The Man Behind the ‘47 Percent’ Video Comes Forward

It was one of the enduring mysteries of the 2012 campaign: who was the source of the video that captured Mitt Romney saying at a private fundraiser that 47 percent of Americans are too dependent on government, a remark that haunted him through the remainder of the presidential race

As it turned out, the bartender did in fact do it - as many suspected.

The Huffington Post reports that the man “tended bar for a company that catered to a high-end clientele.” And the idea of bringing his camera to the $50,000-a-plate Florida fundraiser came from his previous work at an event featuring Bill Clinton, when the former president came back to the kitchen to thank the staff and sign autographs, the report said.

The man, who has not yet been pubicly identified, gives his account of making the surreptitious video in an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show”  that is being broadcast Wednesday night.

In a preview of the program, the man said he “debated for a little while” whether to release the video.

“But in the end I really felt like it had to be put out,” he said. “I felt I owed it to the people that couldn’t afford to be there themselves to hear what he really thought.”

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In his remarks at the fund raiser, initially reported by Mother Jones, Mr. Romney said:

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”

He continued on, adding, “My job is not to worry about those people.”

After the release of the video, Mr. Romney acknowledged the remarks were “not elegantl! y stated.! ”

Senate Debate Introduces 3 Republicans to Massachusetts Voters

EASTON, Mass. â€" Massachusetts voters got their first look Tuesday night at the three largely unknown Republicans who are running to fill the Senate seat left vacant by John Kerry, now the secretary of state.

In their first debate, held here at Stonehill College, south of Boston, the candidates mainly sought to introduce themselves and establish their identities rather than joust with one another. Rarely did they disagree.

Gabriel Gomez, a former member of the Navy SEALs and a private equity investor, had never run for office and seemed nervous on the stage before about 300 people for the hourlong session. His chief message was that he is not a career politician.

Michael Sullivan, a former United States attorney, took a low-key approach. He presented himself as the most experienced candidate.

State Representative Daniel B. Winslow called himself an outsider, but noted that he had experience in all three branches of government â€" as a former Distrct Court judge, a former chief counsel to a governor and a member of the legislature. He did not mention that the governor he worked for was Mitt Romney.

The three will face off in a primary on April 30; the winner will face the winner of the Democratic primary â€" either Representative Edward J. Markey or Representative Stephen F. Lynch â€" in a special election on June 25.

The race has gotten off to a sluggish start, partly because none of the candidates matches the star power of Scott P. Brown or Elizabeth Warren, who clashed in the state’s epic Senate race last fall.

The candidates at the debate did offer mild prescriptions for their party, however, as they were asked why Mr. Brown, the Republican incumbent, had lost to Ms. Warren.

Mr. Sullivan attributed Mr. Brown’s loss to President Obama’s popularity in the state, saying Ms. Warren essentially won on Mr. Obama’s coattails. But he also said the Republican brand suffered because the party did not do a good job! of reaching out to important groups of voters, including women, young Americans and fiscal conservatives.

Mr. Winslow agreed that the party needed to reach out more and said he wanted to use this race as a chance for the Republicans to assert themselves as the party of “growth, opportunity and prosperity,” or G.O.P.

While all three candidates praised Mr. Brown lavishly, they did not embrace many of his positions. For example, none of them supported a ban on assault weapons, as Mr. Brown did after the shootings in Newtown, Conn., in December.

All three support term limits and said they would release at least six years of their tax records.

They also all said that they would have been proud to stand with Senator Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican, who filibustered for nearly 13 hours last week to protest Mr. Obama’s use of drone airstrikes, and that they believed in the se of filibusters, which Ms. Warren has sought to curtail.

“He stood up â€" he wanted to be counted,” Mr. Winslow said of Mr. Paul. “He didn’t just mail it in.” Mr. Winslow said the filibuster should be used on occasion but added, in perhaps the evening’s most memorable line, “It’s mind over bladder.”

Mr. Gomez said he would like to emulate Mr. Paul, though he played down the length of time the senator spent standing.
“I used to be a SEAL,” Mr. Gomez said. “I think I can go for a few days.” In the defense of liberty, he said, a filibuster “was exactly the right thing to do.”

