Chile quake death toll hits 708 as rescue ramps up

CONCEPCION, Chile – Heroism and banditry mingled on Chile's shattered streets Sunday as rescuers braved aftershocks digging for survivors and the government sent soldiers and ordered a nighttime curfew to quell looting. The death toll climbed to 708 in one of the biggest earthquakes in centuries.
In the hard-hit city of Concepcion, firefighters pulling survivors from a toppled apartment block were forced to pause because of tear gas fired to stop looters, who were wheeling off everything from microwave ovens to canned milk at a damaged supermarket across the street.
Efforts to determine the full scope of destruction were undermined by an endless string of terrifying aftershocks that continued to turn buildings into rubble. Officials said 500,000 houses were destroyed or badly damaged, and President Michele Bachelet said "a growing number" of people were listed as missing.
"We are facing a catastrophe of such unthinkable magnitude that it will require a giant effort" to recover, Bachelet said after meeting for six hours with ministers and generals in La Moneda Palace, itself chipped and cracked.
She signed a decree giving the military control over security in the province of Concepcion, where looters were pillaging supermarkets, gas stations, pharmacies and banks. Men and women hurried away with plastic containers of chicken, beef and sausages.
Virtually every market and supermarket had been looted — and no food or drinking water could be found. Many people in Concepcion expressed anger at the authorities for not stopping the looting or bringing in supplies. Electricity and water services were out of service.
"We are overwhelmed," a police officer told The Associated Press.
Bachelet said a curfew was being imposed from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. and only security forces and other emergency personnel would be allowed on the streets. Police vehicles drove around announcing the curfew over loudspeakers.
As nightfall neared, hundreds of people put up tents and huddled around wood fires in parks and the grassy medians of avenues, too fearful to return to their homes amid continuing strong aftershocks.
Bachelet, who leaves office on March 11, said the country would accept some of the offers of aid that have poured in from around the world.
She said Chile needs field hospitals and temporary bridges, water purification plants and damage assessment experts — as well as rescuers to help relieve workers who have been laboring frantically since the magnitude-8.8 quake struck before dawn Saturday.
To strip away any need for looting, Bachelet announced that essentials on the shelves of major supermarkets would be given away for free, under the supervision of authorities. Soldiers and police will also distribute food and water, she said.
Although houses, bridges and highways were damaged in Santiago, the national capital, a few flights managed to land at the airport and subway service resumed.
More chaotic was the region to the south, where the shaking was the strongest and where the quake generated waves that lashed coastal settlements, leaving behind sticks, scraps of metal and masonry houses ripped in two.
In the village of Lloca, a beachside carnival was caught in the tsunami. A carousel was twisted on its side and a ferris wheel rose above the muddy wreckage.
In Concepcion, the largest city in the disaster zone, a new, 15-story apartment building toppled onto its side. Many of those who lived on the side that wound up facing the sky could clamber out; those on the other were trapped. An estimated 60 people remained trapped in the 70-unit apartment building.
Police officer Jorge Guerra took names of the missing from a stream of tearful relatives and friends. He urged them to be optimistic because about two dozen people had been rescued.
"There are people alive. There are several people who are going to be rescued," he said — though the next people pulled from the wreckage were dead.
Concepcion's main hospital was operating, though patients in an older half of the building were moved into hallways as a precaution.
Rescuers worked carefully for fear of aftershocks. Ninety jolts of magnitude 5 or greater shuddered across the region in the first 24 hours after the quake, including one nearly as large as the earthquake that devastated Haiti on Jan. 12.
Firefighters in Concepcion were about to lower a rescuer deep into the rubble when the scent of tear gas fired at looters across the street forced them to interrupt their efforts.
"It's sad, but because of the situation you have to confront the robberies and at the same time continue the search," Guerra said.
The sound of chain saws, power drills and sledgehammers breaking through concrete competed with the whoosh of a water cannon fired at looters and the shouts of crowds that found new ways into a four-story supermarket each time police retreated.
