And perfection is not required — just get healthcare reform done. That was Clinton’s message to Senate Democrats who are now behind the steering wheel in trying to move legislation forward.

Clinton’s own effort to overhaul the healthcare system in 1994 fizzled long before reaching this far — the House of Representatives approved its version of a bill last weekend.

Clinton told Democratic senators at their weekly lunch that healthcare reform was an economic imperative and they should not let this latest opportunity slip away.

“It is not important to be perfect here, it is important to get it passed,” Clinton told reporters after the meeting.  ”The worst thing to do is nothing — that was my message today.”

President Barack Obama wants healthcare legislation passed by the end of this year. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is hoping the Senate can do that, but time is running short as he awaits an official cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.

Reid faces a tough task of stitching together one bill from separate bills passed by two Senate committees that will garner the 60 votes needed to move it in the 100-member chamber.

Senators said the pep talk by Clinton helped.

“People trust him,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, who is playing a major role in writing the Senate bill. “He has excellent political and policy judgments and he believes it is far better to pass healthcare legislation than not.”

“He’s the former president of the United States he’s got a lot of sway, he’s a big man.” Baucus said.

For more Reuters political coverage click here

Photo credit: Reuters/Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus (Former President Clinton and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in August 2009)

Last month, when the Wall Street Journal reported that President Barack Obama was reading Gordon Goldstein’s “Lessons in Disaster,” pundits wondered if the book about the mistakes of the Vietnam War might hold clues to the president’s thinking on his Afghanistan strategy.

Yesterday, during a Reuters interview, when Obama asked what I was reading with my 12-year-old son (”Great Expectations”), he revealed that he was reading the best-selling fantasy-adventure book “Life of Pi.”

His 11-year-old daughter, Malia, is reading it on her own and Obama, who read the Harry Potter series to her when she was younger, finds it compelling too.

“It’s a wonderful book,” Obama said of the prize-winning novel by Yann Martel about an Indian boy cast adrift in a lifeboat with a tiger, a hyena, a zebra and an orangutan.

“There are whole…chapters that really have to do with talking about Hinduism and Christianity and comparing it … there’s a lot of philosophical stuff in there,” Obama said. “But for some reason she’s hanging in there.”

Without revealing the ending, Obama may be in for a nasty surprise… (if you want a hint click here.)

Click here for more Reuters political coverage

Photo credit: Reuters/Peter MacDiarmid (Author Yann Martel after winning Booker Prize for Fiction 2002 for “Life of Pi”)

An audit report Tuesday by the Justice Department’s inspector general said the latest phase of the project for a fully electronic case management system will take three months longer than last expected and will cost $155 million — $18 million more than what had been budgeted.

It identified several new areas of concern with the overall progress of the so-called Sentinel project and with implementation of the project’s second phase.

There have been problems with the FBI’s computer systems dating back more than a decade and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks led FBI Director Robert Mueller to try to accelerate efforts for a massive upgrade.

In 2006, the FBI awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin to develop the system in four phases. The FBI came up with the project after problems caused it to scrap an earlier system.

The FBI’s estimate of Sentinel’s overall cost has not increased from about $450 million since the last inspector general audit nearly a year ago.

But the overall project completion date has been pushed back to September of 2010, three months later than what the FBI previously estimated and nine months later than what was originally planned, according to the audit.

The audit also said FBI employees have expressed concerns about the system’s current operation, complaining about its slow response time to requests for information.

An upgrade of the FBI’s aging computer network, planned to be done by December, should make the system faster.

The FBI said in a statement that it “appreciates the inspector general’s review of the FBI’s Sentinel Program progress and recognition of the FBI’s efforts to resolve concerns identified in previous Sentinel audits.”

Click here for more Reuters political coverage.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Nir Elias

The White House has been frustrated that its internal deliberations on the Afghanistan strategy have leaked into public view, something that Obama acknowledged on Monday in an interview with Reuters.

But will perceptions of the deliberations affect the decision itself?

In the view of some, Obama might risk sending a signal of a weakening commitment in Afghanistan were he to approve anything short of the 40,000 troop increase requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

Obama says concern about such perceptions won’t be a factor for him.

“That’s not how I think about the problem,” he said in the Oval Office interview. “My obligation — my solemn obligation, as commander-in-chief, is to get this right. And then I worry about people’s perceptions later.”

In a separate interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper, Obama talked at some length about the factors that will influence his decision-making.

