Today's Times
- President Obama delivered a new offer to Speaker John A. Boehner on Monday to resolve the pending fiscal crisis, Jonathan Weisman reports. The offer, which would raise revenues but keep in place the Bush-era tax rates for any household with earnings below $400,000, may put the two sides close to a final deal. The proposal could be evidence of a phenomenon that Jackie Calmes explores in a Memo From Washington: how the emotionally wrenching school shooting could work to soften the hearts of politicians as they work on the deficit problem.
- Many pro-gun Congressional Democrats signaled an openness to new restrictions on Monday, a shift that demonstrates the rapidly changing attitudes to ward gun control in the aftermath of the Connecticut massacre, Jennifer Steinhauer and Charlie Savage write.
- Representative Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, was appointed to replace Jim DeMint in the United States Senate on Monday, a move that will make him the sole black lawmaker in the Senate and the first to serve from the South since the late 19th century, Jeff Zeleny writes.
- Interviews with residents of one Michigan Congressional district suggest that constituents may be open to federal tax increases, but only if spending is cut, too, Jeremy W. Peters reports.
- Senator Daniel K. Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat who broke racial barriers on Capitol Hill, died on Monday after 48 years in the Senate, Robert D. McFadden writes.
- Many ultraconservatives and Tea Party crusaders are still distressed over the re-election of President Obama, with some of them expressing their anger by hanging upside-down American flags in their yards, Dirk Johnson reports.
Around the Web
- Now that Mr. Obama is expected to select Senator John Kerry to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state, The Hill is reporting that former Gov. Michael Dukakis, Democrat of Massachusetts, is being looked at as Mr. Kerry's interim re placement in the Senate.
- Politico: Representative K. Michael Conaway, Republican of Texas, will become chairman of the House Ethics Committee in the next Congress, bringing the total of Texas Republicans who chair full committees to five.
- Ben Affleck, star of the movie “Argo,†will be on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to testify before the House Armed Services Committee on “the evolving security situation†in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, The Hill reports.
