Stymied by a GOP House, Obama looks ahead to 2014 to cement his legacy

President Obama, now facing the consequences of automatic spending cuts and the complications they raise for his broader domestic agenda, is taking the most specific steps of his administration in an attempt to ensure the election of a Democratic-controlled Congress in two years.

“What I can’t do is force Congress to do the right thing,” Obama told reporters at the White House Friday after a fruitless meeting with Republican leaders to avert the country’s latest fiscal crisis, known as the sequester. “The American people may have the capacity to do that.”

Obama, fresh off his November reelection, began almost at once executing plans to win back the House in 2014, which he and his advisers believe will be crucial to the outcome of his second term and to his legacy as president. He is doing so by trying to articulate for the American electorate his own feelings — an exasperation with an opposition party that blocks even the most politically popular elements of his agenda.

Obama has committed to raising money for fellow Democrats, agreed to help recruit viable candidates, and launched a political nonprofit group dedicated to furthering his agenda and that of his congressional allies. The goal is to flip the Republican-held House back to Democratic control, allowing Obama to push forward with a progressive agenda on gun control, immigration, climate change and the economy during his final two years in office, according to congressional Democrats, strategists and others familiar with Obama’s thinking.

“The president understands that to get anything done, he needs a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “To have a legacy in 2016, he will need a House majority in 2014, and that work has to start now.”

This approach marks a significant shift in the way Obama has worked with a divided Congress. He has compromised and badgered, but rarely — and never so early — campaigned to change its composition.

Democrats would have to gain 17 House seats to win back the majority they lost in 2010, and their challenge involves developing a persuasive argument for why the party deserves another chance controlling both Congress and the presidency. In the last election, American voters reaffirmed the political status quo in Washington, choosing to retain a divided government.

Of all the presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt, only Bill Clinton picked up House seats for his party in the midterm election of his second term
. His approval rating on the eve of the 1998 contest was 65 percent, 14 points above Obama’s current public standing.

The specific steps Obama is taking to win back the House for his party mark an evolution for a president long consumed by the independence of his political brand.

Obama has committed to eight fundraisers for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee this year, compared with just two events in 2009. The Democrats lost the House the following year, and Obama’s legislative agenda has largely stalled since then.

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CAP releases, retracts statement on McCarthy nomination at EPA

Gina McCarthy, Assistant Administrator with the Environmental Protection Agency.
(Alex Brandon - AP)
Looks like someone at the Center for American Progress has an itchy trigger finger.

The think tank on Wednesday released a statement congratulating Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator for air and radiation at the
Environmental Protection Agency, on her nomination to lead the agency. We hadn’t heard a peep from the White House but CAP has close ties to the Obama administration, so we figured we must have missed something.

But wait... not so fast.

Turns out, there had been no nomination. CAP later sent a second message retracting the first. “The statement... was sent from us in error. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused .”

Oopsie.

One can imagine why they jumped the gun. After all, McCarthy’s selection for the post is a near-certainty — and even the Loop thought the annoucement from the White House would come sooner.

Consider it a practice run.

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Supreme Court lets ban stand on direct corporate campaign donations

The Supreme Court on Monday decided against reviewing the century-old ban on corporations making direct contributions to federal candidates.

The court without comment declined to hear an appeal from two men who said the court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allowed corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on elections, must also nullify the ban on campaign contributions.

The court last week accepted a different campaign finance issue. Justices announced that during their term that begins in October, they will consider a federal cap on how much an individual may spend on political contributions during a two-year election cycle. A conservative activist and the Republican National Committee are challenging the cap, which is $123,200 for an individual.

Groups that favor campaign finance restrictions gave the court grudging praise for not accepting the direct contributions case.

The Campaign Legal Center in a statement called the restrictions on corporate giving “an important bulwark against use of the corporate form to circumvent the contribution limits and to funnel corporate money directly into campaign coffers.”

But it added: “Today’s decision does nothing to mitigate the court’s disturbing decision last week to revisit the aggregate contribution limits passed in the wake of the Watergate scandals, which if overturned would enable individual to make contributions of one-two- or even three-million dollars to buy influence in Washington.”

Two Northern Virginia businessmen, William P. Danielczyk and Eugene R. Biagai, were indicted on charges they used more than $150,000 in funds from Galen Capital to reimburse donors who contributed to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaigns for the Senate and for president.

U.S. District Judge James Cacheris threw out some of the charges, however. “For better or worse, Citizens United held that there is no distinction between an individual and a corporation with respect to political speech,” the Alexandria judge wrote. “Thus, if an individual can make direct contributions . . . a corporation cannot be banned from doing the same thing.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond reversed Cacheris’ ruling, saying the Supreme Court in Citizens United specifically sidestepped the question of direct contributions.

It is the Richmond court’s decision that the justices, without comment, declined Monday to review.

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Obama’s legacy likely to be determined by upcoming battles

President Obama’s legacy ultimately could be determined over the next few months by a series of showdowns — both with Republicans, and, potentially, with fellow Democrats — slated to take place.

Guns. Immigration. Climate change. Debt and spending. The matters that Obama is either moving on or has promised to move on are the sorts of big issues that the two parties (and their presidents) have tangled with for decades and for which no easy solutions present themselves.

Solve them and Obama will write his name in the history books as one of the most influential presidents of the modern era. (Don’t forget he has already achieved a major overhaul of the nation’s health care system.) Fail to find solutions and Obama likely will join the long list of presidents who promised to change Washington but ultimately came up short .

There’s little question of how Obama sees himself — particularly following his reelection victory in November. In a series of speeches since then, Obama has cast his proposals — on guns, the fiscal cliff, the sequester — as designed to help people achieve the American Dream.

“It can feel like for a lot of young people that the future only extends to the next street corner or the outskirts of town; that no matter how much you work or how hard you try, your destiny was determined the moment you were born,” Obama said, discussing his proposal to curb gun violence in a speech in Chicago last week. Later, he added: “We all share a responsibility to move this country closer to our founding vision that no matter who you are, or where you come from, here in America, you can decide your own destiny.”

While Obama’s rhetoric is clear about the grand aims he holds for his second term, the political realities around these issues seem to point to the sort of small-bore solutions that he has long rejected.

