John McCain and Barack Obama agree: Act now on job losses

New job numbers out today evidence more pain -- some of it to be felt around here -- with companies cutting 62,000 payroll slots in June, the sixth consecutive month the economy has shed jobs. The cuts were slightly more than the 60,000 economists had expected, and the unemployment rate held steady at 5.5 %.

The Labor Department announcement elicited dueling statements from John McCain and Barack Obama, pasted in full after the jump. But in a nutshell, McCain says the federal government must "enact policies to create jobs today. To get our economy back on track, we must enact a jobs-first economic plan that supports job creation, provide immediate tax relief for families, enact a plan to help those facing foreclosure, lower health care costs, invest in innovation, move toward strategic energy independence and open more foreign markets to our goods."

Obama cited the 438,000 jobs lost this year and similarly called for immediate action, but a different prescription: "I'm calling on Congress and the President to enact real, immediate relief with energy rebates for working families this summer, a fund to help families avoid foreclosure, extended benefits for the long-term jobless, and assistance to states that have been hard-hit by the economic downturn."

McCain is in Mexico today, and apparently will be unveiling a new "Jobs First" agenda in Denver on Monday, an ironic confluence the Democrats have been working hard to spotlight,including an email from the Democratic National Committee's Brad Woodhouse to reporters suggesting "maybe for his own sake [McCain] should stop going to places like Michigan and telling folks their jobs aren't coming back while going to Mexico and promoting Jobs First - just a thought." 

-- Scott Martelle

Does Barack Obama really want all of Hillary Clinton's donors?

Our blogging cousins over at the Swamp have an item up raising an interesting question about the rapprochement between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton: Does he really want all her financial supporters?

Obama, of course, has made a splash by raising a boatload of money from individual donors while professing to eschew cash from the "politics as usual" crowd. Clinton was less discriminating in her cash sources. But how does Obama heal the party and move forward if he winds up telling big Clinton supporters such as Sant Chatwal that he might not want his money? As the Swamp put it:

"Obama's in an awkward spot. At the moment anyway, he doesn't need Clinton's money -- though campaign money is like good pitching in baseball: You can never, ever have enough. But Obama does need the goodwill of the Clinton faction of the Democratic Party and that means ego massages for Chatwal and company. How Obama handles this kind of, what some would regard as, compromising outreach could help voters decide if indeed he represents 'change we can believe in.' "

The delicate dance continues.

-- Scott Martelle

Photo: Associated Press

Top of the Ticket, the start of Year Two

On this, the first anniversary of our Top of the Ticket blog, we are reminded of the mercurial, unpredictable nature of U.S. politics -- part of what makes what we do so fascinating.

Our goal -- one of us on the East Coast and the other on the far more important or at least less humid West Coast -- was to write about Campaign '08 virtually around the clock.

Our second-ever posting, 12 months ago today, previewed an upcoming L.A. Times/Bloomberg Poll; later in the day, we detailed the results of the nationwide survey. The findings were in line with other polls of the time.

In the Republican presidential race, which then seemed the most likely to last deep into the primary season, Rudy Giuliani was perched in first place. His lead wasn't overwhelming, but it was strong enough that he appeared certain to remain a major contender.

His liberal record on social issues loomed as an obvious liability within his party, but his tough-on-terrorism message was attracting substantial support from moderates and GOP-leaning independents.

His major headache among rivals last June was an as-yet-undeclared candidate who was riding a wave as the great conservative hope -- Fred Thompson. He ran a strong second in the poll.

Lagging far behind were John McCain and Mitt Romney, each barely with double-digit support. In our preview posting, we were especially scornful of McCain, noting sarcastically (and foolishly, as it turned out) that in the poll, he found himself "in heated competition with the 'Don't Know' category."

Meriting no mention from us was Mike Huckabee, one of several back-of-the-pack candidates barely earning any support across the country.

The Democratic race, at that point, seemed so much more cut-and-dried.

Hillary Clinton was the clear front-runner; Barack Obama was just as clearly ...