Mr. Sullivan said that if the issue in question was important enough, “I’d go as long as humanly possible.” He said a filibuster had been Mr. Paul’s only option, and drew laughs when he added, “It wasn’t like he was interrupting a lot of business in the Senate.”

One question that brought out a distinction between the candidates was about Mr. Winslow’s! reputati! on for “out-of-the-box theatrics,” such as an episode in which he said the governor needed to cut “fluff” out of the budget. When no one paid much attention to that, he drew up lists of things that could be cut, put them in marshmallow fluff jars and delivered them to the statehouse.

He was asked if that was “senatorial behavior.”

Mr. Winslow said his actions had brought attention to his issues. “I’m in the loyal opposition,” he said. “My role is to poke back and speak truth to power.”

The other two candidates painted themselves as serious and more dignified. “Since I went to the Naval Academy, and I was a pilot on a carrier and a SEAL, I let my actions speak for themselves,” Mr. Gomez said. “I don’t need to grandstand.”

Mr. Sullivan said he “can’t see myself participating in that kind of theatrics” unless he was trying to be funny. “I take my responsibilities seriously,” he said. “My style is to be respectful. Theatrics is not a big part f my life.”

Arizona Governor Introduces Bill to Expand Medicaid

PHOENIX - Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona stepped to the lectern on Tuesday under blazing sunshine and before a mostly friendly audience to introduce a Medicaid expansion bill she has championed.

In her brief remarks, Ms. Brewer twice used the word “conservative” to describe Arizona’s Medicaid program, a managed-care system whose cost per patient is $680 less than the national average, and the bill she was endorsing, which would extend Medicaid coverage to anyone who made up to 133 percent of the federal poverty line.

Politically, it is a risky proposition in a state where Republicans are the majority in the legislature and where ideals like small government and small taxes are enough to carry people into elected office. And the proposal puts Ms. Breer, an aggressive opponent of President Obama’s policies, in a position of advocating one of the central pillars of his health care law.

Ms. Brewer had her way of packaging the news, though, saying that she is “proud to be a member of a pro-life party” and that being pro-life is exactly what expanding Medicaid - or restoring it, as she and her advisers have described it - is all about. (The state used to provide coverage for childless adults who made up to 100 percent of the federal poverty line, but discontinued it as a way to cut costs during the recession.)

The event, well choreographed and on time, brought together cancer survivors, advocates for the mentally ill, doctors in smocks and other supporters, who carried signs that read: “The math makes sense. Restore.” It came one day after a committee of senators in Florida handed a defeat to the state’s governor, Rick Scott, by rejecting his idea to expand Medicaid.

If approved in Arizona,! the expansion would bring in $8 billion to the state over the next four years and provide “a lifeline to rural hospitals,” which are struggling under the weight of caring for the uninsured who seek care in their emergency rooms, Ms. Brewer said.

It would also keep roughly 60,000 childless adults from being dropped off the rolls by Jan. 1 - including those who lost their jobs during the recession and are “one serious illness away from disaster,” she said.

Opponents have said Arizona would be better off if it opted out of the expansion, an important part of Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul, and sought to reform its Medicaid program on its own. There is also strong resistance among Republican legislators to an assessment - or a tax, depending on whom you ask - that would be charged to hospitals to offset the state’s share of the costs of the program.

Ms. Brewer and her team of supporters - more than 110 groups have come to her side, including associations representing hospitals, octors and even county sheriffs - have been working hard to get just enough support for the bill. Some legislators have been making their way through the Capitol carrying a list of eight Republican senators the governor believes she can get on her side.

Bolling Declines Independent Bid for Virginia Governor

Bill Bolling, in announcing that he will not leave the Republican Party and run as an independent for governor of Virginia this year, did so with one of the classic political dropout lines: It’s not me, it’s the system.

“I was confident I could raise enough money to run a competitive campaign,” Mr. Bolling said in a message posted online and sent to supporters, “but I was not confident I could raise enough money to run a winning campaign.”