Take guns. There seems to be little expectation that an assault-weapons ban can be passed though Congress, a feat that even Bill Clinton, whose presidency was defined, largely, by its dearth of monumental challenges, was able to accomplish. Obama himself has acknowledged as much; in his State of the Union speech his call to action was not for Congress to pass his proposals to lessen gun violence, but rather to simply allow them to be voted on — something short of a historic stand on a controversial issue.

Ditto on the fight over how to reduce the country's debt . The distance between the two parties over what mix of tax increases and spending cuts is the right one has been on stark display in the runup to the March 1 sequestration deadline. To say negotiations have broken down over how to avert the $1.2 trillion in automatic, across-the-board cuts assumes that they ever really began in earnest — which they didn’t. While most polling suggests that Obama enjoys the political upper hand on the issue, that won’t bridge the massive ideological divide that separates the two sides.

Movement on climate change is even more politically fraught, with even small-scale solutions somewhat unlikely to make it through Congress. (Many Congressional Democrats are still reeling from the House passage of a cap and trade measure in 2009, a piece of legislation that went nowhere and is blamed by some within the party for the loss of the chamber the following year.)

Of the second-term issues where Obama’s legacy will be made (or not), immigration reform seems to be the one with the highest probability of a “big” solution — given that a bipartisan group of Senators is working on a compromise proposal. Even there, however, passage of a major piece of legislation will be a heavy lift.

Obama wants to go big. But, he oversees a legislative and political process that seems forever bent toward incrementalism. And, as much as his allies insist that Obama can do little about the alleged intransigence of Republicans in Congress, he will almost certainly need to find a way to bend the other party (or at least a few dozen of them) to his political will if he wants to leave the sort of mark on the presidency— and the country — that he so clearly desires to do.

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Governors express frustration with Washington gridlock, sequestration

The nation’s governors had a message Saturday for Americans frustrated that Washington’s persistent partisan gridlock appears likely to trigger an across-the-board budget cut March 1 that could delay airline travel and result in hundreds of thousands of layoffs: They’re frustrated too.

Meeting in Washington for the winter meeting of the National Governors Association, state chief executives from both parties expressed deepening concern about the mindlessness of the $85 billion budget cut, which will be split between military and domestic programs but will otherwise offer an equal whack to every affected government program. They asked to be allowed more discretion in how spending cuts are implemented.

It’s the result of Congress’ failure to agree on a more targeted deficit reduction package. Congress will return to work Monday after a week-long recess, but despite political posturing, there’s been no sign of serious negotiations between the parties to prevent the cut from hitting on schedule Friday.

Republican governors Saturday stressed they are on board with reductions in federal spending even if they could result in further cuts to already stressed state budgets. But many slammed the across-the-board hack as a silly way to go about deficit reduction.

In Tennessee, Gov. Bill Haslam (R) said he fears what Washington has dubbed “sequestration” could result in delays to toxic-waste cleanup at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

“Every line item gets cut, regardless of what it is,” he said. “This is not a smart way to do government.”

In Hawaii, 19,000 workers at the naval station at Pearl Harbor could face furloughs, which Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) said would undermine military preparedness.

Abercrombie said Pearl Harbor, where a surprise Japanese attack in 1941 propelled the United States into World War II, is a place that “everybody can understand symbolizes . . . what happens when you’re not prepared.”

Governors in both parties said they worried that the latest of a series of Washington budget crisis moments could inject new uncertainty into state economies that had only just begun to fully stabilize after the end of the recession.

“We’re talking about real lives. We’re talking about families. We’re talking about their pocket books,” said Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R), the association’s vice-chairman. “It is not good to have the sequester talk every couple of months.”

After attending weekend sessions on tax reform, cybersecurity and coping with extreme weather, the bipartisan group of governors will meet with President Obama on Monday, with the looming budget ax likely to be a central topic of discussion.

Democratic governors also met separately with Obama on Friday and emerged from the White House to blame Republicans for cuts they said would hit police, firefighters, teachers and National Guard units.

Although governors on a bipartisan basis Saturday pressed Congress and Obama to come up with a more surgical plan than sequestration, they offered no joint solution to the central issue dividing Washington: Whether more tax revenue should be used alongside additional spending cuts.

Democrats agreed with the president that a balanced plan should include both — and blamed the imminent cut on the GOP’s unwillingness to consider higher taxes in a plan to avert them.

“It seems like every three months, the House Republicans find another way to fell a tree in the path of our economic recovery,” said Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D). He warned of particularly damage to the Washington area economy.

Republicans, however, agreed with their congressional counterparts that higher taxes would hurt the economy and the across-the-board cut should be replaced with other spending cuts. Many stressed their desire to see the federal government shrink in other ways, pointing to their own experiences balancing state budgets.

“I’m just worried about the federal government really destroying the economy of this country by continuing to spend more than they take in and not making the tough decisions,” said Gov. Terry E. Branstad (R). “And the president has provided no leadership. He’s not really brought people together.”

Some noted that the Republican-held House twice last year passed bills that would have spared military spending by shifting defense cuts onto other domestic programs. Democrats rejected that approach as hitting the social safety net too hard.

This week, the Senate will consider a Democratic alternative that would replace the sequester with cuts to agriculture subsidies and higher taxes on those making more than $1 million a year. That measure is unlikely to survive a filibuster.

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Group releases list of 90 medical ‘don’ts’

Don’t use feeding tubes in patients with advanced dementia. Don’t use drugs to aggressively treat diabetes in those older than 65. Don’t automati­cally use imaging technology for minor head injuries in children and headaches in adults. And don’t give antacids to babies with reflux.

Those are among the 90 medical “don’ts” on a list being released Thursday by a coalition of doctor and consumer groups. They are trying to discourage the use of tests and treatments that have become common practice but may cause harm to patients or unnecessarily drive up the cost of health care.

It is the second set of recommendations from the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation’s “Choosing Wisely” campaign, which launched last year amid nationwide efforts to improve medical care in the United States while making it more affordable.

The recommendations run the gamut, from geriatrics to opthalmology to maternal health. Together, they are meant to convey the message that in medicine, “sometimes less is better,” said Daniel Wolfson, executive vice president of the foundation, which funded the effort.