One woman ran off with a shopping cart piled high with slabs of unwrapped meat and cheese. A shirtless man carried a mattress on his head. Some of the looters pitched rocks at police armored vehicles outside the Lider market, which is majority-owned by Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
Across the Bio Bio River in the city of San Pedro, looters cleared out a shopping mall. A video store was set ablaze, two automatic teller machines were broken open, a bank was robbed and a supermarket emptied, its floor littered with mashed plums, scattered dog food and smashed liquor bottles.
"It was a mob. They looted everything," said police Sgt. Rene Gutierrez, 46, who had his men guarding the now-empty mall. "Now we're only here to protect the building — what's left of the building."
He said police had been slow to reach the looted mall because one bridge over the river was collapsed and the other so damaged they had to move cautiously.
Ingenious looters even used long tubes of bamboo and plastic to siphon gasoline from underground tanks at a closed gasoline station. Others rummaged through the station's restaurant.
Thieves attacked a flour mill in Concepcion — some toting away bags on their shoulders, others using bicycles or cars. One man packed a school bus with sacks of flour.
Many defended the scavenging — of food if not television sets — as a necessity because officials had not brought food or water. Even Concepcion's mayor, Jacqueline van Rysselberghe, complained that no food aid was reaching the city. She said the federal government should send troops to help halt the looting.
In Talca, where old adobe buildings in the town center were flattened, many spent the night outside, huddled beneath blankets on lawn chairs, sleeping on a mattress hauled from a damaged home or sheltering in camping tents.
State television showed scenes of devastation in coastal towns and more still on Robinson Crusoe Island, where it said the tsunami drove almost 2 miles (3 kilometers) into the town of San Juan Bautista. Officials said at least five people were killed there and more were missing.
The surge of water raced across the Pacific, setting off alarm sirens and evacuations from Hawaii to Japan, but it did little damage.

Mullen: 'steady progress' in fight for Afghan town

WASHINGTON – The nation's top defense leaders said Monday that U.S.-led forces were making steady progress in their efforts in a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan but faced stiffer resistance than expected and the operation would take longer than hoped.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon the efforts against the Taliban were "messy" and "incredibly wasteful," as was war in general. "But that doesn't mean it's not worth the cost."
Mullen said the battle and the broader war can be won with the proper resources and strategy.
"As you've all been seeing, we're making steady, if perhaps a bit slower than anticipated, progress," Mullen said.
Mullen also expressed regret for a NATO airstrike that killed at least 21 Afghan civilians. It was the third coalition strike this month to kill noncombatants and drew a sharp rebuke from Afghanistan's government about endangering civilians.
At the same briefing, Defense Secretary Robert Gates defended the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, saying McChrystal keenly understands the need to do the utmost to avoid civilian casualties and has made that a top priority.
"I have confidence in his judgment," Gates said.
For 10 days, U.S. and Afghan troops have been fighting holdout Taliban forces in an effort to secure the southern town of Marjah in Helmand province.
"The situation remains serious but is no longer deteriorating," Gates said.
On a related subject, Gates said recent arrests of high-level Taliban fighters by Pakistan marks "real progress" by the Islamabad government and "another positive indication" of its commitment to stabilizing its border with Afghanistan.
Earlier this month, Pakistani authorities arrested the No. 2 Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi. Also arrested are a pair of Taliban "shadow governors" from two Afghan provinces and several other militant suspects linked to al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Gates told reporters that "what we are seeing is the importance of operations on both sides of the border."
When asked whether the arrests might help turn the tide in the eight-year-war, Mullen cautioned against putting too much stock in any single event. He said "it's just too early."
"The long view here is the best view," Mullen said.
The Afghanistan Council of Ministers strongly condemned the airstrike, calling it "unjustifiable."

Mullen: 'steady progress' in fight for Afghan town

WASHINGTON – The nation's top defense leaders said Monday that U.S.-led forces were making steady progress in their efforts in a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan but faced stiffer resistance than expected and the operation would take longer than hoped.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon the efforts against the Taliban were "messy" and "incredibly wasteful," as was war in general. "But that doesn't mean it's not worth the cost."
