The White House today filed its legal defense to the sweeping health care bill enacted in 2010, calling it the culmination of "nearly (a) century-long national effort to expand access to health care by making affordable health insurance more widely available."

The filing notes that the uninsured "face enormous obstacles in obtaining health care services," but that they do frequent "hospital emergency rooms...but often they cannot pay for it." That shifts the cost to those who can, the brief notes.

"The Act breaks this cycle through a comprehensive framework of economic regulation and incentives," it says. And it notes that states tried their own thing, including Massachusetts (under Mitt Romney)

"Congress cited the Massachusetts law as a template for key provisions of the Affordable Care Act," the brief notes.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and 35 senators filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of the challenge to what they called the "Democrats' health spending law."

"Americans have been telling Washington for years now that they oppose a 2,700 page health spending bill that dramatically increases costs and expands the reach of the federal government into their health care decisions," McConnell said.

President Barack Obama set off a pitched partisan battle today with his plans to appoint his choice to head up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer confirmed the move in a Twitter post headlined "We Can't Wait." The announcement will come in Ohio -- with Richard Cordray earlier today following Obama onto Air Force One for the flight to Cleveland. Senate Republicans last month blocked his appointment to the bureau that the GOP opposes.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell ripped Obama for making what he calls an "unprecedented recess" appointment.

"Although the Senate is not in recess, President Obama, in an unprecedented move, has arrogantly circumvented the American people by 'recess' appointing Richard Cordray," McConnell said in a statement. He called the appointment "a sharp departure from a long-standing precedent" that has limited the president to appointments only when the Senate is in recess of 10 days or longer.

"Breaking from this precedent lands this appointee in uncertain legal territory, threatens the confirmation process and fundamentally endangers the Congress’s role in providing a check on the excesses of the executive branch," McConnell warned.

Pfeiffer in a blog posting said that Senate Republicans had engineered a "gimmick" to prevent Obama from carrying out the appointment.

So House Speaker John Boehner has named Republicans to a conference, or negotiating committee, to seek a compromise on the Social Security payroll tax plan. What about the Democrats?

They won't play the Charlie Brown role, says their House of Representatives leader.

"Are you not in some ways to blame for the stalemate by not naming your conferees?" Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was asked at a Tuesday news conference.

"No," she said. "It is not a question of blame for stalemate. It is a question of there is a bill that has passed the House and Senate that was designed to pass. The Republicans have put forth a path that is designed to fail. This bill that the Republicans passed in the House was not even brought up in the Senate. The Republicans in the Senate objected to it being brought up because they said they knew it would fail. And the bill that is in the House was not brought up by the House Republicans because, the Senate bill, because they knew it would pass.

"He is not Lucy. I'm not Charlie Brown. We are not falling for that football stunt again. Senator Mitch McConnell fell for it, but we are not falling for it. This is not about getting a bill passed. This is about not getting a bill passed."

The Senate passed a bipartisan compromise Saturday; the House, in a largely party-line vote, rejected it.

"Make no mistake," Pelosi said, "the fact is a clear one, if we do not have a payroll tax cut, it is because the Republicans in the House of Representatives have chosen to paint themselves in a different place than the Republicans in the country and the Republicans in the United States Senate. They are clearly isolating themselves.

" And I will not play Charlie Brown to their Lucy. They have pulled this football every single time. We are not going to let them mislead the American people."

House Democratic leaders made it clear after meeting with rank-and-file members Monday: They want the Senate bill on the Social Security payroll tax passed.

House Republicans are balking, saying the two-month extension is too short. They want a year. Well, said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., so do we. But the two parties could not agree how to fund  a year extension, so two months is the compromise.

"The Senate did compromise" she told reporters. The Senate voted 89-10 Saturday to pass the plan.

But, a reporter said, House GOP leaders were not involved in that compromise.

"No," Pelosi said, "but the Speaker has said very clearly all along that (Senate Majority) Leader (Harry) Reid should negotiate with (Senate Republican) Leader (Mitch) McConnell.  This is the compromise.  This is the compromise.  This isn’t a bill that we were advocating.  We want one year.  This is the compromise.  This is just moving the goal post."  

Still no compromise on an extension of the Social Security payroll tax break as of late afternoon Friday.

The problem is a dispute over the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that would extend 1,700 miles western Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast. It would bring oil from oil sands in Canada to the U.S. President Barack Obama wants to delay a decision until 2013. Republicans want a ruling far more quickly,and want to include an expedited review in the payroll tax legislation.

Their position was firm Friday. "Frankly, I will not be able to support a package that doesn't include the pipeline," said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

"I think this is something we could all be proud of here at the end of the year, demonstrating to the American people that we can work together, not only to help those who are struggling through a continuation of the payroll tax holiday and an unemployment benefits package, but also create jobs at the same time in the private sector without a penny of the federal government's money by moving this pipeline along."

Democrats were huddling on how to proceed; Republicans were meeting separately. Some sort of accord is still expected, perhaps as soon as Friday night.

Still no agreement on how to extend the employee Social Security payroll tax break, which ends Jan. 1.

But people are still optimistic.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told colleagues Friday that he and Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, "are making significant progress and reaching an agreement on a package that will have bipartisan support, I hope. I think we're going to get to that place. And I share his view that good progress is being made.”

Senate leaders were optimistic Thursday they can resolve their differences over the Social Security payroll tax, government funding and a host of other issues.