“Sometimes, it’s easier [for a physician] to just order the test rather than to explain to the patient why the test is not necessary,” Wolfson said. But “this is a new era. People are looking at quality and safety and real outcomes in different ways.”

The guidelines were penned by more than a dozen medical professional organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and ­Gynecologists.

The groups discourage the use of antibiotics in a number of instances in which they are commonly prescribed, such as for sinus infections and pink eye. They caution against using certain sedatives in the elderly and cold medicines in the very young.

In some cases, studies show that the test or treatment is costly but does not improve the quality of care for the patient, according to the groups.

But in many cases, the groups contend, the intervention could cause pain, discomfort or even death. For example, feeding tubes are often used to provide sustenance to dementia patients who cannot feed themselves, even though oral feeding is more effective and humane. And CT scans that are commonly used when children suffer minor head trauma may expose them to cancer-causing radiation.

While the recommendations are aimed in large part at physicians, they are also designed to arm patients with more information in the exam room.

“If you’re a healthy person and you’re having a straightforward surgery, and you get a list of multiple tests you need to have, we want you to sit down and talk with your doctor about whether you need to do these things,” said John Santa, director of the health ratings center at Consumer Reports, which is part of the coalition that created the guidelines.

Health-care spending in the United States has reached 17.9 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product and continues to rise, despite efforts to contain costs. U.S. health-care spending grew 3.9 percent in 2011, reaching $2.7 trillion, according to the journal Health Affairs.

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Kerry makes case for robust foreign aid

CHARLOTTESVILLE — America’s duties and ambitions overseas are too important to shortchange, even in a time of tight budgets, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Wednesday.

“In today’s global world, there is no longer anything foreign about foreign policy,” Kerry said in an unusual first address for a U.S. secretary of state.

Politicians too easily make a bogeyman of American foreign aid, said Kerry, who was a politician for more than three decades, while the payoffs of engagement abroad are badly misjudged by many ordinary Americans, he said.

“I can tell you that nothing gets a crowd clapping faster than to say, ‘I’m going to Washington to get them to stop spending all that money over there,’ ” Kerry said.

In truth, the foreign aid budget, as well as the entire State Department budget, is a pittance, Kerry said, just about a penny on the total U.S. federal budget dollar.

The State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development budget request for 2012 was $51.6 billion. Although Kerry did not make the direct comparison, the Pentagon spent an estimated $115 billion on the Afghanistan war in the same year.

“Deploying diplomats today is much cheaper than deploying troops tomorrow,” Kerry said to applause.

Suggesting that the United States wastes too much money on foreigners is a cheap applause line that does not make the country safer or more prosperous, Kerry said.

In short, the State Department needs a better lobbyist, Kerry said in his speech at the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s first secretary of state.

“In this age, when a shrinking world clashes with calls for shrinking budgets, it’s our job to connect the dots for the American people between what we do over there and why it matters here at home,” he said.

Kerry will embark on his first foreign trip as secretary next week, a lengthy tour of European and Arab capitals that will largely focus on international proposals to end the grinding civil war in Syria. That war is remote and intangible for many Americans, just the sort of seemingly intractable tragedy that Kerry suggested too many Americans mistakenly assume is not their concern.

The costs of pulling back from the world would be huge, Kerry said, while “the vacuum we would leave by retreating within ourselves will quickly be filled by those whose interests differ dramatically from our own.”

Kerry’s trip will take him to European nations gripped by the euro-zone fiscal crisis, whose ripple effects still pose a threat to the fragile U.S. economic recovery. He likened the unpopular belt-tightening underway in many nations to the budget impasse in the United States.

He also put in a plug for heading off automatic March 1 budget cuts that would force furloughs at the State Department and other federal agencies.

“My credibility as a diplomat working to help other countries create order is strongest when America at last puts its own fiscal house in order,” Kerry said.

“Let’s reach a responsible agreement that prevents these senseless cuts,” he said. “Let’s not lose this opportunity to politics.”

Julie Tate contributed to this report.

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Supreme Court to consider limits on individual political contributions

The Supreme Court reentered the controversial field of campaign finance Tuesday, agreeing to consider a Republican challenge to decades-old limits on the total amount a person can contribute to candidates, political parties and political action committees.

It is the court’s first major campaign finance case since its 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allowed unlimited corporate and union spending in elections. By extension, the decision led to the creation of super PACs, whose multimillion-dollar donations transformed funding of the 2012 presidential contest.

The new case, which will be heard in the court’s term that begins in October, concerns the federal limit on the amount an individual can contribute to certain campaigns during each election cycle.

For 2013-14, that would be $123,200 — a maximum of $48,600 to federal candidates and $74,600 to political parties and some political action committees.

Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama conservative activist and businessman, brought the lawsuit along with the Republican National Committee because he is seeking to contribute more than those amounts. He is not challenging the limit on the amount he can give to individual candidates, $2,600.

A three-judge lower-court panel rejected McCutcheon’s contention that the aggregate limits were unconstitutionally low and overbroad. “It is not the judicial role to parse legislative judgment about what limits to impose,” the panel wrote.

Those who favor limits on campaign contributions were alarmed by the Supreme Court’s decision to review the ruling.

“It has become readily apparent that there are a number of justices who are willing to usurp Congress’s role as legislator when it comes to matter of campaign finance,” said Tara Malloy, senior counsel for the Campaign Legal Center.

“An aggregate contribution limit was passed in the wake of the Watergate money scandals and was upheld in the 1976 Supreme Court decision Buckley v. Valeo.” Without the limits, she said in a statement, “corruption, or at the very least the appearance of corruption, would be the rule rather than the exception in Washington.”

Fred Wertheimer, a longtime campaign finance advocate and president of Democracy 21, warned of multimillion-dollar contributions to political parties if the court were to toss out the limits.

But Brad Smith, chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics and an opponent of limits, said the Citizens United ruling may lead to the court’s reexamination of the Buckley v. Valeo decision, which justified contribution limits on anticorruption grounds.

“The case gives the court an opportunity to clarify an important legal question: If contribution limits to individual committees and candidates prevent corruption, what additional interest justifies aggregate contributions?” Smith said in a statement.