Mullen said the battle and the broader war can be won with the proper resources and strategy.
"As you've all been seeing, we're making steady, if perhaps a bit slower than anticipated, progress," Mullen said.
Mullen also expressed regret for a NATO airstrike that killed at least 21 Afghan civilians. It was the third coalition strike this month to kill noncombatants and drew a sharp rebuke from Afghanistan's government about endangering civilians.
At the same briefing, Defense Secretary Robert Gates defended the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, saying McChrystal keenly understands the need to do the utmost to avoid civilian casualties and has made that a top priority.
"I have confidence in his judgment," Gates said.
For 10 days, U.S. and Afghan troops have been fighting holdout Taliban forces in an effort to secure the southern town of Marjah in Helmand province.
"The situation remains serious but is no longer deteriorating," Gates said.
On a related subject, Gates said recent arrests of high-level Taliban fighters by Pakistan marks "real progress" by the Islamabad government and "another positive indication" of its commitment to stabilizing its border with Afghanistan.
Earlier this month, Pakistani authorities arrested the No. 2 Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi. Also arrested are a pair of Taliban "shadow governors" from two Afghan provinces and several other militant suspects linked to al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Gates told reporters that "what we are seeing is the importance of operations on both sides of the border."
When asked whether the arrests might help turn the tide in the eight-year-war, Mullen cautioned against putting too much stock in any single event. He said "it's just too early."
"The long view here is the best view," Mullen said.
The Afghanistan Council of Ministers strongly condemned the airstrike, calling it "unjustifiable."

WASHINGTON – It's time to repeal the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy and allow gay troops to serve openly for the first time in history, the nation's top defense officials declared Tuesday, with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff proclaiming that service members should not be forced to "lie about who they are."
However, both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen asked for a year to study the impact before Congress would lift the controversial policy.
Reversing the Pentagon's 17-year-old policy toward gays "comes down to integrity," for the military as an institution as well as the service members themselves, Mullen told a Senate hearing. Unpersuaded, several Republican senators said they would oppose any congressional effort to repeal the policy.
Ten months before voters elect a new Congress, some Democratic leaders also were leery of trying to change the policy this year, when both sides concede Republicans are likely to pick up seats, especially after GOP Sen.-elect Scott Brown's surprise victory last month in Massachusetts.
Repealing don't-ask-don't-tell is not a winning campaign strategy for a party under siege especially in the South and Midwest.
"What do I want members to do in their districts? I want them to focus on jobs and fiscal responsibility," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., classifying gays in the military in a category of "a lot of other issues" that will invariably come up.
"It's never a good year" for Democrats to bring up the controversial policy, said Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois. "You can expect that it's going to be a rough ride."
However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he didn't see why it should wait another year.
The Pentagon announced an 11-month review of how the ban could be lifted, as President Barack Obama has said he will work to do. But there is no deadline for ending the policy that dates to President Bill Clinton's tenure and that gay rights advocates are pressing to overturn.
In the meantime, Gates announced plans to loosen enforcement rules for the policy, which says, in essence, that gays may serve so long as they keep their sexuality private.
Obama has called for repeal but has done little in his first year in office to advance that goal. If he succeeds, it would mark the biggest shake-up to military personnel policies since President Harry S. Truman's 1948 executive order integrating the services.
Homosexuality has never been openly tolerated in the American military, and the 1993 policy was intended to be a compromise that let gay men and women serve so long as they stayed silent about their sexuality. Clinton had wanted to repeal the ban entirely, but the military and many in Congress argued that doing so would dangerously disrupt order.
Repealing the ban would take an act of Congress, something that does not appear close to happening.
Since 'don't ask, don't tell" was established, much has changed. Five states and the District of Columbia have adopted laws permitting marriage of gay couples, while nine other states have granted similar rights to gay domestic partners.
