by Matthew Hay Brown

House Democrats expect bipartisan support today for a bill that would suspend new shipments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

By reducing demand on the global market, Democrats say, the move could cut the cost of gasoline by as much as 24 cents per gallon.

Wishful thinking, says the White House.

"The SPR fill that we have now is one-tenth of one percent of daily supply," White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said Monday. "So it would have a negligible impact on gas prices. But we know that there's a lot of members of Congress who are interested in this idea."

Among the members interested are several prominent Republicans.

"I'd like to do is see us do something about ... the Strategic Petroleum Reserve," House Minority Whip Roy Blunt told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Sunday. "I think we should stop filling it. The White House doesn't agree with that position. But that's one thing that would have impact at the pump."

In April, 16 Republican senators signed a letter asking President Bush to suspend the shipments. Not counting the Clinton-McCain embrace of a gas tax holiday, shutting off the flow to the reserve is one of the few attempts at reducing gas prices on which both parties have been able to find agreement.

by Matthew Hay Brown

House Republicans unveiled a new slogan today to go with their long-anticipated rebranding effort for the 2008 elections. And as several bloggers now have pointed out, it turns out it's already being used - to market an antidepressant.

"The Change You Deserve" is a trademark used by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals to promote its serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor Effexor XR. As of today, Republican leaders say, it's also the "mantra" under which they will be unveiling "common sense solutions focused on the issues American families and small businesses care about most."

The GOP rollout comes a week after former House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned fellow Republicans to "chart a bold course of real change" or face catastrophe this fall.

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt agrees.

"I think Newt is absolutely right in the idea that real change requires real change," the Missouri Republican told Wolf Blitzer Sunday on CNN's Late Edition. "We're going to be talking in the next few weeks about the things we want to do to bring to the country."

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, also appearing on the program, scoffed at the idea.

"The Republican Party has become the party of no, veto and the status quo," said the Maryland Democrat, who chairs his party's House campaign operation. "And now they're going to try to run as a party of change."

Use only as directed.

Former Rep. Bob Barr at a news conference to announce his presidential candidacy, May 12, 2008 in Washington, DC. Also pictured (L-R) are political advisor Russ Verney, Barr's wife Jeri, and Barr's son Derek. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

by Frank James

Bob Barr, the former Republican congressman made it official today. He's running for the White House, aiming for the Libertarian Party's nomination.

Barr, a former federal prosecutor, is probably best remembered as one of the leaders of the Republican House's impeachment efforts against the President Bill Clinton for committing perjury during a grand jury investigation of the president's relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

The former Georgia congressman has written off his old party, however. He's been a critic of the Bush Administration over what he has seen as violations of constitutionally protected civil liberties as it pursues the war of terror.

As a believer in small-government, he has rebuked the present administration for the growth of the government on its watch, as well as the expanding deficit-spending and borrowing from abroad to finance the government's expenditures.

What's more, he has been very upset by Bush's Iraq invasion which he views as an example of the dangers that can result from an overly large, aggressive federal government.

At his Washington press conference this morning, he offered his candidacy because he won't be the "status quo" candidate or the "lesser of two evils." He senses Americans want someone "who will stand up to the forces here in Washington, somebody who is not a part of that fraternity that has given us the crop of current candidates. Somebody who will stand up as precious few presidents have to the powers in Washington who want more, more, more and say no."

by Matthew Hay Brown

John McCain has taken advantage of the never-ending Democratic primary race to raise money and organize for the general election. But once Democrats unite behind a nominee, Sen. Mel Martinez says, "this is going to be a battle."

"I don't have any doubt that as soon as a nominee is named by the Democrats that that nominee is going to take a tremendous boost in the polls just because that's what happens," Martinez, the former general chairman of the Republican National Committee, tells America's Business with Mike Hambrick this week. "And then that's going to make it a very competitive race right into the fall."

The Florida Republican says "it's got to help that we have had some time for the McCain campaign to get its feet on the ground. He's raising money. Getting organization behind him. But it also remains a clear fact that the Democrats are going to unite and this is going to be a battle."

Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned this week of more Republican losses in November if the party doesn't follow his advice on charting "a bold new course of real change." Current Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she was confident of further Democratic gains.

Martinez says he likes the GOP's chances.

"With McCain at the top of the ticket I think it ... paints a very hopeful picture for what might happen in the down ballot races," he says. "I think in the Senate that we have a really good chance to hold our own or maybe keep any losses to one or two seats which I think would be really, really good in this environment. And I think in the House side we could make some gains actually. I don't think that we could count on taking control of either house this cycle but I think we have a really good shot to win the White House, make gains in the House, and hold our own in the Senate."

(Photo: Matt Rourke/AFP/Getty Images)

by Matthew Hay Brown, and updated with Boehner comment

It is a measure of how concerned Republicans are about the recent House special election losses in Illinois and Louisiana that Vice President Dick Cheney will be traveling to Mississippi next week to participate in the get-out-the-vote effort for Greg Davis.

Davis, the Republican mayor of Southaven, Miss., is facing a tough fight with Democratic Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers in the May 13 runoff vote in the special election to succeed former Rep. Roger Wicker in the state's First Congressional District.

"This seat is a very important one," Cheney told Mississippi radio host Paul Gallow during an on-air interview this morning. "It's been in conservative hands for a long time, and we'd hate to see the liberals gain control."

House Minority Leader John Boehner, meanwhile, took the unusual step of pledging to help secure Davis a seat on the House Veterans' Affairs Committee if he wins.

by Matthew Hay Brown

In the public service announcement they taped recently to promote cleaner energy, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Speaker Newt Gingrich joked that they don't agree on much.

It sounds now as if they can add a second item to the list.

Earlier this week, Gingrich pleaded with fellow Republicans to "chart a bold course of real change" or face "catastrophe" at the polls in November.

Pelosi appears to agree.

"Right now I would say we would gain seats," the California Democrat told reporters Thursday. "I wouldn't venture a guess as to how many. But I do see November as a time of great victory for the Democrats."

With special election wins in Illinois and Louisiana, Democrats already have increased their House majority by two seats this year. Pelosi says a major electoral shift is underway.

"We will have an historic election as to whom we elect as the president of the United States, either the first woman or the first African American, but a person who can unify America," she said. "We will have a strong, confident, predictable Democratic Majority to take us forward, and then we will be in 2010, 2012, and on the path to a strong Democratic leadership for a long time to come."

by Matthew Hay Brown

The gas tax holiday gained a powerful ally in the House today when Minority Leader John Boehner signed on to legislation that would tie a summerlong suspension to a freeze on earmarks.

"Since Democrats refuse to lead on gas prices and earmark reform - top priorities of the American people - Republicans will," the Ohio Republican said.

Economists and other critics say a gas tax holiday would do little or nothing to reduce prices at the pump, but would deprive the Highway Trust Fund of billions of dollars in revenue.

The legislation introduced today by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee, seeks to offset those loses by freezing spending on earmarks - an issue on which Republicans are attempting to regain the moral high ground.

"For far too long, taxpayers have been footing the bill for billions upon billions in wasteful Washington spending that our nation neither needs nor can afford," Boehner said. "An earmark ban will halt this pork-barrel spending until Congress comes up with a straightforward plan to reform the earmark process and restore some sanity to the federal budget."

by Matthew Hay Brown

With their nominee now seemingly apparent, some Democrats want to see the party's president primary race brought to an end. Not Nancy Pelosi.

"Me? I like combat," the House speaker told reporters at the Capitol today. "You know, I think the best training for campaigning is campaigning. So I think that as they have campaigned, the support in our country has grown for our Democratic message. ... So this is all very healthy."

The Capitol press corps has tried for months to draw Pelosi on her preference for the presidential nomination. With Barack Obama now appearing to have sewn it up, she was asked today if she was ready to share.