John McCain makes public some of Cindy McCain's tax records

It must be "Release Day" at the John McCain campaign. First, a selected pool of reporters got a look at his medical files. And now the campaign has released Cindy McCain's 2006 tax returns, after saying for weeks that the McCains maintain separate finances and hers wouldn't be made public.

And both releases came on the eve of a three-day weekend, when people are thinking more about barbecue than politics. (UPDATE: You can have look-see yourself at the material they released.)

Our colleague Maeve Reston reports from Scottsdale that Cindy McCain's 2006 tax returns show an income that year of more than $6 million:

"McCain, who heads Hensley & Co., had insisted she had no intention of releasing her tax returns because she wanted to protect her children's privacy. Some have estimated her personal wealth at more than $100 million. She inherited ownership of what is said to be the nation's third largest Anheuser-Busch distributor from her late father James Hensley. The company has sales estimated at $178 million, according to financial information company Dun & Bradstreet.

"Cindy McCain had faced criticism and relentless news coverage for saying she would never release her tax returns. But a campaign aide said Friday she felt the issue was becoming an unnecessary distraction. The campaign released only the first two pages of her 2006 federal income tax returns Friday afternoon. More than $4.5 million in income was drawn from entities including rental real estate, partnerships and trusts. Aides said she has filed for an extension for 2007 and would decide later whether she would release those returns.

"'As far as why today and the timing -- the campaign doesn't discuss internal decision making,' Cindy McCain spokeswoman Melissa Shuffield said."

-- Scott Martelle

Cindy McCain targeted on the tax return issue

The media blitz that Cindy McCain recently conducted -- co-hosting "The View," appearing on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," sitting down for a "Today" show interview -- did nothing to lessen the lambasting she took Wednesday from a source that might surprise some: an editorial in the Washington Times.

The missive in the conservative-oriented newspaper sternly took her to task for steadfastly refusing, in the face of increasing requests, to release her income tax returns (she files separately from her husband, John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee).

The editorial notes that "Mrs. McCain is an heiress whose income and assets will directly benefit from the tax policies espoused by her husband. ... Taxpayers and voters are entitled to know how much these benefits will be."

Also criticized is her spouse. Noting that McCain "rightly fancies himself the king of transparency on Capitol Hill," the piece terms it "unimaginable" that he and his staff "can permit this open sore to fester."

The entire editorial -- headlined "Cindy McCain's 'privacy' charade" and complete with an accompanying, and caustic, cartoon -- can be read here.

With the McCains giving no sign of yielding on this point, it no doubt will continue to provide fodder for editorialists. What will be worth watching is whether this noise grows into the type of public clamor that causes political headaches.

-- Don Frederick

Photo credit: Bloomberg News

John McCain's been free to fire at Barack Obama for weeks, now comes the response

Three months ago, Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, made a calculated decision to begin painting a not-so-pretty picture of Sen. Barack Obama, now the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Although Sen. Hillary Clinton was -- and still is -- battling Obama for the Democratic nomination, McCain began preparing his case against the Illinois senator early. McCain's advisors, like other observers, concluded Obama was the likely nominee and wanted to begin shaping Obama's image while the Democrat was still consumed with fighting Clinton.

Defining one's opponent is a key task of any campaign, and simply put, McCain has had a long head start. As early as Feb. 12 -- the day McCain and Obama each won primaries in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. -- the Arizonan suggested Obama was guilty of hollow promises and a messianic self-image.

"To encourage a country with only rhetoric, rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people, is not a promise of hope," McCain said, alluding to Obama's speaking skills and campaign theme.

And in another jab he added, "I do not seek the presidency on....

The Obamas quadruple their income in one year, to $4.2 million

Wow, now we know why some of these folks are perennial candidates for president!

Campaigning for president has been very good in the money department for the 46-year-old Illinois senator and Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama.

With most of the media and public attention focused on Philadelphia on Wednesday and the last nationally-televised debate between Obama and his rival, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, before Tuesday's important Pennsylvania primary, the Obama campaign quietly released the family's tax returns.

