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Washington Post congressional Paul Kane was online Monday, July 21 at 11 a.m. ET.

The transcript follows

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Paul Kane: Good morning, folks. We switched things up a little bit and I'm on board here on a Monday rather than the usual Thursday online chat. So, we've got just two weeks left in the summer session of Congress, and most of the big ticket items -- FISA reauthorization, war funding bill, Medicare doctors price fix, global AIDS bill -- have been taken care of (or will be taken care of by early this week, in the case of the global AIDS bill). The big item left to be finished up is housing/Fannie-Freddie legislation. Other than that, we've got a big weekend ahead in which the Senate is going to take up an omnibus package of legislation in one fell swoop -- what they're calling "Coburn weekend", an unusual weekend session in which the Senate tries to pass dozens of bills that have been held up by one senator: Tom Coburn (R-Okla.).

OK, off to the questions. -- pk

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Northern Virginia: What do you think about the near invisibility of Senators Reed and Hagel in the coverage of Obama's trip? I have yet to hear a word from or about either in the press coverage, although they are visible in some photos. A story I saw in the Sydney Morning Herald did not even mention they were on the trip. Could this create behind-the-scenes friction, or was it understood that this came with the territory? Or is this simply a function of the press blackout in the war zones and could change in Europe?

I thought that Senator Lieberman got more attention than this during the Three Amigos overseas tour of McCain, Lieberman, and Lindsay Graham, and we heard a little from Graham, too, although perhaps after the trip.

Paul Kane: Jack Reed is the living, breathing example of workhorse, not a show horse. He wouldn't want any attention from the media. He's a policy wonk/details guy. He's done trips with Hillary Clinton many times before, and he always impressed her with his ability to know every general and Lt. Commander on the ground in Iraq. If he's not getting attention, it's by design.

Hagel, on the other hand, does love the media spotlight. But even he realizes that this is the Obama show; plus, he's probably tired of answering questions about who he wants to be president -- Obama or his old friend McCain. By not doing media, he gets to avoid questions he's tired of answering (or not answering).

So, yes, this is mostly by design.

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Enough Obama: Every Web site I go to, they're there -- Obama ads here, there, and everywhere! Is the Obama campaign worried about over saturation?Could you at least send them a message that it's getting a little old seeing his face everywhere?

Paul Kane: Obama Rewriting Rules for Raising Campaign Money Online

Cut and paste that link into your browser and read a story about Obama and online fundraising/online advertising. Apparently, that's been a catalyst for his huge money machine. So don't expect to see any fewer online ads any time soon.

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Northern Virginia: I am an Obama supporter who is kind of excited about the grassroots meetings being held all over the country to contribute to the Democratic party platform. I also wonder if the Democrats should be careful what they wish for -- surely some of the positions won't square with the usual party dogma (e.g., openness to pro-life voters, concern about FISA, special issues like recognizing genocide in Armenia, both pro and con on gun control, and so on). Good luck to the person reconciling all this.

What do you make of this innovation from a political strategy standpoint? Is this part of the process really something new, and will it have an effect?

Paul Kane: Ultimately, I think convention platforms aren't all that important, so the idea is to create the least amount of attention to them. By putting so many people into the crafting of the platform, Obama runs the risk of getting people drawn into the drama and stakes of something that is not worth drama and high stakes. I think gun control would be a huge mistake to put into the platform, not from my personal views, but from the politics of it. Cazayoux and Childers were running ads in their special elections with them carrying guns on TV screens in Baton Rouge and Tupelo. So, if the base actitivists draw up a platform that's pro-gun control, that's a problem for them.

I think both party's leaders would be wise to do away with platforms altogether.

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Volcano, Hawaii: Sen. Clinton reportedly has $23 million designated for the general election. Is that specifically tabbed for a presidential run, or will she be able to tap the funds if she is the vice-presidential nominee? If the latter applies, and Sen. Clinton is the nominee, will she be able to use the money to pay off debt she incurred during the primaries? Thanks.

Paul Kane: OK, part of this you've actually stumped me on -- whether that $23 million raised for HRC's general election bid could be used by an Obama-Clinton ticket. I don't think it could, I think that's money that is explicity meant to be hers as if she were the nominee. It's its own campaign committee, a separate entity that cannot be joined with some other politician's fundraising vehicle. For instance, Evan Bayh has a huge chunk of campaign cash in his Senate campaign committee -- almost $11 million as of June 30. Should Bayh be the Veep nominee, he could not transfer that money into the Obama-Bayh committee. At least that's what I think the law is.