The potential independent bid is the second gubernatorial campaign that Mr. Bolling, the state’s lieutenant governor, declined in four months. In November, Mr. Bolling said he would not run for the Republican nomination, clearing the way for Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, Virginia’s attorney general, who is known nationally for leading the legal crusade against President Obama’s health care overhaul. In declining to run as a Republican, Mr. Bolling cited the state party’s nominating process, which would favor the more conservative Mr. Cuccinelli.

Mr. Bolling had been staking out a position as a moderate alternative to the conservative firebrand. He said he would not endorse Mr. Cuccinelli when he dropped out of the Republican contest, citing “serious reservations about his ability to effectively and responsibly lead the state.” And last month, Mr. Bolling sided with Democrats in the state Senate, casting the tie-breaking vote to delay a strict voter identification law.

Ultimately, however, Mr. Bolling said he did not want to sever his relationship with the Republican Party, even though he is “very concerned” about its direction. He again withheld an endorsement, offering well wishes to both Mr. Cuccinelli and Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic fund-ra! iser who is now his party’s leading candidate.

Although an independent bid by Mr. Bolling had potential to divide the Republican establishment, it is unclear whether he would have drawn more voters from Mr. Cuccinelli or Mr. McAuliffe. A recent Quinnipiac poll that showed Mr. Cuccinelli and Mr. McAuliffe in a 38-38 dead heat in a two-way race also showed the two statistically tied â€" 34 percent for Mr. McAuliffe to 31 percent for Mr. Cuccinelli â€" with Mr. Bolling as a candidate. Mr. Bolling received support from 13 percent of respondents.

There is another third-party candidate, but his spoiler potential seems minimal: Tareq Salahi, of White House party-crashing fame.

G.O.P. to Put Digital Strategy at Center of New Structure

As part of a rebuilding effort after its 2012 electoral losses, the Republican National Committee on Tuesday announced plans to put an enhanced digital strategy at the center of its operation, led by a new chief technology officer.

“This is a major change in how party committees operate,” said Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for the R.N.C. She explained that while political committees were usually anchored by political and financial departments, “the idea is to center the committee around technology moving forward.”

“There are still questions over how to do it best,” Ms. Kukowski said. “We’re acknowledging that it needs to be done.”

The R.N.C. aims to hire its new technology officer by May 1, after a search that will include Silicon Valley executives and experts in data analysis. Extensive political experience is not necessarily a requirement. The ideal candidate, Ms. Kukowski said, could be someone who “maybe has been an outsider and is maybe able to come in and chage the way that we think.”

Republicans learned the hard way in 2012 how valuable a robust technology operation can be, as the Obama campaign used Web analytics, voter data, social media and online fund-raising to more effectively organize voters, drive turnout and increase donations. The Obama campaign also hired a chief technology officer, Harper Reed, from the tech sector and a team of engineers to build a technology infrastructure to drive the president’s re-election effort.

The digital overhaul is probably just the beginning of the Republicans’ adjustments. On Monday, the party will release a sweeping audit of the 2012 campaign that will include assessments of messaging, fund-raising, campaign mechanics and the primary process - all with an eye toward preparing the R.N.C. for the 2016 campaign.

Reince Priebus, the committee’s chairman,! turned to party elders like Ari Fleischer and Haley Barbour to conduct the so-called Growth and Opportunity Project - a point of derision among younger, more tech-savvy conservative activists. But, said Ms. Kukowski, fresh from a meeting about the review, “a recurring theme throughout this report is getting the youth influence.”

Patrick Ruffini, a Republican strategist who was an early, and once lonely, proponent of digital engagement among conservatives, called the R.N.C.’s plan a “good step.” To close the gap with Democrats, who “have more people at a higher level doing this for a longer period of time,” he said, will require “investing in people and creating a culture of data and innovation that ouches everyone in the party.”

Other aspects of the plan include “digital campaign colleges” in “high tech” cities to build bonds with the tech community and the development of new programs for voter turnout in time to test them during the 2013 and 2014 races.

Representatives Release Carbon Emissions Tax Plan

Almost exactly four years after unveiling his doomed cap-and-trade proposal to deal with global warming, Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, released a new plan on Tuesday to address climate change and federal budget woes: a tax on carbon emissions.

