Via Dave Weigel and Matt Yglesias comes the depressing news that the vast majority of the public doesn't know what cap and trade" is . And I don't mean in the sense that they don't understand the auctions. They have no idea what problem the policy actually refers to. "Given a choice of three options, just 24 percent of voters can correctly identify the cap-and-trade proposal as something that deals with environmental issues. A slightly higher number (29 percent) believe the proposal has something to do with regulating Wall Street while 17 percent think the term applies to health care reform. A plurality (30 percent) have no idea." Matt made a graph: The struggle to define this policy, in other words, is ongoing. Republicans have been referring to it as the "energy tax." Al Gore's group has been trying out "the carbon pollution loophole." But the thing you can probably say is that it's not going to pass all that quickly. It's fairly hard for Congress to manage large action on issues...

This isn't really my beat, but Wanda Sykes' comedy routine at last weekend's White House Correspondent's Dinner was really shockingly offensive.

Lot of health reform posts on the blog today. That's because there's a lot of health reform policy news today. For instance, Arlen Specter, who recently gave a one word "no" when asked if he supported a public plan on Meet the Press, is now proclaiming himself open to a public plan: In a letter to the progressive group Health Care for America Now, Specter said he looks forward to ``discussing and considering'' the issue. He said a starting point could be a proposal by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., that seeks to maintain a level playing field between the private and public sector. The mark of a great political mind, I guess, is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas within days of each other. Elsewhere, The Washington Post -- where I'll be starting next week -- just created a health care reform super site, including a blog from Ceci Connolly. Welcome to the 'sphere!

Obama just left the meeting with the stakeholders and gave some quick remarks. The key bit: [N]one of these steps can be taken by our federal government or our health care community acting alone. They'll require all of us coming together, as we are today, around a common purpose -- workers, executives, hospitals, nurses, doctors, drug companies, insurance companies, members of Congress. It's the kind of broad coalition, everybody with a seat at the table that I talked about during the campaign, that is required to achieve meaningful health care reform and that is the kind of coalition which -- to which I am committed. So the steps that are being announced today are significant. But the only way these steps will have an enduring impact is if they are taken not in isolation, but as part of a broader effort to reform our entire health care system. We've already begun making a down payment on that kind of comprehensive reform. We're extending quality health care to millions of children of...

All this fuss over one little letter. I've got the full document for download here . And the early reports are true. It's signed by the presidents of Pharma, Advamed (device manufacturers), the American Medical Association (doctors), the American Hospital Association, America's Health Insurance Plans, and SEIU's Health Care project. It promises that "we will do our part to achieve your Administration’s goal of decreasing by 1.5 percentage points the annual health care spending growth rate—saving $2 trillion or more." It says that "we are developing consensus proposals to reduce the rate of increase in future health and insurance costs through changes made in all sectors of the health care system." And it gives some general areas of agreement: • Implementing proposals in all sectors of the health care system, focusing on administrative simplification, standardization, and transparency that supports effective markets; • Reducing over-use and under-use of health care by aligning quality...

I've been thinking a lot about James Surowiecki's argument that the administration's critics have developed "a fetishization of boldness." I'd put this a little differently: I think the administration's critics assume timidity. Government is a constrained institution. Geithner has to deal with pressure from critics, yes, but also a bitterly divided Congress, a filibuster-prone Senate, pressure from Wall Street, and resistance from captured regulators. The objective facts of his situation suggest that boldness won't necessarily be rewarded. And so when observers see informed critics like Krugman and Johnson arguing for a bolder strategy and charging that Geithner's approach deviates from the economic ideal, there's an assumption of credibility there: They, after all, don't have incentives colored by interest group pressure or congressional intransigence. That said, they also don't have perspectives colored by, well, the intransigence of Congress and the limits of the federal agencies...

Jon Cohn is enthused . Paul Krugman is excited . Maybe I'm just churlish. Maybe I'm getting cranky as I age. But I can't shake my skepticism about today's big health care announcement. First, the announcement : At about 12:30 today, representatives from the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, Advamed, the California Hospital Association, the Greater New York Hospital Association, and SEIU will present Barack Obama with a letter promising to aid his health care reform effort by cutting health care spending by 1.5 percentage points over the next 10 years. That sounds minimal. But it actually amounts to $2 trillion in savings. The politics of this should surely cheer supporters of reform. In essence, this is the entire medical industry stepping forward and declaring themselves partners in Obama's effort. It leaves Republicans isolated. It allows the administration to credibly claim that they are working...