WASHINGTON – For years, government care and benefits for veterans were often hard to get because of bureaucratic or geographic hurdles.

But that may be changing.

Veterans’ advocates – including lawmakers and the newly appointed leaders of the Veterans Affairs Department – are pushing sweeping reforms in benefits and management practices to modernize the system. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, is shepherding a raft of legislation that would enhance education benefits, increase access to medical care and raise income ceilings that cut off access to services.

“This legislation expands insurance programs and secures cost-of-living increases for certain benefits, some of which have not been updated for decades,” Akaka said.

All this comes as the VA is facing new challenges dealing with wounded veterans from two ongoing wars – many in need of extensive medical care.

Almost 40 percent of the veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan have sought help through the VA health system, with 300,000 reporting mental health conditions. Suicides among veterans who saw combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have spiked.

The VA budget is still in its earliest stages, but rough estimates of the cost of some of these reforms reach the tens of billions of dollars.

Many veterans applaud the reforms but contend that the VA has a long way to go to regain its credibility. And, many say, the Obama administration hasn’t helped. Last month, the administration rescinded a proposal to charge insurers for the treatment of service-connected disabilities or illnesses after it raised hackles among vets. Meanwhile, according to Senate testimony from top VA officials, waiting periods on benefit claims are sometimes six months or longer.

Reports by the Government Accountability Office in recent years have concluded that the VA has concealed funding problems and failed to implement key recommendations to improve treatment for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Both veterans and the VA staff have long been done a disservice by a top-down bureaucracy that has failed to be honest with Congress and resistant to change,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

The VA’s new secretary, former Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, has promised to modernize the agency and streamline the delivery of benefits. He has said his top priorities include implementing the new Veterans’ Assistance Act, which expands educational benefits for vets who have served since Sept. 11, 2001. He has promised to try to expand benefits to many middle-income vets who were excluded under the Bush administration because they made more than about $30,000 annually.

But perhaps one of the most daunting challenges the VA faces is providing care to veterans who don’t live near VA facilities.

One idea before Congress includes expanding benefits to cover emergency care for veterans outside the VA system.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testifies before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on U.S.-Mexico border violence last week in Washington.

WASHINGTON – The time is right for striking at the Mexican drug cartels, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Tuesday.

“We have a unique opportunity now in time because of the priority this has taken with the president of Mexico to break up these cartels,” said the former Arizona governor and federal prosecutor.

Mexican President Felipe Calderón has been widely praised by the Obama administration for his courage in taking on the cartels that have ravaged northern Mexico and spread into the U.S.

Napolitano said she hopes an upcoming series of meetings with Mexican officials involving her, President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder will lead to more U.S. interdiction on southbound guns and cash.

But she said the Mexican government will be pressed on what resources it’s going to put into Mexico’s northern territories to fight the cartels.

“Having the president of Mexico take the lead is something new,” she said. “Clearly, putting his administration behind this – that’s a unique opportunity.”

Federal officials say Mexico’s drug cartels have infiltrated as many as 230 U.S. cities.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and panel top Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine introduced legislation Tuesday to provide an additional $550 million to fight drug violence along the border.

By John Yaukey, Deborah Barfield Berry

WASHINGTON — Mexico’s increasingly brazen drug cartels have infiltrated as many 230 U.S. cities and now represent the most serious organized-crime threat to the United States, top administration officials told lawmakers Wednesday.

“The cartels have fingertips that reach throughout the United States,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a Senate panel.

The former Arizona governor and federal prosecutor agreed with assessments by lawmakers that the drug cartels represent “an existential threat” to the Mexican government, and that the violence they’ve spawned fighting each other has started affecting innocent Americans.

It was one of the gravest assessments by Napolitano to date of the chaotic situation along the border, where murders have spiked in Mexico and kidnappings have risen to alarming levels in border communities, most notably Phoenix.

“The danger here is clear and present,” said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Napolitano’s testimony before the committee came a day after the Obama administration unveiled a major escalation of interdiction efforts along the southern border.

On Tuesday, the administration announced it’s sending hundreds of federal agents, along with high-tech surveillance gear and drug-sniffing dogs, to the Southwest, mainly to keep violence from bleeding over the U.S.-Mexico border.

National Guard troops could be sent to protect the border if the situation worsens, Napolitano said.

But Obama administration officials have stressed that they are not eager to militarize the border.

The violence has prompted a series of high-level visits, which are already under way. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was heading to Mexico on Wednesday for talks with President Felipe Calderon and his administration.

Napolitano, Attorney General Eric Holder and Obama are also scheduled to visit Mexico in the coming days and weeks.

Still, some lawmakers voiced concern that the ramp-up might not be enough.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., commended the Obama plan, but warned, “I’m convinced that we must do much, much more,” including cracking down on demand for drugs in the U.S.

In a rare moment, Lieberman asked Napolitano if she needed more funding.

“If we need to scale up, that is something we will bring to you,” Napolitano said.

Much of the U.S. support for Mexico comes through the Merida Initiative, a security deal with Mexico and Central American countries that funds training, intelligence and equipment to combat drug trafficking and money laundering.

Congress allocated $300 million for the Merida Initiative for 2009 – $150 million less than the Bush administration and Mexico had sought. Congress and the Obama administration are now working on the 2010 budget.

