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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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.

Discuss this topic and other political issues in the Post’s Politics Discussion Forums.

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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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Education panel: To close achievement gap, urgent state, federal action needed

The nation must act urgently to close the achievement gap between poor and privileged children by changing the way public schools are financed, improving teacher quality, investing in early-childhood education and demanding greater accountability down to the local school board level, according to a report issued Tuesday by an expert panel.

Created by Congress in 2010 — with legislation sponsored by Reps. Michael M. Honda (D-Calif.) and Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) — the Equity and Excellence Commission aimed to propose ways to improve public education for poor American children. The 27-member panel included, state and federal officials, civil rights activists and academics.

“This is about all levels of government,” said Christopher Edley Jr., dean of the University of California at Berkeley Law School and the commission’s co-chair. “This is a proposed agenda for everyone who’s concerned with the fate of our children and of our public education system.”

The panel released its recommendations to Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

In a telephone call with reporters, Honda said the goal is to focus the public’s attention on a national crisis. “This is not a minority issue. This is not a poverty issue. This is an American issue,” Honda said.

The achievement gap has proved to be a stubborn problem and one of growing concern among educators, policymakers and civic leaders. With enactment of the No Child Left Behind law in 2002, the federal government made closing the gap a priority and a reason for increased accountability in public education. A host of strategies has been deployed in schools across the country to attack the gap, but few have resulted in substantial progress.

Closely tied to race, the gap is creating an underclass that threatens the country’s long-term economic stability, the commission said.

A 2011 study of the country’s 21 largest urban school districts found that every city displayed a difference in performance between whites and blacks and between whites and Hispanics. That study was based on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which includes federal reading and math exams taken regularly by fourth- and eighth-graders across the country.

“While some young Americans — most of them white and affluent — are getting a truly world-class education, those who attend schools in high poverty neighborhoods are getting an education that more closely approximates school in developing nations,” the commission wrote in its report.

More than 40 percent of U.S. children attend high-poverty schools and 22 percent of children are living below the poverty line, the government said.

Public schools in poor communities have fewer resources, less-experienced teachers and worse facilities than schools in more-affluent communities — an imbalance that must be corrected by state and federal action, the commission said.

“Ten million students in America’s poorest communities . . . are having their lives unjustly and irredeemably blighted by a system that consigns them to the lowest-performing teachers, the most run-down facilities, and academic expectations and opportunities considerably lower than what we expect of other students,” the commission wrote. “These vestiges of segregation, discrimination and inequality are unfinished business for our nation.”

The country’s primary method for funding public schools — property taxes — is one reason for disparate resources, the commission wrote. Communities with elevated real estate values can generate more money for schools, at a lower tax rate, than towns and cities with lower property values.

While the federal government pays about 10 percent of the cost of public education, about half comes from states and 40 percent comes from local communities.

The commission urged states and the federal government to send more tax dollars to high-poverty schools to compensate for the imbalance in local funding. But it stopped short of recommending a new way to fund schools that does not rely so heavily on property taxes.

In 1972, a federal commission convened by President Richard M. Nixon to address school funding concluded that as long as property taxes funded schools, poor and privileged children would be condemned to different educational outcomes.

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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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Gun debate divides Democrats and tests Obama’s second-term strategy

The politically treacherous debate over the nation’s gun laws has thrown President Obama’s second-term negotiating style into sharp relief.

In earlier legislative skirmishes, Obama was pragmatic above all, making a first offer and then a second and a third as he sought compromise with a bitterly divided Congress.

But in his legislative push to curb the nation’s gun violence, Obama’s willingness to make concessions has been absent, at least so far. The president set a clear marker — to enact the toughest gun restrictions in generations — and has since worked to rally the public to his side while waiting for wavering lawmakers to come along.

Obama is all but ignoring the Republican-controlled House as he waits for a bipartisan majority to emerge in the Senate, hoping to use it as leverage to force a vote from House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).

“It’s clear that the dynamic of the second term will be to go to the Senate, try to build a bipartisan majority there for action, and then take it to the House and put John Boehner in the position where he’s the only person in town saying no,” said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist and former House leadership aide.

Although Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday will focus heavily on the economy and fiscal matters, the president is also expected to pressure Congress anew to act quickly on gun control.

Democratic lawmakers are bringing shooting victims from their home states to sit in the gallery. The White House said victims of gun violence will sit with first lady Michelle Obama.

The president’s confident approach on guns is particularly striking given the deep divisions within the Democratic Party over the issue.

