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RELATED: Republicans Plan Race-Baiting Scare With Jeremiah Wright…Again!

Why don’t people embrace subtly anymore?

The New York Times reports:

Mr. Ricketts is increasingly putting his fortune to work in conservative politics.

The $10 million plan, one of several being studied by Mr. Ricketts, includes preparations for how to respond to the charges of race-baiting it envisions if it highlights Mr. Obama’s former ties to Mr. Wright, who espouses what is known as “black liberation theology.”

The group suggested hiring as a spokesman an “extremely literate conservative African-American” who can argue that Mr. Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the proposal calls a “metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln.”

A copy of a detailed advertising plan was obtained by The New York Times through a person not connected to the proposal who was alarmed by its tone. It is titled “The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama: The Ricketts Plan to End His Spending for Good.”

Afterward, ridicule followed with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) quipping: “Well, Ihope they’re as successful with this campaign as the Cubs are on the baseball field.” Burn, Nancy, burn!

Meanwhile, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Hill, “I don’t know what these other people do or why they do it. All I know is the American people vote with their wallets.” Romney himself said, “I repudiate the effort by that PAC to promote an ad strategy of the nature they’ve described.”

‘Twas a smart move given Team Romney knows that going after one’s church isn’t the wisest move for the first Mormon to earn a political party’s nomination for president to make.

When I first read this, I immediately thought about how the Rev. Wright controversy has been old news for a couple of years now — and then laughed. Like, “Obama is a militant Christian who hates America” is no longer the narrative among trendy xenophobes. They’ve progressed to “Obama is a socialist Muslim who wants Jesus and Santa Clause to get married.”

Someone must have alerted Ricketts to this reality since he’s now changing his tune.

A spokesperson for the Chicago Cubs owner told the Wall Street Journal:

“Mr. Ricketts intends to work hard to help elect a President this fall who shares his commitment to economic responsibility, but his efforts are and will continue to be focused entirely on questions of fiscal policy, not attacks that seek to divide us socially or culturally.”

If you believe that you also probably think that Ursula The Sea Witch was merely a misunderstood diva. This is more about their own embarrassment than any real display of a conscious. In fact, if we’re going by some of the other depictions of Obama – i.e. his “celebrity” – thus far, all of the attacks on the president seem like deja vu. This is one that just got immediately shamed for good reason.

Which is why despite growing concerns about the prospect of Obama being outspent thanks to these Super PACs, this story actually gives me a bit of hope. It just goes to show that as much as billions might be able to buy a person, brilliant political strategies don’t make for an easy sale. But you know, go ahead, keep reminding us that he’s a Black guy who is kind of a celebrity at a time when the culture celebrates such novelties. It just won’t do much in the way to scaring the masses into your often perverse point-of-view this time, though. Better luck next election?

Michael Arceneaux is a Houston-bred, Howard-educated writer and blogger. You can read more of his work on his site, The Cynical Ones. Follow him on Twitter: @youngsinick

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) have already made it clear to Obama – in a conference call Monday – that they want him to establish a coherent and tough bargaining position to deal with the GOP’s united support for an extension of all tax cuts, according to House and Senate sources familiar with the call.

But on the call the president brushed aside the suggestion that his position has wavered, sources said. And his aides continue to insist that they are deftly toeing a fine political line between caving to GOP demands that all cuts be extended indefinitely and adopting such an inflexible bargaining posture that Republicans are discouraged from reasonable compromises. (See: Top governors turn against Steele)

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“We are confident that Congress will act so that taxes for middle-class families will not go up at the end of the year,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Wednesday.

Still, Obama’s repeated insistence that he would drive the hardest possible bargain – while signaling his openness to a compromise that includes a temporary extension for high-income taxpayers — has angered some in his party who claim he’s weakening Democrats’ efforts to force concessions from Republicans. (See: Shaken senators start prep for 2012)

“Give us the playbook – or even an inkling of what you want to do and how you want to do it,” said one congressional Democrat involved in crafting the tax-cut strategy.