Napolitano said the administration’s plan is focused on:

— Stopping gun and cash shipments from going south into Mexico. This is a major part of the problem, she said.

“We need to get beyond getting lucky at lane inspections,” she said. A recent quick sweep by U.S. officials netted almost 1,000 guns and $300,000 in cash, all headed into Mexico, Napolitano said.

She also called for tracing guns used in crimes in Mexico.

Holder has talked about re-instating the ban on assault weapons that expired in 2004 during the Bush administration, but Napolitano said existing laws could be used to effectively prosecute the gunrunners supplying the Mexican cartels.

“I’ve got to play the hand of cards I have,” she said.

• Supporting state and local law enforcement along the border.

• Backing Calderon in his brutal war against the cartels.

“President Calderon has taken courageous and decisive action,” said James Steinberg, deputy secretary of state.

WASHINGTON — Arizona’s lawmakers will find themselves at the heart of some of the nation’s most important debates as the new Congress moves from the economic rescue package onto the broader agenda of national business beginning Tuesday.

Seniority, committee appointments and personal experience put the state’s two senators and eight House members at the forefront of what promises to be contentious debates over the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, federal spending and the economy, energy, immigration, judicial nominations and the future of the beleaguered Republican Party.

The stimulus package

Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl already have clashed with the White House and Democrats in managing much of the Republican opposition to the recent $787 billion economic rescue package, which passed on a party-line vote.

As GOP whip, Kyl is responsible for making sure Senate Republicans vote as their leaders instruct and is the second most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill.

At a recent news conference in Phoenix, he voiced frustration at what he called the lack of response from Democrats to his efforts to work with them on the stimulus package.

“We didn’t have just one alternative,” said Kyl, who also sits on the Finance Committee. “We tried several different approaches to see if our Democratic friends would embrace any of them.”

They didn’t. McCain’s proposal to cut the package in half was defeated along party lines.

Kyl and McCain say the final rescue package was railroaded. Only three Republicans voted for it in the Senate. In the House, no Republicans supported it, and 11 Democrats opposed it.

Debate over the stimulus drew a sharp line between Arizona’s fiscally conservative senators and an administration looking to spend its way out of a deepening recession in ways reminiscent of the 1930s.

The war in Afghanistan

What to do in Afghanistan will be another point where President Barack Obama and McCain either agree or collide.

On Wednesday, McCain, top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, will deliver a widely anticipated speech in Washington on “Winning the War in Afghanistan.”

Three and a half years ago, McCain gave a speech on the Iraq war that helped make the case for a troop “surge” that appears to have worked, at least for now.

So far, McCain and Obama agree the campaign in Afghanistan is failing, and that more troops are needed.

But the two could part ways over the specifics of what to do in a region where virtually every invading army since Alexander the Great has left either a loser or just exhausted.

So far, much of the debate over the war has centered on its lack of direction.

The Taliban are resurgent. Last year, U.S. and NATO casualties — 155 on the U.S. side alone — hit their highest level since the war began.

Last week, Obama ordered 17,000 more troops into the theater. McCain welcomed the move, but said the campaign is drifting aimlessly.

“I believe the president must spell out for the American people what he believes victory in Afghanistan will look like,” he said. “Today, notwithstanding the administration’s ongoing policy reviews, there exists no integrated … plan for this war.”

Arizona Reps. Trent Franks, R-2nd District, and Gabrielle Giffords, D-8th District, sit on the House Armed Services Committee and will have a strong voice in the war debate as it moves through Congress.

Judicial nominees

Judicial nominees, could become another source of confrontation between the administration and Republicans — notably Kyl, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee where all Supreme Court nominees are first vetted in the Senate.

Kyl is considered a traditional conservative — but not an ideologue — according to ratings by 10 organizations in the Almanac of American Politics. Those include the American Civil Liberties Union on the left and the American Conservative Union on the right.

Kyl could play a leading role in the debate over as many as four Supreme Court nominees, depending on how age, retirements and illness play out.

Immigration

Congressional leaders have not yet clarified their plans for immigration reform. The faltering economy and Democratic distaste for the issue have made it less of a priority.

Still, Arizona’s congressional bench is stacked with important voices on the subject, including its newest addition, Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-1st District, who sits on the Homeland Security Committee.

Arizona’s former governor, Janet Napolitano, now the secretary of homeland security, also will play a leading role in shaping immigration policy.

Four leading Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee have asked Attorney General Eric Holder and Napolitano to investigate civil rights complaints stemming from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s crackdowns on illegal immigration.

Both agencies are assessing the situation.

On Capitol Hill, McCain and Kyl have clashed on immigration.

In 2005, Kyl opposed a comprehensive immigration bill that McCain authored with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., that included a controversial provision for an immigrant guest-worker program.

Since losing the presidential election, McCain has spoken of the need to heal rifts with the Hispanic community as part of a larger strategy to rebuild the battered Republican Party brand.

Despite taking a moderate approach to immigration, McCain won only 31 percent of the Hispanic vote.

Former President George W. Bush won 45 percent of that demographic in 2004.

Former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano testifies before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on Thursday on her nomination as Homeland Security Secretary.

WASHINGTON — Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, President-elect Barack Obama’s pick to run the Department of Homeland Security, pledged Thursday to get tougher with employers who hire illegal workers.