The divide is more pronounced in the Senate than in the House, where many Democrats have reliably liberal constituencies. A significant number of Senate Democrats, by contrast, represent states with deep hunting traditions or are worried about votes that might antagonize the National Rifle Association.

Yet the president called again last week for a vote on an assault weapons ban, the most polarizing of his proposals. Obama is pursuing a similar strategy for other issues dominating his second-term agenda, from comprehensive immigration reform to staving off the deep spending cuts known as the sequester.

Obama may still return to a more accommodating approach; he often says that he won’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But his recent strategy reminds some longtime congressional observers of former President Ronald Reagan, who also drew firm lines — while still allowing for compromise in the end.

“What Reagan was able to do so successfully was to lay out a firm, tough and pure position and hold to it while things shook down and the other side moved, and waiting for them to come much closer to where he wanted them to be,” said Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. “I see Obama’s public statements on guns now being much more of that than anything else.”

The legislative process should begin by the end of February, when Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) plans to stitch together several proposals, including requiring background checks for all gun buyers, making gun trafficking a federal crime for the first time and limiting the size of ammunition magazines.

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Panetta fighting to the end against proposed defense spending cuts

As he prepares to retire to his California walnut farm this month, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is still fighting the battle that has consumed his entire tenure at the Pentagon: an increasingly desperate campaign to persuade Congress not to whack defense spending.

In recent days, Panetta, 74, has uttered near-apocalyptic warnings about what will happen if Congress does not do something by March 1 to avert a “doomsday scenario” under which the Defense Department could be required to slash $43 billion in spending in the next seven months, and as much as $500 billion in the next decade.

Those cuts, he told lawmakers last week, would turn the mighty U.S. military “into a second-rate power” and would force the Obama administration to throw its entire national-security strategy “out the window.”

He has warned that naval operations in the Pacific would shrink by a third. All military training would slow to a crawl. And almost every civilian employee at Defense could be furloughed, as much as one day a week for the rest of the fiscal year.

At a farewell ceremony Friday at Fort Myer, President Obama praised Panetta, saying, “No one has raised their voice as firmly or as forcefully on behalf of our troops as you have.”

Obama also urged Congress to work out a new deal with him to avoid what he called “massive, indiscriminate cuts that could have a severe impact on our military preparedness.”

He added, “There is no reason, no reason for that to happen.”

It is the same message that Panetta has delivered, so far to no avail, almost every day since he took over as defense secretary in July 2011. The next month, he was saddled with the task of shrinking the military after Obama and Congress agreed to cut $487 billion in projected defense spending for the next 10 years.

But that was just the first swing of the ax. Under the rest of the deal, the Pentagon would be forced to cut $500 billion more in the same period if lawmakers and the White House could not come up with another, more palatable way to reduce the nation’s record deficits.

It appears highly unlikely that Congress and the White House will reach a deal to spare the Pentagon before Panetta retires. It will fall to his successor — Obama has nominated former senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) for the job — to manage any further cuts. But Panetta’s failure to prevent what he described as the worst-case scenario will mark the end of an otherwise influential and colorful career in Washington that has spanned four decades.

The high point came in May 2011 when, as CIA director, Panetta oversaw the successful and daring strike that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Along the way, he served as White House chief of staff during the Clinton administration and as chairman of the House Budget Committee, where he earned a reputation as a skillful negotiator on fiscal issues.

It was largely for his budget and legislative expertise that Obama tapped Panetta to lead the Pentagon, which now faces a wrenching consolidation after years of growth fueled by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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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, equal 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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John Kerry defends Senate, bidding farewell to a ‘great’ institution

In an unusually emotional speech, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) bid farewell to his colleagues Wednesday by rejecting criticisms of a “broken Senate,” forcefully defending the chamber and all its unique rules as an institution that’s meant to forge great compromise among competing personalities.

The next secretary of state — once considered aloof and always searching for a promotion out of the Senate — tearfully sketched out a 50-minute rebuttal to the growing cacophony that deem the Senate’s customs and procedures outdated in today’s political environment. He declared the current version of the chamber “a lasting memorial to the miracle of the American experiment.”

He specifically rejected the calls for reforming the Senate rules to lessen, or even eliminate, filibusters, warning junior Democrats who have pushed such changes to the institution that they would regret such a move. “It’s not the rules that confound us, per se,” Kerry said. “It’s the choices people make about those rules.”