They showed his household income with Michelle more than quadrupled in the one year between 2006 and 2007, multiplying from $991,296, which wasn't all that bad, in 2006 to a whopping $4.2 million in 2007.

Clearly, the campaign worried that numerous detailed stories about the candidate's sudden explosion in wealth could detract and...

Where there's more Republican VP smoke, there's more Condi Rice

Now that everybody is dismissing it, we know there's really something up for sure about Condoleezza Rice possibly becoming a vice presidential candidate with the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain.

Obviously, the choice is his. He's stubborn enough not to be pushed.

And he's said publicly that his campaign team has just begun to assemble a long list of possibilities. (You don't want any party VP wannabes thinking they were overlooked, even if ultimately not chosen.)

The Arizona senator wants the No. 2 choice to be well-prepared when the announcement time comes, unlike, say, a certain former senator from Indiana whose name is the same as those helpless little birds that all the current vice presidents like to blast with large guns.

The speculation about Rice began two weeks ago, chronicled in detail on The Ticket, when within days in between foreign trips she complimented Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on his race speech, spent a long time with the editorial board of the conservative Washington Times and published the transcript of the session on the State Department website.

Then she spoke at the regular Wednesday conservative brainstorming session presided over by the bearded and ubiquitous Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform.

Because it is THE place for conservatives to present themselves and programs before a wide array of important....

What Mark Penn accomplished

You've got to give Mark Penn credit for this: His egregiously boneheaded decision to continue to help the Colombian government promote a free trade agreement with the United States -- which his most high-profile client, Hillary Clinton, has made a point of opposing -- has called far more attention to the pact than otherwise would have been the case.

The timing might have been coincidental, but President Bush can count on longer stories and a more extensive television coverage by picking today to send to Congress his request for approval of the accord. Aside from generally supporting such agreements as beneficial to long-term U.S. economic growth, Bush argues that this deal will help an ally fighting terrorists and drug dealers.

Clinton's opposition to the pact also will be more intensely spotlighted. Following Bush's move, here's the statement her campaign quickly issued:

"I am disappointed that President Bush has decided to send the Colombia Free Trade Agreement to Congress. As I have said consistently for several months, I oppose signing any trade deal with Colombia while violence against trade unionists continues and the perpetrators are not brought to justice. The United States should be pursuing trade agreements that promote human rights and worker rights, not overlook egregious abuses.

"I will vote against the President's Colombia trade agreement, and will urge my Senate colleagues to do the same."

The furor over Penn's effort to compartmentalize his work for Colombia and Clinton cost him both jobs (technically, he is supposed to continue to "provide polling and advice" to her campaign, but somehow we doubt his words are going to carry much clout anymore).

But the Penn story also had this effect, we've noticed: combined with the deft move by Clinton and her husband, the ex-president, to release their much-awaited tax returns on a Friday afternoon, the cable news stations today aren't spending all that much time relating the details (like exactly how lucrative Bill Clinton's work for Los Angeles-based businessman Ron Burkle proved to be).

-- Don Frederick

Why did LA billionaire Ron Burkle pay Bill Clinton $15 million?

There's an interesting nugget of political and financial information -- or, rather, missing information -- buried deep within the Hillary and Bill Clinton tax papers finally released the other day.

The struggling Clinton Democratic presidential campaign seemed to gloss over this part when it released eight years of tax returns on Friday.

Our veteran blogging colleague Thomas Edsall, the political editor over at Huffington Post, points out that Bill Clinton has received something on the order of about $15 million in payments from local billionaire Ron Burkle since 2002.

The Los Angeles-based mogul has long been tied to the Clintons and has been one of the most prolific fundraisers for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign this past year.

In a press statement accompanying the release of the Clinton couple's tax returns, the campaign summarized where much of the couples' money came from over the last eight years -- a Senate salary, a presidential pension, some book royalties and a whopping sum of $51.9 million in speaking fees earned by President Clinton. And who wouldn't love to talk for that kind of money?