The public's attitude toward gays and lesbians also has undergone a significant shift. A Pew poll last year indicated that 59 percent of Americans favor allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, up from 52 percent in 1994.
On Tuesday, several Democratic senators praised Mullen and Gates for what they said was courageous stance, but a number of Republicans spoke strongly against the idea of a repeal.
Gates drew unusually pointed criticism from Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee for saying the review would examine how, not whether, to repeal the ban. Arizona Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the panel, icily told Gates he was disappointed in his position and suggested the Pentagon was usurping Congress' job.
"Has this policy been ideal? No, it has not," McCain said. "But it has been effective."
Mullen looked pained when Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., suggested that the Joint Chiefs chairman had preordained the outcome of any study by signaling his own opposition to the ban.
"This is about leadership, and I take that very, very seriously," Mullen replied, tightlipped.
Tuesday's session gave Obama high-level cover on a divisive social issue complicated by the strains on an all-volunteer military force fighting two wars.
Gates, who says he is a Republican, is the only member of former President George W. Bush's Cabinet whom Obama asked to stay on. He has gained a reputation for both candor and caution. Mullen's words were a forceful endorsement from a careful man, and his very appearance, starched uniform and four stars on view, made a statement as well.
Gates said change was inevitable and called for a yearlong internal study into how it would occur.
He told the senators he understood that any change in the law was up to them. But he made it clear he believes it is time to do away with the 1993 policy, and by implication the outright ban on gay service that preceded it. Alongside Mullen, that put the Pentagon's top leadership at odds with uniformed leaders a rung or two below, as well as with and also with senior members of Congress.
"No matter how I look at the issue," Mullen said, "I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens." Noting that he was speaking for himself and not for the other service chiefs, Mullen added: "For me, it comes down to integrity — theirs as individuals and ours as an institution."
Gates has appointed a four-star Army general, Carter Ham, and his own chief legal counsel, Jeh Johnson, to conduct the assessment. He also has requested legal advice on how the military can relax enforcement standards of the current policy.
McCain, the ranking Republican on the panel, bristled at the Pentagon decision to pursue the study, saying he was "deeply disappointed" and calling the assessment "clearly biased" in presuming the law should be changed.
For their part, Democrats hailed the internal review but suggested they wouldn't wait too long. Sen. Carl Levin, the committee's chairman and a Michigan Democrat who has long opposed the ban, said he was considering legislation this year that would temporarily suspend dismissals of gays under the current policy until a full repeal could be passed.
Democrat Mark Udall said his Colorado constituents pride themselves on allowing others to live and let live.
"You don't have to be straight to shoot straight," said Udall, quoting longtime Arizona Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater.
The tenor of the hearings could change significantly when lawmakers hear from other senior military officials. Each of the service chiefs is expected to testify this month on his 2011 budget, and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway is said to have serious concerns about the upheaval that a change to "don't ask, don't tell" could cause.
Rep. Ike Skelton, a conservative Democrat from Missouri who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, says he thinks it would be ill-advised to pursue such a major shake-up at a time when forces are consumed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mullen said it was his sense that rank-and-file troops would support the change.
"I have served with homosexuals since 1968," Mullen said in response to questions from Republican Sen. Sessions. "There are a number of things cumulatively that get me to this position."
Scott Duane Fair, a former Army helicopter flight engineer, voiced his strong objection to repeal in a comment posted on the Army's official Facebook page, saying straight service members shouldn't be forced to share sleeping quarters and showers with those who are openly gay.
In a phone interview, 30-year-old Fair said he had a troubling experience as a young private when a higher-ranking soldier propositioned him in a California barracks room. Fair said he reported the incident to commanders, who took no action.
"For somebody to go around flaunting their sexuality is going to make a lot of people more uncomfortable," said Fair, who left the Army in 2001 because of a disability.
On the other hand, Jason Jonas, a 28-year-old former Army staff sergeant from Tempe, Ariz., said he knew of openly gay soldiers in his intelligence unit at Fort Bragg, but their lifestyle never affected unit morale.
