Ray LaHood becomes the latest member of President Obama's cabinet to say they are leaving as the president begins his second term.

LaHood announced today he will leave his post as secretary of the Department of Transportation once a successor is confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

"As I look back on the past four years, I am proud of what we have accomplished together in so many important areas," LaHood said in a statement.

The former Illinois congressman was one of two Republicans President Obama appointed to cabinet secretary positions at the beginning of his first term. (Bob Gates at Defense was the other). Obama has nominated Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, to take over at Defense. He's expected to be confirmed.

LaHood's replacement was not immediately clear.

As he exits, LaHood touted accomplishments, including the stimulus, fuel-efficiency standards, high-speed rail, as well as initiatives on distracted driving, combatinng pilot fatigue, and highway safety.

Here's his full statement:

“I have let President Obama know that I will not serve a second term as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation.  It has been an honor and a privilege to lead the Department, and I am grateful to President Obama for giving me such an extraordinary opportunity.  I plan to stay on until my successor is confirmed to ensure a smooth transition for the Department and all the important work we still have to do. 

As I look back on the past four years, I am proud of what we have accomplished together in so many important areas.  But what I am most proud of is the DOT team. You exemplify the best of public service, and I truly appreciate all that you have done to make America better, to make your communities better, and to make DOT better.

Our achievements are significant.  We have put safety front and center with the Distracted Driving Initiative and a rule to combat pilot fatigue that was decades in the making.  We have made great progress in improving the safety of our transit systems, pipelines, and highways, and in reducing roadway fatalities to historic lows.  We have strengthened consumer protections with new regulations on buses, trucks, and airlines. 

We helped jumpstart the economy and put our fellow Americans back to work with $48 billion in transportation funding from the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009, and awarded over $2.7 billion in TIGER grants to 130 transportation projects across the Nation.  We have made unprecedented investments in our nation’s ports.  And we have put aviation on a sounder footing with the FAA reauthorization, and secured funding in the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act to help States build and repair their roads, bridges and transit systems. 

And to further secure our future, we have taken transportation into the 21st century with CAFE Standards, NextGen, and our investments in passenger and High-Speed Rail.  What’s more, we have provided the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy with the funding and leadership it needs to prepare a new generation of midshipmen to meet our country’s rapidly-evolving defense and maritime transportation needs. 

Closer to home, we also have made great strides.  In December, the DOT was recognized as the most improved agency in the entire Federal government in the 2012 “Best Places to Work” rankings published by the Partnership of Public Service.  Even more impressive, DOT was ranked 9th out of the 19 largest agencies in the government. 
Each of these remarkable accomplishments is a tribute your hard work, creativity, commitment to excellence, and most of all, your dedication to our country.  DOT is fortunate to have such an extraordinary group of public servants.  I look forward to continuing to work with all of you as the selection and confirmation process of the next transportation secretary moves forward.  Now is not the time to let up - we still have a number of critical safety goals to accomplish and still more work to do on the implementation of MAP-21.   

I’ve told President Obama, and I’ve told many of you, that this is the best job I’ve ever had.  I’m grateful to have the opportunity to work with all of you and I’m confident that DOT will continue to achieve great things in the future. 

Thank you, and God bless you."

The region that was devastated by Hurricane Sandy last October is close to getting the federal aid that has been requested to help rebuild, but other disaster-hit areas of the country may be left waiting.

Colorado watersheds devastated by last June’s wildfires still need protection from melting snows, spring rains and mudslides. And Alaska fishermen are still looking for federal aid to cope with a fishery disaster and with industrial contaminants and debris from Japan’s 2011 tsunami.

But the chance to get emergency federal funds for those pressing needs is slipping away.

Susan Walsh / AP

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev. walks out of the House Chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Jan. 4, 2013, following the counting of Electoral College votes.

Next week the Senate is slated to take up the Disaster Appropriations Relief Act to aid individuals and businesses recovering from Hurricane Sandy. The House overwhelmingly passed the $50.7 billion bill Tuesday night.

“While the House bill is not quite as good as the Senate bill, it is certainly close enough. We will be urging the Senate to speedily pass the House bill and send it to the President’s desk,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D- N.Y., a member of the Senate leadership whose state suffered massive damage from Sandy in late October.

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Congress was never legally barred from providing funds in that bill for other disasters far away from New York, even as far as away Alaska.

In fact, the disaster spending bill which the Senate passed last month to respond to Hurricane Sandy did provide $125 million for the Emergency Watershed Protection Program, some of which would have been used to restore Colorado watersheds damaged by last June’s wildfires.

“No one questions that we need to help the hurricane victims in the Northeast, but wildfire-relief is not ‘pork,”” said Sen. Mark Udall, D- Colo., Wednesday.