The Citizens United decision was a big boost to interest groups, weakening the ability of campaigns and parties to compete with them. There are no limits on the amount that individuals can contribute to super PACs. The challenge would restore some of the balance by removing restrictions on the political parties.

It is part of a systematic challenge to campaign finance restrictions undertaken by Republicans and conservative interest groups. They have had considerable success with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s court, which has been suspicious of spending limits it has found hinder political speech.

But even though Republicans have brought the challenge, the Democratic Party and its political action committees also would benefit from unfettered contributions.

The case is
McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission
.

T.W. Farnam contributed to this report.

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Giffords advocates for gun control in Congress where she once served

For hours, Gabrielle Giffords had been working the halls of Congress, walking with difficulty or being pushed in her wheelchair. She and her husband, Mark Kelly, zigzagged through the marble corridors the day after the president’s State of the Union speech, visiting top lawmakers to try to sway them in the nation’s raging debate over gun violence.

Leaving the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), Kelly pivoted his wife toward two doors that opened to the Senate floor. They wanted to go inside for a few minutes to peek at the action.

“This is only for members of Congress,” said a Senate guard, blocking the way. Kelly started to explain, but the guard cut him off. “Only members of Congress allowed.” Kelly turned his wife’s wheelchair towards another hallway.

It was a curt symbol of what Giffords has lost in the two years since a gunman shot her in the head as she was meeting with constituents outside a Tucson supermarket on a bright Saturday morning. Days into her third term as a moderate Democratic congresswoman, her political life was ended. Yet, almost as suddenly, the same kind of random and horrible violence has propelled her into a whole new world.

Since the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., Giffords has emerged as the country’s most famous victim advocate, the face of a renewed effort across the country to legislate gun control. It is impossible to be near Giffords and not be reminded of her injuries.

But she has not lost her sharp political instinct nor her determination to deliver her message. When asked during her visit to Capitol Hill if she might be more powerful in her new role, her answer was swift and firm.

“Yes,” she said. “Impact.”

Yet the question is whether the former congresswoman can change the seemingly in­trac­table opposition on Capitol Hill to new restrictions on assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and loopholes in background checks. The sides in the debate have long been chosen, and few members of Congress will cross the powerful gun lobby to support the kinds of changes that Giffords advocates.

In short, in her new role, will Gabby Giffords have an impact?

If not, it won’t be for lack of trying. She and Kelly have embarked on a full-scale campaign to try to reduce gun violence. They have created an advocacy group, Americans for Responsible Solutions, raised a considerable chunk of money and brought their message to Washington, where Giffords was once regarded as a rising political star.

Their partnership works like this: Kelly does most of the talking. Giffords sits or stands beside him, animated and smiling, offering a word here and there. It is not what Giffords says in her new role as much as what she cannot say. Her message is mostly silent, a reminder that no one, even a member of Congress, is immune from the random violence that can transform — or end — a life.

“Gabby has particular insight into the issue, being a former member of Congress, a victim of gun violence, a gun owner and a strong supporter of the Second Amendment,” Kelly, a former astronaut and space shuttle commander, said. “I think folks want to hear what she has to say about this.”

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Postmaster takes case for five-day mail delivery to skeptical senators

Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe took his controversial plan for five-day mail delivery before a congressional hearing Wednesday, where he told senators that the Postal Service “needs your help.”

Donahoe’s refrain was familiar.

●The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is losing $25 million a day.

●Last year, the Postal Service lost $15.9 billion.

●It defaulted on $11.1 billion owed to the Treasury.

As he has before, Donahoe pleaded with Congress, this time the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, to approve comprehensive postal reform legislation. Now, more than before, it looks as though Congress will do so.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, told the Senate panel that after two months of negotiations, “we are close, very close” to agreement on a bipartisan, bicameral bill.

Without some assistance from Congress, said Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate committee, “the Postal Service will drift toward insolvency and, eventually, the point at which it must shut its doors. . . . We have never been closer to losing the Postal Service.”

Although in some ways Donahoe’s appearance echoed his many other pleas for congressional action, this hearing drew a standing-room-only crowd on the third floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. That was probably influenced by all the attention generated by his surprise announcement last week that Saturday mail delivery will end in August.

Donahoe’s written testimony outlined several key legislative goals, but five-day mail delivery was not specifically listed among them. After repeatedly urging Congress to end the six-day requirement, Donahoe said postal officials had determined that he could take that action without congressional approval.

Moving to five-day delivery would close just 10 percent of the postal budget gap, Donahoe said, yet the controversy surrounding it stole the focus from other important financial issues.

Among them is a controversial proposal to move postal employees from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, which serves all federal workers, to a health insurance program run by the USPS.

Donahoe presented an updated health insurance proposal, but it received little attention compared with his five-day delivery plan.

Last year the Senate approved legislation, co-sponsored by Carper, that would allow five-day delivery two years after its enactment. The delay was designed to allow the Postal Service to study the impact of five-day delivery. Carper was among those who have expressed disappointment with Donahoe’s plan to implement it unilaterally.

“We are taking every reasonable and responsible step in our power to strengthen our finances immediately,” Donahoe told the committee. “We would urge Congress to eliminate any impediments to our new delivery schedule.

“Although discussion about our delivery schedule gets a lot of attention, it is just one important part of a larger strategy to close our budgetary gap,” he added. “It accounts for $2 billion in cost reductions while we are seeking to fill a $20 billion budget gap.”

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Obama urges a move away from narrow focus on politics of austerity

Just about every argument in Washington since the 2010 midterm elections, which returned control of the House to Republicans, has centered on reducing the federal deficit. On Tuesday night, President Obama leaned into his second term by declaring that a single-minded focus on deficit reduction would jeopardize the nation’s future. And he sounded an urgent call to rebuild.

Reelected by an ascendent coalition, the president spoke from a position of strength in his fourth State of the Union address. The economy is improving. The Republican Party is in disarray. The time has come, Obama indicated, to pivot away from the politics of austerity.

“Most of us agree that a plan to reduce the deficit must be part of the agenda,” he said. “But let’s be clear: Deficit reduction alone is not an economic plan. A growing economy that creates good middle-class jobs — that must be the North Star that guides our efforts.”

