In a Supreme Court test of whether a company can be granted a patent on the genes in the human body, a majority of the justices indicated during Monday's oral arguments that the court is likely to rule that a human gene can’t be patented. 

It would be one thing, several of the justices said during Monday’s oral arguments, for a company to seek a patent on a test for breast cancer that was developed by analyzing a human gene, but it would be going too far to be awarded a patent on the gene itself.

"What's the difference between snipping off a piece of the liver or kidney, and seeking a patent on that, and seeking a patent on a piece of a gene?" asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Justice Samuel Alito made a different analogy, to someone seeking a patent on a plant found in the Amazon rain forest that bore leaves containing a cancer cure. "You could patent the process used to get the chemical out and the use of the result, but you cannot patent the plant," he said. 

Stelios Varias / Reuters file photo

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington

The case, Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, involves a test that has helped guide more than a million women in their medical decisions. The test can determine whether the composition of their genes makes them more likely to get breast or ovarian cancer.

Myriad Genetics, a Utah company, owns patents on two parts of human genes known as BRCA 1 and BRCA 2, named for the first two letters of the words breast and cancer.

Women with mutations in those genes face up to an 85 percent risk of getting breast cancer and up to a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer. Because of the patents, Myriad has a monopoly on performing all diagnostic tests related to BRCA 1 and BRCA 2.

In the past three decades, the federal government has granted nearly 3,000 similar patents on genetic material. Without such protection, Myriad argues, companies would be less willing to spend the money required for making genetic discoveries.

"Countless companies and investors have risked billions of dollars to research and develop advances under this promise of stable patent protection," according to Gregory Castanias, a Washington, D.C, lawyer who argued the case for Myriad.

The idea of patenting DNA material has provoked a strong debate among scientists, and many have lined up on opposite sides of the case.

"Human genes should not be patented," says James Watson, the Nobel Prize winner and co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA.

"Life's instructions ought not be controlled by legal monopolies created at the whim of Congress or the courts," he says.

But a group of researchers at the University of Maryland is among those arguing just the opposite. "The costs are outweighed by the benefits stemming from the fruits of increased inventive activity," they say in their friend-of-court brief.

In the 220 years since Thomas Jefferson wrote the cornerstone of U.S. patent law, the courts have agreed on a general principle: patents protect inventions, not products of nature. A central issue in this case is whether Myriad has obtained a patent on something already in the body or has created something new.

The ACLU, representing a group of scientists, doctors, and cancer patients, claims that Myriad has merely removed from the body something that was already there -- the DNA sequence making up the BRAC 1 and BRAC 2 genes. Because it is a creation of nature, the ACLU says, it cannot be protected by a patent, even though Myriad claims that removing it is what makes it useful.

"Gold does not become patentable once taken out of a stream because it can be used in jewelry. Kidneys do not become patentable once taken out of a body because they can be transplanted," says the ACLU's Christopher Hansen.

Myriad's exclusive patent, says the ACLU, creates a monopoly that denies women the ability to seek a second opinion, based on another test of the genetic material, and dissuades other laboratories from pursuing research on the patented genes.

The ACLU also contends that because the test costs roughly $3,000, many women cannot afford it or lack the necessary insurance coverage. If the gene was not under patent protection, the ACLU says, competition would make the test cheaper.

But Myriad argues that removing the gene sequence from the body requires breaking chemical bonds that lock it into place, thereby creating a new chemical entity.

The resulting genetic materials, the company says, "were never available to the world until Myriad's scientists applied their inventive faculties to a previously undistinguished mass of genetic matter."

Myriad cites a line of cases finding patent eligibility for naturally occurring substances that were isolated and purified, including aspirin, vitamin B12, and adrenaline derived from cows.

As for availability, the company says the cost of the test is covered by private insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid. It also says many other labs provide second opinions regarding the company's test results and that thousands of researchers have done studies on the gene sequence involved, unimpeded by the patent.

The Obama administration has urged the court to be deeply skeptical of Myriad's broad claim of what can be patented. The Justice Department's brief in the case says the public interest has consistently been given precedence by the Supreme Court "in avoiding undue restrictions imposed by patents that effectively preempt natural laws and substances."   

NBC's Tom Curry contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Mon Apr 15, 2013 4:17 AM EDT

President Barack Obama will stick to his forthcoming budget on Wednesday, and does not regard it as a "starting point" for negotiations with Republicans toward a fiscal deal.

The administration's 2014 budget — which Obama will introduce at 11:15 a.m. on Wednesday — seeks an additional $1.8 trillion in savings through a combination of new revenues, entitlement reforms and targeted cuts to discretionary spending. The budget contains spending adding up to $3.77 trillion.

