**Obama News Conference
*NY Times: "On a day when the leader of fiscally conservative Democrats said a deal was a long way off and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted that she had the votes to push a bill through, Mr. Obama used the news conference to take his message over the heads of lawmakers and straight to the public. Conceding that "folks are skeptical," he sought to convince Americans that overhauling the nation's health care system would benefit them and strengthen the economy.

*Wall Street Journal leads with: "President Barack Obama, looking to pay for his ambitious health-care plan and shore up public support, endorsed a surtax on families earning $1 million a year for the first time Wednesday."

*Ben Smith: "The president's remarks on his chosen subject, health care, were cautious and choreographed, hemmed in on one side by the calculations of his professional wordsmiths, on the other by the delicacy of negotiations with two houses of Congress. He never detailed his own plan, or named a single victim of America's broken system, and he spoke largely in the abstractions of blue pills, red pills, and legislative processes. It's not easy to turn delivery system reform into a rallying cry for change, but at times, it was as if Obama wasn't even trying."

*Howard Fineman writes: "His prime time press conference was worse than a waste of time. He spent an hour (with the aide of a soporific White House press corps) pouring sand (one grain at a time) into the already-slowing gears of the machinery of health-care reform. He made no real news on health care, but DID make news on race relations with his discussion of the Skip Gates case - thereby obscuring the topic he supposedly wanted to feature."

*How's it playing in Boston? Check out the Globe's front page: "Obama scolds Cambridge police."

*WaPo's Tom Shales: "As usual, Obama turned in an admirably effective performance at the news conference, even if it did seem a little too tidy -- and even rehearsed -- for nearly all the reporters to fall in line and stick with the matter at hand rather than pursue their own little butterflies as in many administrations past."

**Other Obama Stuff
*The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt interviewed Obama yesterday. An interesting quote on the deficit: "What I think has to happen is if we can show that we have a disciplined health care reform package that is serious about cost savings and is deficit-neutral, you combine that with the pay-go rules that we have been promoting and I believe that we can get through Congress, and you are imposing some discipline on the appropriations process ... then I think we're in a position to be able to, either at the end of this year or early next year, start laying out a broader picture about how we are going to handle entitlements in a serious way. It may start with Social Security because that's, frankly, the easier one."

*"In an act that officials from previous administrations call 'highly unusual', President Obama met with the head of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Douglas Elmendorf and others for about an hour in the Oval Office on Monday," Fox News reports. On his blog, Elmendorf "suggested that the meeting would not affect his ability to do his job."

*This topic was covered last night: transparency. But Politico reports, CREW said the White House's disclosure of meetings Obama held with executives "doesn't go far enough." CREW's statement: "The actual visitor records likely would indicate with whom each official met, the administration official who requested clearance for the visitor, the time of the meeting, the duration of the meeting and, in some cases, the purpose of the meeting. In addition, no information was provided regarding any visits to the vice president's residence."

*The Plain Dealer on today's visit to Cleveland: "His choice of the Clinic for a short visit underscores the complicated task of selling his health-care reform plan. It allows him to highlight an influential medical institution that has already achieved technological advancements and cost savings that Obama says his health plan will foster elsewhere. At the same time, though, his appearance there reinforces that the Clinic -- like many other prominent hospitals -- has not embraced some elements of the plan, most notably a proposal to offer Americans an option to purchase health insurance through the government. "

*Even as the Chamber of Commerce wages a campaign against Democrats' health care plan, "there are signs that employers around the country are divided on the issue, reducing the force of an opposition push," Washington Post reports.

**Health Care
*"As Democratic Congressional leaders try to round up the votes to remake the health care system, they face a range of concerns about the cost and scope of the legislation among centrist lawmakers in each party whose support is vital to a deal. Many of the centrists said they shared the same concerns: that the legislation proposed so far is too expensive; does not sufficiently reduce health care costs over the long term; and would raise taxes too much, or in ways they oppose," NYT reports.

*Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), chariman of Ways and Means, "appears to be playing second fiddle" on health care, Roll Call reports. "It's not the first time that Rangel, who has been entangled in a yearlong ethics inquiry that he called into his personal finances, has appeared to be outmaneuvered by the Speaker and Waxman."

**Congress
*Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.): "A big chunk of the House climate change bill is in the hands of Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer -- and some of its supporters are worried that she's not up to the task. In private conversations, Senate staffers say that Boxer's abrasive personal style helped tank the climate bill that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and former Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) sponsored last year. And several recent embarrassing episodes involving the California Democrat have them worried about a repeat performance," Politico reports.

*"House Republicans plan to unveil on Thursday their answer to Democratic efforts to overhaul the financial regulatory system. The 101-page draft bill circulated late on Wednesday includes efforts to beef up the bankruptcy code to deal with failing firms, reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and tighten oversight of the Federal Reserve," The Hill reports.

*"The Senate on Wednesday narrowly defeated an effort to allow gun owners to carry their concealed weapons across state lines. ... The legislation would have allowed people who have concealed-weapon permits in their home states to take their firearms into other states -- including California and others that currently prohibit the practice," L.A. Times reports.

**Campaign Stuff
*The Union Leader: "Fred Tausch of Merrimack has taken himself out of consideration for the U.S. Senate." This eliminates one obstacle for former Attorney General Kelly Ayotte (R). Ovide Lamontagne (R) "will soon be facing what one key Republican activist called 'enormous pressure' not to proceed with a candidacy, and it could get very difficult for him to raise money.

*Via GOP12.com, apparently trouble with Mike Huckabee's HuckPAC. "Documents filed by the committee with the Federal Election Commission appear to reveal a quadrupling of debt in the last six months of 2008. As of June 30, 2008, Huck Pac reported a debt of $15,000 compared with a debt of $62,293.14 as of Dec. 31, 2008, the latest full report available."

*A day after Charlie Crist said he wouldn't support Sonia Sotomayor if in the Senate, challenger Marco Rubio said that his last judicial appointment -- Justice (James) Perry -- "is by far much more of an activist judge than Sotomayor. ... So I think that needs to be examined. Your actions speak louder than your words in politics."

*The Hotline reports that Republicans have picked a candidate in the NY-23 special election, Assemb. DeDe Scozzafava (R). "Some elements of the GOP haven't been so welcoming of the socially liberal Scozzafava. She's pro-choice and voted for NY's same-sex marriage bill in the legislature. In the past, she has earned the liberal Working Families Party line, and Conservative Party chair Mike Long told Hotline a few weeks ago that Scozzafava's support of the gay marriage bill would eliminate her from consideration for his party's support in the special."

*"Embattled Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) has begun a media campaign to rehabilitate his reputation, but his poll numbers haven't improved much at all over the last two months. A newly-released Quinnipiac poll shows Dodd still trailing Republican Rob Simmons by nine points, 48 to 39 percent - a worse margin than his six-point deficit in the firm's last poll on May 28," Politico reports.

--Kyle Trygstad and Mike Memoli