UPDATE: Read the invitation sent out for the bipartisan health reform meeting, as well as the invite list.

Following up on the unique conversation the President held with House Republicans at their retreat, the President invited bipartisan leadership from Congress to the White House to discuss job creation and the economy.  Making a surprise appearance at the daily press briefing afterwards, the President relayed some thoughts on the meeting:

THE PRESIDENT:  ...And at this critical time in our country, the people sent us here expect a seriousness of purpose that transcends petty politics.  That's why I'm going to continue to seek the best ideas from either party as we work to tackle the pressing challenges ahead.  I am confident, for example, that when one in 10 of our fellow citizens can't work, we should be able to come together and help business create more jobs.  We ought to be able to agree on providing small businesses with additional tax credits and much needed lines of credit.  We ought to agree on investments in crumbling roads and bridges, and we should agree on tax breaks for making homes more energy-efficient -- all of which will put more Americans to work.  Many of the job proposals that I've laid out have passed the House and are soon going to be debated in the Senate.  We spent a lot of time in this meeting discussing a jobs package and how we could move forward on that.  And if there are additional ideas, I will consider them as well.  What I won't consider is doing nothing in the face of a lot of hardship across the country.

This meeting was also in advance of a bipartisan summit on health reform that the President convened for February 25th.  This meeting has already garnered significant attention, with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs making clear that while the meeting is very much about inviting valuable ideas from Republicans, it is by no means about backing away from the challenges facing the American people.  The President laid out his expectations for a constructive conversation:

Q    After meeting with you, John Boehner came out and told us, "The House can't pass the health care bill it once passed; the Senate can't pass the health care bill it once passed.  Why would we have a conversation about legislation that can't pass?"  As a part of that, he said you and your White House and congressional Democrats should start over entirely from scratch on health care reform.  How do you respond?  Are you willing to do that?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, here's how I responded to John in the meeting, and I've said this publicly before.  There are some core goals that have to be met.  We've got to control costs, both for families and businesses, but also for our government.  Everybody out there who talks about deficits has to acknowledge that the single biggest driver of our deficits is health care spending.  We cannot deal with our deficits and debt long term unless we get a handle on that.  So that has to be part of a package.

Number two, we've got to deal with insurance abuses that affect millions of Americans who've got health insurance.  And number three, we've got to make health insurance more available to folks in the individual market, as I just mentioned, in California, who are suddenly seeing their premiums go up 39 percent.  That applies to the majority of small businesses, as well as sole proprietors.  They are struggling.

So I've got these goals.  Now, we have a package, as we work through the differences between the House and the Senate, and we'll put it up on a Web site for all to see over a long period of time, that meets those criteria, meets those goals.  But when I was in Baltimore talking to the House Republicans, they indicated, we can accomplish some of these goals at no cost.  And I said, great, let me see it.  And I have no interest in doing something that's more expensive and harder to accomplish if somebody else has an easier way to do it.

So I'm going to be starting from scratch in the sense that I will be open to any ideas that help promote these goals.  What I will not do, what I don't think makes sense and I don't think the American people want to see, would be another year of partisan wrangling around these issues; another six months or eight months or nine months worth of hearings in every single committee in the House and the Senate in which there's a lot of posturing.  Let's get the relevant parties together; let's put the best ideas on the table.  My hope is that we can find enough overlap that we can say this is the right way to move forward, even if I don't get every single thing that I want.

But here's the point that I made to John Boehner and Mitch McConnell:  Bipartisanship can't be that I agree to all the things that they believe in or want, and they agree to none of the things I believe in and want, and that's the price of bipartisanship, right?  But that's sometimes the way it gets presented.  Mitch McConnell said something very nice in the meeting about how he supports our goals on nuclear energy and clean coal technology and more drilling to increase oil production.  Well, of course he likes that; that's part of the Republican agenda for energy, which I accept.  And I'm willing to move off some of the preferences of my party in order to meet them halfway.  But there's got to be some give from their side as well.  That's true on health care; that's true on energy; that's true on financial reform.  That's what I'm hoping gets accomplished at the summit.

"It’s done, honey," President Obama said to The First Lady earlier today as he signed a Presidential Memorandum establishing a task force on childhood obesity to address the growing health epidemic. "Now we work," she responded.
 
The new task force is charged with developing an interagency action plan to solve the problem of obesity among our Nation's children as part of the First Lady’s Let’s Move campaign. The campaign will take a comprehensive approach to engage both public and private sectors to help children become more active and eat healthier within a generation, so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight. 