"I don't think it is anybody's right to say who can and who can't fight for their country," said Jonas, who served in Afghanistan before being hurt. He is no longer in the Army. "Nobody cares. Don't ask, don't tell is kind of a joke."
As for the leaders of the study:
• Ham is a former enlisted infantryman who rose through the ranks to eventually command troops in northern Iraq in 2004 and hold senior positions within the Joint Staff. Recently, he helped conduct an investigation into the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas.
• Johnson, as the Pentagon's top legal counsel, has played an integral role into the effort to try to close the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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Schaub helps AFC beat NFC 41-34 in Pro Bowl

MIAMI – In its new role as a warmup to the Super Bowl, the Pro Bowl became a series of wind sprints.
Long gains were the rule and hard hitting was the exception as the AFC beat the NFC 41-34 on Sunday night.
Light showers fell for much of the game, stirring memories of a rainy Super Bowl in Miami three years ago. But uniforms remained mostly spotless, with more pushing and shoving than tackling.
"It's different. It was like 7 on 7," NFC linebacker Brian Orakpo said. "Everybody came out here trying not to get hurt and give the fans a good show"
Matt Schaub of the Houston Texans threw for 189 yards and two AFC scores, and was chosen the most valuable player.
"It's a game you watch growing up as a kid and wonder if you could ever be in," Schaub said. "To actually be a part of it is incredible."
Aaron Rodgers also threw two touchdown passes, and NFC teammate DeSean Jackson had two scoring catches.
From the standpoint of ticket sales, this year's new venue and slot on the league calendar was a success. The crowd of 70,697 was the largest for a Pro Bowl since 1959 in Los Angeles.
Spectators included Peyton Manning, Drew Brees and other Pro Bowl players from the Super Bowl teams. Manning and the Indianapolis Colts will face Brees and the New Orleans Saints on the same field next Sunday in the biggest game of the season.
The NFL sought to transform the Pro Bowl into a bigger game by playing it before the Super Bowl for the first time. In a one-year experiment, the league also moved the game from Honolulu, its home since 1980.
The stadium was half empty by the third quarter, perhaps partly because of the rain and temperatures in the 60s. It was sunny and 82 in Honolulu at game time.
Did the weather dampen the players' enthusiasm for Miami?
"It's beautiful. It's paradise," NFC receiver Steve Smith said. "Too bad it's not Hawaii."
Eager to host more big events, the Dolphins have proposed adding a roof that would cover fans as part of stadium improvements that could cost $250 million or more. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell says the upgrades are needed if South Florida is to remain competitive in bidding for future Super Bowls.
Nearly 40 percent of the players originally selected for the game didn't play. One of the AFC replacements, David Garrard, threw for 183 yards, including a 48-yard touchdown to Vincent Jackson.
"It's so awesome," Garrard said. "One of my goals coming into the game was to just be relevant and show all the people who said, `What is he doing in there? The Pro Bowl has dropped off a few pegs,' that I do belong."
Vincent Jackson made seven catches for 122 yards. Chad Ochocinco had a 40-yard reception but didn't do any kicking after practicing placements and punts for the AFC during the week.
"That's OK. It was fun anyway," Ochocinco said.
DeSean Jackson scored on a 7-yard pass from Rodgers and a 58-yard pass from Donovan McNabb, his regular quarterback with the Eagles.
"I'm just out here having a great time," Jackson said. "And at the same time I'm trying to put out a little effort."
There were plenty of other big plays. Joshua Cribbs caught a punt at the goal line and returned it 65 yards. A penalty negated LaMarr Woodley's 64-interception return for a touchdown.
"I slowed up to get a little camera time," Woodley said.
The AFC totaled 517 yards and the NFC 470. Both teams threw for more than 400 yards.
Redskins linebacker London Fletcher, a 12-year veteran playing in his first Pro Bowl, found the AFC's offensive approach exhausting.
"They came out with a bunch of screens and had us running around," Fletcher said.
But there were no complaints from Fletcher's teammate on defense, first-time Pro Bowler Justin Smith of the 49ers.