Other Democrats were equally outspoken on Wednesday.

“The White House needs to stand firm and say we’re not giving tax breaks to billionaires in this country,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said. “Every day we hear a little differently.”

Read entire article at Politico.com

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Kanye West surprises Delta
passengers with an impromptu performance [from TheUrbanDaily.com]

Michael Jackson and Akon
“Hold My Hand” Audio [from TheUrbanDaily.com]

Kim Kardashian &
The Dream’s courtside date [from HelloBeautiful.com]

Did Kanye choke
Amber Rose when he caught her cheating? [from HelloBeautiful.com]

Some CBC members want more details on Pelosi's plan to create a new job for Jim Clyburn.

Washington (Politco)– The Congressional Black Caucus wants to hear directly from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) before taking caucus positions on pressing matters, including whether to back the outgoing speaker’s plans to hold leadership elections this week, whether to endorse her and whether to support amendments aimed at diminishing her power to appoint lieutenants to party leadership jobs.

A spirited and substantive meeting of the CBC Monday night left more questions open than answered, according to Democratic insiders. Some black caucus members are inclined to support Pelosi’s creation of a new job in the Democratic leadership for current Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, who is black. But with few specifics on the responsibilities and trappings of that post, some CBC members want to hear more about it from Pelosi.

Pelosi has been trying to tamp down efforts from moderate Blue Dogs, a handful of liberals and even some of her longtime allies to strike at her power within the Democratic Caucus.

Read entire article at Politico.com

Share this post on Facebook! CLICK HERE:

Kanye West surprises Delta
passengers with an impromptu performance [from TheUrbanDaily.com]

Michael Jackson and Akon
“Hold My Hand” Audio [from TheUrbanDaily.com]

Kim Kardashian &
The Dream’s courtside date [from HelloBeautiful.com]

Did Kanye choke
Amber Rose when he caught her cheating? [from HelloBeautiful.com]

Washington (AP)– Rush Limbaugh chose to use racially insensitive terminology to attack South Carolina congressman James Clyburn and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Referring to the movie “Driving Miss Daisy” and segregation, he belittled Clyburn and Pelosi:

Clyburn has had power, but they want to take it away from him here. Tavis Smiley is not down with this. Clyburn starts to demand respect and all hell seems to break loose in the Democrat Party. Hey, I have a suggestion. You know, I like to mediate these things. I like to bring people together. I like to unify people. I don’t like seeing this kind of strife. Clyburn’s worried about not having the car. Clyburn’s worried about not having the perk of a big office, driver, and so forth. The way this can all be worked out, Clyburn’s new position: Driving Miss Nancy. He gets to keep the car. He gets to go everywhere she goes, parties and everything else. He’s not in the back of the bus. He’s in the driver’s seat, and she’s in the back of the car being chauffeured. Solved problem.

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The Senate on Wednesday cleared the way to provide $10 billion to states and local school districts to prevent teacher layoffs and an additional $16 billion in federal aid to cash-strapped states, and the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said she would summon House back from its summer recess to grant final approval to the bill.

The procedural vote in the Senate was 61 to 38, with the Maine Republicans, Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe, joining all Democrats in support of cutting off a filibuster. Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, was absent. The Senate is set to approve the measure on Thursday before adjourning for its summer recess.

Read more at NYTimes

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WASHINGTON (AP) — African-American slaves sweated in the summer heat and shivered in the winter’s cold while helping to build the U.S. Capitol.

Congress took note of their service and sacrifice Wednesday by erecting commemorative plaques inside the Capitol in their honor. Lawmakers said the memorials will ensure that the contributions of slaves in building one of the world’s most recognizable buildings will never again be forgotten.

“In remembering the slaves who labored here, we give them in death some measure of the dignity they were so cruelly denied in life,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said at the plaques’ unveiling.