Click here for more Reuters political coverage

Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama answers questions during Reuters interview)

The meeting’s important because Democrats have yet to find the 60 votes they need to stop Senate Republicans from blocking President Barack Obama’s signature domestic issue. House Democrats got their end of the job done over the weekend by passing landmark legislation.

Clinton’s presidency was overshadowed by his own failed bid to reform the healthcare system in the 1990s. But NBC said he could help sway Democrats wavering in the current debate, including Sen. Blanche Lincoln of his home state, Arkansas. 

A big obstacle that Clinton, Obama and Senate Democrats face seems as old as human nature: people who will cooperate — if they get their own way.

This time, a small clutch of moderates want their own way on the so-called public option, a proposal to offer government supported low-cost health coverage that is anathema to Republicans and the insurance industry.

Some senators are categorical about what they want.

For independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut — a state long associated with insurance interests — opposition to the public option is a moral issue. “If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote,” he said at the weekend on Fox News.

But his independent neighbor to the north, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, sounds like Lieberman’s polar opposite: “It would be outrageous to me, that when you have an overwhelming majority of Americans wanting a strong public option, that we do not deliver that.”

Others are not so categorical — until you get to the nitty gritty.

Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska told NBC he could back a public option, but not if states have to make the effort to opt out. Why? Because he doesn’t want them in the system unless they want to be there.

“I don’t think there is anything to be gained by opting out,” Nelson said. “I would look at the ability of the states to opt in, so that the states could make the decisions themselves.”

It seems a small distinction but may prove important. Reform advocates fear their adversaries could easily defeat healthcare reform at the state level, where small numbers of health insurers can sometimes hold a near monopoly.

Obama hopes to sign a healthcare reform bill by the end of the year.

Click here for more Reuters political coverage

Photo Credits: Reuters/Chip East (Clinton); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Lincoln); Reuters/Mike Segar (Lieberman); Reuters/Chris Helgren (Sanders); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Nelson)

Toward the end of his first term, his predecessor George W. Bush famously said in answer to a question that he could not think of any mistakes he had made — a comment which long dogged him as the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 led to chaos in Iraq.

When Obama was asked the same question on Monday, he was quicker on his feet.

“Oh, we make at least one mistake a day,” he said with a smile.

“But I will say this, I don’t think we’ve made big mistakes,” he told Reuters in an interview in the Oval Office. “I don’t think we’ve made fundamental mistakes.”

When asked to give a few examples of errors, Obama regretted how his team had handled some of the early vetting of administration appointments, a reference to problems with personal taxes that knocked some key picks out of contention.

He also mentioned regret over how he had “phrased commentary” on the controversial arrest of a prominent African American Harvard University scholar in Cambridge earlier this year, when he said police had acted stupidly and was later forced to backtrack.

“I mean, there are constant sort of things that I think have proven unnecessary distractions,” he said.

“But in terms of the core decisions that we’ve made to rescue the economy, to move forward on a path for moving our troops from Iraq, on making sure that we’ve gone through a rigorous process in Afghanistan, to how we have moved healthcare to a place that seven presidents have not been able to get to, I feel very good about our progress.”

Highlights from the Interview

For more from the interview, click on the story links below:

Obama warns of strains with China

Obama on Iran nuclear deal

Obama on Copenhagen climate summit

Obama says expect to sign START pact in December

Obama reading Life of Pi

Photo Credit:Reuters/Jim Young (Obama answers questions during Reuters interview in Oval Office)

U.S. House Democratic leaders had hoped to avoid just that in their push to expand healthcare coverage and reform the health insurance market.

But getting the votes to pass the historic legislation on Saturday boiled down to settling a dispute between pro-choice and pro-life forces over abortion.

Abortion foes won. The House passed an amendment restricting the availability of insurance policies that include elective abortion services even though many medical plans currently offer such coverage.

The debate over abortion highlights broader questions surrounding the government’s reach in healthcare.  Once the government starts subsidizing insurance premiums, it will dictate what can and cannot be included in that coverage.

Democrat Congressman Louis Capps underscored that in arguing the amendment “will mean more women will have their reproductive health choices made by politicians and anti-choice zealots in Washington, DC, instead of by themselves and their doctors.”

With abortion-rights supporters vowing to strip the amendment out of the bill as it moves through the legislative process, the debate now shifts over to the Senate.

Senate Democratic leaders are struggling to build enough support for the healthcare overhaul to overcome procedural hurdles that stand in the way of major legislation.

