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Washington (CNN) — The Obama administration raised the stakes in the health care debate Monday, releasing a new blueprint that seeks to bridge the gap between measures passed by the Senate and House of Representatives last year.

If enacted, the president’s sweeping compromise plan would constitute the biggest expansion of federal health care guarantees since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid more than four decades ago. The White House said it would extend coverage to 31 million Americans.

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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s proposed budget predicts the national deficit will crest at a record-breaking $1.6 trillion in the current fiscal year, then start to recede in 2011 to just below $1.3 trillion.

Still, the administration’s new budget proposal to be released Monday says deficits over the next decade will average 4.5 percent of the size of the economy, a level that economists say is dangerously high if not addressed.

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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama renewed his pledge on Saturday to make job creation his top priority in 2010 but said it was also critical to rein in a record budget deficit that threatened an economic recovery.

Obama used his weekly radio and Internet address to remind Americans of the various proposals he put forward in the last week to spur job growth and tame a $1.4 trillion deficit.

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WASHINGTON – Republicans love to get their hands on the Democrats’ health care legislation. They show it to the cameras at every opportunity, even piling one version on top of another to make a big pile look even bigger.

Although they complain they don’t have time to read all of it, they found the time to tape it together, page by page, so they could roll it up the steps of the Capitol like super-sized toilet paper and show how very long it is.

It surely is long. But, no, not longer than “War and Peace,” as they claim.

No one really expects brevity when reinventing something as complex and huge as the nation’s health insurance system, which accounts for one-sixth of the economy. Indeed, legislation of comparable size was used to redefine an area of much more limited federal responsibility, education. That was the No Child Left Behind Act from the agenda of Republican President George W. Bush.

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WASHINGTON (CNN) – Senate Democrats lost a key vote Wednesday on a controversial $247 billion measure designed to ensure that doctors experience no cut in Medicare reimbursement payments over the next 10 years.

The proposal was blocked in a 47-to-53 vote. Thirteen Democrats broke with their party’s leadership to join a unanimous Republican opposition.

The measure, known as “doc fix,” had been separated from broader proposals to overhaul the nation’s health care system.

Under the bill proposed by Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan, Congress would have overriden a formula set more than a decade ago to prevent Medicare costs from rising faster than planned. The formula calls for cutting projected Medicare reimbursements to doctors.

Stabenow’s bill would have reversed those cuts, just as Congress has done repeatedly since the formula was imposed in 1997.

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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s treasury secretary on Sunday said he cannot rule out higher taxes to help tame an exploding budget deficit and his chief economic adviser would not dismiss raising them on middle-class Americans as part of a health care overhaul.

As the White House sought to balance campaign rhetoric with governing, officials appeared willing to extend unemployment benefits. With former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan saying he is “pretty sure we’ve already seen the bottom” of the recession, Obama aides sought to defend the economic stimulus and calm a jittery public

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While 13 states permit the limited sale of marijuana for medical use, and polls show a steady increase in the number of Americans who favor legalization, federal law still bans the cultivation, sale or possession of marijuana. In fact, the feds still classify marijuana as a Schedule I drug, one that has no “currently accepted medical use” in the U.S. (Watch a video on medical-marijuana home delivery.)

But supporters of legalization may have been handed their most convincing factor yet: the bummer economy. Advocates say that if state or local governments could collect a tax on even a fraction of pot sales, it would help rescue cash-strapped communities.

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The deadline came — and went — without a report from the White House on whether or not that promise was fulfilled.

Asked about the spending cuts, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Monday that information still was being compiled.

“Those are being reviewed now, and we’ll release something in the coming days,” Gibbs told the daily White House briefing.

At time the challenge was announced, critics said $100 million in savings was a small amount on the context of the federal budget.

“Any amount of savings is obviously welcome,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said in April. “But [$100 million is] about the average amount we’ll spend every single day just covering the interest on the stimulus package that we passed earlier this year.”

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WASHINGTON – The White House is being forced to acknowledge the wide gap between its once-upbeat predictions about the economy and today’s bleak landscape.

The administration’s annual midsummer budget update is sure to show higher deficits and unemployment and slower growth than projected in President Barack Obama’s budget in February and update in May, and that could complicate his efforts to get his signature health care and global-warming proposals through Congress.

The release of the update — usually scheduled for mid-July — has been put off until the middle of next month, giving rise to speculation the White House is delaying the bad news at least until Congress leaves town on its August 7 summer recess.

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Activists said the TEA Party Day — an acronym for “Taxed Enough Already” — was in response to what they called runaway government spending.

They are taking to task the Obama administration’s stimulus program and health care initiative, and say Congress is not giving constituents enough information about where their tax money is spent.

People at the rally expressed outrage at the $787 billion economic stimulus plan passed earlier this year, saying the bill racked up a huge national debt that will be passed onto their grandchildren. They said President Obama’s push for health-care overhaul is “socialism,” and believe it would negatively affect the quality of care.