And while GOP lawmakers have expressed skepticism toward Obama's new budget, particularly for its inclusion of new taxes, the White House argued Tuesday in previewing the announcement that Republicans shouldn't be so dismissive.

"We don't view this budget as a starting point in the negotiations," one senior administration official said on a conference call previewing the budget. "This is an offer where the president came more than halfway."

“The question is, are Republicans willing to come to us?” the official asked, saying that the administration would be "sticking" to its position.

"If they refuse to include revenues in any deal, then there will be no deal. it's that simple."

Obama offered a change in how Social Security benefits increase over time (so-called "chained CPI") in hopes of drawing Republicans into begrudging agreement on proposals to raise new revenue. Among those revenue-raising provisions were:

• Enacting the so-called "Buffett Rule," which would require households making over $1 million to pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes
• Limiting tax deductions to up to 28 percent of income for the top 2 percent of earners in the United States
• Expanding a tax credit for middle-class families to pay for child care
• Funding universal preschool, something Obama called for in his State of the Union address, through an increase in the federal tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products
• Establishing of a National Infrastructure Bank, which in April 2013 Obama said could raise $10 billion, with each federal dollar leveraging up to $20 in total investment 
• Paying for the launch of 15 “manufacturing innovation institutes,” whose $1 billion price tag was first floated during the State of the Union 

This story was originally published on Wed Apr 10, 2013 6:31 AM EDT

In the midst of their effort to broaden the party’s appeal, Republican leaders continue to engage – sometimes forcefully – on social issues that have sometimes turned off key voting blocs in the past.

The Republican National Committee’s “Growth and Opportunity Project” report issued last month recommended that the party be more “inclusive and welcoming,” warning that doing otherwise would “limit our ability to attract young people and others, including many women, who agree with us on some but not all issues.”

But Republican leaders – who face pressure from the party’s Christian conservative base to hold the line on social issues – have hardly disengaged from social issues.

Look no further than Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate for governor this fall in his state, who last week asked a full federal appeals court to overturn a three-judge panel’s ruling that Virginia’s anti-sodomy laws were unconstitutional.

Cuccinelli’s decision to appeal appears to be related to preserving state laws against sex with minors, but it has the effect of asking the courts to uphold all of Virginia’s anti-sodomy statutes. To that end, the appeal has been characterized by Cuccinelli detractors as an effort to keep laws against gay sex on Virginia’s books.

A spokeswoman for the Virginia attorney general's office insists that the move is about protecting kids from sexual predators. "This case is not about sexual orientation, but using current law to protect a 17-year-old girl from a 47-year-old sexual predator," said Caroline Gibson.

“Ken Cuccinelli continues to ignore the economy and instead focus on a divisive ideological agenda,” wrote Josh Schwerin, a spokesman for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, on Twitter.

Cuccinelli’s appeal, though, is symptomatic of how Republicans have been drawn into social issues, and often to their peril.

Another example came on Wednesday as Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who commissioned the inclusivity-seeking Growth and Opportunity Project, took to the conservative blog RedState to complain that the mainstream media had mischaracterized abortion laws in North Dakota and Florida.

Priebus argued that the media had unfairly maligned conservatives in their coverage of the laws, which (respectively) sought to ban abortion after a heartbeat is detected, and provide medical coverage to a newborn from a failed abortion.

Moreover, Priebus launched into an attack on Planned Parenthood – a standby criticism of the last Republican presidential campaign – accusing it of supporting “infanticide,” and demanding that Democrats answer for their support for the organization.

Steve Helber / Steve Helber / AP file photo

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli last week asked a full federal appeals court to overturn a three-judge panel's ruling that Virginia's anti-sodomy laws were unconstitutional.

“In the last election, Republicans were repeatedly asked about whether they supported cutting funding to Planned Parenthood. It’s time Democrats are asked whether they still support funding an organization that refuses to care for a newborn,” Priebus wrote. “And this case of blatant media bias — cover-up really — should also be cause for some thoughtful self-examination among journalists.”

These strong stances by Cuccinelli and Priebus come amid the overarching GOP effort to broaden the party’s support among Latinos, young voters and women. The GOP report acknowledges at several points the role played by harsh rhetoric on social issues like gay rights in exacerbating the party’s deficit among those groups.

And a new poll released on Wednesday showed that there’s still work to be done. On the question of overall party images, and which party cares more about the average American, Democrats enjoy an advantage over Republicans among women.

Twenty-five percent of women said they had a favorable view of the GOP in the Quinnipiac University poll, versus 42 women who said they had a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party. Fifty-three percent of women had a negative opinion of the Republican Party, versus 38 percent of women who said they had a negative impression of the Democratic Party.

Women also favored Democrats on the matter of which party better cared for needs and problems of people like them. Women respondents agreed, 59 percent to 38 percent, that Democrats cared for their needs and concerns; 35 percent of women said that Republicans cared for their needs and concerns, versus 60 percent of women who disagreed.