President Barack Obama signs a memorandum on childhood obesity in the Oval Office. From left are, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, First Lady Michelle Obama, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar February 9, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Samantha Appleton)

Within 90 days, the task force will develop and submit to the President a comprehensive interagency plan that details a coordinated strategy, identifies key benchmarks, and outlines an action plan.  The President applauded all those involved:

I am so proud of the work that the First Lady, along with the Cabinet Secretaries behind me, has done in trying to tackle one of the most urgent health issues that we face in this country, and that is the increase of childhood obesity. And because of the outstanding planning that they've done, they are going to be rolling out a terrific plan of action that involves the private sector as well as government agencies coordinating much more effectively a lot of public information out there to help parents make good decisions about allowing their children to be active and eating healthier.

Members of the task force include: the Secretary of the Interior; the Secretary of Agriculture; Secretary of Health and Human Services; Secretary of Education; Director of the Office of Management and Budget; Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the First Lady; Assistant to the President for Economic Policy; and heads of other executive departments, agencies, or offices as the Chair may designate.

Speaking at an event later, the First Lady explained what motivated her to take this on: "These words – 'overweight' and 'obese' – they don’t tell the full story.  This isn’t just about inches and pounds or how our kids look.  It’s about how our kids feel, and how they feel about themselves.  It’s about the impact we’re seeing on every aspect of their lives."

You'll find lots more information, such as brief the introductory video, at LetsMove.gov.

Countless entrepreneurs have taught us that the key to success is to execute quickly, seek feedback from the market, and iterate.  We have taken this lesson to heart and think it especially apt in our work to increase transparency, participation, and collaboration in government.  Therefore it is with great pleasure that – after just 60 days - U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra and I unveil what we call Version 1.0 of the Open Government Dashboard and look forward to building it together with all of you.  By way of this blog post, we hope to tell you a little bit about what we’ve done so far and what to expect in the weeks ahead.

Version 1.0 of the Dashboard focuses on agency execution of the deliverables explicitly identified in the Open Government Directive.  It makes it easy for the American people to visually track progress on the deadlines to date.  The Dashboard also links to each agency's Open Government Webpage, where the public can find more details on the steps taken to implement the Directive. Just look for the words "Evaluating our Progress."

The next big step will be to evaluate the agencies' Open Government Plans, due April 7^th.  Whereas the indicators have been largely binary thus far (e.g. Do you have an Open Government Webpage?), the Plans present a special opportunity for the Dashboard to evolve over time and empower the public while spurring a race to the top amongst agencies. We share your feedback that the agency plans are the most consequential deliverable required by the Directive, as they promise to hardwire greater transparency, participation, and collaboration into the culture of every agency. As such, the Open Government Working Group is preparing a set of "stretch criteria" to help evaluate the plans and celebrate those agencies that exceed the minimal requirements of the Directive to reflect the President's vision of openness and accountability as articulated in the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government. We are eager to seek your input in this process, so keep an eye out for opportunities to weigh in over the next two weeks.

After agencies have successfully delivered on the demanding deadlines set out for the first 120 days, Version 2.0 of the Dashboard can deploy a more holistic set of metrics, informed by agency Plans.  Identifying the right set of metrics will help steer agencies toward high-impact efforts in the years to come.  Some of you have already shared your thoughts with us and we look forward to hearing from may more of you in the coming months.

Thank you for helping us make this a success.
 
Aneesh Chopra is U.S. Chief Technology Officer

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs just responded to a letter sent today from House Republican Leader John Boehner and House Republican Whip Eric Cantor regarding the proposed bipartisan health care summit:

The President is adamant that we seize this historic moment to pass meaningful health insurance reform legislation. He began this process by inviting Republican and Democratic leaders to the White House on March 5 of last year, and he’s continued to work with both parties in crafting the best possible bill. He’s been very clear about his support for the House and Senate bills because of what they achieve for the American people: putting a stop to insurance company abuses, extending coverage to millions of hardworking Americans, getting control of rising premiums and out-of-pocket costs, and reducing the deficit.

The President looks forward to reviewing Republican proposals that meet the goals he laid out at the beginning of this process, and as recently as the State of the Union Address. He’s open to including any good ideas that stand up to objective scrutiny. What he will not do, however, is walk away from reform and the millions of American families and small business counting on it. The recent news that a major insurer plans to raise premiums for some customers by as much as 39 percent is a stark reminder of the consequences of doing nothing.

Read HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' letter to Anthem Blue Cross calling on them to publicly justify their extreme premium hikes at the same time their parent company sees soaring profits.

Along with a massive snowstorm, Friday brought a blizzard of new info on the job market.   From the perspective of our work at the White House, two points stand out, one about where we are and the other about where we’ve been.