"No, no," she said. "I do continue to be excited about the campaigns. I think both of our candidates are presenting themselves magnificently to the American people. Either one of them will be a great President of the United States."

Told that Obama's appearance on the House floor today looked like a victory lap, Pelosi asked, "Did it?" She said she didn't know why the Illinois senator stopped by.

"We have floor privileges in the Senate, and of course, I could go over there," she said. "He and Senator Clinton are always welcome, as well as all of the other Senators, on the House floor, Democrats or Republicans."

Sen. Barack Obama in a Capitol elevator. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo.)

by Frank James

Sen. Barack Obama visited the House today to make his case to those House members who are also uncommitted Democratic Party superdelegates and, understandably, his presence created much excitement.

As Congressional Quarterly (subscription required) reports:

Rep. Yvette D. Clarke's copy of Thursday's New York Daily News tells it all.

Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr., D-Ill., a longtime Obama pal and political ally, taunted Clarke and her friends by calling out to reporters that they were staying away from Obama because "they're scared they're going to get elected."

(Susan Walsh/AP Photo.)

by Jim Tankersley

America's Great Penny Crisis moved one step closer to resolution (of sorts) today, when the House passed a bill to change the metallic composition of the one-cent coin.

Supporters of the measure, approved by voice vote, say it will save taxpayers more than $1 billion in production costs over the next decade by allowing the U.S. Mint to switch to less-expensive metals. As we reported earlier this year, it currently costs 1.7 cents to produce every penny and 10 cents for every nickel.

The bill also would require the Mint to begin churning out a primarily steel penny within 270 days of it becoming law.

Rep. Zack Space (D-Ohio) sponsored the bill, but two Illinois congressmen had big roles in shaping it: Rep. Luis Gutierez (D-Ill.), who chaired the subcommittee hearings on the bill, and Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), who authored a similar bill last year that this measure mirrored in several respects. Both urged and celebrated the bill's passage.,

Rep. Vito Fossella answers Friday, May 2, 2008, in Staten Island questions about his arrest for driving while intoxicated arrest in Alexandria, Va. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

by Frank James

It's beginning to look like Rep. Vito Fossella, the only Republican in New York City's House delegation, may not have much of a future left in Congress.

Fossella, who's conservative and married, has admitted to having a three-year old love child.

This comes a week after Fossella was arrested in Northern Virginia on drunk driving charges.

There are some congressional districts where this kind of extracurricular behavior might not be fatal to a political career. His Staten Island district probably isn't one of them.

Here's a passage from the latest Almanac of American Politics describing part of Fossella's district:

Culturally, Staten Islanders are deeply conservative--more so than in most of New York's suburbs, and quite a contrast from Manhattanites who live a 20-minute ferry ride away. Taking a cue from Fresh Kills, their motto is apt: "Don't dump on us." Not many people here read the New York Times...

Here's a Bloomberg story on the latest revelation.

By Christopher Stern

Fossella's relationship came to light after he was arrested in Virginia on May 1 for drunk driving.

by Matthew Hay Brown

House Democrats are preparing another emergency war spending bill, and the antiwar movement is growing restive.

"In 2006, the voters of this country gave Congress a clear mandate to end the occupation of Iraq through a stunning Democratic electoral victory," Tim Carpenter, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America, said Wednesday.

"But now, in 2008, we're still waiting for the war to end, while conditions get worse both here and in Iraq," he said. "To put it bluntly, if this Congress won't stand up and put an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq, and start addressing our needs at home beginning with a national single payer healthcare system, then we'll elect Democratic candidates who will."

The $195 billion legislation, which could come to a vote this week, includes funds to pay for military options in Iraq and Afghanistan into next spring, with the requirement that the Pentagon begin removing combat troops within 30 days, starting a pullout that would be completed by the end of 2009.

It also would expand education funding for service members, extend unemployment insurance, suspend new rules that cut Medicaid funding for the poor and disabled, strengthen levees in New Orleans and restore funding for military base realignment.
Lawmakers will consider the bill in three separate parts, voting on the war funding, war policy and domestic spending.