“You have to deal with illegal immigration from the demand side as well as the supply side,” she told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is expected to send her nomination to the full Senate for a confirmation vote early next week.

“You have deal with what is drawing people across the border, and that is a job,” said Napolitano, who has served as a federal prosecutor and Arizona’s attorney general.

Napolitano didn’t elaborate on her plans for dealing with employers who hire illegal workers. Some critics of immigration reform complain that law enforcement has been lax in prosecuting those employers.

Napolitano’s comments dealt with aspects of a larger immigration strategy that would include fences along the southern border in some places, technology to track human movement and revisiting the controversial Real ID program, which would enhance authentication procedures for state drivers’ licenses.

Napolitano also said improving disaster response, enhancing transportation security and tracking emerging terrorist threats overseas and at home would be among her top priorities.

If confirmed, she would be the nation’s third homeland security secretary, a Cabinet-level position created after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Napolitano could face an early challenge.

President George W. Bush was in office less than eight months before the 2001 terrorist attacks. Shortly after Clinton took office in 2003, terrorists bombed the World Trade Center.

Napolitano’s hearing was cordial, with committee members pledging to back her nomination.

She was flanked by Arizona’s two Republican senators, Jon Kyl and John McCain, who praised her experience, competence and stamina for climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa and beating cancer.

“She will bring a wealth of experience to the department,” Kyl said.

Napolitano was peppered with questions on immigration and border security, and she stressed the kind of practical approach that has won her praise from fellow governors and many national lawmakers.

She said she would meet with the nation’s governors and look for ways to improve the concept behind the Real ID program and lighten the burden it imposes on states. She has opposed the program out of concerns it would cost Arizona too much.

“We need to rethink, revisit, and re-consult here and then come back to this committee if necessary,” she said.

Southern border fences, she said, could be valuable around urban areas. But she said a barrier spanning the entire southern border would be impractical and ineffective in remote regions where technology would work better.

Napolitano was not questioned about the politically charged issue of how to handle raids conducted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. President-elect Barack Obama has been highly critical of the raids.

But after a recent meeting with Napolitano, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Napolitano “will be looking very closely at what ICE has done.”

It’s not clear whether Congress will take up any major immigration reforms soon. If it does, Napolitano is sure to play a central role. The debate fizzled out last year without any resolution, and lawmakers now have a crashing economy to worry about.

Other major issues Napolitano may face include:

• Weapons of mass destruction. A bipartisan commission created by Congress recently issued a chilling report predicting an attack using a weapon of mass destruction is “more likely than not” in the next five years, unless the international community acts.

• Ground transportation and port security. Aviation has received most of the federal government’s attention, but huge security gaps remain in other modes.

“Lets go where the gaps are,” Napolitano said.

• Communication breakdowns. Local and national disaster response teams often can’t communicate because they’re still using old, incompatible radios.

• A daunting bureaucracy with a mixed record. The massive 22-agency Homeland Security Department was hastily created in the wake of the 2001 attacks to better coordinate national responses to threats and disasters.

The Coast Guard was lauded for its daring helicopter rescues during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency was lambasted for its slow response to Katrina.

“The Department of Homeland Security represent perhaps the most serious management challenge in government today,” said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, a member of the homeland security committee.

In this Dec. 3, 2008 file photo, Homeland Security Secretary-designate Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (left) speaks as Vice President-elect Joe Biden, center, is briefed by Jim Talent, co-chair Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, right, at the presidential transition headquarters in Washington.

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ON THE WEB

Homeland Security Department: www.dhs.gov

Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee: hsgac.senate.gov

Head of homeland security committee calls her superb choice

Napolitano

WASHINGTON – Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, tapped by President-elect Barack Obama to lead the Department of Homeland Security, is expected to move quickly and smoothly through the Senate confirmation process beginning next week.

But if she’s confirmed, the two-term governor and former federal prosecutor faces politically charged issues, from how to handle controversial raids conducted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to new intelligence that concludes terrorists probably will acquire mass destruction weapons.

Napolitano met for almost an hour Tuesday with Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that will handle her confirmation hearing. Lieberman later pronounced Napolitano a “superb” nominee and stressed the importance of moving quickly on her confirmation.

Napolitano’s confirmation hearing is scheduled for Jan. 15. Lieberman said he hopes for a full Senate confirmation vote well before the end of the month.

If confirmed, Napolitano will be the nation’s third homeland security secretary.

“The secretary of homeland security, in current reality, is as critically important to our national security as the secretary of defense and the secretary of state, and in some ways, more urgent,” Lieberman said following Tuesday’s meeting with Napolitano.

If the past is any indicator, Napolitano could face an early test. President Bush was in office less than eight months before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Shortly after President Bill Clinton took office in 1993, terrorists bombed the World Trade Center.

The massive 22-agency Homeland Security Department was hastily created in the wake of the 2001 attacks to better coordinate the national response to threats and disasters.

Like most Cabinet nominees, Napolitano has kept a low profile. She avoided reporters as she left Tuesday’s Capitol Hill meetings.

But that ends next week when she’ll tell lawmakers how she would deal with some of the thorniest issues facing the nation, including:

• Immigration. The border-state governor has won praise from lawmakers for what they see as her tough but human approach to immigration.

But Napolitano has taken positions as a governor that she might have to rethink as a national policymaker.