More broadly, Democrats also enjoy an advantage over Republicans on the question of which party better handles the issue of same-sex marriage. Forty-nine percent of all Americans said that Democrats do a better job, versus 28 percent who prefer Republicans. Independents favor Democrats, 48 percent to 26 percent, on that question, and even one in five Republicans — 21 percent — prefer Democrats’ handling of the issue of same-sex marriage. 

NBC's Kasie Hunt contributed to this report.

Related:

Top Va. Republican urges court to keep anti-sodomy law on the books

Surprising shifts in attitudes on same-sex marriage

North Dakota governor signs toughest anti-abortion package in US

This story was originally published on Thu Apr 4, 2013 5:06 AM EDT

Strong majorities of Americans say they favor stricter gun laws, including an assault-weapons ban and universal background checks for private gun sales, according to a new national Morning Joe/Marist poll.

Read the entire poll here

Six in 10 respondents – including 83 percent of Democrats, 43 percent of gun owners and 37 percent of Republicans – believe that the laws covering gun sales should be stricter.

This figure is virtually unchanged from the 61 percent who backed stricter gun laws when a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll asked the same question in February, even though at least one other national survey has found waning support for gun-control laws months after the Dec. 2012 shootings in Newtown, Conn.

Jessica Hill / AP

John Woodall. left, of Newtown, Conn., carries a sign that he says indicates the percentage of Americans who support universal background checks, speaks with Gordon Jones of Southbury, Conn., a supporter of gun rights during a rally outside the National Shooting Sports Foundation headquarters in Newtown on March 28.

What’s more, the Morning Joe/Marist poll finds that 87 percent of Americans support background checks for private gun sales and sales at gun shows, and 59 percent favor legislation that would ban the sale of assault weapons.

Later this month, the U.S. Senate is set to consider Democratic-backed gun legislation that, among other provisions, contains a requirement for universal background checks. With Republican senators threatening to filibuster the legislation, its prospects for passage remain uncertain.

Democrats also are expected to offer an assault-weapons ban as an amendment to the legislation, but it has almost no chance to win passage in the Senate.

Favoring job creation over deficit reduction
Turning to the economy and the deficit, the Morning Joe/Marist survey shows that Americans – by nearly a 2-to-1 margin – want President Barack Obama and Congress to make job creation their top priority (64 percent) instead of deficit reduction (33 percent).

Those who prefer Washington’s political leaders to emphasize job creation include 76 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of Republicans; a narrow majority of Republican respondents (51 percent) want the focus to be on deficit reduction.

Also, Obama edges congressional Republicans by four percentage points, 44 percent to 40 percent, on the question of who has a better approach to deal with the federal budget deficit.

But the president’s approach to deficit reduction – calling for a combination of spending cuts and increased tax revenues – is more popular than the Republicans’ cuts-only approach.

Forty-two percent of respondents prefer a mixture of spending cuts (including to entitlement programs) and revenue increases; 35 percent pick increasing mostly revenue; and just 17 percent choose mostly cutting government spending (including to programs like Medicare and Medicaid).

The Morning Joe/Marist poll was conducted March 25-March 27 of 1,219 national respondents by both landline phone and cellphone. It has a margin of error of plus-minus 2.8 percentage points. 

Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, will re-emerge into the public spotlight with a speech on Friday before the Conservative Political Action Conference, a gesture that has left some Republicans wondering why.

Romney will speak to activists for the first time since suffering a decisive defeat versus President Barack Obama in last fall’s election.

And he’ll do it before a gathering that has witnessed some of the most enduring moments of Romney’s political career: He twice won CPAC’s closely watched straw poll, he ended his 2008 campaign there, and it was at the confab in 2012 that Romney termed himself a “severely conservative” governor – a characterization which Democrats would turn back against him over the course of last year’s campaign.

And while it’s unknown what Romney might say during his speech on Friday, his speech before CPAC has prompted muted bewilderment among Romney’s own allies and conservative activists alike.

Brendan Smialowski / AFP - Getty Images

Former Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney arrives for lunch at the White House November 29, 2012 in Washington, D.C.

The former Massachusetts governor, who turned 66 on Tuesday, had kept a deliberately low profile after Nov. 6 of last year. Romney met once with Obama and gathered with campaign alumni this winter, but has otherwise avoided a spotlight that wasn’t always kind of him throughout last year’s campaign.

He’s only started to re-emerge in recent weeks. Romney gave an interview to “Fox News Sunday” earlier this month, and joined the executive board of his son Tagg’s investment company. Romney’s speech on Friday is his return to the public square, though it’s not clear how much interest conservatives will have in what he’ll have to say.