In the past, emergency spending bills enacted in the immediate aftermath of one catastrophe have included funds for other disasters.

Related: House OK's $50.7 billion in Sandy emergency funding

Case in point: the emergency spending bill President Barack Obama signed in July of 2010 included $5.5 billion not only for recovery from the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil discharge off the coast of Louisiana, but also for hurricanes Katrina (2005), Rita (2005), Gustav (2008), and Ike (2008) as well as the 2010 floods in Rhode Island, Tennessee, and other states.

But members of Congress from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut want the $50.7 billion which the House passed on Tuesday to be available immediately.

Including funds for disaster relief in places that Sandy didn’t hit is a tough sell: any amendment added by the Senate would necessitate sending the amended bill back to the House for another vote.

“Sen. Begich is talking with Senate leadership and other senators affected by unaddressed disasters about amending the House bill to ensure fishermen in their states get their needs addressed,” said Amy Miller, Begich’s spokeswoman. “Historically, disaster-aid funding bills include multiple disasters, and that’s how Sen. Begich thinks it should be done,” she explained. “He may propose an amendment to make a point about how he thinks disasters should be funded, but if it’s not getting any traction he’s not going to make a big stand that winds up delaying aid to Sandy victims.”

Udall said Wednesday the House's decision this week to not include money for wildfire relief in the Sandy bill was “unbelievable.” He added that communities in his state “are now vulnerable to floods and other long-term effects of the 2012 fires. The long-term costs and damages will make this now-rejected relief funding seem like mere peanuts.”

Udall spokesman Mike Saccone said Wed that “We suspect this (the disaster relief bill) will be sent through by unanimous consent,” which would mean no opportunity for adding amendments.

Just as New Yorkers such as Schumer can make the case that Sandy funding is urgent – in order for homeowners to hire contractors to rebuild homes, for instance – so, too, time is of the essence in the aftermath of Colorado’s wildfires: spring rains means clogged streams and reservoirs and more outlays by local water districts.

Of course, another disaster need not wait until the spring tornado season or the late summer hurricane season. It may be just a few weeks away.

For example, on Jan. 30, 2010 Obama signed a disaster declaration for the state of Oklahoma after a severe winter storm hit the state two days earlier.

But in an era of fiscal strain, with Obama and GOP congressional leaders struggling over spending cuts and an increase in the government’s borrowing limit, a new disaster might not necessarily mean a new disaster relief bill any time soon.

Two and a half months after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the Northeast coast, the political fight over federal spending to assist the recovery efforts continues in Congress.

In the end, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut will almost certainly get more than $60 billion in federal aid to help them recover and rebuild.

But efforts by some House members even as late as Monday night to add unrelated funds to the Sandy emergency aid bill provided an object lesson in why such emergency bills are perfect vehicles for adding more spending.

The House on Tuesday will be voting on both a larger Sandy bill, costing $33.7 billion, offered by Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R- N.J., a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, and a smaller one, costing $17 billion, offered by Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky.

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If the House were to pass both those bills and if one adds the $9.7 billion that the House OK’d on Jan. 4 in additional borrowing authority for the National Flood Insurance Program, the total aid, at least for now, would be $60.4 billion.

At Monday night’s hearing of the House Rules Committee that considered 92 amendments to the bill, Rogers explained that his version was “Sandy only. We tried to rifle-shot money to this immediate catastrophe…. We kept everything out of my bill except Sandy.”

Rogers reminded committee members that tens of billions of federal dollars have already been spent on helping people hurt by Sandy. “So far FEMA has been able to award states a total of $3.1 billion for the immediate needs that have been taking place while we were scouring the numbers (in the big Sandy relief bill),” he reported. “For example, New York has received $2.1 billion and New Jersey almost $900 million, Connecticut $38 million.”

Among the differences between Frelinghuysen’s bigger bill and Rogers’s smaller one: Frelinghuysen would provide more funding for the operations of federal agencies in the Sandy-affected states – even if the agency is not directly engaged in helping people or businesses hit by the storm. For instance, Frelinghuysen’s bill would provide $50 million to the National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Fund for “expenses related to the consequences of Hurricane Sandy” and another $10 million for Sandy-related building and construction expenses for the federal prison system. Rogers’s bill does not include this funding.

Some House Republicans are still balking at the sheer size of the bills and at the near certainty that some money won’t be going directly to victims or towns hit by the storm.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, walks to a strategy session with GOP members, on Capitol Hill, Friday, Jan. 4, 2013, at the start of the first full day of business for the new 113th Congress.

Rules Committee member Rep. Rob Woodall, R- Ga., said Monday night, “If we have an urgent need, let’s agree on that number we can agree on and let’s get it out the door with haste, but if we have a giant need, then let’s give it the slow and thoughtful scrutiny that we owe folks back home.”