The speech began with Kerry greeting his fellow Vietnam War hero, former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.), in an embrace as he entered the chamber to deliver the speech, and ended with a bipartisan standing ovation amid hugs and handshakes from about 20 colleagues on hand. While few Republicans attended, those on hand included a pair of freshmen who are generationally and ideologically a world apart from Kerry, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), anti-spending conservatives who sat through the entire speech listening intently. Cruz was one of just three Republicans who opposed Kerry’s confirmation in Tuesday’s 94 to 3 vote.

Without singling out Republicans for derision, Kerry chastised the GOP for its inflexibility and abuse of the chamber’s rules, leading to the gridlock that helps eat away at the public support for Congress. “The problems that we live through today come from individual choices of senators themselves, not the rules,” he said. “When an individual senator or a colluding caucus determine that the comity essential to an institution like the Senate is a barrier to individual ambition or party ambition, the country loses.”

Kerry acknowledged how his own ambition and its failings helped shape him into a much better senator. His party’s 2004 presidential nominee -- as well as a runner-up to be the vice-presidential nominee in 2000 and the secretary of state in 2009 -- Kerry became the sort of senator that won acclaim from both sides of the aisle only after he gave up on higher ambition. He dug into the chamber and fashioned a resume of bipartisan work that included sweeping passage of a nuclear arms treaty with Russia and close work with another Vietnam war hero, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), on “Arab Spring” issues.

“Eight years ago, I admit that I had a very different plan [to leave the Senate], but 61 million Americans voted that they wanted me stay here with you,” Kerry joked about his close loss to George W. Bush in 2004. “And so staying here, I learned about humility and I learned that sometimes the greatest lesson in life comes not from victory but from dusting yourself off after a defeat and starting over when you get knocked down.”

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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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OPM plans to shake up charity program raise concerns about reduced donations

The Office of Personnel Management wants to shake up the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC), the charitable-giving system for federal employees, but in the process the agency could risk losing donors and reducing contributions.

One rule under review by the Obama administration would “eliminate the use of cash, check and money order contributions. Instead, all donations will be required to be made through electronic means.”

This could “streamline the operations,” as proposed rules from OPM suggest, but whether it also would “increase the effectiveness of the program to ensure its continued growth and success” is questionable.

The reason: In 2011, the last year for which OPM data are available, just 22 percent of the money pledged was donated electronically. Moreover, 88.4 percent of the donors did not make electronic contributions.

So, a move to electronic-only donations would seem to put CFC at risk of losing a majority of its donors. The proposal worries executives of some charitable organizations, even as they welcome other sections of the plan.

Federal employees contribute through the CFC to various charities. Donations exceeded $272 million in 2011. That’s a lot of money, but it represents a drop of almost $10 million from 2009, the high point.

An OPM spokeswoman said the agency does not comment on rules under review. In the 53-page document that contains the proposed regulations, however, OPM Director John Berry wrote:

“These proposed changes will introduce efficiencies and cost savings into the CFC by leveraging technology that was not widely available just a few years ago. They will make the CFC more efficient, more transparent, more accountable and more relevant to Federal, Postal and military service personnel who want to make the biggest impact with their donations.”

Scott Jackson, chief executive of Global Impact, said electronic giving can save $14 a pledge, by reducing processing costs.

“That’s very, very powerful,” he added. How the change to electronic-only contributions might effect donations presents “important issues to work through,” he said. Global Impact administers the overseas campaign of the CFC.

Those issues leave Stephen M. Delfin “highly concerned.” He is president and chief executive of America’s Charities, a group that works with CFC organizations. Delfin said he is worried that the rules, previously reported by the Federal Times, could result in lower donations.

“You have to be careful,” he said. “Technology is not a panacea.”

Marshall Strauss, chief executive of the Workplace Giving Alliance, a consortium of CFC federations, agreed. Although he thinks “electronic donations are an excellent addition to the campaign,” he said he worries that relying solely on that “may dramatically reduce the number of people giving and the overall receipts of the campaign. Many thousands of people prefer to give by check or even cash, and we would hope the government would preserve these options.”

In addition to electronic-only giving, Delfin and others have concerns about a proposal to eliminate 184 local CFC committees in favor of fewer and larger regional panels.

This would require “a reduced number of Federal personnel for oversight purposes,” according to the plan.

But it also would diminish the sense of community that charitable leaders say is crucial in motivating individuals to give.

Dumping the local committees will shrink the “person-to-person feeling of the campaign, which is very, very important,” said Kalman Stein, president and CEO of EarthShare, which was recently selected to administer the Combined Federal Campaign of the National Capital Area.