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The plaques read: “This original exterior wall was constructed between 1793 and 1800 of sandstone quarried by laborers, including enslaved African Americans who were an important part of the work force that built the United States Capitol.”

Lawmakers have been looking for ways to honor the slaves who were used in the construction of government buildings, including the Capitol and the White House.

Democratic Rep. John Lewis, a former civil rights leader from Georgia, who chaired a congressional task force that studied the contributions of slaves to the Capitol’s construction, told onlookers that the plaques help reveal a part of the Capitol’s history that has been overlooked by many.

“Imagine, in Washington’s oppressive summer heat and humidity, to chisel and pull massive stones out of a snake- and mosquito-infested quarry,” Lewis said. “Imagine, having to fight through the bone-chilling winter in rags and sometimes without shoes. Just imagine, the United States government paying your owner, not you, but your owner $5 a month for your labor. This Capitol, the most recognizable symbol of our democracy, was not built overnight, it was not built by machines. It was built through the backbreaking work of laborers and slave laborers.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, both Democrats, along with their Republican counterparts McConnell and House Republican Leader John Boehner, unveiled the plaques inside the Capitol’s historic Mansfield Room. They will next be placed in the Congressional Visitor Center; its largest room is called “Emancipation Hall” in honor of the slaves’ work on the Capitol.

Historians have discovered that slaves worked 12-hour days, six days a week on construction of the Capitol. The federal government rented the slaves from local slave owners at a rate of $5 per worker per month.

Besides working on the building, slaves worked in quarries extracting the stone for the Capitol. Other slaves provided carpentry skills, and still others worked at sawing stone and timber.

Slave women and children were used to mold clay in kilns.

Lawmakers recounted for the standing-room only crowd the story of Philip Reid, perhaps the most famous of the slaves who worked on the construction of the Capitol. Reid was owned by a Maryland sculptor and ironworker who had been contracted to bronze a plaster copy of the Statue of Freedom, the statue that sits today on top of the Capitol Dome.

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When the worker who had assembled the plaster model at the Capitol refused to disassemble it until he was paid extra money, Reid — a mulatto slave from South Carolina — was the only person who was able to figure out how to separate the sections so they could be moved to the foundry for casting.

Reid later is believed to be the person put in charge of bronzing the Statue of Freedom and was officially thanked for his work in an address to Congress in 1928 by one of the statue’s admirers.

The original plaster model of the Statue of Freedom that was worked on by Reid now sits in Emancipation Hall.

Reid also was one of the few slaves who was paid for his work at the Capitol, working for $1.25 a Sunday “keeping up fires under the moulds” — or keeping the ironworking fires hot so they would not have to wait on Mondays for new fires to be lit — according to a pay receipt. His receipt is signed with an “X,” suggesting that Reid was illiterate.

“We stand here today not only because of Philip Reid but for other enslaved African Americans like him who worked tirelessly and sacrificed,” said Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who also worked on the Congressional Slave Labor Task Force. “These plaques, in their own right, will serve as a symbol of their sacrifice and will be seen by visitors who enter the building forevermore.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are trying to prevent a political disaster along with the environmental one taking place in the Gulf of Mexico as they try to convince Americans frustrated by the ongoing oil spill that BP and Republican coziness with the oil industry are to blame.

Within a few hours Tuesday, the White House said President Barack Obama would visit the Gulf Coast again next week, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi set a strict deadline for new oil spill legislation.

Obama will return for his fourth oil spill-related visit to the region — this time a two-day trip — Monday and Tuesday to receive updates in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

Four Democratic-controlled committees were to hold hearings Wednesday, covering spill cleanup, financial responsibility, liability caps and offshore drilling safety.

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All this while a Washington Post poll showed nearly half of those surveyed — 48 percent — now say Obama does not understand the problems of people like them, the highest percentage of his presidency.

And a Pew Research Center poll shows a sharp rise in the number of people who claim Obama’s policies are making the economy worse rather than better.

