Health Industry Promises Obama $2T In Cuts
President Obama's plan to provide medical insurance for all Americans took a big step toward becoming reality Sunday after leaders of the health care industry offered $2 trillion in spending reductions over 10 years to help pay for the program.
Jarrett, Tchen in Chicago for Schakowsky

by John McCormick, updated

Although not exactly a 'stop the presses' moment, two top aides to President Barack Obama broke a small piece of White House news while appearing this afternoon at a Chicago luncheon to boost the campaign coffers of U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).

Chicagoans Valerie Jarrett and Tina Tchen said an office they both lead, the White House Office of Public Liaison, is being renamed to the Office of Public Engagement to give it more of a community organizing tone that is central to Obama's biography.

Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president, and Tchen, director of the engagement office, told stories about their first months into the White House during a joint half-hour appearance before a heavily female audience of about 2,000.

Schakowsky, meanwhile, said she will announce on June 8 -- an arbitrary deadline -- whether she will run for U.S. Senate. "If I do run, we will put together a campaign that leaves no stone unturned," she said.

With the Democrats in control of the White House and Congress, she said she has no plans to leaving public life, even as she prepares to turn 65 later this month.

"I find retirement unthinkable," she said. "This is harvest time."

Should she decide to run, questions about her husband, Robert Creamer, will almost certainly be raised.

He pleaded guilty in August 2005 to bank fraud and a federal tax charge and was sentenced to five months in prison and 11 months of home confinement.

After the event, Schakowsky said she has "brutally tested" the negatives her husband's record could bring to a U.S. Senate campaign using polls that measured the kind of attack words that could be used in a negative campaign against her.

"He's not so bad," she said of the results. "Everyone comes to a race with positives and negatives."

An aide to Schakowsky said the event at the Hyatt on East Wacker Drive was expected to gross about $300,000.

"Thank you, Jan, for throwing a party where we could see all of our friends in one place," Tchen said.

Immigrants Urged Not To Participate In Census

The Rev. Miguel Rivera, of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, is urging undocumented immigrants not to participate in the upcoming United States Census. Rivera hopes a boycott will pressure lawmakers to pass comprehensive immigration reform. But the Rev. Luis Cortes, of the faith-based group Esperanza, says a census boycott would do immigrants more harm than good.