House Democratic leaders delayed unveiling a plan last week after a challenge by fiscally conservative Democrats.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Republicans and Democrats continued to spar Sunday over how to pay for health care reform.

Some Democrats rejected a proposal to start taxing health care benefits provided by employers. At the same time, momentum among Democrats seems to be building for Obama's proposal to limit tax deductions for those earning more than $250,000 a year.

Republicans oppose the high cost of health care reform, as well as key components of Democratic proposals including higher taxes on the wealthy. However, some Republicans expressed support for taxing employer-provided benefits of the most expensive health insurance plans.

The bottom line: Little is clear as the White House and Democrats continue to press for a health care reform bill by the end of the year.

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WASHINGTON (CNN) – A day after reports that former Vice President Cheney instructed the Central Intelligence Agency not to share with Congress information about a specific intelligence program, Republicans are attempting to downplay a possible violation of the laws governing intelligence gathering while Democrats are attempting to sound an alarm about the possibility of Congress being denied critical information affecting national security.

“That’s a serious breach,” Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

Related: Cheney and alleged secret CIA program 'a problem,' Senator says

Fellow Democrat Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan said she would be “extremely surprised” if a loophole in the laws governing briefing Congress would justify what the CIA reportedly did at Cheney’s direction.

Stebanow said reports that Cheney had directed the withholding of information from Congress were “very, very serious.”

“But this really, goes to a larger question that we struggled with throughout the [George W.] Bush presidency – which is checks and balances.”

“There is a reason why we have checks and balances,” Stabenow also said Sunday, “we don’t have a dictatorship. We have a Congress that is a responsible to oversee and to ask questions on behalf of the people. And I think that’s what we saw continually challenged,” during the last administration.

Republican Sen. Judd Gregg said that, if true, reports about Cheney’s directions to the CIA suggested actions that were not appropriate but the senator also said Sunday that the recent reports might be the beginning of using the intelligence agency as “a whipping boy.” That kind of reaction runs the risk of undermining the morale of the agency while it is playing a critical role in battling terrorism, Gregg also said.

Related: Holder considers prosecutor to probe interrogations, source says

Fellow Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander suggested that concerns among Congressional Democrats about the extent of briefings by the CIA might undermine the agency’s mission.

“The CIA is in the secrecy business . . . the best way to ruin the secrecy business is to tell a lot of Members of Congress,” Alexander told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

Alexander suggested that the so-called “gang of eight,” Congressional leaders with responsibility for overseeing intelligence, should sit down with President Obama and the new CIA director ask for the information they are entitled to under the nation’s intelligence laws.

Panetta told Congress the CIA misled lawmakers since 2001, according to a letter to the agency head.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – CIA Director Leon Panetta recently testified to Congress that the agency concealed information and misled lawmakers repeatedly since 2001, according to a letter from seven House Democrats to Panetta made public Wednesday.

The letter to Panetta, dated June 26, was published on the Web site of Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-California.

"Recently you testified that you have determined that top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all members of Congress, and misled members for a number of years from 2001 to this week," said the letter, signed by Eshoo and six other House Democrats — Reps. John Tierney of Massachusetts, Mike Thompson of California, Rush Holt of New Jersey, Alcee Hastings of Florida, Adam Smith of Washington and Janice Schakowsky of Illinois.

The letter contained no details about what information the CIA officials allegedly concealed, or how they purportedly misled members of Congress.

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A coordinated conservative push to kill a climate change bill took down the House of Representatives' phone switchboard.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – A coordinated conservative push to kill a climate change bill managed to at least take down the House of Representatives' phone switchboard.

The volume of calls to House members Friday was so high that a spokesman for the House chief administrative officer told CNN Radio the system could not handle it.

"Phone traffic has increased to a level where some callers are receiving an 'all circuits are busy now, please try back again later' message," communications director Jeff Ventura wrote in an e-mail response.

This came as conservative radio hosts and congressmen made direct pleas for voters to dial the Capitol and oppose a Democratic bill that would set strict limits on carbon emissions. Both sides believed the bill was within a few votes of passing or failing.

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WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Senate Finance Committee has crafted a health care reform bill that is less than $1 trillion, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Montana, announced Thursday.

The bill is paid for through a combination of tax increases and various savings.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has also assessed various policy options the committee can choose from in order meet that politically important price point, Baucus added.