He noted that a $60 billion bill for Sandy – to be given just a few days of debate -- would be larger than the normal appropriations bills for the State Department or the Homeland Security Department on which Congress deliberates for months.

Disaster relief bills are massive, have emotional appeal, and aren’t subject to as much scrutiny as spending bills that go through the normal Appropriations Committee process.

This bill has particular momentum since House Speaker John Boehner was so harshly criticized by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and House members from the Northeast for not allowing a vote on a Sandy relief bill on New Years’ Eve.

And the bigger the emergency, the better the opportunity to add more money. Last June’s wildfires in Colorado and the 2011 tsunami in Japan both occurred months before Sandy and hundreds or even thousands of miles away from Sandy, but emergency bills are an opportunity to get aboard a moving train and get money for disasters in one’s own district.

For example:
• Rep. Cory Gardner, R- Colo. and other Colorado members proposed $125 million for watershed protection and flood mitigation around the nation, including about $20 million for areas in Colorado burned by last summer’s wildfires. This watershed protection money was in the Sandy bill that the Senate passed last month.
• Rep. Rick Larsen, D- Wash. proposed an amendment to allow the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration greater leeway over the $290 million in Sandy marine debris cleanup funds so that Pacific Coast states could get some of that money to cope with their own marine debris from the March 2011 Japanese tsunami.
“Just last month, an entire Japanese dock washed up on the Washington state coast,” Larsen said in a statement. “Our state and local governments do not have the resources to deal with this problem, which can cost as much as $4,300 per ton of debris that comes ashore.”

Ultimately the Rules Committee did not allow those two amendments to proceed to the House floor for Tuesday’s debate. It did allow a few amendments to try to offset the cost of the Sandy aid.

For example the House will consider a proposal by Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R- S.C. to offset $17 billion in Sandy funding by a 1.63 percent across-the-board cut in non-Sandy discretionary funding.

“I’ve lived through a hurricane myself; I’ve had my office destroyed by a flood; I think this (emergency aid) is a proper function of the government….I just want to try to find a way to pay for it,” Mulvaney told the Rules Committee. “This is important; there is no question. Is it important enough to borrow money from China to do it, especially when we’re already borrowing money from China to do so many other things?”

Pool / Getty Images

President Barack Obama returns to the White House on August 29, 2012 in Washington, D.C. Obama continued to campaign for his re-election on the second and last day of his college tour through Iowa and Virginia.

President Obama will visit Louisiana on Monday to meet with officials and view the damage from Hurricane Isaac, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney announced Friday.

Carney said the president will go to assess the impact of the hurricane, which has since been downgraded to a tropical storm, and make sure “that unmet needs are being met and that the federal response led by FEMA is helping.”

Obama will stop in Louisiana after beginning his day in Toledo, Ohio where he’ll hold a campaign event.

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He was scheduled to campaign in Cleveland after his event in Toledo but Carney said changes to the campaign schedule were still pending.

Obama’s Republican opponent in the presidential race, Mitt Romney, is visiting the storm-stricken parts of the state today. 

Certainty – that’s what business owners need in order to invest, expand, and hire workers. That’s the argument Republicans have been using for months to urge President Barack Obama to agree to extend current tax rates for another year.

Now with drought afflicting states from Florida to Wisconsin to Oregon, it is Obama who’s using the “certainty” argument, saying that Congress must “pass a farm bill that not only helps farmers and ranchers respond to these kinds of disasters, but also makes necessary reforms and gives them some certainty year-round.”

The Senate passed its $970 billion farm bill on June 21, but the House hasn’t acted on $958 billion farm legislation passed by the House Agriculture Committee last month.

“Too many Americans are suffering right now to let politics get in the way” of passing a new farm bill, Obama said last Saturday in his radio address. But politics seem inescapable, especially 11 weeks before Election Day.

Obama, who campaigned this week in drought-stricken Iowa, is trying to use the drought as a political lever to get the House to pass its farm legislation and come to terms with the Senate so a final bill could be sent to him for his signature.

That seems unlikely to happen before the current farm bill expires on Sept. 30.

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If the farm bill does expire and if a new one isn’t signed into law, it will not affect crop insurance for farmers. Crop insurance is authorized not through the farm bill, but through a separate law. The most recent five-year agreement between the federal government and the private companies that carry out the farm insurance program was reached in 2010.

But next year growers of corn, soybeans and other crops may need to pay higher premiums for their crop insurance – because a significant loss of crops due to drought or other factors lowers their average production history and that affects premium levels, said Sam Willett, senior director of public policy for the National Corn Growers Association, a group that represents more than 36,000 corn farmers.

Disaster assistance programs for livestock and dairy producers and for growers of specialty crops such as cherries expired on Sept. 30, 2011. The Senate-passed farm bill would reauthorize that disaster assistance money.