Pelosi told her committee chairmen to produce new legislation by July 4 to cope with the spill and prevent future environmental disasters.

The House then would act on the bills before Congress’ summer recess, set to begin Aug. 9, a leadership aide said.

Pelosi and Democratic committee chairmen said legislative reforms could address changes in the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, which has been found to be too close to the companies it’s supposed to regulate; a huge increase in the $75 million liability cap for spill damages under federal law; increased protection of oil industry workers; and better readiness and response times.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats on Tuesday proposed a fivefold increase in the tax that oil companies pay into a spill liability fund. The legislation would raise the tax on oil produced offshore from 8 cents a barrel to 41 cents a barrel — 7 cents higher than legislation that passed the House last month.

Pelosi and her chairmen sat around a table in her office Tuesday in what was billed as an opportunity for news photos and videos. But once reporters started asking questions, the speaker and her chairmen got rolling.

“Democrats have tried to rein in Big Oil over time with our legislation and our initiatives,” she said, while Republicans “have always protected Big Oil.”

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said BP initially lied about the amount of oil gushing into the Gulf because the amount of the government’s fine was based on gallons spewing from the underwater well. The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig being leased by BP exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and setting off a massive and continuing release of oil into the Gulf.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., said BP had a poor safety record, with a spill in the North Slope of Alaska and an explosion at a Texas City, Texas, refinery in 2005 that killed 15 people.

“It is very clear whether it is on the North Slope, whether it is in the refineries or in the offshore, they can’t keep oil in the pipeline,” Miller said.

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One of the chairmen at the table, Rep. Henry Waxman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, has asked the U.S. Chemical Safety Board to consider, among other things, the corporate safety culture of BP; what role, if any, cost-cutting may have had in well design and testing; BP’s oversight of subcontractors; and whether any parallels could be drawn between the causes of the Gulf spill and the 2005 Texas City refinery explosion that killed 15.

Chemical Safety Board Chairman John Bresland said he is committed to having his agency investigate the Deepwater Horizon accident. But first he will check with his two fellow board members to identify the resources needed to do the job.

The safety board investigated the Texas City refinery accident and issued a scathing report faulting BP management.

In another development, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen wrote BP CEO Tony Hayward demanding “more detail and openness” about how the company is handling mounting damage claims.

Allen complained in Tuesday’s letter that BP is failing to provide “information we need to meet our responsibilities to our citizens.”

Allen had said earlier this week at a news conference that he felt BP was struggling to efficiently process relief claims from individuals and businesses in the stricken area, attributing that to the company’s lack of experience in the area.

In the letter made public Wednesday, Allen said that “the NIC and our state counterparts have made several requests for additional information which we have not received.”

“Access to this level of detail is critical to informing the public as to how BP is meeting its obligations as a responsible corporation,” Allen said. “I expect a response from BP on this critical issue as soon as possible.”

Democratic leaders wrestling with health care legislation are confronting a host of knotty issues such as medical malpractice, abortion, illegal immigrants and Medicaid, all the while predicting passage of sweeping health care legislation within a few months.

“That’s the legislative process,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said as she and other Democrats shifted from praising President Barack Obama‘s health care speech this week to the less glamorous task of trying to negotiate a bill that will pass muster with a host of opposing factions.

“As issues emerge, let’s drill down on the public option, let’s drill down on what this means to small business, let’s drill down on what this means to seniors,” Pelosi, D-Calif., said Thursday.

Increasingly, events in the Senate Finance Committee appeared pivotal, precursor to likely votes in both the House and the Senate by early October.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., has said he will convene the committee the week after next to vote on legislation that would meet Obama’s goal of expanding access to health care, providing consumer protection to those with coverage and slowing the growth of medical spending overall.

Still unclear was whether Baucus would get a bipartisan deal after months of negotiating with two other Democrats and three Republicans on his committee — the so-called Gang of Six. If he doesn’t, Baucus has said he’ll go it alone, but a bipartisan compromise is still in play, with another meeting set for Friday.

