Daily Dose

The first sentence of the "funding highlights" in the White House budget document says that the $79.9 billion the president is requesting for Health and Human Services would be "slightly above the 2010 funding level."

In fact, as the agency's budget figures show, the proposal would decrease HHS's discretionary funding -- the portion Congress allots each year -- by $72 million, or 0.9 percent, from fiscal 2010.

The spending plan for HHS includes $465 million to help carry out the sprawling law Congress adopted last year to overhaul the nation's health care system. It also contains $300 million to implement a recent law providing health care to people harmed in the Sept.11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

The budget goes a fraction of the way toward fulfilling President Obama's promise to stave off cuts in payments to doctors for treating older Americans through Medicare for 10 years. The reductions were part of a 1997 law That delay is forecast to cost a total of $370 billion. The budget proposes enough money to cover the first two years, starting with $18.6 billion for 2012.

Some parts of HHS would be trimmed overall but would selectively receive extra money. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be cut by nearly $600 million but would get new funds to expand its efforts to prevent the spread of the AIDS virus and other infectious diseases and to promote immunization.

The budget would kill or pare down more than two dozen programs across the vast agency. One of the largest cuts would halve spending on the Community Services Block Grant program and reduce by nearly half the funding to help low-income people heat their homes.

In some instances, the cuts the administration is recommending for fiscal 2012 overlap with programs that the new House Republican majority has targeted for fiscal 2011 -- the current year -- although the GOP is proposing a wider range of reductions.

View agency budget document (Annotated PDF)

Budget 2012 analysis: Full list of agencies

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) will announce Tuesday that Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) will helm the subcommittee that handles District matters, giving the job to a freshman lawmaker with no record of speaking out on D.C. issues.

Gowdy will serve as chairman of the newly formed Subcommittee on Health Care, District of Columbia, Census and the National Archives. Jurisdiction over D.C. was previously held by a subcommittee that also covered the Postal Service and the federal workforce, but Issa has scrambled the old panel structure since taking over as full committee chairman.

Several of the Oversight committee's Republican members from the last Congress have departed for more desirable outposts, which helps explain why the panel will have so many freshmen in the 112th Congress. Another first-term member, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), will serve as vice chairman of the new D.C. subcommittee.

Continue reading at D.C. Wire >>>

Buried within the annual ombudsman report on the Internal Revenue Service, the nation's taxpayer advocate warns that the agency needs to recast itself as it prepares to enforce elements of the new health-care reform law.

"Historically, the IRS's mission has been to collect taxes, but in recent years, Congress has directed the IRS to administer an increasing number of social benefits programs, including Economic Stimulus Payments, the First-Time Homebuyer Credit," and the new health-care law, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson writes in her annual report to Congress released Wednesday.

Specifically, the health-care law directs the IRS to administer the penalties for the controversial individual mandate, which is facing several legal challenges. It also will have to enforce penalties against employers who fail to provide coverage and the small business tax credit.

Updated 5:48 p.m. ET
Federal workers who need to breast-feed on the job should be given a reasonable amount of time, must be provided access to a clean, private room and might not be paid while doing so, according to new government personnel rules.

Administration officials quietly released changes to the government's breast-feeding policy shortly before Christmas, soon after President Obama ordered updates to how federal agencies and departments accommodate breast-feeding mothers.

The changes, outlined in a memo issued by the Office of Personnel Management, apply to all breast-feeding employees of the executive branch and were among several provisions related to workplace health and safety in last year's health-care law.

The calendar is about to turn on a very active 2010 election cycle, but another one waits just around the corner, with the 2012 election expected to begin shortly after the calendar reads "January."

To help you keep track of what's ahead, we came up with 11 key questions that are likely to be answered in 2011, and what they mean for the road ahead.

Click through, and once you've had a look at our ideas, let us know what you're watching for. The comments section awaits.

President Obama is asking federal personnel officials to draft "appropriate workplace accommodations" for federal employees who are nursing mothers.

The president issued a memo Monday to the Office of Personnel Management, asking for new guidelines to be published when ready.

The order is required by the new health-care reform law, which mandates new breastfeeding rights primarily for hourly workers in the private and public sectors. But Obama asked the federal govenrment to go a step farther by establishing new guidelines for all federal employees, no matter their status, according to White House aides.

Ken Cuccinelli's role in the health care repeal effort makes him a conservative hero in Virginia. AP Photo

The decision today by a federal judge in Virginia that a provision of President Obama's health care law is unconstitutional thrusts state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli into the national spotlight.

Cuccinelli, who was elected to his current post in 2009, had brought the suit -- insisting that requiring people to purchase insurance violated a Virginia statute.

The case, which now seems almost certainly headed for the Supreme Court, will cast Cuccinelli -- already a conservative darling -- as the face of the attempts to repeal the president's signature policy achievement of his first two years in office.

And, that elevation means that Cuccinelli can almost certainly have the Republican nomination for any statewide office he likes in Virginia. "He is hero on Fox [News Channel] and with Virginia Republicans," said former Virginia Rep. Tom Davis (R).

(For more on Cuccinelli, make sure to read David Montgomery's profile, which ran in the Post magazine in August.)

But, what office does Cuccinelli want?