President Bush has told Congress to give him the money for Iraq and Afghanistan without restrictions or add-ons; Republicans have accused Democrats of playing politics with the troops by loading up their legislation with other projects.

But some of the strongest opposition is coming from the antiwar left, where some oppose any additional war funding under any circumstances. Democrats.com is advising supporters to tell their representatives to "stop the Iraq sellout;" Progressive Democrats of America will be going door to door with its "Healthcare not Warfare" campaign.

by Matthew Hay Brown

The congressional stalemate over prices at the pump continues.

Senate Democrats unveiled new energy legislation this afternoon that they said would address the root causes of rising gasoline prices. But their Consumer-First Energy Act, with its proposals to raise taxes on oil companies, is likely to be blocked by Senate Republicans.

Meanwhile, the Republican proposal to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve and off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, introduced this afternoon as the American Energy Production Act, is even less likely to go anywhere in the Democratic Senate.

"Even as it costs Americans more every day to fill up their gas tanks, Bush Republicans only offer more of the same failed energy policies that brought us to this point," Majority Leader Harry Reid said.

The Democratic legislation, by contrast, protects consumers, he said.

"Instead of helping big oil make more money at the expense of average Americans, we are forcing oil companies to change their ways," Reid said. "We will hold them accountable for unconscionable price-gouging and force them to invest in renewable energy or pay a price for refusing to do so."

by Matthew Hay Brown

House Democrats are taking exception to President Bush's dismissal today of a housing bill expected to pass today in the House.

Bush, after meeting this morning with House Republicans, said he would veto the bill to insure new loans for cash-strapped homeowners. The White House has called it a "bailout;" Bush said today it would reward "speculators and lenders."

"American families confronting foreclosue deserve better from the president than a veto threat," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in response to Bush's remarks. "They deserve the House's bipartisan housing plan that will protect the American dream of home ownership."

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer was more pointed.

"As the second term of his failed presidency winds to an end, President Bush has little left on the agenda but finger-pointing. With gas prices skyrocketing and with Americans losing their homes to foreclosure at record rates, the president can do little but blame, criticize, and pass the buck. ... Americans saw today an Administration out of leadership, and a president out of ideas."

Bush said he was "committed to a good housing bill that will help folks stay in their house, as opposed to a housing bill that will reward speculators and lenders. There's a House alternative that will do the right thing for the American people when it comes to housing."

by Whitney Blair Wyckoff

Tony Zirkle, who spoke at an Adolf Hitler birthday party last month on how prostitution and pornography impact white women, came in third place in Indiana's 2nd Congressional District Republican primary yesterday. Fighting prostitution and porn is a major plank in Zirkle's platform.

He has said that he will speak to any group who invites him, but he dodged questions from an Indiana paper asking whether he was a white supremacist sympathizer.

Washington Post columnist Al Kamen has the story:

Tough news last night in the closely watched Republican primary in Indiana's 2nd Congressional District.

Zirkle, whose top campaign issue is opposition to pornography and prostitution, finished a distant third behind Goshen, Ind., businessman and GOP establishment candidate Luke Puckett and Culver, Ind., newspaper delivery man Joseph Roush. Puckett won with 48 percent of the vote; Zirkle drew 16 percent.

by Matthew Hay Brown

Senate Democrats are planning to unveil legislation tomorrow to contain rising prises at the pump - and it won't include the gas tax holiday idea that has dominated the last few days of the Democratic presidential primary race.

"We are going to come up with our own proposal tomorrow which won't be Clinton or Obama's, it will be the Senate Democrats'," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told CNN's Wolf Blizter this afternoon. "It's something that will have the ability to impact prices."

The Nevada Democrat didn't divulge details, but told Blitzer the bill would not iunclude the gas tax holiday favored by Hillary Clinton and opposed by Barack Obama. Panned by economists, the idea is seen as having no chance of making it through Congress.

"You decided that's not necessarily a good idea right now?" Blitzer asked.

"It's not what we're going to do," Reid said. "We're not