Finance committee members were shocked last week when the CBO determined that their reform bill would cost $1.6 trillion. They have slowly whittled it down since.

Senators still have to make a number of decisions regarding which policy options they will choose in order to make up a comprehensive reform package.

–CNN's Ted Barrett contributed to this report

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Several senior Democratic advisers to the White House are urging President Obama to further step up his personal involvement in the health care debate, as administration allies privately warn that the president's push for a major reform bill is hitting major roadblocks at a critical juncture on Capitol Hill.

One of the Democratic advisers told CNN there is fear within the party that the president's signature issue is "on the rocks" because of dramatically high cost estimates for separate bills being drafted by Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and Max Baucus (D-Montana). The Congressional Budget Office's estimate for the Kennedy bill — that it will cost $1 trillion and yet leave millions of Americans without health insurance — has given Republicans strong political ammunition to charge reform may be too expensive at a time of massive federal deficits.

CNN Radio: Ed Henry reports on the status of the president's plan

"We're going to need the White House to step it up a little bit and get more engaged," said a second Democratic adviser, who acknowledged concerns that Republicans are gaining steam in the message battle. "We've got some time to sort this out, but decision time is just around the corner."

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WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) — The Senate on Thursday passed a $1 billion effort to subsidize new auto sales by giving vouchers toward the purchase of new cars.

President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill.

The "cash for clunkers" measure was attached to the $106 billion war spending bill that was approved by the Senate late Thursday. It drew some opposition from lawmakers who were opposed to spending more money on the auto industry.

The measure would give consumers vouchers worth as much as $4,500 to turn in gas guzzlers and buy new cars that are more fuel efficient.

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Rep. John Sullivan speaks to the Tulsa Press Club in this undated photo.

(CNN) – U.S. Rep. John Sullivan, of Oklahoma, checked himself into the Betty Ford Center in California on Thursday night for treatment for alcohol addiction, according to a written statement from his office.

Sullivan, a Republican from Tulsa, said in the statement that he will be taking a leave of absence from Congress while he seeks treatment.

"I value my relationship with the citizens of Oklahoma's First Congressional District, whom I am privileged and honored to have served for the past eight years," Sullivan said in the statement, released Friday evening. "So, I wanted to be open and honest on this tough situation."

Sullivan is married with four children, according to the biography on his Web site.

"My family is going through a difficult time right now, and I ask that you respect their privacy and keep us in your thoughts and prayers," he said. "With God's help and strength, I will get through this most challenging time in my life."

The Betty Ford Center, named for the former first lady, opened in 1982. It specializes in treatment of dependency on alcohol and other drugs.

Democrat Henry Waxman is trying to get his party's massive climate change bill out of his committee by Memorial Day.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – As Congress prepares for a weeklong recess next week, Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have armed themselves with a special weapon to deal with a possible Republican effort to delay getting a major piece of legislation out of committee by Memorial Day.

Democrats on the committee have hired a speed reader to read the more than 900-page climate change bill if necessary.

A request to have the entire bill read aloud is a prerogative Republicans have a right to invoke which could be used to frustrate Committee Chairman Henry Waxman's deadline of Memorial Day to get the committee's work on the bill done.

Even with the use of the speed reader, reading the entire bill could take the equivalent of more than a full work day of time.

–CNN Congressional Producer Deirdre Walsh contributed to this report.

'Sexting' implies sharing a risqué photo or suggestive words via text message.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez and Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz have teamed up to introduce a bill that would educate young students about the consequences of "sexting."

At a press conference Wednesday on Capitol Hill, they introduced The Safety Internet Act, which would give money to internet safety non-profit organizations to work with schools in hopes of "integrating internet safety curricula" into classrooms.

The bill proposal comes after 18 year-old Jessica Logan of Cincinnati, OH committed suicide after she "sexted" a nude photo of herself to her boyfriend and it leaked to several fellow classmates and students at nearby schools. "Sexting" implies sharing a risqué photo or suggestive words via text message. As a result of the picture, Logan's mom said she was bullied, tormented, and left to deal with the problem on her own.
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Moran wants to limit when Viagra ads can appear.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Former presidential candidate Robert Dole made headlines as a pitchman for Viagra, and now a decade later a Virginia congressman wants to limit the time when ads for this and similar products can air.