It depends on who you ask.

Those close to Cuccinelli insist he has no grand plan for his political future and remains committed to making good on a campaign promise to serve out his term as the state's top cop.

Unlike the governorship, which has a single term limit, the other statewide offices in Virginia are not bound by term limits so Cuccinelli could stay on as state Attorney General for the foreseeable future.

This post was last updated at 1:42 p.m.

The Portland (Maine) Press-Herald reports that both of Maine's senators -- Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins -- are signing on to a friend-of-the-court brief in support of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the new health-care law.

The brief was initiated by U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and boasts the signatures of 30 Senate Republicans. The lawsuit was brought by the attorneys general for several states and the National Federation of Independent Businesses, a small-business trade organization.

At issue is a requirement that U.S. citizens purchase health insurance beginning in 2014 or face a fine -- known as the "individual mandate."

As the lone Republican on the Senate Finance Committee who voted to move the bill -- which at the time included an individual mandate (though Snowe made clear then that she didn't support that provision) -- to the full Senate last year, Snowe was the only Republican senator who supported the bill at any stage. She did not vote for final passage of the bill in March. Snowe and Collins are widely viewed as two of a dwindling number of GOP moderates remaining in Congress.

Snowe is up for reelection in 2012, and Maine tea party groups have already pledged to mount a primary challenge. Snowe is no doubt taking the threat seriously, considering the Maine GOP adopted a tea party-backed platform this year and Paul LePage, a combative conservative candidate who promised to tell President Obama to "go to hell," won the state's gubernatorial race in November. Collins faces reelection in 2014.

UPDATE: In an interview last year with Karen Tumulty -- then of TIME and now of The Post -- Snowe voiced opposition to the individual mandate on affordability grounds, but didn't say anything about the provision's constitutionality.

By Aaron Blake

"I voted for it before I voted against it."

It's a quote that many cite as Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) downfall in the 2004 presidential election. (He was talking about funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

When it comes to this year's health care vote, however, it turns out it may be more harmful to have voted against it before you voted for it.

That's a lesson Democrats are learning in the eight districts where the party's incumbent congressman voted against the first version of the health care bill last November before voting in favor of the second -- and final -- version in March. (In almost every case, the member came under heavy pressure from the White House and Democratic leadership to cast a "yea" vote.)

Of those eight seats, Democrats are favored to hold just one after next Tuesday's election. Three or four of the other seven look to be lost causes, and the rest appear increasingly tough for Democrats.

Meanwhile, there were five Democrats who flipped from "yes" on the first bill to "no" on final passage. And, by comparison, they're looking pretty good.

Below, we dissect each of the vote-switchers:

NO-TO-YES

* Retiring Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.): Gordon retired before switching his vote. It probably didn't matter, though, because Democrats were unable to recruit anyone of substance into the race. This race ranked No. 1 on The Fix's most recent Line of the 50 seats that are most likely to flip.

* Rep. Betsy Markey (D-Colo.): Markey was in a tough electoral spot from the get-go -- due to the conservative leaning of her district. She switched her vote, saying she had been satisfied by its deficit-reduction elements. Apparently, her district wasn't; a poll from GOP-leaning American Action Forum showed voters in Colorado's 4th district opposed the bill by a 17-point margin. In the end, her switch didn't even get her financial support from the national party, which appears to be conceding this one.

* Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-Fla.): Kosmas' situation is remarkably similar to Markey's, including the polling and the fact that national Democrats have pulled out completely.

* Rep. Allen Boyd (D-Fla.): Boyd's switch to support the bill on final passage may have saved him in a close primary fight in August but Republicans say it effectively doomed him in the general election. Democrats aren't giving up here, spending their first $167,000 on this race last week, but that's nothing compared to the $1.1 million from GOP-aligned groups like the National Republican Congressional Committee and conservative retiree group 60 Plus . Much of that money was spent hammering Boyd on health care.

By Aaron Blake

If House Democrats sustain major losses on Nov. 2, the health care law passed earlier this year is likely to be a big reason.

The proof is in the pudding: while Republicans have been hammering away at Democratic incumbents who voted for the bill and even open seat candidates who expressed support for the legislation, Democrats have run almost no ads playing up the bill.

After the bill was signed, Democratic leaders stressed that some of the finer points of the bill -- coverage for pre-existing conditions, allowing young people to stay on their parents' insurance longer, and removing lifetime limits on coverage -- polled well. They made the case that these were proposals that their party could run and win on even if the broader bill was unpopular.

But few vulnerable Democrats have followed that strategic course.

So far we've seen ads from Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Rep. Scott Murphy (D-N.Y.) going on the offensive over the issue. Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) mentions the pre-existing conditions aspect of the law briefly in one of her ads, while Reps. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) and Kathy Dahlkemper (D-Pa.) have defended themselves from attacks.

Beyond them, it's basically been radio -- and television -- silence. Even as Republicans have attacked Democrats on the bill, Democrats haven't seen fit to fight back -- preferring to change the subject.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (Md.) said Democrats are still talking about the issue, but he conceded that its mostly just safe incumbents.

"The large majority around the country do talk about it; it's just that they don't get as much attention because they're in congressional races that are not necessarily as contested," Van Hollen said.