"The pace is nice," Smith said. "You don't have to worry about working too hard."
The game will return to Honolulu in 2011 and 2012, but the league hasn't decided whether to hold those games before or after the Super Bowl. The Pro Bowl site for 2013 and beyond hasn't been determined

Obama's $3.8 trillion budget heading to Congress

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's proposed budget predicts the national deficit will crest at a record-breaking almost $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 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.
A congressional official provided the information, which comes from a White House summary document circulating freely on Capitol Hill and among Washington's lobbyists. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the spending proposal is not supposed to be made public until tomorrow.
Details of the administration's budget headed for Congress include an additional $100 billion to attack painfully high unemployment. The proposed $3.8 trillion budget would provide billions more to pull the country out of the Great Recession while increasing taxes on the wealthy and imposing a spending freeze on many government programs.
Administration projections show the deficit never dropping below $700 billion, even under assumptions that war costs will drop precipitously to just $50 billion in some years instead of more than three times that this year and next.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the administration believed "somewhere in the $100 billion range" would be the appropriate amount for a new jobs measure made up of a business tax credit to encourage hiring, increased infrastructure spending and money from the government's bailout fund to get banks to increase loans to struggling small businesses.
That price tag would be below a $174 billion bill passed by the House in December but far higher than a measure that could come to the Senate floor this week.
Gibbs said it was important for Democrats and Republicans to put aside their differences to pass a bill that addresses jobs, the country's No. 1 concern. "I think that would be a powerful signal to send to the American people," Gibbs said in an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union."
Job creation was a key theme of the budget President Barack Obama was sending Congress on Monday, a document designed, as was the president's State of the Union address, to reframe his young presidency after a protracted battle over health care damaged his standing in public opinion polls and contributed to a series of Democratic election defeats.
Obama's $3.8 trillion spending plan for the 2011 budget year that begins Oct. 1 attempts to navigate between the opposing goals of pulling the country out of a deep recession and dealing with a budget deficit that soared to an all-time high of $1.42 trillion last year.
The startling budget numbers — deficits would total $8.5 trillion over the decade — are raising worries among voters and the foreign investors who buy much of the country's debt.
On the anti-recession front, congressional sources said Obama's new budget will propose extending the popular Making Work Pay middle-class tax breaks of $400 per individual and $800 per couple through 2011. They were due to expire after this year.
The budget will also propose $250 payments to Social Security recipients to bolster their finances in a year when they are not receiving the normal cost-of-living boost to their benefit checks because of low inflation. Obama will also seek a $25 billion increase in payments to help recession-battered states.
Obama's new budget will set off months of debate in the Democratically controlled Congress, especially in an election year in which Republicans are hoping to use attacks against government overspending to gain seats. Obama has argued that he inherited a deficit of more than $1 trillion and was forced to increase spending to stabilize the financial system and combat the worst recession since the 1930s.
Obama's new budget was expected to repeat many of the themes of his first budget. But in a bow to worries over the soaring deficits, the administration is proposing a three-year freeze on spending for a wide swath of domestic government agencies. Military, veterans, homeland security and big benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare would not feel the pinch.
The freeze would affect $447 billion in spending and is designed to save $250 billion over a decade. However, it would not fall equally on all domestic agencies. Some would see budget cuts to free up spending for programs the administration wants to expand such as education and civilian research efforts.
NASA's mission to return astronauts to the moon would be grounded with the space agency instead getting an additional $5.9 billion over five years to encourage private companies to build, launch and operate their own spacecraft for the benefit of NASA and others. NASA would pay the private companies to carry U.S. astronauts.
Obama's budget repeats his recommendations for an overhaul of the nation's health care system, the fight that dominated his first year in office. It proposes to get billions of dollars in savings from the Medicare program and again seeks increased taxes on the wealthy by limiting the benefits they receive from various tax deductions. Both ideas have met strong resistance in Congress.