Aides were reviewing lists of proposed changes from members of the group — primarily the Republicans — touching on issues that included how much states must pay for a proposed expansion of Medicaid, prohibiting federal funding of abortion, reducing medical malpractice costs, ensuring illegal immigrants don’t get insurance and a possible phase-in of coverage for legal immigrants.

Support from two of the Republicans — Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Mike Enzi of Wyoming — looked uncertain. The third, Olympia Snowe of Maine, was a surer bet for Baucus.

Baucus said Obama’s speech to Congress and the nation on Wednesday helped create momentum for his group “and also the recognition that changing the system is an inevitability.”

With that comes the desire to “work a little harder to see if we can figure out a way,” Baucus said.

Whatever bill the Finance Committee approves must be blended with legislation approved earlier in another panel, and is expected to reach the Senate floor by early October. In the House, the three committees with jurisdiction have already passed bills and Democratic leaders were working to combine them before bringing a package to the floor.

Presuming both chambers pass legislation, then would come the daunting task of melding the two bills and bringing the finished product back for final votes in both chambers.

The initial House bill is likely to include a new government-run insurance plan to compete with the private market, but Baucus long ago embraced establishing nonprofit cooperatives instead, and it appears unlikely liberals have the votes in his committee to overrule him.

Baucus and many other senators believe a so-called public plan would be unlikely to get the 60 votes needed to advance in the 100-member Senate. Obama has spoken repeatedly in support of a public plan and did so again in his speech, but he also left room for alternatives like the co-op or a fallback option that would trigger the public plan only if private companies weren’t offering enough choices.

The trigger alternative was getting attention from a number of moderate Senate Democrats who met with Obama at the White House on Thursday, according to several who attended. Some moderates oppose a straight-up public plan.

“His willingness to be flexible on that reassured members of our group,” said Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind. “His willingness to say what matters here is the ends, we shouldn’t obsess about the means.”

The moderates also responded to Obama’s commitment in his speech to holding down costs.

The Congressional Black Caucus and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi honored the first Black Congresswoman and first female to run for President, Shirley Chisholm in Congress yesterday.

Pelosi called Chisolm “a brave pioneer who was unwilling to settle for the status quo. … As the first woman speaker of the House, I want to say thank you to Shirley Chisholm.”

Pelosi also unveiled a self portrait of Chisholm to Congress.

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Economic stimulus legislation at the heart of President Barack Obama‘s recovery plan is on track for final votes in the House and Senate after a dizzying final round of bargaining that yielded agreement on tax cuts and spending totaling $789 billion.

Obama, who has campaigned energetically for the legislation, welcomed the agreement, saying it would “save or create more than 3.5 million jobs and get our economy back on track.”

The $500-per-worker credit for lower- and middle-income taxpayers that Obama outlined during his presidential campaign was scaled back to $400 during bargaining by the Democratic-controlled Congress and White House. Couples would receive $800 instead of $1,000. Over two years, that move would pump about $25 billion less into the economy than had been previously planned.

Officials estimated it would mean about $13 a week more in people’s paychecks when withholding tables are adjusted in late spring. Critics say that’s unlikely to do much to boost consumption.

Millions of people receiving Social Security benefits would get a one-time payment of $250 under the agreement, along with veterans receiving pensions, and poor people receiving Supplemental Security Income payments.

An additional $46 billion would go to transportation projects such as highway, bridge and mass transit construction; many lawmakers wanted more.

The House could vote on the bill as early as Thursday, though Friday seemed more likely. The Senate would follow, but its schedule is less certain.

The Obama plan offers a 60 percent subsidy to help unemployed people pay health insurance premiums under the COBRA program and divvies up $87 billion among the states to help them with their Medicaid costs for the next two years. It provides $19 billion to modernize health information technology systems, even though such funding will create few jobs right away.

