Tax Cut Deal Might Be at Hand

WASHINGTON — White House officials and Congressional Republicans said Sunday they were closing in on a deal to temporarily continue the Bush-era tax cuts at all income levels, while bitterly frustrated Democratic Congressional leaders began exploring whether they would have the votes for such a package.

A day after the Senate rejected President Obama’s preferred tax plan, officials said the broad contours of a compromise were in focus.

Rather than extending the tax rates only on income described by Democrats as middle class — up to $250,000 a year for couples and $200,000 for individuals — the deal would also keep the rates for higher earners, probably for two years. In return, Republicans said they would probably agree to extend jobless aid for the long-term unemployed.

Senior Democrats on Sunday said that they were resigned to defeat in the highly charged tax debate, and they voiced dismay.

“We’re moving in that direction,” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat said dejectedly when Bob Schieffer, host of “Face the Nation” on CBS, asked him if the 2001 and 2003 tax rates would be extended even for the wealthy. “And we’re only moving there against my judgment,” Mr. Durbin added.

In meetings with administration officials after the Senate votes, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and many other House and Senate Democrats voiced deep unhappiness at the prospect of extending all the tax cuts and also expressed their belief that the White House did not appear to be getting enough for such a big concession, officials said.

That sort of anger raised the likelihood that Republicans would have to generate large numbers of votes to advance any deal in Congress, much as they did to help approve the big financial system bailout at President George W. Bush’s request in 2008.

White House officials, meanwhile, expressed hope of sealing a deal swiftly, perhaps by midweek, and clearing the Congressional calendar for a long list of other priorities that they aim to accomplish by the end of the year, including ratification of the New Start arms treaty with Russia and the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gay service members as part of a wider Pentagon policy bill.

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New Jersey Might Allow Medical Marijuana

The New York Times reports:

A standoff between Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and advocates for medical marijuana has ended in a compromise that could put marijuana on the market for seriously ill patients by next summer.

The new regulations, announced on Friday, would provide for six growing and distribution sites for medical marijuana in various parts of the state. The governor had wanted to limit the number of growers to two and distribution sites to four.

But among the states that allow it, New Jersey would become the only one to limit the amount of psychotropic chemical permitted in the marijuana.

While the Christie administration had pushed to require qualifying patients to exhaust all other treatments before receiving medical marijuana, the compromise applies that restriction to only three nonfatal conditions: seizures, glaucoma and intractable muscle spasms.

Mr. Christie hailed the compromise as “the best way to move forward on a responsible, medically based program that will avoid the significant fraud and criminal diversion that other states have experienced.”

Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed New Jersey’s medical marijuana law as he was leaving office in January, making New Jersey the 14th state to legalize the treatment. New York and Connecticut have not.

Since then, Mr. Christie, who was skeptical of the legalization, has been haggling with lawmakers and advocates over the particulars of how to carry out the law.

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Part of Arizona Law Might Be Upheld

The LA Times reports:

A federal appeals court, reviewing Arizona’s tough new immigration law while protestors outside shouted and waved signs, suggested during a hearing Monday that the state may be permitted to require police to investigate the immigration status of suspected criminals and yet be powerless to do anything about a person’s illegal residency.

During an hourlong hearing, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals examined four provisions of the Arizona law that a federal judge in Phoenix blocked as unconstitutional. The three-judge appeals panel appeared largely inclined to agree with the lower court’s July ruling, which said the law usurped the federal government’s sole authority to regulate immigration.

But the panel expressed skepticism about the part of the ruling that blocked the state from requiring police to at least investigate the immigration status of someone stopped on suspicion of a crime.

After a lawyer for the federal government told the court the provision was illegal, a frustrated Judge John T. Noonan Jr., a moderate Republican appointee, noted that federal law permits police to inquire about a person’s immigration status.

On that score, “you don’t have an argument,” the judge told the lawyer for the Obama administration.

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