Gibbs insisted Sunday that the president's push for health care was "still inside the 5-yard line," but Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, also appearing on CNN, said the public was overwhelmingly against the bill and the administration should "put it on the shelf, go back and start over."
In addition to the freeze on discretionary nonsecurity spending, Obama is proposing to boost revenues by allowing the Bush administration tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 to expire at the end of this year for families making more than $250,000 annually. Tax relief for those less well-off would be extended.
The new Obama budget will also include a proposal to levy a fee on the country's biggest banks to raise an estimated $90 billion to recover losses from the government's $700 billion financial rescue fund. Those losses are expected to come not come from the bank bailouts but from the support extended to General Motors and Chrysler and insurance giant American International Group as well as help provided to homeowners struggling to avoid foreclosures.
Also on the deficit front, the president has endorsed a pay-as-you-go proposal that passed the Senate last week. It would require any new tax cuts or entitlement spending increases to be paid for, and he has promised to create a commission to recommend by year's end ways to trim the deficits. However, a legislatively mandated panel was rejected in a Senate vote last week. Republicans opposed establishing the panel because it might recommend tax increases to close the deficit.
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Haiti Earthquake

MIAMI – The U.S. military will resume bringing Haitian earthquake victims to the United States aboard its planes for medical treatment, ending a suspension that lasted several days, the White House said Sunday.
The military had brought hundreds of critically injured Haitians to the United States aboard its planes before halting the flights on Wednesday. Since then, at least a handful of patients were flown on civilian aircraft, and other flights continued to carry U.S. citizens and other mostly non-injured passengers.
Late Sunday, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said the medical airlift was on track to resume by early Monday. The White House received assurances that additional medical capacity exists in the U.S. and among its international partners for the patients.
"We determined that we can resume these critical flights," Vietor said. "Patients are being identified for transfer, doctors are making sure that it is safe for them to fly, and we are preparing specific in-flight pediatric care aboard the aircraft where needed."
Exactly what led to the suspension of medical evacuation flights was unclear, though military officials had said some states refused to take patients. Officials in Florida, one of the main destinations for military flights leaving Haiti, say no patients were ever turned away. However, the suspension took effect after Florida Gov. Charlie Crist sent a letter Tuesday to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius saying the state's hospitals were reaching a saturation point.
The letter also asked for federal help paying for patient expenses — a request Crist on Sunday said could have been misinterpreted. He also said federal officials have indicated he would receive help covering the costs, totaling more than $7 million.
Crist told ABC News' "Good Morning America" on Sunday he was puzzled by the suspension. Military planes carrying 700 U.S. citizens, legal residents and other foreign nationals landed in central Florida over the past 24 hours, and three of those people required medical care at hospitals, state officials said. However, Florida had not received any critical patients needing urgent care since the halt, said Sterling Ivey, the governor's spokesman.
"We're welcoming Haitians with open arms and probably done more than any other state and are happy to continue to do so," Crist said in the interview.
Col. Rick Kaiser said Sunday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been asked to build a 250-bed tent hospital in Haiti to relieve pressure on locations where earthquake victims are being treated under tarpaulins.
Several hospitals in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince were damaged or destroyed in the Jan. 12 earthquake.
U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten said about 435 earthquake victims had been evacuated before the suspension.
Individual hospitals were still able to arrange private medical flights — such as one Sunday that brought three critically ill children to hospitals in Philadelphia.
The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia said the trio arrived Sunday afternoon. One is a 5-year-old girl with tetanus, the second, a 14-month-old boy with pneumonia. The third, a baby suffering from severe burns from sun exposure after the quake, was transferred to another area hospital.
Doctors have said the makeshift facilities in Haiti aren't equipped to treat such critical conditions and warn that patients in similar condition could die if they aren't treated in U.S. hospitals.
Crist also has asked Sebelius for better coordination of the evacuations.
The state had been relying on air traffic controllers at Miami International Airport to relay information about the evacuations because the U.S. military flights headed to the state without notice, David Halstead, the Florida Division of Emergency Management's interim director, said Sunday.