“What can he offer them?” asked Reagan biographer Craig Shirley. “Based on his interview I saw last weekend, not much. When he ran, he didn’t seem to understand much of this country.”

Romney allies also privately express their misgivings about Romney’s choice of CPAC to stage his national comeback. Its penchant for red-meat conservative rhetoric could make Romney still seem bitter about the election, and scuttle his chance to builder a broader, statesmanlike profile.

Moreover, Romney had occasionally struggled from a rocky relationship with conservatives throughout his campaign. Conservative critics had often been quick to criticize the Republican ticket for any perceived tack toward the political middle in the general election. And following the election, many of Romney’s detractors were unsparing in their criticism of the Republican nominee, in particular his surreptitiously-recorded comments about the “47 percent” of Americans whom he called dependent on government.

The former GOP nominee’s decision to speak at CPAC, though, likely reflects his close relationship with Al Cardenas, a supporter of Romney’s who heads the American Conservative Union, which organizes CPAC.

And not all Romney supporters think the decision to speak at CPAC is a bad idea, either.

“I think it’s a very good sign for the movement that Mitt Romney will be there,” said former Rep. Vin Weber, R-Minn., who served as an informal adviser to the Romney campaign. “A lot of people kind of expected that Romney would move back to the moderate Republican middle, which wouldn’t be a good thing for him – it would make him look cynical.”

Related:

Conservative struggle on immigration on display at CPAC

CPAC chair: Christie didn't 'deserve' an invite this year

Rand Paul calls GOP 'stale and moss covered'

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 15, 2013 5:20 AM EDT

A vote on President Barack Obama's nominee to lead the Defense Department, Supreme Court arguments about the future of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act and the expected onset of automatic spending cuts known as the "sequester" mean the nation's capital is bracing for a politically consequential week ahead.

After a weeklong recess, Congress returns to Washington with a full agenda of business that needs handling. Topping that list is an item which lawmakers are arguably unlikely to resolve over the course of the week: the sequester, about $85 billion in automatic spending cuts set to begin taking effect on Friday, the first day of March.

Lawmakers left town before the President's Day holiday no closer to resolving the sequester, the second part of the so-called "fiscal cliff," which was delayed for two months by the New Year's Day deal on taxes.

Last week's recess was more full of posturing and blame-placing by Obama and Republicans in Congress — who each blame the other for the sequester's creation — than any substantive progress toward a deal to address the cuts, which both sides agree would be perilous.

"So now Republicans in Congress face a simple choice: Are they willing to compromise to protect vital investments in education and health care and national security and all the jobs that depend on them?" Obama said last Tuesday at the White House. "Or would they rather put hundreds of thousands of jobs and our entire economy at risk just to protect a few special-interest tax loopholes that benefit only the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations? That's the choice."

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, responded in the pages of the 'Wall Street Journal': "The president's sequester is the wrong way to reduce the deficit, but it is here to stay until Washington Democrats get serious about cutting spending." 

The administration has been warning of the potential consequences to the spending cuts, including military readiness and even delays and inconveniences in air travel.

Related: Why Obama has the PR upper hand in sequestration battle

"We're not making this up in order to put pain on the American people," outgoing Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." "We are required to cut a billion dollars and we are going to do that unless Congress gets together and works together and compromises on this." 

With both sides still so far apart, an agreement to delay or soften the blow of the automatic cuts before Friday seems unlikely.

That legislative showdown would normally suffice to consume all the political oxygen in Washington. But this week also features several other major events worth noting.

One such item is another holdover from before recess. The Senate is set to vote Tuesday on final confirmation for former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., to become the next defense secretary. The vote follows tenacious efforts by some Republican senators to block their former colleague from joining the Obama administration.

Senate Democrats had hoped to formally vote to confirm Hagel before last week's recess, but Senate Republicans — even some GOP senators who said they'll support final confirmation for Hagel — joined together to sustain a filibuster, and delay the confirmation vote until this week. For their part, Democrats decried the filibuster as unprecedented against a Pentagon chief's nomination.

Still, Hagel appears to be headed toward confirmation. Some of his most vociferous critics — Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., among them — said they would support moving toward a final vote on confirmation, which would only require a simple majority of the Senate's support. Even still, several GOP senators have said they intend to support Hagel, which only boosts his prospects for confirmation, barring some sort of development.

Hagel isn't the only member of Obama's prospective national security team left hanging over the recess.

After facing a grilling earlier this month before the Senate Intelligence Committee, John O. Brennan's nomination to become the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency faces an uncertain future. Senators are looking for more information about the Obama administration's secretive drone strikes program — and Brennan's role in crafting that strategy — before moving forward with his nomination.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has threatened to filibuster Brennan's nomination before the whole Senate until he's received a satisfactory answer. The concerns about Brennan aren't isolated to Republicans, either; Democrats like Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon have voiced similar misgivings about the secretive use of drone strikes to target suspected terrorists and the process behind them.