Stein said that he doesn’t think OPM understands “how critical that local component is” and that he is “very concerned the campaign will decline precipitously” if the Local Federal Coordinating Committees are eliminated.

“Our history shows that more consolidation leads to less donations,” said Stein, who, along with Strauss, was a member of the CFC-50 Commission. The commission, formed in 2011 to mark CFC’s 50th anniversary, issued a report last year. A number of its recommendations were incorporated into OPM’s proposals.

But Stein said consolidating the local committees into regional ones would go “way beyond the commission’s recommendations.”

The commission said its 24 recommendations were designed to further encourage a “history of giving” by federal employees, who have “set the standard for workplace giving to charitable organizations.”

But the recent decrease in donations “is a cause for concern,” the report said.

Now there is concern that parts of the OPM plan could make the situation worse.

Previous columns by Joe Davidson are available at wapo.st/JoeDavidson.

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Senate Democrats’ budget plan will reopen battle over taxes

Senate Democrats plan to draft a budget blueprint that calls for significantly higher taxes on the wealthy, oil and gas companies and corporations doing business overseas, reopening a battle over taxes Republicans had hoped to lay to rest with the “fiscal cliff.”

For nearly four years, Senate leaders have ducked their legal duty to craft a comprehensive budget framework. Now, however, Democrats see the budget process as “a great opportunity” to pursue additional tax increases — and to create a fast-track process to push them through the Senate, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“There’s going to have to be some spending cuts, and those will be negotiated,” Schumer, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, said in an interview after the show. “But doing a budget is the best way for us to get revenues.”

The announcement comes days after House Republicans offered to forgo a potentially damaging clash over the federal debt limit, saying they would vote this week to permit the government to continue borrowing through mid-April. In return, House leaders demanded that the Senate revive the traditional budget process, by which the two chambers adopt their own blueprints and work out differences in conference committee.

With the offer, the GOP backed off its hard-line stance that any increase in the debt limit be paired with spending cuts of equal size — “a major victory for the president,” Schumer said.

The move also suggests a desire by Republican leaders to create a more orderly forum for the partisan clash over record budget deficits. White House political adviser David Plouffe welcomed that move Sunday in an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“I think it’s a significant moment that the Republican Party now has moved off their position that the only way they’re going to pay their bills is if they get the correct kind of concessions,” Plouffe said. “I think we’d all be better served to go back to a little bit more regular order in Congress so we’re not careening crisis-to-crisis.”

Fresh deadlines loom in March: Sharp automatic spending cuts are due to hit the Pentagon and other federal agencies at the beginning of the month. And a temporary funding measure will expire at the end of the month, shutting down the government unless Congress acts.

But the developments of the past few days suggest that both parties are looking to continue the argument without sparking panic in financial markets and causing unnecessary harm to the broader economy.

Reviving the budget process is critical to that effort.

Because they are fraught with political pitfalls, budgets are protected from filibuster in the Senate, so Democrats could pass a budget without Republican votes. A budget blueprint is also the only way to create a fast-track process for deficit reduction, known as reconciliation, which is also protected from filibuster.

House Republicans are eager to draft a reconciliation bill to cut spending on federal health programs and to overhaul the tax code, in part by cutting rates. And Democrats are eager to draft a reconciliation bill that would raise additional revenue, in part by limiting tax breaks for wealthy individuals, oil and gas companies and multinational corporations.

During the fight over the “fiscal cliff,” Congress voted this month to raise rates on income over $450,000 a year. Republican leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), argued that should end the fight over taxes.

But the “fiscal cliff” measure is projected to generate only about $600 billion over the next decade, well short of President Obama’s goal of $1.6 trillion. On Sunday, Schumer said Democrats plan to fight on.

“We’ll have tax reform . . . but’s it’s going to include revenue,” he said. “It’s a great opportunity to get us some more revenue to help” replace the automatic spending cuts, which are scheduled to slice nearly $1 trillion out of agency budgets over the next decade.

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For top donors, inauguration means access, influence and angling for next big job

The voters have spoken, but even after a $2 billion presidential campaign, the quest for dollars in Washington continues. This weekend, the high rollers are paying for inauguration parties that are almost always busts, a ceremony that’s better seen on TV and access that’s not exactly priceless but pretty darn expensive.

For the thousands of high-end donors who pay for the whole thing, the inauguration is about exclusive access to the president and vice president, as well as what insiders call “placement.” (Jobs, they mean.) Goodness knows it’s not the big public balls that lure the visitors; by universal accord, those mega-parties are mostly letdowns — people you don’t know and don’t like, bars you’d need a crowbar to reach, bad food and not enough of it.