First, while there are encouraging signs regarding jobs, they are early signs and must be viewed with care.   The job market is clearly doing better than it was but the level of unemployment is miles north of where it needs to be.  Unemployment fell significantly last month, which is good, but a) it’s a one month data point and not yet a new trend, and b) it fell from 10% to 9.7%, and that's still an unacceptably high rate of joblessness.

Second, today's data release has new, revised information on just how bad this recession has been in the job market.  Here a chart is worth a lot of words.
The chart plots the course of payroll employment over the last four recessions, including this one.  In each case, we index jobs at the start of the recession to 100%, and the x-axis shows the number of months from when the recession began. 

By setting it up this way, you get a lot of useful, comparative information across different downturns.  For example, you see how much longer it took to regain the lost jobs in the 1990 and 2001 recession compared to the 1981 version. 

But the main point is how severe this recession has been on job loss.  There are two lines in the graph for the current recession because last week's data provided a revision based on more complete data.  We knew it was bad, but it turned out to be even worse.  We thought we were losing an unprecedented 690,000 jobs per month in the first quarter of last year.  It turned out to be 750,000.  In the four months between December 2008 and March 2009, we lost more jobs than during the last two recessions combined.

That's where we were.  Where we are, as noted, is better but not good enough.  Last month, we lost 20,000 jobs and that's not an outlier—it's another data point in an improving  trend moving towards net job gains, which we expect to be seeing in a few months.  But the job market won't be in recovery until those small negatives turn into big positives.

Here's what comes out of all this: our policies, most notably the Recovery Act, have helped move us from a situation where we were losing a nightmarish 750,000 jobs per month to one in which we've pulled back from the economic abyss and are moving a lot closer to adding jobs, on net, on a regular basis.  But we can't kick back and wait for that moment.    There's too much pain out there, too many families struggling with a job market that’s simply not providing the opportunities they need to get back on their feet.

So we have to hasten the arrival of more robust job growth with a set of initiatives targeted at the factors holding back job creation.  The House passed a targeted jobs bill in December that included some of these priorities, including upgrading transportation and infrastructure, and aid to states to keep teachers, cops, and firefighters on the job.  The Senate’s actively working on proposals with some of those same components.

Last week the President announced an initiative to help credit flow more freely to small businesses that want to expand their operations and payrolls but can’t access the capital.  Both the President and Congress have been working on a new hiring tax credit targeted at the business owner who is considering adding workers but needs a nudge (and you can see employers dipping their toes in the labor pool—temp work has increased in each of the past four months). 

Another idea in the mix right now is investment in infrastructure to help offset the continuing job losses in construction, a sector that took another big hit last month.  And another is help to state and local governments facing tight budget squeezes and the resultant layoffs in folks like teachers, down 10,500 last month at the local level.

GDP is growing and growing pretty solidly.  The employment data show employers cutting a lot less but not yet adding a lot more.  Unemployment moved in the right direction last month, and we need to build on that positive movement.  

But as the figure above shows so clearly, we've got a huge hole to fill.  That hole wasn't dug overnight, and it's going to take some time and some smart, targeted policies, to fill it up.  Now there's a shovel-ready project worth taking on.

Jared Bernstein is Chief Economist to Vice President Biden, and Executive Director of the Middle Class Task Force

Today the President got to meet the Park View Little League Team, 2009 Champions.

President Barack Obama shakes hands with members of the Park View Little League baseball team of Chula Vista, California in the East Room of the White House, to congratulate them on winning the 2009 Little League World Series February 5, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

As the President has recently noted, the Administration has had an extraordinary first year for transparency and open government.  We still have work to do, but we have already had some significant accomplishments. That was the conclusion of the respected independent groups that gave us an A for transparency in a recent report card -- and that view was also expressed by other experts in this area who I recently joined on a panel hosted by OMB Watch on government transparency. You can watch a recording of the full panel discussion, and we have excerpted some of the comments below.

Ellen Miller, Executive Director of the Sunlight Foundation, said:

There is no question that the President has set an extraordinarily high bar with respect to transparency in government. And while I think there have been certainly some shortcomings in execution… I think he has begun to make a significant change in the culture of what openness means and move the default of where government information is from being in the hands of government into citizens’ hands… The Administration has clearly endorsed that sort of fundamental cultural shift in information and transparency. It’s a sea change, frankly, not just from the previous Administration… Forget the previous administration; this is a sea change in my decades of experience of Washington…

The important thing that's happening in the administration is not the individual things that they are making available, as important as they are, but the fact that they are beginning to hardwire this default of openness into government.

Transparency is not an issue; it’s a value. And I think that's what the administration has embraced and what’s absolutely key to their successes.

