President Obama wants his State of the Union address to be in early February, a week or so later than usual, so Congress (which must formally invite him to speak) can hammer out a final health-reform bill. “The president wants to be able to talk about health care in the past tense—or nearly in the past tense,” Marc Ambinder writes, “and doesn’t want to have to pretend that negotiations are over when they really aren’t.”
(More President Obama stories.)