She criticized the decision to pull back the National Guard from the U.S.-Mexico border before some fence work was done. She also opposed the government’s Real ID mandate for biometric identification cards, saying it would unfairly shift costs onto border states like Arizona.

The controversial raids by ICE agents, which critics call too aggressive, are sure to come up during her confirmation hearing.

Obama apparently doesn’t like the way ICE is enforcing policy. In a speech to the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group, he talked about communities being “terrorized by ICE immigration raids.”

Lieberman said Napolitano “will be looking very closely at what ICE has done.”

• Weapons of mass destruction. A bipartisan commission created by Congress recently issued a chilling report predicting an attack using such a weapon is “more likely than not” in the next five years unless the international community acts.

The report concluded, “America’s margin of safety is shrinking.”

In a recent speech, current Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff echoed those concerns, warning that “over the passage of time, the knowledge base that you need in order to fabricate a dirty bomb, a biological weapon or a chemical weapon – that knowledge base expands.”

• Civil liberties. The homeland security secretary must do everything possible to thwart terrorist threats while making sure domestic intelligence gathering doesn’t become too intrusive.

Obama’s decision to pick Leon Panetta to head the CIA signaled that he wants to take a softer approach to intelligence gathering than Bush, who drew fire for what critics called a trampling of civil liberties. Panetta was Clinton’s chief of staff and criticized the Bush administration’s use of torture in interrogating suspected terrorists.

• Cumbersome bureaucracy. The creation of the Homeland Security Department constituted one of the biggest government reorganizations in U.S. history, and its record has been mixed.

The Coast Guard, which is part of the department, won hero status for its daring helicopter rescues during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, also part of the agency, became the poster child for incompetence for its slow response to Katrina.

“Given where we are right now, the relationship between presidential personnel and government performance matters an enormous amount, more than ever, I would say,” said William Galston, a Brookings Institution fellow. “If you doubt the truth of that proposition, just cast your mind back three years to the government’s response to the disaster that hit New Orleans in the form of Hurricane Katrina.”

WASHINGTON — If you’re flying this Thanksgiving, you might have to spend more time waiting in line to get through security.

But take heart — your flight is more likely to be on time, according to a Gannett News Service analysis of federal and private air travel data.

On average, it took just slightly longer in 2007 than in 2006 — an extra 21 seconds — to reach an airport security checkpoint during the busiest time of day over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

But at some airports, the additional wait time was much greater.

The peak wait time at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida, for example, increased about seven minutes to about 16-1/2 minutes from Thanksgiving 2006 to Thanksgiving 2007.

Overall, the average time it took to get through security lines at peak flying times rose to 11-1/2 minutes from 2006 to 2007. The average for the whole day — peak and other times — increased to about four minutes over the same period, an increase of only about 10 seconds.

Betsy Rasmusen, a veteran business traveler from Arlington, Va., views Thanksgiving as the one time of the year to stay away from airports.

“That’s when everyone with all their family belongings — most of which are not allowed as carry-on — try to game the system and ultimately fail,” she said as she walked into Reagan Washington National Airport recently to catch a flight. “It just backs up the lines, and it’s the same every year.”

GNS looked at how long it took travelers to make their way through the line to get to an airport metal detector. Among the nation’s 50 busiest airports, at the busiest time of the day:

• Twenty-nine airports reported longer wait times in 2007 — an average of about two-and-a-half minutes longer.

• Twenty-one airports reported improvements averaging about three minutes.

• The Norman Mineta San Jose International Airport and the John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Calif., posted some of the most improved times.

Mineta cut almost nine minutes off its average peak wait time of more than 19 minutes by rerouting travelers around hurdles created by ongoing construction.

“We worked with TSA (the Transportation Security Administration) and consolidated some checkpoints where it made sense to help smooth out traffic, and then we launched a construction PR campaign to get the passengers informed,” airport spokesman David Vossbrink said.

• The longest average security-related wait time in 2007 was at Miami International Airport — almost 22 minutes. That was an increase of about three minutes from 2006.

At Miami International, gateway to Latin America, “security is a very serious issue,” said airport spokesman Marc Henderson.

TSA officials, who run security stations at airports, like to keep peak wait times at or below about 12 minutes. On average, they’ve succeeded.

They say they must balance convenience with security, but security comes first.

“We work very closely with the airlines and the airports to keep things moving as smoothly as possible,” TSA spokesman Greg Soule said. “But security is why we’re there.”

Managers at busy airports with longer-than-average wait times say they face obstacles they can’t control. If a storm shuts down flights on a Tuesday, those travelers are back Wednesday, adding to the usual crowd. Mix in holiday travelers who don’t know the security system well, and the lines grow quickly.

“They’re (leisure travelers) often not up on the fastest ways to get through the security lines,” said Greg Meyer, spokesman for Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International.

Although screening times have risen, airlines have been making significant improvements in hitting departure and arrival times.

During the first half of this year, about 72 percent of flights were on schedule, according to data from FlightStats, which tracks flights at virtually all commercial airports nationwide.

That rose to almost 85 percent in October, marking the fifth straight month of improving numbers.

One reason: Fewer planes are in the air.

Airlines will offer almost 3,000 fewer domestic flights a day during the Thanksgiving season, according to a USA TODAY analysis of flight schedules.

“It’s not rocket science,” said Joe Brancatelli, an air travel expert in Cold Spring, N.Y. “Fewer flights means less congestion.”