Responding to the drought, the House did pass a stand-alone $256 million disaster relief bill to help farmers, ranchers, orchard owners, and nursery tree growers on Aug. 2. The vote was 233 to 197, with 35 Democrats, many from farm states such as Iowa and Indiana, joining 188 Republicans in supporting the bill. But that measure is not a full five-year farm bill.

House Agriculture Committee chairman Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., said, “This is not a long-term solution, but it takes care of the problem until we can get a five-year farm bill on the books…. I am committed to giving certainty to our farmers and I plan to work toward that goal when we return in September.”

Although the drought and the food stamp program – or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – aren’t directly related to each other, it’s the opposition to SNAP funding levels that is one of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of an accord on a new farm bill. This isn’t surprising since nutrition assistance spending accounts for about 80 percent of the total cost of the farm bill.

Among many congressional Republicans, “There’s substantial concern about the level of nutrition program cuts not being high enough” and “you have the opposite on the Democratic side” – a belief that SNAP was cut too much, said Willett.

The Senate farm bill would reduce outlays for SNAP and other nutrition assistance programs by $4.5 billion over ten years, but would still spend nearly $770 billion on SNAP. The House Agriculture Committee farm bill would reduce SNAP outlays by $16 billion.

The Corn Growers Association supports an effort in the house to get 218 members to sign a discharge petition that would force the Ag Committee’s bill to be brought to the House floor for a vote.

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Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, told NBC’s Chuck Todd on Daily Rundown Wednesday that “the market is adjusting” to the drought conditions and that both his state and the federal government are taking steps to help livestock producers such as allowing grazing on state land and opening conservation reserve lands to grazing.

Explaining the opposition by some Republicans to the farm bill, Branstad said, “The biggest problem I think a lot of people have is a massive expansion of the food stamp program. We have more people on food stamps than ever before; they’ve liberalized the rules, and a lot of people think they need to tighten that up, just like we reformed welfare in the 1990s … .”

It’s not only food stamps – conservative farm state Republicans have an array of complaints about the Obama administration’s policies toward farmers and ranchers. Agriculture Committee member Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R- Kan., issued a statement Wednesday accusing the administration not only of “vastly expanding the food stamps rolls by 45 percent," but of “continuing the regulatory assault on our farms and ranches” and “supporting a huge increase in the death tax at the end year.”

On the campaign trail in Colorado Thursday President Obama assailed Mitt Romney for opposing the tax break for wind energy production, saying the presumptive nominee would put tens of thousands of jobs at risk by letting them expire.

“At a moment when homegrown energy, renewable energy, is creating new jobs in states like Colorado and Iowa, my opponent wants to end tax credits for wind energy producers,” Obama said.

“Think about what that would mean for a community like Pueblo. The wind industry supports about 5,000 jobs across this state. Without those tax credits, 37,000 American jobs, including potentially hundreds of jobs right here, would be at risk.”

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Wind energy now supplies about 4 percent of U.S. electricity, up from 1.3 percent in 2008.

A spokesman for Romney's Iowa campaign said last week that Romney “will allow the wind credit to expire, end the stimulus boondoggles, and create a level playing field on which all sources of energy can compete on their merits."

Romney’s stance on the wind energy tax break puts him at odds with Republican senators such as Jerry Moran of Kansas and Chuck Grassley of Iowa. It was Grassley who pushed for the wind tax credit when it was created in 1992.

But Romney won applause from one GOP House member, Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas, who has proposed a bill to abolish all energy tax breaks. “The Solyndra scandal has demonstrated that taxpayers must no longer be forced to subsidize these industries,” Pompeo said last week. “When the government bets on these energy technologies, it typically selects the most unaffordable energy leading to unnecessarily higher energy prices for all Americans.”

Solyndra, a California solar-panel manufacturing firm that got a $535 million federal loan guarantee, filed for bankruptcy last year. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has acknowledged that the $535 million isn’t likely to be recovered.

Beyond the campaign rhetoric and the question of whether Romney’s anti-wind tax credit stance will hurt him in two wind-energy loving battleground states (Colorado and Iowa), there’s a serious economic debate here.

It hinges on the classic question: what activities and industries, if any, should the government require taxpayers to subsidize? Is it ever possible to have a “level playing field” so that consumers can choose the energy source that’s most cost effective?

And when Congress creates and preserves tax breaks for favored industries, does it also perpetuate the entrenched culture of lobbyists and special interests seeking favors from Congress?

In this case, every few years the wind energy industry and its lobbyists must urge Congress to give the tax break another lease on life before it expires. Lobbyist filings show that the American Wind Energy Association spent $1.1 million in the first half of this year on lobbying Congress.