But glaringly missing from the summary, Edsall points out, is....

BREAKING NEWS: Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton took in $109 million since 2000

It pays to be an ex-president. The Clintons -- Bill and Hillary -- reported $109 million in income from 2000, his last year in office, through estimates for 2007, the campaign said this afternoon. The couple paid more than $33 million in federal taxes and donated more than $10 million to charities.

That left post-tax earnings of a little over $57 million -- a pretty good Lotto jackpot. Specific income included just over $1 million from Hillary Clinton's Senate salary, and $1.2 million from a  presidential pension. An additional $10.4 million came from  Hillary Clinton's book income, a third of what her husband took in -- $29.6 million. The big cash cow: President Clinton's speech revenue: nearly $52 million.

All the details are available here. The campaign release is after the jump* ....

-- Scott Martelle

*item has been edited

Barack Obama does 4 fundraisers in a New York night while Clinton snipes

What's a March day promising spring without some campaign sniping?

After giving a speech on the economy Thursday (with Mayor Mike Bloomberg in attendance) along with some interviews advocating higher taxes, Sen. Barack Obama had a busy afternoon and evening of fundraising in Manhattan. He made four stops to pick up cash, starting with a $1,000-a-plate event at the Credit Suisse building.

As Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign has jumped up and down and pointed to for days, Credit Suisse is a major sub-prime lender, a financial service Obama believes needs added regulation following the nation's housing troubles.

"Today, Sen. Obama gives an economy speech followed by a fundraiser at -- you guessed it -- one of the top 10 issuers of subprime loans in America," spokesman Phil Singer said in a perfectly timed statement. "In fact, Sen. Obama has taken more money from the top 10 issuers of sub-prime loans than both Sen. Clinton and Sen. McCain."

But those at the first dinner weren't all Credit Suisse employees. The suggestion that Obama was holding a fundraiser at the offices of a sub-prime lender drew a pointed response from his campaign.

"The American people are tired of the sniping from the Clinton campaign, both real and imagined," said Jen Psaki, Obama's traveling press secretary.

"Today's event was a general fundraiser in a room paid for by our campaign and attended by people from varied backgrounds who are committed to changing the tone of our politics, and rejecting the kind of tactics that the Clinton campaign is now embracing," she said. "Any suggestion this was a fundraiser hosted by the mortgage industry is as imaginary as the other tall tales that have been coming out of the Clinton campaign lately."

Oh, ouch! You can almost hear the cackling. Lobbing the old Bosnia bomb back at the Clintons.

--John McCormick

John McCormick writes for the Swamp of the Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau.

Barack Obama thinks higher taxes are a good thing

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama went after the "We're not paying enough taxes to the government" vote today during a television interview in New York.

First, he said the Bush tax cuts ought to die. He likes that top marginal rate of 39%. Although the non-partisan National Journal recently declared him the most liberal of the 100 senators, Obama denied being a "wild-eyed liberal," which wasn't what the Journal called him, but it sounds good on TV where everything moves by so quickly.

Maria Bartiromo on CNBC's "Closing Bell" asked, "Who should pay more and who should pay less?" Predictably, the politician chose to talk about who would benefit from his higher tax plan, not who would get socked the hardest. But from his answers it sounds like the "wealthy" in his mind are those making more than $75,000.

"I would not increase taxes for middle class Americans and in fact I want to....

Goody-goody Barack Obama releases tax returns for 7 years

This Barack Obama guy and his staff are pretty clever. They wanted to release his income tax returns for the last several years to show a blatant transparency that conflicts with the secrecy of his opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton.

But Obama was smart enough to know that if he released his tax returns for 2007, that means he already has them done three whole weeks before the April 15 deadline. He would look like one of those guys named Joel with glasses and spare pens in 10th grade who ostentatiously turned in his English essay a day early, earning praise from the teacher and the distinct dislike of his silently staring classmates.

And Obama would lose the vote of every one of us, er, you procrastinators out there.

It's all really just part of the ongoing sniping between the Illinois senator and the New York senator, the one who just got around to releasing her first lady schedules eight-plus years after she was no longer first lady. Yeh, right it was the National Archives' fault.

She hasn't even released her income taxes for recent years the way Obama has. So, since....

Hello? Now, Judicial Watch wants Hillary Clinton's phone logs

First came the daily schedules from former First Lady Hillary Clinton’s files with the release of 11,046 pages of material yesterday covering 2,888 days of her life in the White House.

Great. Fine. Her campaign, which hasn't seemed all that eager to put these papers out in public view as proof she gathered valuable experience then that qualifies her to be president now, used the release occasion to call on Barack Obama to release his files as an Illinois state legislator.

He points out instead that he's already put out his income taxes. Show us yours, he demands. Clinton says she will on or around April 15, which means they'll be at least a year old. So what's the delay? But O.K.

Now, Judicial Watch, the conservative watchdog organization that started the whole thing by suing to demand access to the slow-moving file clearance process in the Clinton presidential library, wants to see Hillary Clinton's telephone logs from her White House years.

Can you imagine writing down in the same place all day every day every phone call you make or take? So that's why the White House staff is so large.

Today in Washington a federal judge said he would allow Judicial Watch to question the National Archives about Clinton’s telephone logs. U.S. District Judge James Robertson said....

He didn't say "Read my lips" ...

... but during an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC's "This Week," John McCain, the presumptive GOP presidential candidate, did utter those three little words so beloved of conservatives:

"No new taxes," the Arizona senator told host George Stephanopoulos.

McCain's statement came during a discussion of his support for making President Bush's tax cuts permanent. He initially opposed the tax cuts, twice voting against them because, he has said, they were not accompanied by spending limits. More recently he has contended, as he did Sunday, that allowing the cuts to expire would impose "what essentially would be a tax increase of thousands of dollars per family in America."

In fact, he continued on ABC, "I could see an argument, if our economy continues to deteriorate, for lower interest rates, lower tax rates and certainly decreasing corporate tax rates, which are the second-highest in the world." He also supported allowing individuals to write off depreciation in a year and eliminating the alternative minimum tax, which was created to prevent the wealthiest from avoiding the long arms of the Internal Revenue Service but has increasingly ensnared middle-class taxpayers.

Last year, McCain refused to sign a "no new taxes" pledge sponsored by Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative group that, according to its website, "opposes all tax increases as a matter of principle." He defended that action in September during a Republican candidates debate at the University of New Hampshire. "I stand on my record," he said then. "I don't have to sign pledges."

McCain's verbal "no new taxes" pledge came the day before he is expected to receive an endorsement from former President George H.W. Bush, who spoke those same three words -- preceded, for emphasis, by "Read my lips" -- during his speech accepting the GOP presidential nomination in 1988. (And we all know how that turned out.)

The whole McCain video is available here.

-- Leslie Hoffecker

Parsing Bush's State of the Union words over 7 years

Here's something you can't do with your newspaper.

The Times' Ben Welsh has deconstructed online the most common words from every one of President Bush's seven State of the Union speeches and one Budget Address. They total 40,655 words and it took Bush six hours and 57 minutes to deliver them all over his entire term. (Although last night's address, the longest by 174 words, was likely Bush's last State of the Union, some presidents like Ford and Johnson have chosen to speak to joint sessions one last time just days before they leave office.)

Now, don't ask someone who blogs with two fingers how Welsh did this, but he's imaginatively created what's called a word cloud. You can find it here on this website. Using the president's own words and the frequency in which he uses them, it's an amazing and creative tool for even non-historians to measure right before their very eyes how national times and presidential priorities change over the years.

Notice how the words in Welsh's word cloud are different sizes; the more often they're used, the larger the type. Now put your cursor on the little thingy with the arrows that runs across the top of the type and drag it to the left. The dates of the speeches change.

You are literally moving back through time and all eight speeches. See how the words change in size. "America" and "Americans" are usually large as are words like "Congress," "health" and "must" because they're used so often, perennially. So was "Saddam" and "Hussein" and "weapons" back before 2003. Now, not at all.

"Al Qaeda" doesn't appear until 2002. "Security" appears more often as time passes. "Children" are there along with "health" and then "retirement."

You can detect your own patterns over the years. Feel free to offer your observations in the comments below.

--Andrew Malcolm

Correction: An earlier version of this post included a comparison of exact word counts between years that was mistakenly drawn from an incomplete draft analysis. It has been removed.

Mitt Romney plays softball at the GOP debate

Mitt Romney must have read today's New York Times article that probed why his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination seem to especially dislike him. That's because, presented with an early opportunity at tonight's candidate debate in Florida to recycle faults he's found in two of his opponents, he decided to play nice.

Meanwhile, his vigilant campaign team made sure, through e-mails, that John McCain would catch at least some grief.

The debate began on friendly ground for Romney, with questions about the nation's economic problems and how he would address them. Much as he tried -- with mixed success -- virtually all of last year to persuade his party that his conversion to conservative positions on abortion, gay marriage and the like was sincere, much as he tried to show he would be tough on fighting terrorism by refusing to disavow waterboarding as an interrogation technique, his business background makes the economy the subject he is most comfortable talking about.

As part of the discussion, co-moderator Tim Russert noted that Romney had criticized McCain and Rudy Giuliani as, based on their records, insufficiently committed to tax cuts. Russert asked if Romney ...

What's this? An unexpected forum question?

The small audiences that presidential candidates encounter on the campaign trail in New Hampshire are mostly friendly and intimate. When the candidates do a Q&A-type town hall meeting, the Q's usually play right into the candidate's talking points. It's a technique perfected by President Bush and, in this election cycle, Hillary Clinton.

But, occasionally, someone in the audience violates the rules, sending campaign aides into head-shaking mode because unexpected turns violate their event game plan.

Friday night, as a Times staffer watched, Mitt Romney got one of those questions in the American Legion Hall in Rochester, N.H. It came from the middle of an audience so friendly that one member had Mitt's name sewn onto the back of his sweatshirt.

Having lauded Bush's tax cuts as a "courageous thing" and "a great thing for our country," Romney was asked by one man why he had refused to endorse the tax cuts when Bush first proposed them. Wasn't that being hypocritical? the questioner wanted to know.

No, replied Romney, stumbling briefly. What he had said back then, the former governor said, was "Look, I'm busy being governor ... and I'm not weighing in on federal issues." Recovering rhetorically, Romney added: "Sen. McCain is different. He voted against the tax cuts twice. I was governor of a state, not a senator."

The questioner, identifying himself later only as "Sam," was surrounded later by tsk-tsking Romney aides, who accused him of being a plant from the McCain campaign. Gee, who would suspect such antics could happen among grown-up campaigns competing to lead the entire country?

--Andrew Malcolm

Snake hunting aside, the Huckabee surge continues

All praise is due the dynamic duo who pen the Washington Post's Reliable Source column, Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts. When an obvious follow-up was called for, they rose to the occasion.

Like many, we think, the pair was struck by a line that leapt out of a Post story Sunday on the dramatic hike in support for Republican Mike Huckabee in Iowa. The surge has been so surprising, the piece noted, that during the extended Thanksgiving weekend, his Iowa state director was "in Costa Rica hunting snakes."

The aide, Eric Woolson, was back on the job at the start of this week and, via the Reliable Source, he expounded on his unusual avocation here. He noted that as a political operative, some folks might consider his recent trip "a working vacation." But he charitably added: "I wouldn't be quite so kind."

The good tidings continue for Huckabee, meanwhile.

Today, he was endorsed by Jerry Falwell Jr., son of the well-known televangelist who passed away earlier this year. Also, for the first time, a poll shows Huckabee atop the GOP presidential field in Iowa (though his lead over Mitt Romney -- whose camp once though it owned the state -- in the new survey by Rasmussen Reports, is within its margin of error). For a look at the results from several recent Iowa polls, go here.

Here's another shocker...

My, we're a cranky lot

And it's not just the war.

The daily Poll Track column at the National Journal collates a few disparate surveys this morning and finds that, to quote another politician in another time, we're in something of a national malaise.  As Poll Track points out:

"A full two-thirds of respondents to a new Marist/WNBC poll said they believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, a 9-point increase from fall 2006.  Harris' 'Alienation Index' has also risen slightly since last year, as more Americans told pollsters this month that they feel the nation's leaders don't care about them and are out of touch with the country at large.

"Considering such widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo, it's no wonder 58 percent of registered voters responding to a new Gallup/USA Today poll said the outcome of the 2008 presidential race matters more to them than previous elections.  For many months the conventional wisdom had placed the blame for the public's angst squarely on President Bush and the Iraq war.  But recent polls suggest that Americans are increasingly worried about traditional bread-and-butter issues, too."

And the butter has been melting.  So it's a "pox on both their houses" mood out there, though other polls show that more people think the Democrats are better suited to straighten the mess out than the Republicans.  Those sentiments won't mean much in the primaries and caucuses, but they will come next November.  And of course anything can happen between now and then to change the current mood.

But you have to wonder what might have happened had the national elections been this week instead of next year, and how many babies would have gone out with the bathwater.

-- Scott Martelle

Obama pushes his $26-billion middle-class plan

Our colleague Janet Hook is on the road in Iowa with Barack Obama, and was on hand this morning in Bettendorf, near Davenport, as he outlined his economic plan to improve the lives of the nation's middle class. 

Hook reports that Obama's plan doesn't differ that much from one Hillary Clinton unveiled a month ago, and that he tried to argue that the key difference was in who would be best suited to push the agenda.

"We're not going to reclaim that (American) dream unless we put an end to the politics of polarization and division that is holding this country back," Obama said, "unless we stand up to the corporate lobbyists that have stood in the way of progress; unless we have leadership that doesn't just tell people what they want to hear -- but tells everyone what they need to know.''

Hook reports that the Obama plan "includes college tuition tax credits, liberalized family leave for working parents, and new employer mandates to help workers save for retirement." Obama said the agenda was designed to "put some wind at the backs of working people, to lower the cost of getting ahead and to protect and extend opportunity for the middle class."

Obama's speech on economic policy "comes at a time when polls indicate his political strength remains among more affluent voters, not the middle- and working-class families that would benefit most from the plans he unveiled Wednesday -- a package that also included many elements, such as his healthcare and middle-class tax cuts," Hook writes.

Obama's staff said the initiative would cost about $26 billion a year and would:

-- Require employers who do not offer pensions to automatically enroll employees in a direct-deposit retirement savings account. Employees may opt out of the plan, but Obama argues that participation rates will be higher than giving employees the option to participate but leave the initiative to them.

-- Provide a $4,000 annual tax credit for college expenses -- an amount Obama's staff estimates would cover two-thirds of the cost of the average public university.  The credit would be refundable, meaning it would come in the form of cash to low-income people who do not owe taxes.

-- Require employers to provide seven paid sick days a year.  He also would expand the federal Family and Medical Leave Act to allow workers to take time off for school conferences, doctors appointments and other purposes beyond the medical caretaking now allowed.  He also would set up a $1.5-billion fund to encourage states to require family leave to be paid, not unpaid, as is now the case under federal law.

-- Overhaul federal bankruptcy laws to lighten the strain on families in financial hardship due to medical problems, and establish other consumer protections.  He underscored his opposition to a bankruptcy reform bill that critics denounced as too favorable to credit card companies and banks.

During the speech, Obama hit one of his pay-off lines -- "I'll be a president who stands up for working parents'' -- and a 1-year-old girl in the back of the room jumped up on her mother's lap and squealed in delight.

But Hook reports the girl's mother, Brooke Bribriesco, in her 20s, was less impressed.  Joe Biden is her candidate because, she said, he is more "substantive'' than Obama, whom she dismissed as "more idealistic than realistic.''

Ouch.

-- Scott Martelle

Clinton nixes one idea; embraces another

Goodbye, $5,000 baby bonds. Hello, $1,000 matches for retirement accounts.

Campaigning in Iowa today, Hillary Clinton jettisoned what had been an uncharacteristic proposal from such a highly disciplined politician: her recent suggestion--not a definitive plan, mind you--but her suggestion that every new child born in the U.S. receive a government-funded $5,000 account that later could be used to pay for a college education.

Instead, the Democratic presidential contender now says she wants to create--for sure--a 401(k) plan in which Americans could invest up to $5,000 annually. Families that do so and have an income of $100,000 or less a year would receive a tax cut. For those households making less than $60,000, the first $1,000 they put in the accounts would be matched by a comparable tax reduction. Those families making $60,000-$100,000 would get $500 knocked off their tax bill.

Republicans were quick to heap scorn on the "baby bond" idea; Rudy Giuliani, as we noted last week, compared it to a controversial proposal that Democrat George McGovern toyed with during his ill-fated 1972 presidential campaign. Such attacks will not be defused by the audible Clinton has called; indeed, Giuliani trashed Clinton's new initiative during the GOP presidential debate that ended just minutes ago.

Intriguingly, one of Clinton's Democratic foes, John Edwards, also chimed in with criticism, albeit from a different perspective. "Apparently, new polling data seems to have pressured the Clinton campaign to throw out the baby bond with the bathwater," said a spokesman for Edwards, Chris Kofinis.

A quip simply too good to resist. And while we would perish the thought that Clinton's switch would be motivated by such crass considerations, it does strike us that folks eyeing their retirement financial status are a more reliable voting bloc than newborns (or their parents, for that matter).

-- Don Frederick

This just in: Mitt is rich

Mitt Romney has been sparing no expense in his run for the White House; so far, he's funneled about $9 million of his own money to his own campaign. Not to worry, he can easily afford it --- the Republican is worth as much as $250 million, with holdings spread among scores of investments, according to his new financial disclosure statement.

Largely because of the complexity of his finances (a problem we can only fantasize about), Romney failed to meet a May 15 deadline for filing the document and obtained two 45-day extensions. But he and his staff finally got it done and it shows he's worth between $190 million and $250 million (candidates report their assets and liabilities within ranges, rather than having to provide precise numbers).

Upon becoming governor of Massachusetts in 2003, Romney placed his holdings in a blind trust. The federal government, however, required a listing. The Times' Dan Morain, who will have a detailed story on the report on our website later today and in Tuesday's print editions, says it revealed that Romney has numerous off-shore holdings.

R. Bradford Malt, a lawyer who supervises the Romney trust and oversees all investment decisions, said at a news conference that the off-shore investments were not made to reduce income taxes. "There is none of that,” Malt said.

Romney disclosed that he has one checking account that contains between $5 million and $25 million (that's one way to keep from overdrawing). He holds stock in such U.S. firms as ...

Romney lobs a grenade at Edwards

Yes, yes, elections are all about divisions, splitting the primary or general election electorate into little pieces like a jigsaw puzzle and then meticulously reassembling us through promises, platforms and personalities into a new coalition that theoretically adds up to more votes than the opponent.

In the primaries, candidates of each like-minded party are usually trying to split hairs to concoct distinctions among themselves. O.K., that doesn't include Ron Paul and Mike Gravel. But occasionally it's useful for a candidate to lob a grenade over at another party's candidate just to help emphasize his own stance using the media.

Such was the case this week with Democrat John Edwards, who is successfully trying to stake out a populist position among the major candidates so far to the left that he is unflankable way out there. That gives him more to live down during the drive to the center if he makes it to the general election.

But first come the primaries. Recently, he did his poverty tour, as described by The Times' Richard Fausset. All the major Democratic candidates agree on letting the Bush tax cuts expire during the next presidential term, meaning taxes will increase. But now Edwards....