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Washington, D.C.: As far as I know, Hillary has not released her delegates and some stories suggest she wants her name placed in nomination at the convention next month. Is it true that she can't release her delegates and still try to retire her debt? If not, is Hillary trying to test the waters to see if delegates are getting buyer's remorse or hoping to blackmail Obama into making her the Vice-Presidential nominee?

Paul Kane: Holding on to her delegates has no role in debt retirement. If you had to have/keep delegates to be able to retire debt, then Joe Biden and Chris Dodd never would have been able to retire their debt -- because they didn't have any delegates to begin with!

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Florissant Valley, Mo.: Morning, Paul. Gregory and Todd said on Meet the Press yesterday that they thought Obama might declare his veep choice before the Olympics -- i.e. within the next two weeks and, obviously, after his return from finding facts. Does that sound sensible to you? What do your sources tell you? Thanks.

Paul Kane: Everyone -- including the politics staff of the Washington Post, which would like some vacation time in August before the conventions end our lives as we know them -- is curious about when the Veep announcements will come. Here are a few dates of importance that I'll be watching in the next 6 weeks:

July 27 -- Bruce Springsteen returns to U.S. soil to launch the final domestic leg of his world tour, at Giants Stadium.

Aug. 1/3 -- House and Senate finish their summer sessions and adjourn for a 5-week recess to allow for campaigning and conventions back home (with several of those lawmakers still wondering whether they will get the call to be Veep).

Aug. 8 -- Lift off for the Beijing Olympics, held on 8/8/08. For those wondering, 8 (pronounced bah) is the lucky number in Chinese culture. This will be a 16-day run, taking you right up to the start of the Dem convention.

Aug 19 -- Bruce plays Hershey Park (possibly the last fun thing I do until these elections are over).

Aug. 25 -- Dem convention starts in Denver (ending 4 days later).

Sept. 1 -- GOP convention starts in St. Paul (ending 4 days later).

Sept. 4 -- The National Football League kicks off the seaon. E-A-G-L-E-S, Eagles!

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Baltimore: The Democrats seem to be dumping a big chunk of money into Maine -- do you think there's any chance of knocking out Collins? She seems to still be quite popular.

Paul Kane: Maine has been the tricky state so far for Democrats. On paper it should be a green state, has gone for Gore and Kerry, John Baldacci (the 1st congressman I ever covered on a regular basis, starting in 1995) is now a 2nd term, pretty popular governor. Both House seats are held by Dems.

BUT, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe continue to show that, in a state like Maine, you can build your own political brand, both proudly connecting themselves to the moderate female Republican lineage of Margaret Chase Smith. Collins first won her seat in 1996 in a year when Bob Dole got something like 32 percent or thereabout. She knows how to run ahead of unpopular national Republicans.

She's still comfortably ahead of Rep. Tom Allen (D-Maine), but Democrats expect that race to close. However, with so many other races getting close -- North Carolina, Minnesota, Oregon, possibly Kentucky or Kansas -- it's getting harder to see Chuck Schumer wanting to spend too much money there unless Allen closes the gap.

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Concord, N.H.: I'm curious about the reports of Obama meeting with the Iraqi Prime Minister and other officials concerning strategy. How is Obama able to hold those kinds of meetings while Bush is still in office? Does Bush have any control over this? It seems a bit premature for him to be meeting heads of state and discussing potential policies. It's not quite a fait accompli just yet.

Paul Kane: Congressional delegations travel to foreign nations and meet with world leaders all the time, giving them advice and telling them what they should or shouldn't do. It's a fact of life for Congress. This trip is, after all, technically a Codel that Obama is on; it's paid for by the Senate.

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New York, N.Y.: Let's face it, Paul. Polling is really wacky these days. And news organizations have had egg on their faces since Obama's unforeseen Iowa blowout. We see huge shifts across the polling gamut -- even from day to day. Why don't news organizations just pool dollars and invest in a few better polls with larger samples and cell phones included? That would, in the long run, be more accurate. Or is the business problem for the media that there would be fewer polls showing daily public opinion shifts that the media could then wildly exaggerate and aggressively misinterpret. After all, that's really the point of polls, anyway... or am I just being cynical?