To tamp down costs, several tax provisions were dropped or sharply cut back. A provision popular with Republicans and the big business lobby that would have awarded about $54 billion to money-losing businesses over the next two years was instead limited to small businesses, greatly reducing its cost.

A $15,000 tax credit for anybody buying a home over the next year was dropped; instead, first-time homebuyers could claim an $8,000 credit for homes bought by the end of August. Car buyers could deduct the sales tax they paid on a new car but not the interest on their car loans.

But nothing could shake negotiators from insisting on including $70 billion to shelter middle- to upper-income taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax, originally passed a generation ago to make sure the super-rich didn’t avoid taxes.

The move is aimed at easing headaches that would follow if Congress passed it later in the year — rather than creating jobs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that provision will have relatively little impact on the economy.

In late-stage talks, Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pressed for $8 billion to construct high-speed rail lines, quadrupling the amount in the bill that passed the Senate on Tuesday.

Reid’s office issued a statement noting that a proposed Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas rail might get a big chunk of the money.

Scaling back the bill to levels lower than either the $838 billion Senate measure or the original $820 billion House-passed measure caused grumbling among liberal Democrats, who described the cutbacks as a concession to the moderates, particularly Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who are feeling heat from constituents for supporting the bill.

Specter played an active role, however, in making sure $10 billion for the National Institutes of Health, a pet priority, wasn’t cut back.

After final agreements were sealed Wednesday afternoon, staff aides worked into the night drafting and double-checking in hopes of officially unveiling the measure Thursday.

Courtesy of Glenn Greenwald, the outstanding blogger and legal expert, on why the choice of Johnsen is so encouraging. The Office of Legal Counsel, Greenwald argues, “is probably the most consequential federal government office that remains relatively obscure.” Greenwald notes that “The legal opinions which it issues become, more or less automatically, the official legal position of the Executive Branch. It was from that office that John Yoo, Jay Bybee and others did so much damage, issuing now-infamous memoranda that established the regime of lawlessness that has dominated our political institutions over the last eight years.” This regime of lawlessness justified repeated illegal spying on Americans, green-lighted torture in contravention of US domestic and international legal obligations and excused the President from any responsibility for these actions.

After the systematic degradation of presidential accountability over the past eight years, Johnsen’s appointment is an encouraging sign that President-to-be Obama takes seriously the idea that there are, in fact, limits to Presidential power.

A good example of her views can be found here.

Greenwald’s post about Johnsen elaborates on her credentials for helping to restore such limits. You can read it here.

One other related point – also courtesy of Greenwald. He’s been documenting for years now the complicity of Democratic leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Jay Rockefeller, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, in the Bush illegalities. He has an especially incisive and disturbing post on that here.

Officials struck an agreement in principle on the measure Tuesday and hoped to finalize it and schedule swift House and Senate votes as early as Wednesday. Money could be disbursed within days to cash-starved General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, while Ford Motor Co. — which has said it has enough liquidity to stay afloat — would be eligible for federal aid.

All three would have to negotiate with labor unions, creditors and others and submit blueprints by March 31 to an industry czar named by President George W. Bush showing how they would restructure to ensure their survival. If not, the emergency loans would be revoked, the companies cut off from further federal help, and the government overseer could order his own overhaul, including forcing them into bankruptcy.

After days of marathon negotiations over the plan, congressional aides and White House officials were still fine-tuning legislative details of the agreement. It could face substantial obstacles from Republican lawmakers, who remained skeptical of the White House-negotiated plan.

A group of conservatives led by Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who has threatened to block the measure, planned a midday news conference Wednesday.

As the measure took shape Tuesday, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he was concerned that Democrats were proposing a package that “fails to require the kind of serious reform that will ensure long-term viability for struggling automobile companies.”

With their approach, “we open the door to unlimited federal subsidies in the future,” McConnell said.

Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, said Wednesday that “I don’t know if this is going to pass.”

He said on CBS’s “The Early Show” he believes the Bush administration “snatched defeat from the jaws of victory” by consenting to the outline of legislation that fails to give taxpayers sufficient assurances that the money would be well-spent.