Last month, Democratic Rep. Jim Moran introduced the "Families for ED Advertising Decency Act," which prevents erectile dysfunction and male enhancement ads from appearing on radio and television between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

"This [the advertisements] is an intrusion into our daily lives that I believe has become inappropriate." Moran said in an interview with CNN. "There is a saturation of the television airwaves with these E.D. ads, and they have gotten more pervasive, more blunt, and less subtle."

The bill currently has only one co-sponsor, Rep. Robert Brady, D-Pennsylvania, and there are currently no hearings scheduled on the issue. But a Moran spokesman said the congressman is actively seeking more support.

"I don't want to be prudish about it," Moran said. "I understand there is limitless market to deal with male insecurity and its fine for drug companies to make a profit on that. The problem is that they are showing these ads when small children are bound to get curious."

UPDATE: Pfizer, the maker of Viagra, defended their commercials in a statement, saying, "Our goal in advertising our products is to reach the people who would be most likely to benefit from them."

Full statement after the jump

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President Obama should expect more dissention from Democratic lawmakers, says CNN's Candy Crowley.

(CNN) — As President Obama approaches the 100-day mark, he can look back on a short legislative history with near-unanimous support from fellow Democrats.

Mathematically, he is sitting pretty with overwhelming majorities in the Senate and House. But in politics, things don't always add up.

Two incidents in early January may hold big hints about the post-honeymoon period (when it happens) for the president. In early January, more than two weeks before the Obama inauguration, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid told the Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill, "I do not work for Barack Obama, I work with him."

Reid also let it be known early on that unlike former Vice President Dick Cheney, Vice President Joe Biden would not be allowed to attend Senate Democratic policy lunches. Two days before the inauguration, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she wanted immediate repeal of Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and an investigation into whether the Bush Justice Department illegally fired federal prosecutors.

Obama had already said he wanted to move forward rather than look back and signaled he would not repeal Bush tax cuts on the wealthy but rather let them expire in 2010.

So far, Pelosi has lost on both counts. And she and Reid have been formidable activists for the White House agenda. Still, there is a clear political message: no rubber stamps.

It is also a message about the Constitution and the co-equal branches of government.

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Paul Ryan is among the congressional Republicans criticizing the final details of a proposed budget deal

WASHINGTON (CNN) — As the final details of a proposed budget deal were worked out Monday, Republican lawmakers slammed Democrats for including special rules to speed up legislation for health-care reform.

"You won the election. You've got the votes. This is your right to do this and you are doing it. But let's not kid ourselves that there is some kind of bipartisan collaboration occurring here," Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin.

"Let's not kid ourselves that this isn't a negotiation with a gun in one hand."

Both the House and Senate are expected to vote this week on a fiscal 2010 budget resolution. The legislation includes a procedural rule known as reconciliation, which prevents Republicans from blocking legislation, limits debate and allows Democrats to pass the bill with a simple majority.

"You know, I can understand shaking Hugo Chavez's hand, but can't understand embracing his politics — basically shutting down the minority, which is essentially what this reconciliation issue is," Sen. Judd Gregg, R-New Hampshire, referring to President Barack Obama shaking the Venezuelan president's hand at the recent Summit of the Americas.

Ryan acknowledged that Democrats had authority to employ reconciliation, but said the tactic should be used to deal with spending issues — not major public policy proposals.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota, who chairs the budget committee, also opposed using reconciliation, but said it wasn't his call to include it in the budget.

"It's in because the president, the speaker and the majority leader in the Senate all want it in," he said. "That's a lot more power than I bring to the table."

Still, Conrad said he didn't believe the Senate would need to use reconciliation, saying, "It's there as an insurance policy."

Under the budget proposal, Congress has until October 15 to develop a health-care bill. If lawmakers are unable to negotiate a bipartisan approach by that date, the Senate will be allowed to move forward with the expedited process.

President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell earlier this year.

Editor's note: How would you rate the new Congress in President Obama's first 100 days? You'll get a chance to make your opinion known on at 7 p.m. ET Wednesday on the CNN National Report Card.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — There's little debate that Democrats who run Congress mark President Obama's 100-day milestone with some significant victories.

First and foremost, they passed the president's $787 billion measure intended to stimulate the economy with warp speed, meeting his February deadline.

Congressional Democrats also made good on promises to push through several priorities that President Bush had refused to sign into law.

They finally approved last year's bill to fund the government, with significant increases in spending for things such as education, health care and transportation.