Paul Kane: The whole point of cell phones and not giving out those numbers is to avoid calls from people like pollsters. If you think polling is bad now -- personally, I think some of it is spectacular -- it's only going to get worse. More and more people, like myself, have gone cell-only.

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Alexandria, Va.: Paul, I recall some chatter in the blogosphere recently about McCain being a high-dollar craps player, yet never having filed a tax form for gambling winnings. Seems like a juicy story with lots of hooks, but I don't think I've seen anything in the Post or other major outlets. Is the paper looking into this?

Paul Kane: McCain loves casinos, no doubt about it. He's taken reporters (not myself) into casino rooms in Vegas and gambled for a little while. But I don't think he has to report any winnings unless he actually won big. You suggest he has. I really have no idea.

Here's what the IRS says.

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Toronto: I see that McCain made ANOTHER reference to Czechoslovakia today and talked about the Iraq/Afghanistan border. Combined with confusing Sunni and Shia several times in a week a couple of months ago, is this cause for alarm about his mental faculties or just a typical example of a "geographically challenged" American?

Paul Kane: Seriously folks, compared to the slipups of the last 8 years, I don't see McCain's as being that definitively bad. I mean, remember, Governor Bush only knew that Pakistan was run by "that general". And then there was the time when, as president, he waved to Stevie Wonder at the Kennedy Center honors -- although his aides later denied he was actually waving to the blind entertainer. The list goes on.

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Vienna, Va.: There are only 100 days left to the election. Will you survive?

Paul Kane: Sure, I'm covering a boatload of congressional issues and helping with the presidential stuff since both nominees are from the Senate, going to both conventions, and then trying to oversee coverage of about 10 Senate races and 50 House seats. But a couple Springsteen concerts, some time at the beach and a few rounds of golf in between it all should make it all survivable.

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Roseland, N.J.: Do you think the fact that Reid is holding a "Coburn weekend" (which, give props, was parliamentarily a clever idea) makes the Oklahoma senator annoyed, or ecstatic? Has he commented?

Paul Kane: Saw a couple Coburn questions, so let me take one and explain this out. Coburn purports himself to be a citizen legislator, a man who has staked his political claim to being here just 12 years (two terms). He's not trying to become a chairman or a Republican leader. So, if there's a bill he doesn't like, he stops it and uses every parliamentary device possible. Most legislation actually pass the Senate on something called unanimous consent, some non-controversial stuff that everyone agrees to pass because it would otherwise by approved 96-1.

Not Coburn. If he truly opposes something, he does so publicly and informs leadership of his "hold" on the bill; that means to pass that bill, leaders have to schedule lots of different maneuvers and spend a lot of time on the legislation, just like the war funding bill and other major items. For noncontroversial stuff, Harry Reid often doesn't want to do that, so instead Coburn wins.

Now, Reid is pilling all these bills into one big package of legislation, removing the need to have 40 or 50 different filibusters. He will spend the floor time on this one package, and hope to eventually crush Coburn. (The way to beat a "hold" is to simply hold "cloture" votes to shut off debate, 60 votes needed to pass.)

Does Coburn like all this attention? Yes. Will he be upset if all this stuff passes? Yes. He's a true believer.

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"...compared to the slipups of the last 8 years....": But don't you see? That's exactly why some of us are so hard on the media's non-reportage of situations like these. If people had really understood just how obtuse and incurious George Bush was, do you think they would have voted for him? Seems any tiny slip-up by Obama is major news, but ongoing slips by McCain (Czech stuff, Sunni/Shia in Iran, "I don't understand the economy," and so on) are very quickly shoved in a closet somewhere. Why isn't somebody's mental ability to keep things straight something your readers should know about?

Paul Kane: I really don't think there's been anything close to resembling a pro-McCain tilt in the coverage. I just don't think any honest analysis would find that. Our ombudsman is always yelling at us in her Sunday column about the nature of our coverage, and she really doesn't ever accuse us of being anti-Obama.

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Green Bay, Wisc.: The rule is you only have to fill out a tax form if you win $1,200 or more at one time -- say, a slot jackpot. Some slots have a top payout of $1,199 in order to avoid that rule. Win $600 every day (HA!) and you wouldn't have to fill out a form.

Paul Kane: Green Bay here has given us an answer that is, ahem, I think technically accurate but I"m not sure if it's legally completely above board. Basically, I don't think anyone would believe that John McCain is unfit to be president if, on a few occasions, he won $500 a craps/black jack and didn't file that money on his returns (especially if you did the total losses/gains over the course of an entire year).