Mr. Waxman, joined by Representative Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon, and Senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Brian Schatz of Hawaii, both Democrats, distributed a relatively simple proposal to impose a fee on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, factories, refineries and other major sources. The idea of a carbon tax, long favored by many economists as the most straightforward way of deterring pollution, has been kicking around the Capitol for years, but has never gained a broad following.

The plan contains three potential per-ton prices for carbon pollution, $15, $25 or $30, and a range of annual cost increases from 2 percent to 8 percent a year to ensure that greenhouse gas levels continue to decline over ime.

The new proposal would return most of the revenue from the new tax to the public through utility rebates, federal deficit reduction, payments to displaced workers or investments in clean-energy projects.

“Putting a price on carbon could help solve two of the nation’s biggest challenges: preventing climate change and reducing the budget deficit,” Mr. Waxman said in a news release. “There have been carbon tax proposals made by others. What’s unique about this one is its novel design. We are seeking to craft a system in which each agency does what they are good at and that minimizes compliance burdens and administrative costs. Utilities, oil companies and other major sources are already reporting their emissions to E.P.A. We build off of this existing program.”

The draft legislation being circulated by the lawmakers covers only 11 pages, vastly smaller than Mr. Waxman’s cap-and-trade bill, which grew to 1,200 pages after months of ho! rse-trading and concessions to special interests before it passed the House in June 2009.

That bill, strongly supported by President Obama, never got a hearing in the Senate and the idea of a national approach to climate change fell by the wayside.

In his second Inaugural Address and his recent State of the Union speech, the president has renewed discussion of climate change, citing record temperatures and destructive storms fed by growing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

The president has specifically ruled out proposing a carbon tax, however, and it is unclear whether he would support the Waxman-Whitehouse approach, should it make any progress in Congress.

Even in Afghanistan, a Focus on Budget Battles of Washington

FORWARD OPERATING BASE FENTY, Afghanistan - The new defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, arrived at this rugged security outpost situated along a ratline of insurgent infiltration from Pakistan to talk to American troops about the war.

Instead, the soldiers wanted to hear only about the budget battle back in Washington - in particular, how steep reductions in spending for the Pentagon would affect their careers, their salaries and their health care benefits, and their eventual retirements.

Perhaps that could be viewed as a positive sign of the status of combat operations in Afghanistan.

As Afghan forces take the lead in securing thir own country, members of the 101st Airborne Division’s First Brigade Combat Team were not so concerned about the quality of their body armor, or the details of counterinsurgency tactics, or whether there was a slackening of support for the war back home. Those are the sorts of things that usually come up when a defense secretary convenes a town-hall-style meeting with troops in the combat zone.

In his opening remarks delivered this weekend at the forward operating base, located in Jalalabad, a strategic crossroads in eastern Nangarhar Province, Mr. Hagel discussed the war effort, of course, and thanked the troops for their service to the nation. And he pledged to always keep at the forefront the needs of America’s service personnel and their families.

Then he opened up the dialogue to questions. Not a single one was about the war effort.

“Mr. Secretary,” came the first question, “with the high unemployment rate facing our veterans of our Op! eration Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, what is â€" what are we doing to help veterans as they transition out of the military and back into the civil sector to be successful”

The second query to Mr. Hagel went straight at the across-the-board spending cuts, known as sequestration, and their impact on the military.

“Mr. Secretary,” the soldier asked, “how will sequestration affect military P.C.S. movements” The initials P.C.S. are military shorthand for “permanent change of station,” the official term for being given a new assignment at a new location as members of the military advance their careers.

The next question went to a specific category of military spending, in particular whether a partner in a same-sex relationship with a member of the armed services would be receiving the full set of benefits traditionally given to spouses.

Following that was a question on “budget cuts and the downsizing of the military,” followed by a final question on “ho is everything going on in Congress right now going to affect us that are about to retire”

“I think you all are aware of what’s going on in Washington with sequestration,” Mr. Hagel said. “We are required to take a cut in our budget. We are managing that. We are dealing with it. We will continue to manage with those realities.”