The president rejected the fiscal brinkmanship that defined the past two years. Instead, he framed future fiscal debates as opportunities to shape a “smarter government” — one with new investments in science and innovation, with a rising minimum wage, with tax reform that eliminates loopholes and deductions for what the president labeled “the well-off and well-connected.”

Second-term presidents have a narrow window of time to enact significant change before they become lame ducks, and Obama, while echoing campaign themes of reinforcing the middle class, made an urgent case for a more pragmatic version of populism, one that emphasizes economic prosperity as the cornerstone of a fair society.

Over and over, he noted that the time to rebuild is now.

The “Fix-It-First” program that Obama outlined to put people to work on “urgent repairs,” such as structurally deficient bridges, bore echoes of President Bill Clinton’s call in his 1999 State of the Union address to “save Social Security first.” Clinton’s was an effective line, one that stopped — at least until President George W. Bush took office two years later — a Republican drive to use the budget surplus to cut taxes.

Although Obama’s speech lacked the conciliatory notes of some of his earlier State of the Union addresses, he did make overtures to Republicans and cited Mitt Romney, his presidential challenger, by name.

He combined tough talk about securing the border, which brought Republicans to their feet, with a pledge to entertain reasonable reforms to Medicare, the federal entitlement program that fellow Democrats are fighting to protect.

“Those of us who care deeply about programs like Medicare must embrace the need for modest reforms,” he said.

Obama also pledged to cut U.S. dependence on energy imports by expanding oil and gas development. And he singled out one area where he and Romney found agreement in last year’s campaign: linking increases in the minimum wage to the cost of living.

Obama set a bipartisan tone at the start of his speech, quoting from President John F. Kennedy’s address to Congress 51 years earlier when he said, “The Constitution makes us not rivals for power, but partners for progress.”

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Obama should focus on deficit in State of the Union

President Obama is preparing to deliver his fourth State of the Union address on Tuesday at — or close to— the height of his political power. He has been reelected convincingly, won legislative showdowns with Republicans on debt and spending issues, and is basking in some of his highest approval ratings in years.

Of course, modern political history has shown that political momentum can disappear — or at least erode — rapidly. That’s especially true for a second-term president, who probably has until the midterm election — 2014 in Obama’s case — to either use or lose his political power.

So, how can Obama use the speech to keep on his current political roll? Here are three ideas.

It’s the deficit, stupid. A look back at Obama’s first three State of the Union speeches, plus the address to a joint session of Congress in 2009, suggests a similar thematic pattern: He starts with the economy, moves to education and then, in the middle section of the speech, addresses the deficit. (The exception was in 2011, when Obama began his speech with a riff on partisanship.) In 2012, Obama spent just five minutes on the debt — less time than he spent on partisanship (5¹/
₂ minutes) or foreign policy (six minutes).

He should flip that script in this State of the Union and spend the bulk of his time talking about the deficit. Here’s why: In January 2009 polling by Pew Research Center, 53 percent of respondents said reducing the deficit was a “top priority.” In January 2013, that number soared to 72 percent, by far the biggest increase of any issue over that time. (By contrast, 85 percent said strengthening the economy was a top priority in 2009, while 86 percent said so at the start of this year.)

The debt is the issue of the day, and one that, if Obama is beginning to eye his legacy as president, could go a long way toward shaping how history remembers him. Make this speech a deficit speech.

Pressure Republicans. Much of Obama’s success since the November election has been born of a willingness to take advantage of the fact that congressional Republicans are not only deeply unpopular with the public at large but internally divided over the future of the party — and without a clear leader to guide them. (The choice of Marco Rubio as the Republican responder to Obama’s State of the Union address suggests the GOP establishment would like the Florida senator to be that leader.)

Polling tells the story. While Obama’s job approval rating was at 55 percent in a January Washington Post-ABC News survey, just 24 percent of respondents approved of the job performance of Republicans in Congress. And two-thirds of the sample (67 percent) said Republicans were doing too little to compromise with the president on major issues.

Given those numbers, there’s every reason for Obama to continue the aggressive approach he has taken in his dealings with Republicans since winning a second term in November. Act, oratorically speaking, and force Republicans to react.

Pick a pet issue, just one. A look at the Pew priorities polling conducted last month is a telling indicator of the public’s priorities. Of 21 issues tested, global warming ranked dead last among those priorities, while strengthening gun laws came in 18th and illegal immigration 17th.

And yet, that trio of issues — along with the economy — has been at the forefront of political and policy discussions in Washington over the past few months. (Circumstances obviously matter here; the shootings in Newtown, Conn., thrust gun laws into a spotlight they would never have had if that tragedy had not happened.)

What that discrepancy should tell Obama is that he needs to tread carefully on those issues in his State of the Union speech, and beyond. While most people would like to see all of them addressed, none are even close to the priority of fixing the economy or reducing the debt. And so, Obama would be smart to pick one — guns seems by far the most likely — and spend real time on it in the speech, with only a passing reference or two to the others.

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Michelle Obama mourns slain teenager at Chicago funeral

CHICAGO — First lady Michelle Obama attended the funeral here Saturday of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who went to school only a mile from the Obama family home and was gunned down a few days after visiting Washington for President Obama’s second inauguration.

Obama did not know Pendleton, nor did scores of other political dignitaries who filed into the Greater Harvest Baptist Church in Chicago’s South Side for the service. But by returning to her home town of Chicago to honor Pendleton, the first lady spotlighted the everyday gun violence that plagues the nation’s biggest cities at a time when the president is pushing Congress to pass tougher gun laws.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan and White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett accompanied the first lady to the service. All three have long ties to the South Side.

Although the president did not travel here Saturday, the back of a glossy obituary program distributed to mourners included a handwritten note from him to Pendleton’s parents, Cleopatra and Nathaniel.

“Michelle and I just wanted you to know how heartbroken we are to have heard about Hadiya’s passing,” he wrote in the letter. “We know that no words from us can soothe the pain, but rest assured that we are praying for you, and that we will continue to work as hard as we can to end this senseless violence. God Bless, Barack Obama.”

As hundreds of people filed into the church Saturday morning, a heart-shaped pillow rested beside Pendleton’s casket, which was lined in purple, her favorite color. The pillow featured a smiling image of the girl, signed by “mom and dad.”

