House GOP Struggles To Pass Budget
House GOP sets up tricky budget votes Wednesday. The Hill: "House Republicans have decided to pursue the risky strategy of holding two separate floor votes on the GOP budget blueprint Wednesday ... One of the amendments allows a vote on the budget in its current form, which includes a provision that would boost the Pentagon’s war fund next year to $94 billion, while requiring $20 billion in offsets ... The other amendment [is] a new proposal to boost the war fund to $96 billion and require no offsets."
Vote strategy is a "gamble" for leadership. Politico: "It is betting that [Budget Chair Tom] Price’s budget will fail and the spending plan with increased defense money will pass ... [But the] fallout from failing to pass a budget cannot be overstated. It would show a fresh inability to govern ..."
Hillary Talks Wealth Gap
"Hillary Clinton tries to soothe progressives" reports Politico: "The former secretary of state spoke at the Washington headquarters of the liberal Center for American Progress ... She stuck largely to policy, praising, for example, a pre-Kindergarten program championed by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ... by appearing with union leaders Monday, Clinton seemed to be trying to show her commitment to the middle class ... Clinton also did not explicitly mention the importance of collective bargaining rights [and] also avoided the topic of trade."
"Hillary Clinton is getting serious about social mobility" says W. Post: "'Why,' she asked Monday morning, 'do some communities have, frankly, more ladders for opportunity than other communities?' ... This question is actually a sophisticated and hugely important one, and the fact that Clinton is thinking about it hints at what could be an important theme in the coming election."
O'Malley run "likely" reports W. Post: "The former Maryland governor, who’s said he will probably make a decision by May, huddled with more than 150 donors and other boosters at the Baltimore Hilton ... Senior members of O’Malley’s political team made presentations, participants said, and a speech by O’Malley echoed the populist addresses he gave in Iowa, the nation’s first presidential caucus state. O’Malley aides said the former governor plans to give several policy speeches in coming months to flesh out his agenda."
Republicans Target Climate Rules
Republican bill aims to thwart EPA climate regs. The Hill: "The draft bill would delay the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rule until all court challenges are over and let governors block any plans to implement the regulation — whether from the state or imposed by the EPA — if they think it would significantly increase electricity rates or harm reliability."
City of Beijing to shut down all coal plants. Bloomberg: "Beijing, where pollution averaged more than twice China’s national standard last year, will close the last of its four major coal-fired power plants next year ... after last week closing [two other] plants ... Nationally, China planned to close more than 2,000 smaller coal mines from 2013 to the end of this year..."
US government to raise price of coal, argues David J. Hayes and James H. Stock in NYT oped: "Lawmakers set a royalty payment of 12.5 percent of the sale price of the coal in 1976. Forty years later, those payments remain stuck there ... The price for taxpayer-owned coal should reflect, in some measure, the added costs associated with the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions."
Rahm Holds Lead
Mayor Emanuel maintains lead in latest poll. Chicago Sun-Times: "The Ogden & Fry poll conducted Saturday among 951 likely voters shows Emanuel getting support from 48.5 percent of those polled, while Garcia comes in at 32.1 percent. A large number of those polled — 18.4 percent — say they’re still undecided ... Last week’s poll had him with a 10.4-point lead ... a Garcia campaign representative said: 'The Feb. 22 Ogden & Fry poll underestimated our support relative to the mayor’s by more than 10 percent...'"
Challenger Garcia explains to Bloomberg why he is holding back on policy details: "it’s because he thinks the situation Chicago’s facing is even worse than advertised, and doesn’t want to fake it or over-promise ... 'That’s why I say that the first actions I will take will be audits of the finances as well as performance audits of the departments. Because they’ve never been done and thus my reluctance to get into the details of the measures we’ll take...'"
Breakfast Sides
Van Hollen Senate run sparks House Dems to jockey for leadership position. Politico: "...Rep. Joe Crowley has been burnishing his liberal bona fides after getting dinged for being too moderate early in his career ... Reps. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Terri Sewell of Alabama, both relative moderates in the caucus, have already started moving up the ladder ... Rep. Elijah Cummings, a respected and senior member of the CBC, [could] move up ... House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer is next in line to replace Pelosi, but he’s sure to be challenged by younger members when Pelosi steps aside..."
"[T]the airline industry is increasingly looking like an uncompetitive oligopoly," says NYT's Andrew Ross Sorkin: "...airfares [have] not dropped along with oil prices ... mergers over the last several years have left the nation with only four main airlines — Delta, United, Southwest and American-US Airways — which deliberately don’t compete on some routes ... in a truly competitive marketplace, airlines would add capacity to popular routes where they saw the opportunity to undercut a competitor."