And Democrats passed long stalled legislation for children's health insurance — the State Children's Health Insurance Program, known as S-CHIP — as well as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act mandating equal pay for women in the workplace.

But the slew of legislative achievements during Obama's first 100 days have come at the cost of bipartisanship.

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Some congressional Democrats are calling for an investigation into CIA interrogation techniques.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — An independent commission is needed to determine who authorized the use of abusive interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists, a leading advocate of such a panel said Sunday.

"I want to know who was it who made the decisions that we will violate our own laws; we'll violate our own treaties; we will even violate our own Constitution," Sen. Patrick Leahy told CBS' "Face the Nation."

"That we don't know," said Leahy, D-Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "We don't know what that chain of command was."

Former President George Bush repeatedly denied that his administration authorized the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody. But a set of legal opinions released earlier in this month documented the Bush administration's justification for coercive interrogation techniques including waterboarding, which has been considered torture since the Spanish Inquisition.

A Senate Armed Services Committee report released last week showed that top Bush administration officials gave the CIA approval to use waterboarding as early as 2002. And in 2003, a meeting that included then-Vice President Dick Cheney, CIA Director George Tenet, Attorney General John Ashcroft and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed the use of coercive tactics, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The releases have fueled calls for investigations of former administration and led to arguments from Bush's defenders — including Cheney — that the tactics produced information that saved American lives.

Leahy first proposed the idea of a nonpartisan "commission of inquiry" in March. He said Sunday that he was not "out for some kind of vengeance," but added, "I'd like to read the page before we turn it."

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(CNN) — Democrats will push through health care reform in 2009, but at the expense of bipartisanship. CNN's Dana Bash reports

Some congressional Democrats are calling for an investigation into controversial CIA interrogation techniques.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Who knew what, and when?

Those questions, focused on recently released Bush-era CIA memos detailing "enhanced interrogations" of suspected al Qaeda members — are now being posed inside the Beltway, as calls by Democrats for an independent investigation into torture allegations have become louder.

House Minority Leader John Boehner said Thursday that the release of what he described as the "torture" memos is politically motivated.

"Last week, they [Obama administration] released these memos outlining torture techniques. That was clearly a political decision and ignored the advice of their Director of National Intelligence [Dennis Blair] and their CIA director [Leon Panetta]," Boehner said.

The Ohio Republican pointed out that he saw a partial list of the number of members of the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans "who were briefed on these interrogation methods and not a word was raised at the time, not one word."

Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Michigan, also blasted concerns being raised by Democrats.

"Only now that we have a new administration are people coming out who were aware of these programs saying wait a minute, these were terrible programs. In reality, two, three years ago, they signed off on it, they voted for legislation that funded these programs, and now all of a sudden these are terrible practices," he said.

But when asked whether or not she raised objections to the interrogation measures at the time, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — a then-ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee — vehemently said "we were not, I repeat, we were not told that waterboarding or other enhanced methods were used."

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Congress comes back after a two week recess, a national poll indicates that the honeymoon may be over for congressional Democrats.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – As Congress comes back after a two week recess, a national poll indicates that the honeymoon may be over for congressional Democrats, although they maintain a decided advantage over the GOP.

Forty-nine percent of people questioned this month in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation national survey say that the country is better off with the Democrats controlling Congress. That's down seven points from January, but it's 15 points higher than the 34 percent who say the nation would be better with the Republicans running Capitol Hill.

Democrats won back control of both houses of Congress in the 2006 elections, and increased their majorities in last November's elections.

"Most of the Democrats' loss of support has come among younger Americans," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "In January, two-thirds of those under the age of 35 said Democratic control of Congress was good for the country. Now that figure is down to 48 percent."

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WASHINGTON (CNN) – Listen closely and you'll hear squeals of disgust from a watchdog group tracking congressional pork in the nation's capital.

Citizens Against Government Waste is out with its annual "Pig Book" — a list of lawmakers whom the group considers the most egregious porkers, members of the House and Senate who use the earmarking process to funnel money to projects on their home turf.

Fittingly perhaps, the list includes nearly $1.8 million for swine odor and manure management research in Iowa.

"In fiscal year 2009, Congress stuffed 10,160 projects into the 12 appropriations bills worth $19.6 billion," the group said in a report released Tuesday. The amount marks a 14 percent increase over 2008.

The "Pig Book" also names dozens of what it considers the most blatant examples of pork-barrel spending.

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