But he acknowledged that the shifting budgetary foundation for the Pentagon “affects everything; it affects all of our programs.” He told the soldiers that he and the military chiefs were committed to assuring that “our readiness continues to stay as active and alert and essential as at any time. And so we are adjusting in training, steaming time, flight time, areas that don’t affect directly our men and women in uniform and our readiness.”

The defense secretary did not try to dissuade the troops from fearing that sequestration was a serious problem. “If it continues, it’ll be more and more difficult for us to do what we are required! to do, a! nd that is to assure the security of America around the world,” he said.

“We will work through it,” Mr. Hagel concluded, “and we’ll continue to work with the Congress on ways to make sure that that certainty of security is there, and will continue to be there.”

Skullcandy Crushers Vibrate to Boost Bass

How many headphones count a threat to “make your eyeballs bleed” as a virtue At least one, the Skullcandy Crusher, which uses an unusual speaker technology to generate vibrations that are perceived as powerful bass notes.

The Crushers are an over-the-ear enclosed headset, which both accentuates the bass vibrations and muffles what mass transit seatmates are likely to hear.

The trick is that the Crushers turn speaker design on its head. Normally electrical pulses go to a weighty stationary magnet that make a lightweight coil and speaker cone move to produce sound.

In the Crushers, the coil is stationary. It is the heavy magnet that moves, producing vibrations that you can feel. Thrugh a phenomenon known as bone conduction, those vibrations are perceived as powerful bass.

In a test, with the bass adjusted to a medium setting, the sound was a bit less sloppy than usually associated with bass-heavy headphones. The effect worked particularly well with rock, pop and hip-hop - although at full blast, it felt as if my head was inside the kick drum. It was less effective on some older jazz recordings and symphonic music, even dramatic movie music, like Danny Elfman’s “Batman” score.

Although the Crushers enhance the bass, the 40-millimeter driver that handles the rest of the sound spectrum sounded a bit muddy. Individual instruments were indistinct, and higher-pitched sounds, like horns, were muted.

The headphones fit me snugly, sealed well and were comfortable over a half-hour or so. They fold into a compact size for an over-the-ear headphone and come with a fabric carrying case.

The Crushers - n! ot to be confused with an earlier model called the Skullcrusher - are headed to store shelves now at a price of $100.

Q&A: Capturing the Windows 8 Screen

Q.

In Windows 8, nothing happens when I press the Print Screen button â€" no Screenshots folder shows up in the Pictures library. Can you help

A.

Windows 8 offers a few ways to save an image of what is currently on your screen. To automatically take a picture of the screen and save it as a file, press both the Windows key and the Print Screen (PrtScn) key. After pressing the keys (or pressing the Windows logo and volume down buttons on a touch-screen device), the screen should dim momentarily to indicate the shot was taken. The resulting file appears in the Screenshots folder inside the Pictures library folder.

To capture a shot of the screen without saving it as a file to your drive, press just the Print Screen button. From here, you can open an image-editing program like Paint or a word-processing application, and paste the captured image into a new file. Pressing the Alt key and the Print Screen key takes a shot of the active window on the sreen.

If you are using those keys without success, try pressing the computer’s Function (Fn) key as well and see if the shot appears in the folder. Because they generally have room for fewer keys, laptops in particular may remap certain key functions and require a different shortcut combination than the default set used by Windows 8. Check your computer’s manual to see if the screen-shot function has been moved to different keys.

Microsoft has more information about taking screen shots on its site. As with some previous versions of Windows, the Snipping Tool is also available to capture screen shots; instructions for using it in Windows 8 are here.

The Early Word: Called Out

Today’s Times

• They shied away from it before, but now members of the president’s administration are pointing fingers and dropping names on cybercrime, and they want the world to hear it. Tom Donilon, President Obama’s national security adviser, demanded that the Chinese government agree to “acceptable norms of behavior in cyberspace” after it rejected a growing body of evidence that the country’s military was involved in widespread theft of data from American computer networks, Mark Landler and David E. Sanger report.

• Though former Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick of Detroit was convicted on Monday of racketeering and other federal charges, as Mary M. Chapman reports, the financial crisis that has ade Detroit one of the largest cities to face mandatory state oversight was decades in the making. Monica Davey and Mary Williams Walsh delve into the “bad decisions piled on top of each other” that led a veteran financial consultant to suggest that the city file for bankruptcy.