Some of Pendleton’s classmates and fellow majorettes in the King College Prep’s band wore their black and yellow warm-up suits and carried roses.

Pendleton was remembered as an honors student who enjoyed cheerleading, debate and volleyball. She loved eating Chinese food, cheeseburgers and Fig Newtons; her favorite class in school was Latin; and she aspired to major in pharmacology or journalism in college.

During the service, Eric Thomas, pastor at Greater Harvest Baptist Church, asked that God “let the family know — her parents know — that her life has not been in vain. Because of this day, there will be many others saved.”

President Obama has spoken out repeatedly about finding ways to end not only mass shootings like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., but also the daily gun violence on street corners in cities such as Chicago, the nation’s third-largest.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Rep. Danny Davis (Ill.), all Democrats, attended Saturday’s service, as did the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who stood at the front of the church near Pendleton’s casket for a while before taking his seat in the congregation.

Quinn mentioned Pendleton in his “State of the State” address this week, in which he called for tougher gun control measures. And Emanuel, who was President Obama’s first White House chief of staff before being elected mayor, has become emotional recently when talking about Chicago’s frighteningly high homicide rate.

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Obama pays tribute to Leon Panetta at the Pentagon chief’s farewell ceremony

President Obama paid tribute Friday to outgoing Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, hailing him for presiding over victories against terrorists and the expansion of opportunity in the U.S. armed forces.

In a speech at Fort Myer, Va., for the “Armed Forces Farewell Tribute” to Panetta, the president called the Pentagon chief “a man who hasn’t simply lived up to the American dream but has helped to protect it for all of us.”

He told Panetta, who served as CIA director before taking the helm at the Pentagon, “Your leadership of the CIA will forever be remembered for the b lows that we struck against al-Qaeda” and for “delivering justice to Osama bin Laden.”

Obama added: “Because we believe in opportunity for all Americans, the tenure of Secretary Panetta” as defense chief “will be remembered for historic progress in welcoming more of our fellow citizens to military service.” He referred to the 2011 repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that barred openly gay people from serving in the military, and to the lifting last month of a ban on women in combat positions.

Obama spoke after a ceremony featuring military bands and honor guards, including the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps clad in red coats and tricornered hats.

“I’ve witnessed a new generation of Americans ask themselves what they could do for their country,” Panetta said after being introduced by Obama.

“We’ve kept pressure on al-Qaeda, and we’re going after extremists wherever they may hide,” he said. “We have shown the world — we have shown the world — that nobody attacks the United States of America and gets away with it.”

Panetta formally announced his retirement early last month, and Obama nominated Chuck Hagel, a Republican former senator from Nebraska, to replace him. Hagel’s nomination has run into stiff opposition from Senate Republicans, who accused him of being insufficiently supportive of Israel and soft on Iran during an eight-hour confirmation hearing last week.

“It’s pretty obvious that the political knives were out for Chuck Hagel,” Panetta said in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

In one of his final acts as defense secretary, Panetta testified Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee about attacks on U.S. compounds in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans in September. Responding to questions, he and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said they favored supplying weapons to Syrian rebels, a position that put them at odds with the White House.

Panetta also warned that the United States risks becoming a “second-rate power” if automatic spending cuts known as the “sequester” take effect as currently scheduled March 1 in the absence of a deficit-reduction deal to avert them, the Associated Press reported.

If that happens, he said, the U.S. military would face its worst readiness crisis in more than a decade. A forced budget cut of $42.7 billion from March through September, on top of $487 billion in defense reductions already mandated over the next 10 years, would leave the armed forces “hollow,” Panetta said.

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Strengthening security at the nation’s airports

Most people think of airport security as their walk through the metal detector and the eyeballing by transportation security officers (TSOs). Dan Liddell, whose job it is to protect the flying public at seven airports in central New York, instead sees 17 zones of worker responsibility and hundreds of different tasks.

In pursuit of safeguarding the public, Liddell, a federal security director based in Syracuse, has written a book that is now used to train TSOs. It’s called the “National Standardization Guide to Improving Security Effectiveness.” Tasks at each duty area have been inventoried and cataloged, and the “knowledge, values and skills” associated with the airport security jobs have been identified under what Liddell describes as a systems approach to training.

As important as it is to use X-ray machines and explosive trace-detection equipment and to have the correct rules and procedures in place, Liddell said transportation security relies on the skills of the people responsible for it.

“People performance is the cornerstone,” he said. “When I set out to improve things, I look at the people. I look at their proficiency, their skill in doing something and how well they’re doing that job.”

Even when people have the skills to do their jobs, they don’t necessarily do them well each time, especially when conditions can vary with each day and every passenger. To keep performance high, TSOs are tested covertly at unexpected times. A banned item will be sent through a checkpoint and the reaction and activities that take place are monitored.

Whether or not TSOs spot contraband, everyone at that checkpoint during the test participates in an “after-action” review. “It’s the learning experience that’s relevant,” Liddell said. “We’re doing a review of actual performance and you can always improve.”

Liddell is sensitive to the pressure that airport security personnel face. TSOs have the tough of performing multiple tasks under constant camera surveillance and public scrutiny, often interacting with tired or irritated travelers. The testing and training helps them continually up their game.

Thirty airports around the country that helped test the training system and now use a version of it. Paul Armes, federal security director at Nashville International Airport, was interested in creating such a system with a colleague when they both worked in Arizona, but it “never got traction.”

When he learned about what Liddell was doing, he was eager to participate. “Typical of Dan, he built it himself and practiced it so he had hard metric results, and then he started reaching out to some of us, working with his counterparts around the country to get a good representative sample,” Armes said. “He sees things others don’t see sometimes and he has the capability to drill down into the details.”

Liddell began the “pretty long process” of analyzing how people were performing at checkpoints in 2009. He sat down with subject-matter experts to produce the task inventory he now uses. In 2010, he improved the review and reporting process that occurs after covert tests events and instituted the security practices he refined at the other New York airports he oversees, including Greater Binghamton, Ithaca and four others. “I love breaking it down,” he said. “I’ve got a quest for improvement.”