Joshua Roberts / Reuters file photo

Capitol Hill in Washington, DC

Also this week, the Supreme Court will hear potentially consequential oral arguments challenging a section of the historic Voting Right Acts. The justices will hear a challenge to a section of the law requiring nine states with a history of racial discrimination to seek Justice Department approval for any change in their voting procedures before those changes can take effect.

Obama, speaking Thursday in a radio interview, sought to calm fears that African American or other minority voters would face greater challenges to voting if the Supreme Court were to strike down that section of the law.

"I know in the past some folks have worried that if the Supreme Court strikes down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, they're going to lose their right to vote. That’s not the case," Obama said on "The Black Eagle" radio show. "People will still have the same rights not to be discriminated against when it comes to voting, you just won't have this mechanism, this tool, that allows you to kind of stay ahead of certain practices."

Published at 5 a.m. ET: Less than one month into his second term, President Barack Obama looks to complete the outlines of an ambitious agenda in his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

In his inaugural speech, the president telegraphed several initiatives he wants Congress to pursue and pass this year: gun control legislation, a bill to create a legalization process for many of the nation’s illegal immigrants, subsidies for renewable energy technologies and legislation to respond to climate change.

Obama will likely return to those topics Tuesday night, but the White House has signaled that this speech will focus more on the themes that dominated the past four years -- jobs and the economy -- with new initiatives aimed at improving the prospects of growth for both, and a particular emphasis on the middle class.

But any new policies or programs will have a cost to both present and future taxpayers, and it will take some time to figure out that cost because the president hasn’t yet presented his budget proposal to Congress. And when he does, the ongoing standoff between Republicans and Democrats over everything from how to continue funding the government to looming spending cuts still leaves plenty of uncertainty about any fiscal policy in Washington.

Due a week ago, but not likely to appear until sometime next month, the president’s budget proposal is the detailed and lengthy (last year’s was 256 pages long) blueprint in which a president gives Congress and taxpayers all the specifics -- how much each new initiative will cost and what tax proposals he is offering to help to pay for his programs.

The budget document is the president’s attempt to direct spending policy for the coming fiscal year -- the one that starts on Oct. 1 -- and for the ten years beyond that.

This year there’s an air of unreality about the budget compared to, for instance, 2009 when the president’s Democratic allies controlled both the House and the Senate. Exactly four years ago, when Obama proposed to collect $646 billion in new revenues from auctioning off greenhouse gas emission allowances, there was a reasonable expectation that the proposal would become law and that the $646 billion would flow into the Treasury.

When Obama does deliver his budget proposal next month, the fiscal path forward will remain in an extraordinarily makeshift and unpredictable state.

Budget 'harder to predict' than ever
Veteran budget analyst Stan Collender wrote this week that even former congressional Budget Committee staffers who have spent their careers assessing budgets find that “the current situation is as complex, hard to read, and even harder to predict than any they’ve ever seen.”

The federal government is now operating on a six-month continuing resolution which keeps discretionary spending for departments and agencies at the prior year’s levels.

Mandatory spending for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and federal employee retirement benefits is driven by demographics, enrollment, and the cost of medical procedures. It isn’t as controllable by Congress or the president.

The continuing resolution expires on March 27, leaving Obama and Congress only a few weeks to figure out what to do next. Another stopgap continuing resolution seems quite possible.

In addition, the Budget Control Act requires $85 billion in spending cuts to begin on March 1.

Illustrating just how unreal the current fiscal situation is, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in his farewell address last week at Georgetown University that if Congress passes another continuing resolution and it allows the spending cuts required by the Budget Control Act to take effect, then his department “will have to abruptly absorb in a period of about six months” $43 billion in spending cuts (known as the sequester). This will be on top of what Panetta thinks are inadequate spending levels in the continuing resolution -- what he described as “a $35 billion shortfall in operating funds for our active forces.”

Kevin Lamarque / REUTERS

President Barack Obama speaks from the briefing room of the White House in Washington Feb. 5, 2013.

Panetta explained that the Pentagon has been spending money at a relatively robust rate level so far this fiscal year. “We assumed, silly us, that we would get a 2013 appropriation, what we requested,” he said. “And so we're operating on this hope that 2013 appropriations bill will be passed. It hasn't been passed.” And yet the Defense Department has been spending money as if it would be passed.

With both the sequester and another continuing resolution looking possible, Panetta is now facing, and leaving his successor with, “a serious disruption in defense programs and a sharp decline in our military readiness.”

Reminding his audience how big an employer the Department of Defense is and how large an economic effect it has, Panetta said, “If sequester happens, let me tell you some of the results. We will furlough as many as 800,000 DOD civilians around the country for up to 22 days. They could face a 20 percent cut in their salary.”