———

On the Web:

http://waittime.tsa.dhs.gov, Transportation Security Administration site with information on average and maximum wait times at security checkpoints at individual airports.

www.tsa.gov/travelers/index.shtm, Transportation Security Administration advice for travelers.

———

TIPS FOR TRAVELERS

• Check in online and print your boarding pass at home.

• Be nice to airline workers. If something goes wrong, you’re more likely to get help.

• Know your options — other airlines or routes — in case something goes wrong.

• Know your airline’s baggage rules. Most big carriers now charge for even one checked bag.

• Avoid checking bags. If you’re traveling with kids, they’re entitled to a carry-on.

• Board as early as possible to get the overhead bins.

• Watch the weather. If there’s a storm, airlines often will waive change fees. Acting quickly usually leaves you more options.

• Dress for travel and the security search. Avoid metal in clothing. Know the federal 3-1-1 rule for bringing liquids and gels on board.

• Don’t wrap gifts as some may need to be opened for inspection.

By John Yaukey, Robert Benincasa

The two senators running for president have this in common – neither utters the word “pre-emption” when discussing problems abroad.

There is plenty that separates Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain on national security matters.

But seven years after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and President Bush’s subsequent pre-emption doctrine, which was used to justify the Iraq war, the broad thematic talk by both candidates now is about diplomacy, coalitions and the integrated nature of modern global challenges and threats.

It’s a far cry from Bush, who justified his pre-emption doctrine, which permits striking adversaries before they act, by describing the war on terror as an epic struggle against “evildoers” and demanding that all countries choose sides.

Bush eventually invaded Iraq with scant support from traditional major allies. By most accounts, the war has been a near disaster, squandering much of the international good will that followed the terrorist attacks.

“Both Obama and McCain want to signal that there is going to be a bit of a sea change here,” said Stephen Flanagan, director of the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. “Both realize other countries have important input and have powerful levers they can pull as well.”

Obama, who opposed the Iraq war from the start, espouses a foreign policy that integrates the problems of pandemic disease, poverty, collapsing governments, rogue states, nuclear proliferation, extremism, rampant crime, terrorism and climate change into a world view that reflects the realities of a global society.

“He understands that the realities today are not the realities of the world of a decade ago or a generation ago,” said Susan Rice, Obama’s top foreign policy adviser and a scholar at the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution. “This is a different world. The threats are transnational in nature. We need a set of integrated and cooperative solutions.”

In an article for Foreign Affairs journal, Obama writes, “We can neither retreat from the world, nor try to bully it into submission.”

In some important ways, McCain’s worldview is not far from Obama’s.

McCain clearly recognizes the critical role of allies, the global nature of the modern world and the possibility that American policies are occasionally wrong.

“When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right,” he said in a recent speech at the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles. “But we, in turn, must be willing to be persuaded by them.”

McCain has also spoken of the need for a “league of democracies,” a group of like-minded nations pursuing common interests all geared toward “an enduring peace.”

Again, the language he uses is nothing like the tough talk Bush used leading up to the Iraq war when he derided the United Nations as a hapless “debating society.”

“This league of democracies would not supplant the UN or other international organizations but complement them by harnessing the political and moral advantages offered by united democratic action,” McCain said in Los Angeles.

On global warming and torture, McCain has also broken with the Bush administration. Ignoring climate change and torturing captives, McCain has concluded, only weaken American authority abroad.

Bush has only recently recognized global warming as a problem. Since the 9/11 attacks, Bush has sought to retain as much executive control over torture policy as possible rather than submitting to international treaties, the courts or Congress.

Still, the power of allies and international cooperation has not been lost on Bush.

In his second term, there has been something of a course correction on foreign-policy issues other than Iraq with some notable success.

He has managed get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program with the help of a multilateral group that includes China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.

By easing up on the war talk against Iran, Bush has managed to get the traditional U.S. allies in Europe behind an aggressive diplomatic effort to keep the Islamic republic from attaining atomic weapons.

Despite the problems in Iraq, pre-emption and unilateral action remain options for any president.

But Obama and McCain have clearly concluded that in a post-9/11 world, allies bound by shared interests are perhaps the most effective force of all.

John Yaukey is a reporter for Gannett News Service. E-mail: jyaukey@gns.gannett.com

WASHINGTON — Tim and Joan McDivitt owe their new lives to an often-overlooked federal program that helps retrain manufacturing workers who lose their jobs to foreign competition.

After they were laid off in 2005 from an Indiana plant that makes heating and cooling equipment, the McDivitts, of Connersville, Ind., used a program run by the Labor Department to reinvent themselves.

Tim became a substance abuse counselor. Joan is completing her business degree.

“I don’t know where we’d be without it,” Tim said of the program.

Under the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, workers can get up to 130 weeks of training and up to 104 weeks of income support beyond their state’s standard unemployment benefits. They also can use a tax credit to help pay for health insurance. And older workers who are eligible can boost their income for two years if their new job pays less than their old one.

Displaced workers who have used the program say it has saved them from financial ruin, but critics say the government, companies and unions don’t do enough to spread the word about the program, and they say it’s difficult to navigate. They also say it focuses too narrowly on manufacturing jobs lost to foreign competition without covering service jobs now going overseas in droves.