Meredith Fuchs, General Counsel of the National Security Archive, focused on the Administration’s work on three specific openness issues:

[F]or me, these three issues--presidential records, classification, and FOIA--can be summed as showing a pretty good start. A lot of work necessary in a few of these areas but really a tremendous change.

She also noted regarding our historic White House visitor records release (100,000 records and counting) that it is "tremendously brave to expose yourself to that kind of attack, that kind of inquiry."

Sarah Cohen, Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University, while candid about the work that remains to be done, stated:

The idea that we’re here at all talking about transparency says a lot. We wouldn't have been here at all a year and a half ago. Nobody would have had it on an agenda, and nobody would have cared about it. And that makes a big difference… the point about releasing the White House visitor logs is a very important one, that that was a huge step, and one that I think most people around the country looked at and said "that’s really important."

And even Mark Tapscott, the editor of the Washington Examiner's editorial page—which has been pretty tough on the Administration at times—offered some kind words:

Having served in an administration… as a political appointee, I have some appreciation for the political imperative that the transparency issue has to exist within. The political imperative is very simply this: plausible deniability. "Protect the boss." "Save your tail." And that means, too often, we have an incentive to not be transparent. And an incentive that’s institutional and not merely personal. That’s one of the main reasons why it’s so difficult to achieve change.

It's also one of the reasons why many of the things that the Obama people have started to do are rather remarkable. It is remarkable, given that imperative, that they would assume responsibility for doing these things.

Our release of the White House visitor logs that the panelists applauded is only one example of the many steps the President has taken so far to increase government transparency. The Administration’s other concrete commitments to openness include issuing the Open Government Directive, putting up more government information than ever before on data.gov and recovery.gov, reforming the government’s FOIA processes, providing on-line access to White House staff financial reports and salaries, issuing an executive order to fight unnecessary secrecy and speed declassification, reversing an executive order that previously limited access to presidential records, and webcasting White House meetings and conferences. The release also compliments our new lobbying rules, which in addition to closing the revolving door for lobbyists who work in government have also emphasized expanding disclosure of lobbyist contacts with the government.  And the President capped the year off by calling in the State of the Union for bold transparency initiatives (pdf) as part of his reform agenda for 2010 and the years ahead. 

Norm Eisen is Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform

While unemployment remains a severe problem, today’s employment report contains encouraging signs of gradual labor market healing.  The unemployment rate fell three-tenths of a percentage point and employment rose in a number of industries, though overall employment fell slightly.

The unemployment rate declined from 10.0 percent to 9.7 percent.  This decline occurred despite a modest rise in the labor force.  The broadest measure of the unemployment rate, which includes all persons marginally attached to the labor force and workers working part time for economic reasons, fell almost a full percentage point.  Obviously, the unemployment rate remains unacceptably high, and is even worse for certain demographic groups such as teenagers and black or African American workers.
 
Overall payroll employment declined 20,000 in December.  This total reflects substantial variation across industries.  Employment in manufacturing rose for the first time since January 2007, led by an increase in employment in motor vehicles and parts.  Employment also rose in retail trade and in temporary help employment.  Employment fell, however, in construction and state and local government.

Even as today’s numbers contain signs of the beginning of recovery, they are also a reminder of how far we still have to go to return the economy to robust health and full employment.  Indeed, with the benchmark revision announced today, we now know that the total job loss over the recession was more than 1 million larger than previously estimated.  That is why at the same time that he released a plan for reining in the budget deficit over the medium and long run, the President has called on Congress to enact responsible, targeted actions to jump-start job creation.  His proposals for a small business jobs and wages tax cut and a new program to encourage small business lending are important steps to help the businesses that are essential to robust job creation.  Today’s numbers showing continued decline in construction and state and local government employment emphasize the importance of two other of the President’s priorities—continued infrastructure investment and additional aid for strapped state and local governments.

There will likely be bumps in the road ahead.  The monthly employment and unemployment numbers are volatile and subject to substantial revision.  Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.  It is essential that we continue our efforts to move in the right direction and replace job losses with robust job gains.

Christina Romer is Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers

[Update: Chat will begin at 1:00PM EST]

If you were here at WhiteHouse.gov last week you may well have seen the President's event answering questions submitted through YouTube by citizens across the country.  If you missed it, you can still watch the video of course.

But if you were one of the 64,969 people who cast 772,384 votes on 14,459 questions, and didn't get your favorite question asked, all is not lost.  We pledged from the beginning that we would make an effort to answer some more of the questions after the President's interview, and we'll be following through tomorrow in a chat where we'll take another round of questions submitted last week, along with some live questions in a chat run by YouTube. 

The chat will be at 12:45 EST with some of our key policy folks from the Domestic Policy Council, the National Economic Council, and the National Security Council.  Join the chat at YouTube.com/citizentube or through facebook.