In a less sneaky version of the television show, “Undercover Boss,” Liddell went through the new-hire training program for his employees to understand as much as he could about the jobs and the training provided for them, he said.

If pursuing knowledge is in Liddell’s genes, it may be because his parents were both in education. His father was a high school principal and his mother was a fifth-grade teacher. His teaching manifested itself instead in the training realm, where he strives to educate security employees as effectively as possible, inside the classroom and out.

“It’s always a challenge to meet that right balance of really great effectiveness and really great efficiency,” he said. “There are always challenges. It’s what gets me up in the morning, trying to improve.”

This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/fedpage/players/ to read about other federal workers who are making a difference.

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Issa presses for USAID documents

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has threatened to subpoena the nation’s foreign aid agency if it doesn’t hand over documents and information relating to alleged wrongdoing by top agency officials.

Issa, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told administrator Rajiv Shah of the U.S. Agency for International Aid that the documents had to be produced by Monday evening.

The oversight committee is examining an inspector general’s investigation into possible contract-rigging by the agency’s general counsel and allegations that USAID’s second-ranking executive interfered with the probe.

The contract was for an adviser to USAID’s government-to-government direct assistance program, which is part of an initiative to improve the outcomes for foreign aid and wean developing nations off support.

An internal memo from the inspector general’s office indicates investigators were trying to determine whether USAID general counsel Lisa Gomer worked with former agency chief financial officer David Ostermeyer to create a six-figure contract that would go to Ostermeyer after he retired from the agency.

The document alleges deputy administrator Donald Steinberg chastised investigators, telling them their efforts to gather information were “inappropriate” and that the issue should have been taken to senior USAID officials before going to the Justice Department.

USAID said none of its top officials interfered with the inspector general’s efforts.

“The investigation was conducted unimpeded, and we cooperated with the investigation,” spokesman Kamyl Bazbaz said last week.

Issa has requested documents and communications relating to the contract and subsequent inquiries by the inspector general and the House oversight committee.

Issa’s letter, sent Tuesday and co-signed by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) — chairman of the oversight committee’s national security subcommittee — noted that corruption is prevalent in many developing nations that receive U.S. aid.

“It is therefore troubling that senior USAID officials . . . have themselves been implicated in allegations of contracting fraud and interference with an independent inspector general, whose job is to protect the taxpayer interest from this type of activity,” the letter said.

Corruption in prioritized countries and disaster areas is one of three “persistent problems” for USAID, according to the latest inspector general’s report, from 2011, on management challenges for the agency.

Two-thirds of all nations scored in the lower half of the rating scale on the corruption perceptions index of watchdog group Transparency International-USA.

“Corruption amounts to a dirty tax, and the poor and most vulnerable are its primary victims,” the group said on its index Web site.

Bazbaz said USAID terminated the solicitation Gomer had allegedly made for Ostermeyer when the agency learned of it. Gomer has resigned, he said, and will leave the agency on Feb. 9. Ostermeyer retired on Jan. 3 and declined last week to comment on the investigation.

USAID said the State Department is reviewing the documents and communications Issa requested to determine whether any information is diplomatically sensitive.

“We will produce the responsive information to the committee after an interagency review of the documents is complete,” said Bazbaz, who noted that House oversight committee staff members have personally reviewed some requested documents.

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In immigration debate, same-sex marriage comes to the fore

In his final legislative act as a senator, Secretary of State John F. Kerry sought to resolve an international dilemma. He filed Senate Bill 48, seeking “permanent resident status for Genesio Januario Oliveira,” a gay Brazilian national facing deportation because he does not qualify for a spousal visa.

Now, President Obama is aiming to grant same-sex couples like Oliveira and his American husband, Tim Coco, the same immigration rights as their heterosexual counterparts. The proposal could allow up to 40,000 foreign nationals in same-sex relationships to apply for legal residency and, potentially, U.S. citizenship.

But the measure has inspired fierce pushback from congressional Republicans and some religious groups, who say it could sink hopes for a comprehensive agreement aimed at providing a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants.

The standoff may force Obama to choose between two key interest groups — Hispanics and the gay community — that helped power his reelection last fall. The president must weigh how forcefully to push the bill, known as the Uniting American Families Act, while not endangering a long-sought deal to resolve the status of undocumented immigrants, most of whom are Latino.

The same-sex measure was not included in the immigration proposals issued last week by a bipartisan Senate working group, whose overall framework Obama largely embraced. Several key Christian groups that have supported the White House’s immigration push have objected to the measure on the grounds that it would erode traditional marriage.

The issue has prompted an intense lobbying effort on both sides, including a letter to the White House from a coalition of influential church organizations and a series of urgent conference calls between advocates, administration officials and lawmakers.

For Obama, the political sensitivity was evident in the public rollout of his immigration plans last Tuesday. Although the same-sex provision was included in documents distributed by the White House, the president did not mention it in his immigration speech in Las Vegas.

“The president in his plan said that you should treat same-sex families the same way we treat heterosexual families,” White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said Friday on “Political Capital With Al Hunt.” “It’s wrong to discriminate. It’s a natural extension of the president’s view about same-sex marriage, the view about providing equal rights, no matter who you love.”

But congressional Republicans immediately condemned the idea and warned that the measure imperils broader immigration reform. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), one of the senators on the eight-member bipartisan working group on immigration, said at a Politico breakfast last week that injecting social issues into the debate over immigration legislation “is the best way to derail it.”

“Which is more important, LGBT or border security?” McCain said, using an abbreviation for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. “I’ll tell you what my priorities are.”

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VA study finds more veterans committing suicide

Every day about 22 veterans in the United States kill themselves, a rate that is about 20 percent higher than the Department of Veterans Affairs’ 2007 estimate, according to a two-year study by a VA researcher.

The VA study indicates that more than two-thirds of the veterans who commit suicide are 50 or older, suggesting that the increase in veterans’ suicides is not primarily driven by those returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“There is a perception that we have a veterans’ suicide epidemic on our hands. I don’t think that is true,” said Robert Bossarte, an epidemiologist with the VA who did the study. “The rate is going up in the country, and veterans are a part of it.” The number of suicides overall in the United States increased by nearly 11 percent between 2007 and 2010, the study says.