“A job loss is a job loss whether to technology or to trade,” said economist Thomas Palley, founder of the Washington-based Economics for Democratic and Open Societies.

With unemployment climbing, key Senate Democrats say they are close to a bipartisan deal that would significantly expand the trade assistance program to include workers in the service industry, such as call center operators and financial and other consultants.

But the administration is pushing back.

President Bush has threatened to veto an early House bill that would expand trade assistance beyond the roughly 140,000 displaced workers a year it covers now for about $9,000 each. The program will cost about $200 million this fiscal year.

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao has said the proposed expansion would build “a bigger bureaucracy that will make it harder for unemployed workers to access relevant training and reconnect with the job market.”

The White House Office of Management and Budget opposes extending benefits beyond manufacturing workers and has other objections to the House proposal.

The Senate is now at the center of negotiations over trade assistance, but it’s not clear what will emerge from those talks or how Bush will react.

Some of the leading expansion provisions that lawmakers are debating would:

— Allow the government to make workers in entire industries eligible for assistance instead of making determinations company by company.

— Make service workers eligible.

— Expand the program’s health care tax credit and wage subsidy program.

— Give states an incentive to expand their unemployment insurance programs.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, who analyzes trade policy at the conservative-leaning Hudson Institute based in Washington, said improving trade assistance aid should focus more on retraining than jobless benefits.

Under some of the proposed expansion provisions, she said, workers who can least afford it would be encouraged to stay out of work for up to three years and would lose three year’s income.

The McDivitts said the program only encouraged them to get on with the next phase of their life.

Joan will graduate this summer from Indiana Wesleyan University, and Tim said his work helping substance-addicted people is “deeply rewarding.”

“This has been a godsend for us,” Tim McDivitt said.

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On the Web:

www.doleta.gov/programs/factsht/taa.htm, Trade Adjustment Assistance program fact sheet.

www.hudson.org, Hudson Institute.

WASHINGTON – As gas prices soar past $4 a gallon, speculators who buy and sell futures contracts in the oil market have emerged as the latest villains behind rising energy costs.

“There is clearly a supply-and-demand problem in the oil markets,” said Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland and an expert on the oil futures markets. “But there is also clearly a speculation premium. We’re paying a tax that is being collected by speculators.”

Greenberger estimates that premium could be as high as 25 percent per barrel of oil, which hit $135.42 near week’s end.

Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, estimates at least 70 cents of the current gallon price of gasoline is due “to pure speculation.”

Since Congress eased regulations on energy futures markets in 2000, “they have become more volatile and prices have skyrocketed,” said Tyson Slocum, an energy expert with Public Citizen.

Meanwhile, consumers recently were told they should get used to paying at least $4 a gallon for gas through next year, with oil prices expected to stay well above $100 a barrel.

Prices should hover around $126 a barrel in 2009, about $4 higher than this year, Guy Caruso, head of the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration, told lawmakers June 11.

Even as Caruso testified, oil inventories fell and the July delivery price for light, sweet crude oil jumped to nearly $136 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The week before, the price of crude oil jumped almost 9 percent in a single day, to $138.54 a barrel. Oil prices have risen 44 percent so far this year, undercutting economic growth already dampened by the housing crisis.

The commodities exchanges that handle trading in oil futures have been on the defensive for some time. They say they’re being vilified unfairly for a problem caused by basic economic forces. Rising demand for oil from China and India, they argue, is outstripping supply by 1 million barrels a day.

Volatility in Nigeria and other major oil producers is adding an “instability premium” as well.

“It’s fundamentally a supply and demand problem,” said Sarah Stashak, spokeswoman for Atlanta-based IntercontinentalExchange.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill, besieged by complaints from motorists, aren’t so sure it’s that simple.

Some key members of committees that oversee commodities exchanges have said they favor tighter regulations on the energy futures trading, and they’ve voiced growing frustration with the agencies tasked with overseeing it, most notably the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., called the commission a “toothless tiger,” and Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., called for an overhaul of energy futures regulations.

“As my grandfather would say, trust everyone, but cut the cards,” he said. “We not only need to cut the cards – we need a new deal here.”

Regulators are responding to the heat.

A special task force including the CFTC, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department met for the first time earlier this month to take a closer look at crude oil trading markets and consider tougher oversight.

Officials at the CFTC recently said they want to collect more trading data to see if speculation is a real problem.

That won’t be easy. Futures markets have grown dramatically in size and complexity in recent years. Trading on futures markets has grown sixfold since 2000, when a group of energy companies, including Enron, convinced Congress to ease regulations on energy markets.

Commodities have become attractive to investors of all kinds as stocks have tanked. Big investment funds especially have poured money into commodities, seeking a hedge against inflation and the weak dollar.

Tracking this flurry of investing and trading will be a formidable challenge for the CFTC.

Commodity trading often occurs on “dark markets” that aren’t fully transparent or are regulated by foreign agencies because of their global reach.

And the CFTC already is overburdened.

“Since the CFTC opened its doors 33 years ago, the volume on the futures exchanges has grown 8,000 percent while the CFTC’s staffing numbers have fallen 12 percent,” acting CFTC Chairman Walter Lukken recently told a Senate panel. “This is a small agency doing an extraordinary job under difficult circumstances.”