Unless an accord is reached by Friday night, parts of the government begin shutting down. And if no agreement is reached on extending the 2011 Social Security payroll tax cut, the rate paid by employees would return to its 2010 level of 6.2 percent. It's now 4.2 percent.

But Senate Majority Harry Reid, D-Nevada, struck a conciliatory tone Thursday.

"We hope that we can come up with something that would get us out of here at a reasonable time in the next few days," he said.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was also upbeat.

"We hope to be able to pass a combination of appropriation bills and we are working hard to resolve the remaining differences on the payroll tax extension and the related issues that are important to both sides," he said.

And, McConnell added: "We're confident and optimistic we'll be able to resolve both on a bipartisan basis."

The Obama administration had been hoping for months to have the support of Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski for the head of its new consumer watchdog, but Murkowski said Tuesday that she has "great concerns" about the agency's structure and that it shouldn't have a director without changes Republicans want.

In a test vote Thursday, Senate Republicans are poised to block the nomination Thursday of former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Tuesday, Republicans were nearly united in opposition.

Murkowski said Cordray is "competent and capable," but would have too much power.

"There's no accountability within this proposed agency," she said. "And I haven't seen anything that's given me any assurance."

Murkowski said she didn't sign a letter with 44 Republicans in May opposing any nomination to the bureau because she wanted "flexibility." But Tuesday, she sided with her colleagues.

"I don't think we want anybody in there in that position until we can address some of the concerns that were raised in that letter," Murkowski said.

Over the weekend, the White House launched a lobbying campaign in the home states of several Republican senators, including Alaska, aiming to build support for Cordray.

While Murkowski said the White House had contacted her staff, she hasn't had direct conversations with anyone in the Obama administration about Cordray's nomination.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday in a floor speech that he didn't know if President Barack Obama to had reached out to any Republican senators.

"If he's picked up the phone to talk these issues over with anybody in our conference, I haven't heard about it," McConnell said.

The agency began its work in July, but the absence of a director limits its authority. The White House Sunday released a report that said without a director, the bureau can't regulate non-bank financial institutions, which include payday lenders, debt collectors, credit reporting agencies and non-bank mortgage lenders and servicers.

In October, the Senate Banking Committee approved Cordray's nomination without the support of any of the panel's 10 Republicans. But also that month, 37 state attorneys general, including Democrats and Republicans, endorsed Cordray's confirmation.

Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts is the only Republican who said he'd back Cordray. He was one of three Republicans who voted for the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill last year that established the consumer protection bureau. The agency's primary architect, Elizabeth Warren, is Brown's Democratic opponent in the Massachusetts Senate race.

 Republicans want changes to the bureau's structure: a board of directors, rather than a single director; a budget that's subject to congressional appropriations instead of independent funding; and more checks and balances over the agency's authority.

Ken Edwards, the federal policy counsel with the Center for Responsible Lending, a consumer advocacy group, said those changes are unnecessary and would hurt the consumers the bureau is trying to protect.

"Structural changes would weaken the bureau," he said. "It would keep it from being the watchdog it was designed to be."

Republicans Wednesday proposed freezing federal pay, cutting the federal workforce and cutting some benefits to millionaires, as they unveiled their plan to pay for a temporary 2012 cut in Social Security payroll taxes.

The proposal includes:

--A three year pay freeze on federal workers and Pentagon civilians.

--A 10 percent cut in the federal workforce, a reduction of 200,000 positions.

--A curb on benefits such as food stamps and unemployment compensation for millionaires and billionaires.

--Making it easy for millionaires and billionaires to voluntarily pay more tax.

--No new taxes on job creators.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell reiterated Wednesday that Republicans will support an extension of this year's 2 percentage point payroll tax cut--but in doing so, he said, it's a reminder of how Democrats have hurt the economy.

And he won't agree to the Democrats current proposal for paying for it, a surtax on millionaires.

Here's some of McConnell's reasoning, from a Senate floor speech earlier Wednesday:

“The President and Democrats in Congress are saying we ought to recoup the revenue we won’t get from one group of taxpayers by socking it to another group, a significant number of whom happen to be employers. What this really means is that one way or another they want the money coming back to Washington — so that the President and his allies in Congress can divvy it up how they want, protecting and aiding the politically-favored few.

“And this really sums up the whole story of this President and the economic policies he’s promoted over the past few years: send your money to Washington — so the President and his allies in Congress can spend it their way, on things like turtle tunnels or bailing out politically-connected investors at failing solar companies.

"The Democrats can say they just want some people to pay a little bit more to cover this or that dubious proposal. But what they don’t tell you is that 80 percent of the people they want to tax are business owners — in other words, the very people we’re counting on to create the jobs that we need in this country. Think about that: the Democrats’ response to the jobs crisis we’re in right now is to raise taxes on those who create jobs. This isn’t just counterproductive. It’s absurd.

“And that brings me to my second point, which is this: the only reason we’re even talking about extending a temporary cut in the payroll tax right now; the only reason we’re even talking about extending unemployment insurance right now, is because President Obama’s economic policies have failed working Americans. Democrats and liberal pundits are fond of saying that Republicans are rooting against the economy. But it’s easy to refute that one. If Republicans wanted the economy to stall, we’d just stand on the sidelines and wave through everything this president and his Democrat allies in Congress propose.

"That’s what the Democrats did for two years, and now we’re living with the results. Unemployment’s still stuck at around nine percent. Fourteen million Americans are looking for work and can’t find it. Millions more are underemployed or have given up on finding a job altogether. And here we are, three years into this presidency, still talking about temporary stimulus measures."