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The group has hired lobbyists such as Juleanna Glover of the Ashcroft Group, former Louisiana Republican Rep. Jim McCrery of Capitol Counsel, and Elmendorf Ryan’s Steve Elmendorf, an aide to Dick Gephardt when he was House Democratic leader.

A pragmatist would say there’s nothing new here: the wind industry is just getting in on a subsidy game that other energy industries have played for decades.

As a Congressional Budget Office report noted in March, “Tax preferences for energy were first established in 1916, and until 2005 they were primarily intended to stimulate domestic production of oil and natural gas. Beginning in 2006, the cost of energy-related tax preferences grew substantially, and an increasing share was aimed at encouraging energy efficiency and energy produced from renewable sources, such as wind and the sun….”

That CBO report said energy-related tax breaks cost $20 billion in 2011 and 68 percent of them went to renewable energy, while only 15 percent went to fossil fuels.

Under current law, for a wind facility that starts operating by the end of this year, the owners can claim a 2.2 cent tax credit for each kilowatt hour of electricity produced. The tax credit is good for a 10-year period.

In a bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee last week, the wind production tax credit was extended through 2013 but it was also modified in a significant way, said energy industry consultant and blogger Geoffrey Styles.

The Finance Committee bill would make wind energy facilities eligible for the tax preference if the construction of such facilities or property begins before Jan. 1, 2014. “This will sweep in many more projects,” said Styles. “It has the effect of being much more than a one-year extension” since as long as a project gets started – not completed -- before Jan. 1, 2014, it would be eligible for the tax break.

According to the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the proposal would cost $12 billion in lost revenue over ten years.

Energy economist William Pizer, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment and Energy at the Treasury Department from 2008 to 2011 and now teaches at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, said the tax break is less than ideal energy policy for a variety of reasons.

One is the inefficiency of a subsidy compared to higher tax on more polluting energy sources such as coal and oil. And he said frequently some of the benefit of the tax-break flows to “tax equity partners” who are brought in to join with the actual wind energy project company.

And noting that the wind energy credit has expired three times since 1992 (with Congress ultimately reviving it each time), he said, “The boom-and-bust cycle has been problematic for the industry.”

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When analysts at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington looked at the wind and other renewable energy tax breaks that were part of the 2009 stimulus bill, they said, “In general, these subsidies are less cost-effective than price increases” which Congress could impose through higher taxes on fuels such as coal.

The Tax Policy Center added that, “Such subsidies are very hard to remove once they have outlived their usefulness, since they develop powerful constituencies.”

In a blog post last week, Styles noted that during the 20 years in which the renewable energy production tax credit “has been escalating annually with inflation -- from 1.5¢ per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to the present level of 2.2 ¢/kWh -- the cost of wind turbines and (the cost of) their output has fallen significantly.” During that same period, wind energy capacity in the United States grew by 30 times.

So, Styles said, “in effect, we're subsidizing today's relatively mature onshore wind technology by a larger proportion than we did when it was in its infancy. That makes no sense, especially in the current environment.”

One factor which might call into question the competitiveness of wind energy in the marketplace is the new abundance of domestically produced natural gas in the United States.

But Ellen Carey, a spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association said, “One of the reasons the U.S. is able to enjoy this new abundant source of low priced natural gas was the multi-decade government support of the Section 29 production tax credit for unconventional gas. The production tax credit for wind energy ensures we build a diverse and stable portfolio of energy and do not over rely on a single energy source which exposes us to potential volatility.”

House and Senate leaders are making a last-ditch effort to revive stalled legislation to overhaul federal transportation programs — Congress' best bet for passage of a major jobs bill this year — but prospects for passage before the November election are dimming.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, as well as two key committee chairmen, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., are scheduled to meet Tuesday to try to reach an agreement on how to handle a collection of sensitive policy and financing matters still in dispute.

A 47-member House-Senate committee has been holding negotiations on the bill for over a month, but they have been unable to reach agreement on a host of difficult issues, lawmakers involved in the process and their staffs said.

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Time is running extremely short. Authority to spend money from the Highway Trust Fund — the main source of federal transportation aid to states — expires June 30. As a practical matter, congressional leaders need to make a decision by about Wednesday on whether to continue to try to pass a comprehensive bill, or whether seek a temporary extension of transportation programs. There are only about a half dozen days left in the month in which Congress is scheduled to be in session, and it takes time to prepare an extension bill and pass it.

Boehner has already signaled that if there is to be an extension, it should be at least six months long. That would push off the question of how to shore up the trust fund — which is forecast to go broke sometime next year — until after the election. Highway and transit programs have limped along under a series of nine extensions since the last long-term transportation bill expired in 2009.