WASHINGTON – As gas prices soar past $4 a gallon, speculators who buy and sell futures contracts in the oil market have emerged as the latest villains behind rising energy costs.

“There is clearly a supply and demand problem in the oil markets,” said Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland and an expert on the oil futures markets. “But there is also clearly a speculation premium. We’re paying a tax that is being collected by speculators.”

Greenberger estimates that premium could be as high as 25 percent per barrel of oil, which hit $135.42 near week’s end.

Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, estimates at least 70 cents of the current gallon price of gasoline is due “to pure speculation.”

Since Congress eased regulations on energy futures markets in 2000, “they have become more volatile and prices have skyrocketed,” said Tyson Slocum, an energy expert with Public Citizen.

Meanwhile, consumers recently were told they should get used to paying at least $4 a gallon for gas through next year, with oil prices expected to stay well above $100 a barrel.

Prices should hover around $126 a barrel in 2009, about $4 higher than this year, Guy Caruso, head of the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration, told lawmakers June 11.

Even as Caruso testified, oil inventories fell and the July delivery price for light, sweet crude oil jumped to nearly $136 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The week before, the price of crude oil jumped almost 9 percent in a single day to $138.54 a barrel. Oil prices have risen 44 percent so far this year, undercutting economic growth already dampened by the housing crisis.

The commodities exchanges that handle trading in oil futures have been on the defensive for some time and say they’re being vilified unfairly for a problem caused by basic economic forces. Rising demand for oil from China and India, they argue, is outstripping supply by 1 million barrels a day.

Volatility in Nigeria and other major oil producers is adding an “instability premium” as well.

“It’s fundamentally a supply and demand problem,” said Sarah Stashak, spokeswoman for the Atlanta-based IntercontinentalExchange.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill, besieged by complaints from motorists, aren’t so sure it’s that simple.

Some key members of committees that oversee commodities exchanges have said they favor tighter regulations on the energy futures trading, and they’ve voiced growing frustration with the agencies tasked with overseeing it, most notably the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., called the commission a “toothless tiger,” and Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., called for an overhaul of energy futures regulations.

“As my grandfather would say, trust everyone, but cut the cards,” he said. “We not only need to cut the cards — we need a new deal here.”

Regulators are responding to the heat.

A special task force including the CFTC, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department met for the first time earlier this month to take a closer look at crude oil trading markets and consider tougher oversight.

Officials at the CFTC recently said they want to collect more trading data to see if speculation is a real problem.

But that won’t be easy. Futures markets have grown dramatically in size and complexity in recent years. Trading on futures markets has grown sixfold since 2000, when a group of energy companies, including Enron, convinced Congress to ease regulations on energy markets.

Commodities have become attractive to investors of all kinds as stocks have tanked. Big investment funds especially have poured money into commodities, seeking a hedge against inflation and the weak dollar.

Tracking this flurry of investing and trading will be a formidable challenge for the CFTC.

Commodity trading often occurs on “dark markets” that aren’t fully transparent or are regulated by foreign agencies because of their global reach.

And the CFTC already is overburdened.

“Since the CFTC opened its doors 33 years ago, the volume on the futures exchanges has grown 8,000 percent while the CFTC’s staffing numbers have fallen 12 percent,” acting CFTC Chairman Walter Lukken recently told a Senate panel. “This is a small agency doing an extraordinary job under difficult circumstances.”

With U.S. forces trickling out of Iraq, the Bush administration is touting 2008 as a year of major transition and improvement.

Just as it did 2003, ’04, ’05, ’06 and ’07.

For all the cynicism about the war – now entering its sixth year — it has undeniably turned a corner. Violence is down, and political reconciliation among the Iraqis is advancing, albeit haltingly.

The question now is whether the Iraqis can build toward sustainable improvement so U.S. troop levels can come down significantly.

“Can you get the Iraqi forces to really take over?” said Anthony Cordesman, a military expert from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, just back from Iraq. “Can you find ways to move money and services in for governance and development?”

Or will Iraq again tumble into a familiar pattern of violence punctuated by exhaustion and rearming as it did after the fall of Baghdad in 2003, the Shiite rebellion in 2004, the violence that followed Iraq’s first election in 2005 or the sectarian civil war of 2006 and ’07?

Here’s what some of the leading experts are watching as they assess where the Iraq campaign is headed and what’s in store for the U.S. troops there.

Petraeus, Crocker report
Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the ambassador there, are scheduled to deliver a much-anticipated second report to President Bush and Congress this spring. They will discuss how the now yearlong troop surge is going, future troop levels and Iraq’s progress toward competent self-governance.

Their first report in September changed the dialogue on the war.

Petraeus’ insistence that the surge was working, backed by undeniable statistics, put war opponents on their heels and laid the groundwork for a successful defense of the war in the Senate in the months that followed. Citing Petraeus, the Republican minority thwarted some 40 votes aimed at ending or shortening the war.

Barring any major spikes in violence, Petraeus and Crocker are expected to reaffirm the success of the surge this spring.

Petraeus has suggested he will recommend halting the withdrawal of some of the surge troops to ensure the hard won security gains are not lost.

War opponents are already preparing for rebuttal, but they face two men of considerable credibility.

Troop fatigue
This summer, the Army is expected to announce it will cut combat deployments from 15 to 12 months.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey recently told lawmakers the anticipated halt in the withdrawal of surge troops shouldn’t affect that.