Other departments and agencies would need to take similar steps.

Given such a crisis atmosphere, one could see why Obama’s proposals for new programs and new spending might get overshadowed and might stand little chance of being adopted.

Disaster spending
And yet Obama and members of Congress have been extremely lucky in one sense. The last few years has been a good time to be in charge of fiscal policy, thanks to ultra-low interest rates which mean an ultra-low cost of financing the federal government’s borrowing.

That will end in the next several years. The Congressional Budget Office, in its annual budget forecast last week, projected that what the federal government must spend on net interest payments will more than double in the next five years and will nearly quadruple by the end of the 10-year budget forecasting period. Instead of spending six cents of every dollar to pay interest on the debt, the government will be spending 14 cents of every dollar on interest payments in 2023. 

By 2020 the government will be spending more on interest than it will spend on national defense.

In the short term, the good news for Obama is that the economy is recovering and with that recovery has come a surge in federal tax revenues, which are up 12 percent in the first four months of Fiscal Year 2013. Individual income tax revenues are up by 16 percent so far in FY2013.

Keep in mind that revenue surge has come even before the full impact of the $700 billion tax increase that Obama signed into law on Jan. 2. The increased revenues from that tax increase will show up in withholding from paychecks in 2013 and also will be seen in the income tax payments Americans must make when they file their tax returns in April 2014.

Given the need Obama sees for even more revenues, don’t be surprised if you see some of the very same ideas in the State of the Union and the budget blueprint that he proposed back in 2009 in his very first budget proposal, such as taxing a form of investment income called “carried interest” as if it were ordinary income and eliminating of certain tax preferences for oil and gas firms.

But while some things might be the same as in 2009, in one part of the budget one thing is quite different: in Obama’s first budget proposal in 2009 he and his number-crunchers projected that in the current fiscal year, FY 2013, the federal government would need to spend $20 billion on disaster relief. That disaster spending prediction will turn out to be far short of reality: Obama has already signed into a law a disaster relief bill for Hurricane Sandy that will cost $50 billion -- and the hurricane season does not being until June 1.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

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

Throughout the 2012 presidential campaign, President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress confidently predicted that the re-election of the president would break the partisan “fever” they claimed had enveloped Washington and the Republican Party.

But the weeks since the election have found Republicans as dogged as ever in their resistance to Obama, whose initiatives – including gun control, immigration reform and efforts to boost renewable energy – still face an uncertain path forward, particularly in an unruly House of Representatives still controlled by a Republican majority. Republicans are signaling a willingness to go to great lengths to bend coming battles in their favor, especially versus a White House whom they view as just as unflinching in its views, if not more so.

“I believe if we're successful – when we’re successful in this election – the fever may break. My hope and my expectation is that after the election, now that it turns out the goal of beating Obama doesn’t make much sense because I’m not running again,” Obama said at an event on June 1. “We can start getting some cooperation again, and we’re not going to have people raising their hands and saying – or refusing to accept a deal where there’s $10 of cuts for every dollar of tax increases, but that people will accept a balanced plan for deficit reduction.”

That was an expectation the Obama administration carried all the way through the campaign; Vice President Joe Biden said on MSNBC just days before Election Day: “I think you’re going to see the fever break.”

But the just-finished fight over the fiscal cliff suggested that, if anything, Republicans are more entrenched than ever before. While Obama ultimately won the income tax rate increases on the wealthy, on which the president campaigned, it wasn’t until Republicans had exhausted every feasible move that they relented to Obama’s demand. And even then, it wasn’t until the U.S. had gone over the fiscal cliff – if only for a matter of hours – that Congress agreed to act, passing the bill in the House with mostly Democratic votes.

Debt limit a 'point of leverage'
But Obama might be mistaken to assume his toughest fights with congressional Republicans are behind him. While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s vow to make Obama a one-term president is now moot, Republicans appear as emboldened as ever to both battle with the administration and keep true to their the ideological conservatism that a large number in the party represent.

The temporary fiscal cliff deal sets up a series of potentially more contentious battles this spring over continuing government funding and authorizing more borrowing authority for the government. And top Republicans are now openly discussing options, like a government shutdown, that they had taken every pain to disavow in 2011.

"It may be necessary to partially shut down the government in order to secure the long-term fiscal well being of our country," Texas Sen. John Cornyn, Republicans' No. 2 in the Senate, wrote last week in the Houston Chronicle. "President Obama needs to take note of this reality and put forward a plan to avoid it immediately."

And House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, called the debt limit fight "one point of leverage" in an interview with the Wall Street Journal; a Politico report, also published Monday, suggested the House speaker was more circumspect about the possibility of defaulting on the national debt. In 2011, Boehner stressed at every turn that defaulting on the U.S. debt was not an option.