The Senate passed a bipartisan, $109 billion transportation bill earlier that year that would consolidate current programs, give states more flexibility on how they spend federal aid and streamline environmental regulations to speed up completion of highway projects. House Republicans also crafted a comprehensive bill, but were unable to pass the measure. There are deep divisions within the GOP about whether transportation programs should be forced to live entirely with the revenue generated by federal gas taxes and other user fees, even if it means cutting programs by more than a third.

After several tries, House leaders gave up trying to pass their bill, and instead passed what was effectively a shell bill designed to meet legislative requirements necessary to begin negotiations with the Senate.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to lawmakers Monday urging them not to give up on a comprehensive bill. To do so would mean "the economic growth potential of infrastructure investment would be squandered and job losses would likely continue in the coming months and years," wrote Bruce Josten, the chamber's executive vice president.

The Senate late Monday broke a deadlock that had threatened to bring down a half-trillion-dollar farm and food bill, setting the stage for expected passage of the measure later this week.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced a list of 73 amendments that were acceptable to both parties. That was out of the approximately 300 proposed amendments to the measure, a 1,000-page bill that will set farm policy over the next five years and provide nearly $80 billion a year for the federal food stamp program.

The two parties had negotiated for days on a package of allowable amendments, with the main sticking point being amendments concerning such issues as foreign policy and budgetary matters that were unrelated to the farm bill.

The Senate will start voting on the amendments Tuesday with much of the attention centered on proposals to cut food stamp spending or put limits on subsidies offered farmers for crop insurance.

The farm bill differs significantly from past farm policy in eliminating direct payments to farmers even when they don't plant crops, and instead stressing crop insurance and a new program that compensates growers for revenue losses.

Senate Agriculture Committee chairman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., says the bill will save $23.6 billion over the next decade by ending direct payments, consolidating conservation programs and eliminating abuses in the food stamp program.

"This farm bill is unlike any other before it," she said. "It cuts spending, ends subsidies, improves accountability and strengthens healthy food systems. We are now closer than ever to achieving real reform in America's agriculture policy."

Even with Senate passage, the bill could face an uphill battle in the House, where conservative opposition to farm bill spending is high. The House Agriculture Committee has been waiting for the Senate to act before moving ahead with its version.

The House is also expected to be more sympathetic to Southern rice and peanut farmers who rely more heavily on direct payments and want changes in the Senate safety net provisions.

The current farm bill expires at the end of September.

North Dakota voters on Tuesday soundly rejected a ballot measure that sought to make the oil-rich state the first to abolish property taxes, a move critics said would have undermined local governments and forced an increase in taxes overall.

The measure, which would have required state lawmakers to come up with a way to replace $812 million in lost property tax revenues for 2012 alone, was defeated by a vote of 77.5 percent to 22.5 percent, with 70 percent of precincts reporting.

A varied coalition organized opposition to the measure, including the North Dakota Chamber of Commerce, which said it was looking for "broad based" reform of personal income, corporate and sales taxes as well as property taxes.

"We would like to see all levels of our taxes go down, spread it across all of our tax streams," Jon Godfread, vice president of governmental affairs for the chamber, said in a telephone interview before the polls closed.

Supporters of the proposal called property taxes among the most regressive and argued that North Dakota's booming oil economy has produced low unemployment levels and hefty budget surpluses that would make the transition easier.

"The surplus makes it easy for us to fund whatever revenue might be lost when the measure passes," said Charlene Nelson, chairwoman of the group that proposed the measure.

Nelson said earlier that the group did not expect the measure to be approved by voters, but they would try again next year if lawmakers fail to approve broad-based tax changes.

"We will give them a chance," Nelson said. "My guess is they will be unable, unwilling, incapable of reforming this tax because it really is unfixable."

The measure would have eliminated $812 million in property tax revenue from 2012 and $1.8 billion from the next two-year budget period, according to a nonpartisan legislative analysis.

The measure also would have required North Dakota state legislators to replace lost revenue to cities, counties, townships, school districts and other political subdivisions without specifying how that was to be done.

Moody's had issued a special comment on the measure, saying that if voters were to approve it, local and municipal governments in North Dakota would face significant financial pressure.

Updated at 3:05pm ET The Senate struggled Thursday to push forward a bill to restructure the U.S. Postal Service, but still lacked accord on which amendments the senators would be allowed to offer.

“We’re really very, very close to getting something done,” said Majority Leader Harry Reid Thursday afternoon. “Our main issue now is whether there will be a 50-vote hurdle or a 60-vote hurdle,” he said.

The Postal Service is headed for financial collapse and perhaps for a taxpayer bailout. Whether Congress can avert this outcome and save it is the question that the Senate has been debating this week as it considers a bipartisan agency restructuring bill.

Reid warned on the Senate floor Thursday, “Those of you who are holding up the bill because you don’t like it, you may not like what the result of having no bill is.”

He also said, “If there is no bill, the post office will be drastically hit.”

Reid and his colleagues face a deadline: the Postal Service has agreed to a moratorium on closing any postal retail facilities until May 15, to allow Congress time to devise a way to resuscitate an enterprise that, if it were in the private sector, would be on the brink of bankruptcy or liquidation. 

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., seen in this February 2012 file photo, said it was "unthinkable" that the Postal Service could cease operation.

If Congress does not act by that deadline, the postmaster general will close more than 200 mail processing plants and take other cost-cutting steps.

But there’s discord among senators over what “saving” the Postal Service would really mean, whether it’s worth saving, and whether small towns from Maine to Montana will lose the post offices that serve as their community anchors.

“Its failure would deliver a crushing blow to our economy at a time when the economy is already fragile and it would be particularly harmful to people living and working in rural America,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the chief Republican co-sponsor of the restructuring bill.

The legislation’s other chief sponsor, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said, “This bill will keep the Postal Service alive and I think it will keep it well and put it on the path to surviving forever – but in a different way …”

Noting that the Postal Service still delivers 563 million pieces of mail each day, Lieberman said it was “unthinkable” that it could cease operation, calling it “not just a relic of the 18^th century but a pivotal part of the 21^st century.”

Related: Save Postal Service! No, don’t! Readers weigh in

The Lieberman-Collins bill would use an $11 billion refund from Federal Employee Retirement system to offer buyouts of up to $25,000 to postal workers. Half of the Postal Service workforce of 557,000 employees is eligible for full or early retirement, Lieberman said. If 100,000 were to retire, the Postal Service would save $8 billion a year.

The bill also relaxes the tight schedule for Postal Service payments into a fund for retiree health care, easing its cash flow problem. And for at least two years, it would halt the end of Saturday mail delivery, as other cost-cutting measures were implemented.

Action on the bill was temporarily derailed when Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., tried on Tuesday to get a vote on an amendment to the postal bill aimed at cutting off U.S. aid to Egypt unless Cairo ends prosecution of American citizens pursuing pro-democracy action in the African nation.

Leaders of each party were working to reach a deal to allow votes on a limited number of amendments to the legislation. If there’s no deal on amendments, there will be a vote to move ahead on the bill Thursday morning and Republicans might block it if they can’t get the chance to vote on amendments they want.

Although Cairo, Egypt is long way from Cairo, Kentucky, Paul defended his effort to get a floor vote on his amendment.

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., speaks at a news conference on the 2013 budget March 8, 2012 in Washington, DC.

“I was never preventing any action (on the postal bill). I just want a 15-minute vote,” he told reporters on Wednesday. The Postal Service, he said “is losing $4 billion a year and I think the American people would like to know why we’re sending money to Egypt when we can’t fund our own enterprises in this country.”

According to a report issued Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s fiscal watchdog, transactions at postal retail facilities have decreased by 18 percent over the past five years, while mail volume has declined by more than 20 percent. In fiscal year 2011, the Postal Service had a $5.1 billion loss and did not make its $5.5 billion retiree health benefits payment to the federal government.

“Approximately 80 percent of its retail facilities do not generate sufficient revenue to cover their costs,” the GAO reported, yet “the number of USPS-operated retail facilities, about 32,000, has remained largely unchanged” over the past five years.

An opponent of the Lieberman-Collins bill, Sen. John McCain, R- Ariz., said, “It is very clear that Congress and the Postal Service cannot make decisions.” The only solution, he said, would be an independent commission (akin to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission which closed military bases) to shut down redundant or money-losing facilities.

Mocking the Lieberman-Collins bill’s two-year study of cost control measures before eliminating Saturday mail delivery,  McCain said sarcastically during Tuesday’s floor debate, “Now isn’t that marvelous! Two years to study! It’s delaying what is absolutely necessary and that is to have five-day-a-week delivery.”

Illustrating the home-state concerns felt by almost all senators on closing postal facilities, Collins passionately defended a mail processing center in Hampden, a town in northern Maine. Closing it would mean that a letter sent from one town in northern Maine to another town just ten miles away would take a 600-mile roundtrip, she said.

“That (Hampden) plant could be downsized, but it should never be closed” she insisted.

Karen Bleier / AFP - Getty Images

Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, is seen during the Senate Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Subcommittee hearing in this June 23, 2010 file photo on Capitol Hill.

NBCPolitics.com asked Collins Wednesday whether her die-hard defense of Hampden didn’t precisely illustrate the problem – few senators or House members are willing to allow a facility in his or her state or district to be closed -- so few are ever shuttered.

“The problem is there are (under current law) not (legal) standards when a center or a post office should be closed,” she explained. The Lieberman-Collins bill would set such standards. “Our bill does not say that not a single post office or processing plant can be closed. Nor do we dictate that certain numbers should be closed.” Instead the bill sets what Collins called “logical standards” to determine which ones should be shut.