“They’ve already written their checks and now they come for the celebration,” said David Rosen, a Chicago Democratic fundraiser who serves as a fixer for wealthy donors on their inauguration trips, making certain their schedule is properly packed with the right parties and the most intimate VIP gatherings. “This weekend is a marker in their lives, so they want to be invited to the White House or the small gathering at the vice president’s house.”

President Obama’s second inauguration is smaller, less emotionally powerful and less transparent than the first. There are fewer balls, fewer tourists and fewer details about the money being raised. Four years ago, promising a new openness, the president banned corporate giving to the inauguration, limited gifts from individuals to $50,000 and released a full accounting of donations.

This year, the sky’s the limit on gifts, corporations are good people and the official roster of donors won’t include addresses or amounts for up to 90 days. The list includes companies such as AT&T, Microsoft and Southern Co., a utility that says it gave $100,000. Individual supporters include donors such as Irwin Jacobs, founder of the tech company Qualcomm, who had already given more than $2 million to groups supporting Obama.

Administration officials have said the loosened donation rules were designed to reach out to businesses whose executives felt spurned in the first term and to ease pressure on Democratic donors who feel squeezed dry after the campaign. After the inaugural celebration’s expenses are paid, the remaining money could be used for an Obama foundation that would support his presidential library and other projects after he leaves office.

“It is just the wrong thing to do,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonprofit group that pushes for transparency in government and campaign finance reform. “This is symbolic of doing business as usual in Washington, from an administration that has said it did not want to follow that path. It doesn’t make sense.”

Presidential Inaugural Committee spokesman Cameron French says that although it is taking corporate donations “to make sure we are able to meet our fundraising obligations” without burdening the public, it is not accepting gifts from political-action committees, lobbyists or firms that aren’t current on federal bailout loans from 2009. A committee statement says its “guidelines aren’t just consistent with the law — they are consistent with the president’s commitment to transparency and to reducing the influence of PACs and lobbyists in Washington.”

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Earl Smith is the man behind a military patch that President Obama prizes

AUSTIN — That February morning in 2008 found Barack Obama decidedly out of sorts.

He was locked in one battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination that showed no signs of ending — and another with a vicious cold that felt the same way.

As he rode the service elevator in the backway of a convention hotel here, the snowy-haired African American operating it turned suddenly. He held out a black-and-gold bit of fabric embroidered with a screaming eagle.

“Senator Obama, I have something I want to give you,” the man said. “I’ve carried this military patch with me every day for 40 years, and I want you to carry it, and it will keep you safe in your journey.” Obama tried to refuse, but the older man persisted.

Big endeavors can find their meaning in small moments.

Later that day, Obama and his aides discussed the encounter. The future president pulled the patch from his pocket, along with about a dozen other items people had pressed upon him.

“This is why I do this,” he said. “Because people have their hopes and dreams about what we can do together.”

Two American stories intersected that morning in that elevator. The more famous, of course, is the one that begins its next chapter on Monday, as the nation’s first black president takes the oath of office for a second term.

But the other story also tells a lot about where this country has been and how far it has come.

No one in Obama’s small party that day noticed the man’s name tag or, if anyone did, the fact that it said Earl Smith was quickly forgotten.

No one knew how much of Smith’s life had been woven into a patch that, over four decades, found its way from the shoulder of an Army private to the pocket of a future commander-in-chief.

It was the only shred of cloth he had saved from the uniform of a nightmarish year in Vietnam. Smith fired artillery with a brigade that suffered 10,041 casualties during the course of the war. The brigade’s soldiers received 13 Congressional Medals of Honor.

The patch was waiting among his possessions when Smith was pardoned by the state of Georgia in 1977 after spending three years in prison for a crime he claimed was self-defense.

Smith kept it close as his lucky charm while he rebuilt his life and his reputation, starting with a job vacuuming hallways and changing sheets in an Atlanta Marriott. He carried it with him as he traveled halfway around the world again, to positions in hotels far from home, Riyadh in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

Along the way, as he tended to travelers and made sure VIP gatherings went smoothly, he met three U.S. presidents.

His instincts told him Obama would make it four.

Like just about anyone else who was alive on Nov. 22, 1963, Smith can describe exactly where he was when he heard the horrific news: He was coming off a high school football practice field in his home town of San Benito, Tex.

Though not yet old enough to have voted for the man slain in Dallas, “I was devastated — a lot of us young people were — because John Kennedy was the young president,” recalled Smith, now 68.

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