Corker also said he believes bankruptcy might ultimately be the right path, saying that might be “the only way” for the industry to proceed.

Getting 60 votes for an agreement, with many senators expected to be absent for the emergency, postelection debate, could be tricky.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., an ally of the auto industry, said, “This gets us to the 20-yard line, but getting over the goal line will take a major effort, particularly in the Senate.”

He called for Bush and President-elect Barack Obama to lobby personally for the auto bailout.

A breakthrough on the measure came when negotiators reached a compromise to require the czar to revoke the loans and deny any further federal aid to automakers that don’t strike restructuring deals by next spring. Democrats had proposed giving the overseer that option but not requiring it.

“A great deal of progress has been made on auto legislation that will protect the taxpayer and ensure that short-term financing is available only to companies prepared to undertake the dramatic restructuring necessary to become viable and competitive,” Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, said late Tuesday.

One potential stumbling block remained. Democrats’ were still refusing to scrap language, vehemently opposed by the White House, that would force the carmakers to drop lawsuits challenging tough emissions limits in California and other states.

That measure “kills the deal,” said Dan Meyer, Bush’s top lobbyist.

Senior Democratic aides acknowledged as much Tuesday and said they expected the provision to be dropped.

Environmentalists, who count House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., among their closest allies, already were irate that the bailout uses money set aside for a program to help the automakers finance the retooling of their factories so they could produce greener vehicles.

Another remaining hang-up was over ensuring that Cerberus, the private equity firm that owns Chrysler LLC, would reimburse the government if the auto company defaulted on its loan, said a congressional negotiator who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose details of the emerging deal.

The measure would attach an array of conditions to the bailout money, including some of the same restrictions imposed on banks as part of the $700 billion Wall Street rescue. Among them are limits on executive compensation, a prohibition on paying dividends and requirements that the government share in future profits and taxpayers be repaid before any other shareholders.

Also included in the plan is a requirement that the carmakers taking federal aid get rid of their corporate jets — which became a potent symbol when the Big Three CEOs used them for their initial trips to Washington to plead before Congress for government assistance.

Democratic leaders in Congress sidetracked legislation to bail out the auto industry Thursday and demanded the Big Three develop a plan assuring the money would make them economically viable.

“Until they show us the plan, we cannot show them the money,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said at a hastily called news conference in the Capitol.

She and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Congress would return to work in early December to vote on legislation if the General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC produce an acceptable plan.

The decision averted a likely defeat of legislation providing $25 billion loans for the industry. Reid and Pelosi both said there was no plan in circulation that could pass both houses of Congress and win President George W. Bush’s approval.

While the decision headed off the defeat of one bill, it did not necessarily translate into passage of a different one.

As a result, the fate of hundreds of thousands of auto workers and even of an iconic American industry hangs in the balance.

The chief executives of the Big Three automakers appealed personally to lawmakers for the loans this week, and warned that their industry might collapse without them. In testimony, they said their problem was that credit was unavailable, and not that they were manufacturing products that consumers had turned their backs on.

But whatever support they found sagged when it became known that each of them had flown into Washington aboard multi-million dollar corporate jets. Reid observed that was “difficult to explain” to taxpayers in his home town of Searchlight, Nev.

The automakers are on a tight timeline. Reid and Pelosi said their plan must be turned over to key lawmakers by Dec. 2 They said hearings were possible the first week of December, and Congress may return to session the following week to consider legislation.

Pelosi stressed that whatever the Big Three provided to Congress, it must show they had a plan for “viability and accountability,” meaning that the were transforming theoir industry in a way that it would become competitive, and that they were clear about how the federal loan money was used.

Even if lawmakers return to vote, they are likely to insist on numerous conditions on any loans. One possibility is to seek a partial ownership of the companies. Another is to limit salaries of top executives. A third is to prohibit use of the funds for any lobbying.