But the Army is clearly exhausted from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Combat decorated captains and majors, poised for stellar military careers, are leaving the force in large numbers while suicides have hit alarming levels.

Another major outbreak of violence in Iraq could further strain an Army already starting to buckle.

“The cumulative effects of the last six years of war have left our Army out of balance, consumed by the current fight and unable to do the things we know we need to,” Casey testified.

Iran
Top Army generals report that as the violence in Iraq has subsided, neighboring Iran has lowered its profile in the war.

The Shiite nation had been supplying Iraq’s Shiite militias with advanced explosives and other weapons, but that has trailed off for the time being.

Still, Iran remains a powerful military and political force across Iraq’s Shiite-dominated southern provinces. It could easily become a major problem for U.S. forces at any time.

Reconciliation, rebuilding
The purpose of the troop surge was to give Iraq’s fractious political constituencies breathing room to negotiate.

The plan was for this to happen top-down, but the opposite occurred. Local tribal leaders have been striking security and economic deals on their own.

Oil revenue is being shared without an overarching agreement. And some of the critical national legislation has passed, albeit years behind schedule.

But this is all very tenuous. If it starts to break down, security could go with it.

Reconstruction has not gone well, by any account.

Americans and Iraqis have spent $100 billion on rebuilding, but output in critical areas such as water and electricity supply remain at or below pre-war levels, according to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. Projects remain half finished. Money vanishes.

Cease-fires
The drop in violence is in large part the result of two major movements among the warring Shiites and Sunnis.

Seven months ago, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his fearsome militia to lay down arms, and several weeks ago, he called for a six-month extension.

Some of the top Sunni tribal leaders, meanwhile, have turned away from the insurgency and sided with Iraqi and U.S. forces in hopes of earning a legitimate place in the new Iraq.

If either of these tenuous developments crumbles, experts fear, it would likely take the other with it.

At that point, U.S. forces would find themselves back where they were a year ago – in the middle of a Sunni-Shiite civil war.

John Yaukey is a reporter for Gannett News Service. E-mail: jyaukey@gns.gannett.com.

Bush also expected to talk extensively on the war in Iraq

President Bush hit the road in 2006 on the Tuesday following his State of the Union speech to stump for support in Nashville, Tenn.

WASHINGTON – The good news for President Bush as he prepares to deliver his final State of the Union address Monday: U.S. casualties in Iraq are down significantly.

But so is the stock market, highlighting a raft of worrisome economic trends Bush will have to deal with in his speech, maybe more prominently than he was planning only weeks ago.

The urgency of the shaky economy was evident Thursday as House leaders and the White House agreed on a $150 billion economic stimulus package that includes rebates of between $300 and $1,200, and $50 billion in breaks for business.

“It was done in record time,” House Speak Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said of the deal.

Bush said the package “has the right set of policies and is the right size.”

The Senate is scheduled to begin work on the package next week with the goal of getting it to Bush by mid-February.

Recent polls show the economy now equals or surpasses Iraq as the top concern among voters, who watched their 401(k)s lose all their 2007 gains in just days.

The president and his top aides have been stressing that despite the turmoil, the nation’s economy is fundamentally sound, and he’s expected to hit that theme hard Monday night, mixing concern with confidence.

But his audience will be anxious – about more than just the stock market:

• Unemployment hit 5 percent in 2007, up from 4.4 percent in 2006, and the rate is higher in some states.

• Some 5.6 percent of mortgages were in danger of foreclosure in the third quarter of 2007, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. That was up from 4.7 percent in the third quarter of 2006.

• Inflation for 2007 hit an almost two-decade high of 4.1 percent.

All of this follows a significant loss in home values nationwide, stripping thousands of dollars of wealth from average families.

In addition to the stimulus package, it’s not clear yet what else Bush will propose to stabilize the economy or how much of that he will discuss Monday night.

Bush has repeatedly called for making his tax cuts permanent, and the Federal Reserve is expected to follow Tuesday’s huge interest rate cut with another reduction as early as next week. But economists say there are limits on what any president can do to shore up a shaky economy.

“The president has his bully pulpit, which he can use on Monday,” said Vincent Reinhart, former director of the Federal Reserve Board’s Division of Monetary Affairs. “But the bad news is that there are not that many fiscal policy tools available in a timely fashion.”

The economic downturn comes at an inauspicious time for the legacy-mind Bush, eager to draw attention to some of the best news out of Iraq since the start of the war, now in its fifth year.

Perhaps more than any other issue, Iraq will define the Bush presidency, and he is expected to discuss it in detail Monday night.

Last year’s controversial troop surge is showing signs of success – militarily at least. About 75 percent of Baghdad’s neighborhoods are secure, a dramatic increase from about 8 percent a year ago, according to the Pentagon.

American fatalities are roughly half, or less, of what they were a year ago.

By summer, troop levels are scheduled to drop from about 160,000 to 130,000, and American commanders are planning for possibly further reductions by year’s end.

Still, Bush’s critics argue that the troop surge he will declare a success Monday night is really a failure because it never produced the kind of political reconciliation in Iraq necessary for long-term stabilization.

“We’re still mired down in political dysfunction, ” said moderate Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., who sits on the Armed Services Committee. “Unless Iraq steps up, the cycle of dependence will continue.”

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THE SPEECH: BUSH’S PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE