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Obama OKs broader insurance for children
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President Obama on Wednesday signed a bill extending health coverage to 4 million uninsured children, a move he called a first step toward fulfilling a campaign pledge to provide insurance for all Americans.
It was a victory for Obama a day after his nominee to shepherd his broad health care agenda, Tom Daschle, stepped aside amid tax problems.
Obama used an ebullient East Room signing ceremony to continue his push for his plan that would provide universal health insurance. "As I think everybody here will agree, this is only the first step," he said of the bill that reauthorizes the State Children's Health Insurance Program. "Because the way I see it, providing coverage to 11 million children through CHIP is a down payment on my commitment to cover every single American."
The children's health bill calls for spending an additional $32.8 billion on SCHIP, which now enrolls an estimated 7 million children. Federal money for the program was set to expire March 31, barring action by Congress. To cover the increase in spending, the bill would boost the federal excise tax on a pack of cigarettes by 62 cents, to $1.01 a pack.
ADVISERS: FINANCIAL BAILOUT WILL COST MORE
Obama's closest economic advisers signaled Wednesday that the financial wounds at the center of the economic downturn will require more money and more intervention to mend.
"It's going to cost more money to deal with this financial crisis," Paul Volcker, chairman of the president's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, told members of the Senate Banking Committee. "It's going to be lots more billions of dollars."
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also said the government will have to do "substantially more" to address the crisis.
The predictions came as the administration was preparing to unveil a new framework for how to assist banks and other financial institutions with the unspent money in a $700 billion financial rescue fund. Geithner is to announce the plan next week.
Lawmakers, faced with public antipathy to the Wall Street bailout, have cautioned the administration not to seek more money. The administration has not yet tipped its hand. But its options include direct capital infusions into banks, guarantees against losses on bad assets and a "bad bank" to buy distressed assets.
INTERIOR CANCELS BUSH DRILLING PLANS
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar canceled oil and gas leases on 77 parcels of federal land that opponents said would blight Utah's scenic southeastern corner.
Salazar's decision -- which reverses the Bush administration's December move to allow drilling on about 130,000 acres near pristine areas such as Nine Mile Canyon, Arches National Park and Dinosaur National Monument -- is one of a series of steps that Democrats are planning to take to reshape federal regulation of drilling, mining, lumbering and other resource tapping activities, both on U.S. soil and offshore.
Next week the House Resources Committee is holding the first in a series of hearings on offshore oil drilling, a policy Salazar has said he intends to revamp in consultation with Congress. Salazar is also reviewing a rule easing commercial oil shale development, must decide what federal parcels to offer in pending lease sales in the West, and will have to decide in the coming months on land management plans for areas in Colorado and Wyoming that contain valuable resources as well as imperiled species and wilderness habitat.
CLINTON'S FIRST TRIP: EAST ASIA
In another departure from her predecessor, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will make her first trip as secretary of state to East Asia.
She is expected to visit China, Japan and South Korea, and perhaps a country in Southeast Asia.
The itinerary signals that Clinton intends to take a closer interest in East Asia than did Condoleezza Rice, her predecessor. Rice in large measure delegated diplomatic matters concerning China to her deputies, sometimes skipping ministerial meetings in the region to the frustration of diplomats there.
State Department officials have not yet announced Clinton's travel plan.
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