As a result, the percentage of veterans who die by suicide has decreased slightly since 1999, even though the total number of veterans who kill themselves has gone up, the study says.

VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki said his agency would continue to strengthen suicide prevention efforts. “The mental health and well-being of our courageous men and women who have served the nation is the highest priority for VA, and even one suicide is one too many,” he said in a statement.

The study follows long-standing criticism that the agency has moved far too slowly even to figure out how many veterans kill themselves. “If the VA wants to get its arms around this problem, why does it have such a small number of people working on it?” asked retired Col. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, a former Army psychiatrist. “This is a start, but it is a faint start. It is not enough.”

Bossarte said much work remains to be done to understand the data, especially concerning the suicide risk among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. They constitute a minority of an overall veteran population that skews older, but recent studies have suggested that those who served in recent conflicts are 30 percent to 200 percent more likely to commit suicide than their ­non-veteran peers.

An earlier VA estimate of 18 veterans’ suicides a day, which was disclosed during a 2008 lawsuit, has long been cited by lawmakers and the department’s critics as evidence of the agency’s failings. A federal appeals court pointed to it as evidence of the VA’s “unchecked incompetence.” The VA countered that the number, based on old and incomplete data, was not reliable.

To calculate the veterans’ suicide rate, Bossarte and his sole assistant spent more than two years, starting in October 2010, cajoling state governments to turn over death certificates for the more than 400,000 Americans who have killed themselves since 1999. Forty-two states have provided data or agreed to do so; the study is based on information from 21 that has been assembled into a database.

Bossarte said that men in their 50s — a group that includes a large percentage of the veteran population— have been especially hard-hit by the national increase in suicide. The veterans’ suicide rate is about three times the overall national rate, but about the same percentage of male veterans in their 50s kill themselves as do non-veteran men of that age, according to the VA data.

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Bipartisan group of senators to unveil framework for immigration overhaul

A key group of senators from both parties will unveil on Monday the framework of a broad overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, including a pathway to citizenship for more than 11 million illegal immigrants.

The detailed, four-page statement of principles will carry the signatures of four Republicans and four Democrats, a bipartisan push that would have been unimaginable just months ago on one of the country’s most emotionally divisive issues.

The document is intended to provide guideposts that would allow legislation to be drafted by the end of March, including a potentially controversial “tough but fair” route to citizenship for those now living in the country illegally.

[Do you think the new immigration plan will work? Discuss this and other immigration issues in The Washington Post’s new political forums.]

It would allow undocumented immigrants with otherwise clean criminal records to quickly achieve probationary legal residency after paying a fine and back taxes.

But they could pursue full citizenship — giving them the right to vote and access to government benefits — only after new measures are in place to prevent a future influx of illegal immigrants.

Those would include additional border security, a new program to help employers verify the legal status of their employees and more-stringent checks to prevent immigrants from overstaying visas.

And those undocumented immigrants seeking citizenship would be required to go to the end of the waiting list to get a green card that would allow permanent residency and eventual citizenship, behind those who had already legally applied at the time of the law’s enactment.

The goal is to balance a fervent desire by advocates and many Democrats to allow illegal immigrants to emerge from society’s shadows without fear of deportation with a concern held by many Republicans that doing so would only encourage more illegal immigration.

“We will ensure that this is a successful permanent reform to our immigration system that will not need to be revisited,” the group asserts in its statement of principles.

The framework identifies two groups as deserving of special consideration for a separate and potentially speedier pathway to full citizenship: young people who were brought to the country illegally as minors and agricultural workers whose labor, often at subsistence wages, has long been critical to the nation’s food supply.

Expanding visas

The plan also addresses the need to expand available visas for high-tech workers and promises to make green cards available for those who pursue graduate education in certain fields in the United States.

“We must reduce backlogs in the family and employment visa categories so that future immigrants view our future legal immigration system as the exclusive means for entry into the United States,” the group will declare.

The new proposal marks the most substantive bipartisan step Congress has taken toward new immigration laws since a comprehensive reform bill failed on the floor of the Senate in 2007.

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Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) won’t seek reelection

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), a five-term senator and one of his party’s most outspoken liberals, will not seek reelection in 2014, presenting Democrats and Republicans with key tests of their midterm electoral strategies.

Harkin’s surprise announcement Saturday makes him the third senator up for reelection this cycle to announce his retirement. Sens. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) have said recently that they will not seek another term.

The race to succeed Harkin likely will be one of the most competitive Senate contests next year and key to either party’s chances of controlling the chamber. Democrats hold a 55-seat majority but will be defending 20 of the 34 seats up for grabs, mostly in rural and western states; Republicans need to gain six seats to retake the majority.

Harkin’s departure “immediately vaults Iowa into the top tier of competitive Senate races next year,” said Rob Collins, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Acknowledging the challenge his party faces, Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a statement, “I appreciate that Senator Harkin has made this decision so early in the cycle, giving us ample time to recruit a strong Democratic candidate for this seat.”

Harkin, 73, said in an interview Saturday that the recent death of his friend, Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), was a factor in his decision to retire.

“It begins to bring home that life is fleeting,” he said of Inouye’s death. “I’ve had the privilege of 40 years in the House and Senate. I thank my Iowans for the privilege, but it’s somebody else’s turn.”

Harkin said he plans to remain active in policy debates and also spend more time with his wife, Ruth. He said he will finally learn how to dance and maybe participate in RAGBRAI, the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, a seven-day event that is one of the state’s quirkier traditions.

Harkin was first elected to the House in 1974 and won his Senate seat in 1984. He was a champion of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, ran unsuccessfully for president in 1992 and was a key supporter of President Obama’s health-care law.

As for potential successors, both parties have several prospects.

Republicans, eager to avoid the missteps of the more outspoken conservative candidates nominated in recent years, may coalesce around Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds or U.S. Rep. Tom Latham, who represents Des Moines and is a close friend of House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). But U.S. Rep. Steve King, a staunchly conservative tea party favorite and frequent cable news guest, has openly discussed a Senate campaign.

U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley is expected to be a front-runner on the Democratic side but has also talked of running for governor in 2014. Other potential Democratic candidates include Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, and his wife, Christie Vilsack, who unsuccessfully challenged King in 2012.

Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan contributed to this report.

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