Senate Republicans’ budget chief was more explicit: “I think it should be a firm principle that we should not raise the debt ceiling until we have a plan on how the new borrowed money will be spent,” Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday.

If Obama was hoping there were more deals to be had on taxes, too, Republicans all but tried to slam the door on such an idea.

“We’ve resolved the tax issue now. It’s over. It’s behind us,” McConnell said Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

Fight over defense secretary
And those are only the spending fights; other clashes are already taking shape.

Former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., whom Obama nominated to be the next secretary of defense, appears likely to face strong Republican resistance in the Senate.

Obama has also suggested that he’s willing to dive headlong – and quickly – into battles over comprehensive immigration reform and gun control, fights which could only threaten to intensify hostilities between the White House and congressional Republicans (and put some moderate Democrats in a tough spot politically in the meanwhile).

The president’s second-term initiatives could fall victim to the same fever that killed the DREAM Act, cap-and-trade legislation, the Employee Free Choice Act and the “public option” in health care reform during his first term.

“There will be plenty of time to take a look at their recommendations once they come forward,” McConnell said Sunday of Obama’s hope for quick action on curbing gun violence. “What’s going to dominate Washington for the next three months here is going to be spending and debt.”

Roger L. Wollenberg / Getty Images

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell speak to the media at the White House on Nov. 16, 2012.

Four months ago, the United States Congress had a gloomy approval rating of just 12 percent. And that was before most Americans had ever heard of a "fiscal cliff." 

The last NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll to measure congressional approval (August), showed that a whopping 82 percent of Americans disapproved of the job Congress was doing, an all-time record for the history of the survey.

By some estimates, Congress' approval rating could now -- after an ugly fiscal cliff fight and the brewing storm over aid to Hurricane Sandy victims -- be nearly within the margin of, well, zilch. 

Big policy losers in tax deal: deficit reduction and 'certainty'

So is Congress doomed to forever be the branch of government eating alone in the proverbial cafeteria of public opinion? And can it go any lower?

For the last four years, no more than one-in-three adults has given Congress a thumbs up, according to the poll. And it's been longer than a decade since more than half of Americans approved of their representative government on Capitol Hill.

Experts say that because the ratings have been so poor for so long, members are no longer fazed by the public's overall disapproval. They note that the lambasting of Congress as a whole has minimal effects on individual races, especially when candidates run against the status quo of the very body they're trying to join.

Some 90 percent of lawmakers who ran for re-election in 2012 will be coming right back to Capitol Hill for the 113th Congress. 

"Nobody ever votes on Congress as a whole, they vote on individual members," says Jack Pitney, professor at Claremont McKenna College in California. "The message that most lawmakers give their constituents is 'I'm great, it's these other bozos who are the problem.'"

For the most part, that pitch works.

'Everybody has something to hate'
In the August NBC/WSJ poll, even though only about one-in-ten Americans approved of Congress, four times as many said that their own representatives deserved re-election.

Apart from keeping the same lawmakers they seem bent on throwing out, the public has also sent mixed signals on whether or not it wants a government divided between two parties.

For more than 20 of the last 30 years, the White House has been controlled by a different party than one or both houses of Congress.

Boehner likely to be reelected speaker, but there could be drama

With Congress frequently butting heads with the president -- particularly on budgetary matters that could have real and unpleasant consequences for American taxpayers -- it's not easy for lawmakers to compete for a "Miss Congeniality" trophy.

"These fights, combined with difficult economic times, leave the public to understandably think very poorly of the Congress," says Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and the co-author of a recent book on political dysfunction.

"I don't think it's destined to always be that way, but when you have a war going on between the two major parties, not just during campaign season but throughout the governing season, then it's not surprising for Congress to get these kind of ratings," Mann said. 

Making matters worse for Congress: the issues at stake often involve spending cuts and federal program changes likely to affect voters directly -- many of them negatively.

"We have an enormous deficit and the only steps that we can take to reduce the deficit are painful and unpopular," says Pitney. "Plus, you have split party control, so everybody has something to hate."

Public wants unity
In a model divided government, the Congress would serve -- at least in principle -- to cancel the most partisan priorities from the executive branch in favor of centrist ideals.

But with that rosy idea of balance often replaced by inaction and gridlock, polling suggests that the country may be shifting toward a preference for unity.

A recent Gallup survey showed that the number of Americans who said they want to see divided government is at record lows, with just 23 percent favoring a president and a Congress from different parties.

What the fiscal deal means for you

That's a finding that Brock McCleary, the former deputy executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee and founder of the survey firm Harper Polling, has seen replicated in polls throughout various House districts.

"Our assumption was voters would want one branch of government as a nice check and balance on the other one and think that as long as everyone's tapping the brakes on one another it's probably better for the country," he said. "But we would go and look at polling and find that wasn't actually the case. Very few people were telling pollsters that's what they wanted."