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Arlington, Va.: I think I read the other day that Obama's big June fundraising haul was still almost all primary money with very little general money. Why would they do that? How does anyone direct their money to one or the other? Is it just a matter that the first $2300 goes to the primary and the second $2300 goes to the general? I understand that after a certain point they are no longer allowed to use primary money. What happens to the leftovers? Or do they just make sure the spend it all in a big frenzy before the deadline?

I have stopped my contributions (about $300) after the FISA vote. I will vote for Obama, but he's not getting another dime out of me.

Paul Kane: I believe you designate the money as primary or general. Most people probably don't do it, and in that case the campaign designates it as primary money, which they want as much of as possible because, come August 28, the night he accepts the nomination, he's no longer in the primary and is instead in the general election; hence, at that point he can no longer accept donations into his primary account.

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Boston: Paul, I just spent $320 for two Springsteen tickets. I have never paid that much for a concert before and it kinda freaks me out. I've seen Bruce five times since '78. Was I wrong to spend that much?

Paul Kane: Look, I saw Bruce and the guys twice in Dublin over Memorial Day weekend. He's still full of incredible energy, but, seriously, the Big Man's not looking so great these days. I'm not suggesting the end is near, but I'm not sure how long this all goes on; seems like money well spent, if you ask me. Plus, let's put this another way. The economy is slumping, you're just doing your part to prime the pump of the economic engines to get America going again. Sound good?

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Washington, D.C.: As a former Maryland resident, I've been following the downfall (even as a liberal, it was a real shame) of Wayne Gilchrest and have been donating to the Dem in the race: Frank Kratovil. Please tell me he's got a real shot at winning Maryland's 1st. Harris is downright frightening -- plus, with 99 percent of the district located on Maryland's Eastern Shore, I can't see how a state senator from Baltimore County can pull in huge numbers over there. It really is a totally different place.

Paul Kane: This is one of those races that independent analysts like my friend Stu Rothenberg would call an outlier. Gilchrest was never going to lose this Eastern Shore district in a general election, but he got beat by a very conservative R in the primary. If this race ends up tight down the stretch, you know the Republicans are in a lot of trouble nationwide.

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Waterville, Maine: Obama has gotten great press lately and hasn't made any major gaffes. On the other hand, McCain can't seem to do anything right? Why, then, have Obama's daily poll numbers (Rasmussen, Gallup) slipped to the point where he is in a dead heat with McCain? Given the economy and Bush's approval ratings, he should be 30 points ahead, not tied. What gives?

Paul Kane: This the $64,000 question that we'll have to await the answer to until November, you know. Everything is going Obama's way, the Democrats way, why is this race so close?

Let me throw it one possible alternative narrative: presidential elections are always close. Not in terms of the electoral college count, but they're always close enough that even by mid-October the loser still thinks he has a really good shot at winning. In the last 50 years there have only been 3 true blowouts of margins greater than 10 percent -- LBJ over Goldwater in '64; Nixon over McGovern in '72; Reagan over Mondale in '84. All three of those were re-elections or the equivalent of a re-election (with LBJ running as the continuation of JFK.) Every other race has been 8 points or less. So, if Obama's up by 3-5 points now, he's right there where he should historically expect to be.

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The Important Stuff: Has Congress passed an operating budget for the government/individual departments for next year?

Paul Kane: Congress has not passed a single appropriation for the federal government for FY09, no. They expect to pass a bill to pay for the Defense Department and military construction on bases and the like. The remaining 10 bills or so funding the rest of the government will be rolled up into one big, so-called continuing resolution that will keep the government going largely at FY08 levels, until the Dems start over again in January -- when they believe they will have much larger margins in the House and Senate and, in their view, a Democratic president to negotiate a new spending plan with.

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Anti-Obama: I don't think rational folks think there is any anti-Obama bias, but a lot of McCain's (ahem) slip-ups do get swept under the rugs. "Absolute Disgrace" anyone?

Paul Kane: Alright folks, we're all just going to agree to disagree on this one. A lot of you see some sort of bias and planned reasoning behing an effort to bury McCain's slipups. I just don't see that, don't think the evidence backs that up. And with that, another chat has come to a close. By the time we speak, er, type again, Congress should be long gone for the August recess. Can't wait. Thanks for the questions, and I'll see you in August. --pk

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