The biggest point of contention has been whether the government should offer a new health plan option.  But the abortion debate will likely prove impossible to avoid.

Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, acknowledged the issue will come up when the Senate takes up healthcare reform possibly as early as next week.

“It is an issue that we are going to have to deal with over here,” he said. “Senator Reid will need to talk to his caucus about how to proceed.”

For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credit: Reuters/Yuri Gripas ( U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi following House vote on healthcare reform legislation)

The former Louisiana lawmaker faces between 27 and 33 years in prison according to federal sentencing guidelines and prosecutors said that sounds good to them. Authorities discovered $90,000 in Jefferson’s freezer during their investigation.

“As the defendant stands convicted of some of the most serious corrupt schemes uncovered in recent history, he is without remorse and has yet to accept responsibility for his actions,” according to a memorandum filed with the court late Friday.

“A severe sentence would send the message to the public that such egregious and criminal behavior will not be tolerated in our society,” the prosecutors counseled. They also asked that Jefferson, 62, immediately go to prison for fear he would flee the country before his appeals are exhausted.

The ex-congressman was convicted in August on 11 of 16 counts of bribery, racketeering and money laundering. He was accused in 2007 of soliciting millions of dollars in bribes from companies while using his office to broker business deals in Africa.

Jefferson lost re-election last year to Republican Anh “Joseph” Cao — yes, the lone Republican who voted for the Democrats’ health care reform bill that passed the House of Representatives late Saturday. (The district is heavily Democratic and includes most of New Orleans.)

Jefferson acknowledged when he was first charged that he had made mistakes in judgment that he regretted, but denied selling his office or trading official acts for money.

For more Reuters political news, click here.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Jefferson after his arraignment in federal court in 2007)

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, Berliners have erected a wall of giant painted dominoes.

During the evening’s festivities the domino wall will be toppled along several blocks near Brandenburg Gate.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to visit the domino sponsored by the U.S. Embassy.

She met with the east Berlin school students and teachers who designed and painted the giant block and pronounced it “very impressive.”

The scene on the domino shows the back of a popular East German car traveling through a wall from darkness into light. Overhead are a rainbow and a white dove of peace.

Clinton said she liked “the light breaking through the dark.”

“Let’s do a picture with everybody in front of it, on both sides. I don’t want to cover it up,” she said.

“Thank you so very much for doing this and for coming out to see me,” Clinton told the youths. “Good job. Good job.”

The scene on the other side of the domino?

The back of a nude angel ascending toward heavenly light, all discreetly hidden by a U.S. Embassy sign during Clinton’s appearance.

For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credit: Reuters/Pawel Kopczynski (Clinton poses with students in front of U.S.-sponsored domino)

A preliminary review of Hasan’s computer has revealed no evidence of any connection to terror groups or conspirators, according to a report by CBS News.

But lawmakers have asked the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies to preserve documents on Hasan. That’s according to ABC News, which says the spooks believe he may have been trying to contact U.S.-born imam Anwar al Awlaki, who is based in Yemen and supports holy war against the West.

It’s not clear whether the U.S. military knew one of its officers was under intelligence surveillance, ABC said.

U.S. law enforcement and military investigators are also looking into associations between Hasan and the Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia, in early 2001, about the same time Awlaki and two of the Sept. 11 hijackers were there, the Los Angeles Times reported.  The mosque is one of the biggest in the United States and thousands of people go there for prayer services and other events.

Witnesses at Fort Hood told investigators that Hasan yelled “Allahu Akbar” — Arabic for “God is Greatest”  — before killing 13 people and wounding another 30 last week. The 39-year-old psychiatrist was shot four times by police and remains hospitalized.

It is unclear what motivated Hasan and the Army’s chief of staff, General George Casey, is afraid the shooting spree could cause a backlash against Muslims in the military.

But Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who is a hard-liner on security issues, sees the Fort Hood melee as a possible act of terrorism.

“We don’t know enough to say now. But there are very, very strong warning signs here that Dr. Hasan had become an Islamist extremist and, therefore, that this was a terrorist act,” Lieberman told Fox News over the weekend.

Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, wants the Pentagon to launch an independent probe of whether defense officials missed early signs of stress and statements that might have expressed Islamist sentiment.

Photo Credits: Reuters/Ho New (Hasan); Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi (Fort Hood); Reuters/Vivek Prakash (Lieberman)