But, McCleary added, that sentiment didn't translate into change in the two most recent elections in 2010 and 2012, which resulted in a Republican House despite a fairly decisive re-election for a Democratic president.

"There's a disconnect there," he said.

With divided government in place for at least the next two years, and with the vast majority up for re-election likely to return each year -- Congress's best hope may ultimately depend on the economy that each party aims to improve. But in the immediate future, those prospects look bleak.

"People generally need to feel as though the country is back on the right track," said McCleary. "Until that turns around it, sliding approval numbers are a fact of life for American politicians."

Updated at 12:32 a.m. ET: An agreement to stave off the harshest and most immediate consequences of the fiscal cliff won approval in the House late Tuesday. President Barack Obama signed the law on Wednesday night, the battle over which foreshadowed more fights with Congress over spending.

Following a day of hectic wrangling on Capitol Hill — where the prospects for passing the bipartisan, Senate legislation regarding the fiscal cliff hung in the balance for much of New Year's Day — the House voted 257 to 167 to pass the belated compromise measure over the objections of many conservative Republicans.

The legislation takes steps toward resolving the combination of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts that took effect at midnight on Jan. 1. It preserves tax rates as they were at the end of 2012, except for those individuals earning more than $400,000 and households earning over $450,000. It also allows taxes on capital gains and dividends to go up, and extends benefits of the unemployed. Additionally, the Senate bill delays the onset of the "sequester" — the swift, automatic spending cuts — for two months. 

Fiscal cliff compromise leaves few satisfied

"Thanks to the votes of Democrats and Republicans in Congress I will sign a law that raises the taxes on the wealthiest of Americans," Obama said in remarks at the White House Tuesday, "while preventing a middle-class tax hike."

The House vote laid bare some of the internal ideological divisions to plague the GOP over the past two years. More Republican congressmen (151) voted against the Senate bill than for it (85), meaning that Democrats' support was needed to advance the final deal. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, took the rare step of casting a vote, and did so in favor of the legislation. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the former Republican vice presidential nominee, also supported the package. But Boehner's top two lieutenants, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., each opposed the deal.

"Now the focus turns to spending," Boehner said in a statement following the House vote. "The American people re-elected a Republican majority in the House, and we will use it in 2013 to hold the president accountable for the ‘balanced’ approach he promised, meaning significant spending cuts and reforms to the entitlement programs that are driving our country deeper and deeper into debt."

While the last-minute action on Capitol Hill essentially mitigates much of the risk posed to the U.S. economic recovery by the fiscal cliff, it hardly brings resolution to the bitter and often intractable fight in Washington over taxes and spending. The first half of 2013 will feature battles in Congress over raising the debt limit, continuing basic government funding and the expiration of this two-month delay in the sequester. 

Bipartisan outrage after House skips vote on $60 billion Sandy aid bill

Obama nodded to those looming fights in his remarks Tuesday evening, renewing his call for "balance" in any solution in the coming year to address deficits and debts. But the president also sternly warned Congress against using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip, as Republicans had in summer of 2011.

"While I'll negotiate over many things, I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether to pay the bills they have racked up," Obama said.

PhotoBlog: Deal done, Obama heads back to Hawaii with a weary wink

The fiscal cliff itself was the product of discord in Congress resolving those very issues. And the difficulty in attaining even this less ambitious piece of legislation — versus the kind of "grand bargain" Obama had first sought in talks with Republicans — offered a cautionary tale for the 113th Congress, in which the House and the Senate remain controlled by the same parties as during the past two years. 

Squabbling
And even for much of Tuesday, House approval of the fiscal legislation — which was negotiated by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Vice President Joe Biden — was far from certain. GOP leaders were forced to cajole conservatives who complained the fallback deal contained insufficient spending cuts. Only after it became clear that Republicans wouldn't have the votes to amend the Senate proposal — which the upper chamber said it wouldn't even consider — did House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, bring the bill to the floor. 

The squabbling was familiar to any observers of Congress during the past two years. This divide almost resulted in a government shutdown and a default on the national debt in 2011. It again threatened Tuesday to allow the painful, across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts to play out just as the U.S. economic recovery showed signs of accelerating.

PhotoBlog: See images of Congress working overtime to avoid fiscal cliff

And this deal just approved by Congress in the waning hours of 2013's first day all but ensures that much of the coming year will be dominated by similar battles in Washington. Republicans are hopeful they might be able to extract more spending cuts and entitlement reforms with the government up against other deadlines, like the one needed this spring to authorize more government borrowing. 

That could complicate Obama's already-ambitious second term agenda. The president said just this past Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he will seek comprehensive immigration reform legislation and new laws to address gun violence.