• Nearly three months into a new session and more than a week after the automatic budget cuts took effect, Congress has decided to take the first steps toward a budget process that both parties hope is a move away from the deadline-driven cycle of quick fixes. Though it will be hard to merge the spending plans proposed by each party, the fact that both houses of Congress are working on their budgets simultaneously is enough to ignite a glimmer of hope in some Washington optimists, Jerem! y W. Peters reports.

• Democrats say that President Obama’s renewed efforts at making nice with Republicans will put to the test, or at least expose, what they call the biggest factor of all: Republicans’ resistance to any overtures Mr. Obama makes, whether social or legislative, given the political danger of appearing at all cordial with a president so unpopular among the conservative base, Jackie Calmes writes.

Around the Web

• It’s that time again, Politico reports. The Faith and Freedom Coalition will be inviting the biggest names in the 2016 presidential field to a conference that will allow them to court the Republican Party’s evangelical base.

• The Hill: After President Obama received overwhelming support from black voters in the 2012 election, some members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been asking him, “Where are the black cabinet nominees” The caucus’s chairwoman, Representative Marcia L. Fudge, Democrat of Ohio, expressed concern that Mr. Obama had yet to name any black nominees to his second-term cabinet.

Happenings in Washington

• Anyone with an Internet connection can listen in as President Obama delivers remarks to his Export Council in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. It will be live-streamed on the White House Web site.

• Later, Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will hold a bilateral meeting with Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei, as the White House continues its renewed focus on the Asia Pacific region.

• After that Mr. Obama will head to Capitol Hill for the f! irst of m! ultiple meetings with legislators from both parties.

The Early Word: Called Out

Today’s Times

• They shied away from it before, but now members of the president’s administration are pointing fingers and dropping names on cybercrime, and they want the world to hear it. Tom Donilon, President Obama’s national security adviser, demanded that the Chinese government agree to “acceptable norms of behavior in cyberspace” after it rejected a growing body of evidence that the country’s military was involved in widespread theft of data from American computer networks, Mark Landler and David E. Sanger report.

• Though former Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick of Detroit was convicted on Monday of racketeering and other federal charges, as Mary M. Chapman reports, the financial crisis that has ade Detroit one of the largest cities to face mandatory state oversight was decades in the making. Monica Davey and Mary Williams Walsh delve into the “bad decisions piled on top of each other” that led a veteran financial consultant to suggest that the city file for bankruptcy.

• Nearly three months into a new session and more than a week after the automatic budget cuts took effect, Congress has decided to take the first steps toward a budget process that both parties hope is a move away from the deadline-driven cycle of quick fixes. Though it will be hard to merge the spending plans proposed by each party, the fact that both houses of Congress are working on their budgets simultaneously is enough to ignite a glimmer of hope in some Washington optimists, Jerem! y W. Peters reports.

• Democrats say that President Obama’s renewed efforts at making nice with Republicans will put to the test, or at least expose, what they call the biggest factor of all: Republicans’ resistance to any overtures Mr. Obama makes, whether social or legislative, given the political danger of appearing at all cordial with a president so unpopular among the conservative base, Jackie Calmes writes.

Around the Web

• It’s that time again, Politico reports. The Faith and Freedom Coalition will be inviting the biggest names in the 2016 presidential field to a conference that will allow them to court the Republican Party’s evangelical base.

• The Hill: After President Obama received overwhelming support from black voters in the 2012 election, some members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been asking him, “Where are the black cabinet nominees” The caucus’s chairwoman, Representative Marcia L. Fudge, Democrat of Ohio, expressed concern that Mr. Obama had yet to name any black nominees to his second-term cabinet.

Happenings in Washington

• Anyone with an Internet connection can listen in as President Obama delivers remarks to his Export Council in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. It will be live-streamed on the White House Web site.

• Later, Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will hold a bilateral meeting with Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei, as the White House continues its renewed focus on the Asia Pacific region.

• After that Mr. Obama will head to Capitol Hill for the f! irst of m! ultiple meetings with legislators from both parties.