over the end of a war and the subsequent effort to contract the military. He’s one of many intellectuals and dissenting voices Dempsey has reached out to, the chairman said in his interview with National Journal. Read more.
5. ISRAEL CALLS FOR TOUGHER IRANIAN SANCTIONS. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Israel's deputy prime minister and defense minister called for tougher sanctions against Iran, the UK’s Guardian reports. Ehud Barak said the sanctions would help stop an Iranian nuclear bomb and further proliferation, in which Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt may seek their own weapons. Read more.

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