Under the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act, the Postal Service was supposed to be financially self-sufficient, covering its costs through postal rates and fees. But in its previous reform efforts, Congress has shown that it manages and sometimes micromanages the Postal Service, even as it advocates self-sustainability.

This week’s GAO report blamed Congress itself for making it impossible for the Postal Service to operate as a profitable private-sector firm would.

The GAO said, “On one hand, USPS is supposed to ‘act like a business’ and be self-financing, but on the other hand, it is restricted by law from making decisions that businesses would commonly make, such as closing unprofitable units.” For example, under federal law, no small post office can be closed solely for operating at a deficit.

Paul seems to see the Postal Service as a lost cause, calling the Lieberman-Collins effort was “too little, too late. I always ask people would you like to buy the Postal Service? If we could just sell it to somebody,” he mused and then pondered another idea: “Declaring bankruptcy – I don’t know if you could do it technically – but there’s been some discussion of that.” Declaring bankruptcy would allow the Postal Service to abrogate contracts with its labor unions “and start all over” with new contracts, he said.

But the Kentucky freshman senator acknowledged, “People are emotional” about closing post offices. “People come to me … Republicans who say, ‘I supported you (in the 2010 election), I’m part of the Tea Party, but don’t close my post office.’”

The Obama administration says it is saving taxpayers billions of dollars in improper payments to vendors and contractors, the result of a concerted attempt to reduce errors and instances of fraud in outside expenditures. To better coordinate the effort among executive agencies, it is launching a new online tool to cut waste.

The administration planned to announce Thursday that agencies have already exceeded President Barack Obama's goal, set in 2010, of recovering $2 billion in overpayments to contractors by the end of September. The administration has already reported that the government reduced its rate of improper payments in 2010 and 2011, potentially saving $20 billion over the period.

The announcement comes amid a growing scandal over spending at the General Services Administration, the agency in charge of the federal government's buildings and supplies. The agency's inspector general reported this month that the GSA spent about $823,000 for a 2010 conference at a Las Vegas resort.

The administration is drawing attention to its fight on waste as Republicans and the party's likely presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, increasingly cast Obama as a tax-and-spend liberal who has expanded the government.

An administration official provided information on the improper payments effort on condition of anonymity to discuss the program ahead of its announcement.

The official said the administration was able to surpass its savings goal for the current fiscal year with the help of Medicare and Medicaid audits that have lowered excess payments in the health programs.

In his budget plan earlier this year, Obama set a goal of saving $102 billion over the next 10 years by cutting down payment errors and by improving collection of outstanding debts. To help with that effort, the Treasury Department is creating a "Do Not Pay" online site to help match various government databases and keep better track of expenditures.

The technology, officials say, would help target improper pension payments to deceased retirees or payments to contractors who have been barred from doing business with the government.

Even though the word “stimulus” isn’t a big part of Democrats’ political vocabulary any more, the reality of federal spending is still a major factor in the U.S. economy.

Some congressional Democrats who voted for the $830 billion stimulus bill in 2009 no longer use the word “stimulus,” but one prominent Democrat, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, wasn’t shy about doing so Thursday in making the case for the $109 billion transportation bill the Senate is likely to vote on next week.

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Schumer cited the estimate by the American Public Transport Association that every $1 billion in federal spending on highways creates 36,000 jobs.

“At this point in time, that kind of stimulus, in a sense, would serve the economy well and would be needed,” Schumer told Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke as he tried to get him to endorse the concept of more federal spending on highways.

Bernanke was cautious about playing along with Schumer: “Well senator, you know, there are different ways to provide stimulus. Infrastructure -- if it’s well designed and has a good return -- I think is often a good approach, but you understand that I don’t want to endorse a specific bill,” he told Schumer.

The economy is still sluggish, as Bernanke said in his testimony this week: “The job market remains far from normal; the unemployment rate remains elevated, long-term unemployment is still near record levels, and the number of persons working part time for economic reasons is very high.”

And the economy is still highly dependent on federal spending -- a point also made in a different way this week by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, in his testimony to the Senate Budget Committee.

Defense contractors, he warned, are already beginning to brace themselves for the effect of the automatic sequester -- the cut of an additional $55 billion in defense spending in the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1 if Congress and Obama can’t figure out a way to avoid the sequester.

“It's already beginning to have an effect on our defense industrial base,” Dempsey told the Budget Committee. “Although we can wait until the summer (to figure out how to avert the sequester), there are some corporations in our defense industrial base who, with the specter of sequestration hanging over them, are already making some decisions about their workforce. And so this is an immediate problem for them that will become a problem for us eventually.”