What we're watching: Weds., Nov. 17, 2010

WHO WILL CONVINCE SEN. KYL? – One of President Obama's top foreign-policy goals suffered a potentially ruinous setback when the Senate's second-ranking Republican said the U.S. nuclear treaty with Russia should not be considered until next year. The statement Tuesday by Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.) stunned the White House and Democrats, who scrambled to save the pact. It came just days after Obama declared that ratifying the treaty was his top foreign-policy priority for the lame-duck session of Congress. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) needs 67 votes to pass. Because of Democratic losses in the midterm elections, it would be harder to approve next year, requiring at least 14 Republican votes rather than nine now. The Washington Post reports that the administration will make a last-ditch effort Wednesday to appeal to Kyl, the Republicans' main negotiator, in a meeting including Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, several officials said.  

WHO WILL CUT? – The country got a little shock therapy last week when the co-chairmen of President Obama's debt commission offered their recommendations for curbing U.S. debt. One of their goals: reduce deficits by $4 trillion over the next decade. On Wednesday, a leading group of economists, budget experts and former government officials is doing them one better - offering a plan that would save $6 trillion by 2020. The Bipartisan Policy Center's Debt Reduction Task Force is led by Republican Pete Domenici, a former senator from New Mexico, and Democrat Alice Rivlin, the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office and a member of the president's debt commission. In broad strokes, the task force's recommendations echo the proposals from Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. But the panel's report also diverges in some very significant ways from the Bowles-Simpson plan. Most notably it calls for a one-year $650 billion payroll tax holiday as well as a national sales tax that could raise trillions in revenue over 30 years. And it would not formally raise the retirement age for Social Security.

WHO WILL LEAD? – Leadership elections for the Democratic and Republican caucuses in the House are scheduled for Wednesday. Republicans, who won a net gain of 61 seats in the midterm elections, will control that chamber next year. House Democrats have been divided since their midterm losses, with a diminished faction of more conservative "Blue Dog" members pushing to replace outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California. On the other side of the aisle, House Minority Leader John Boehner is widely expected to become the new House speaker when the House Republican Conference holds its leadership elections behind closed doors.

WHO WILL OWN GM? - General Motors increased the proposed size of its initial public offering on Wednesday, bringing the total it could raise to nearly $15.8 billion.  In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, GM said it was increasing its offering to 478 million shares of common stock, an increase from the previously announced 365 million. All shares are being sold by existing holders of the automaker, including the U.S. Treasury Department, which holds a majority stake in the company as a result of the 2009 bailout. Investors could profit when General Motors starts selling shares to the public Thursday. But U.S. taxpayers, who are the majority shareholders in the automaker, may have a tough time breaking even.

AND WHO WILL SIGN UP FOR PROF. BILAL'S CLASS? - A New York University photography professor is going one further by implanting a camera in the back of his head. According to The Wall Streeet Journal, the project is being commissioned by a new museum in Qatar. But the work, which would broadcast a live stream of images from the camera to museum visitors, is sparking a debate on campus over the competing values of creative expression and student privacy. Wafaa Bilal, an Iraqi assistant professor in the photography and imaging department of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, intends to undergo surgery in coming weeks to install the camera, according to several people familiar with the project. For one year, Mr. Bilal's camera will take still pictures at one-minute intervals, then feed the photos to monitors at the museum. The thumbnail-sized camera will be affixed to his head through a piercing-like attachment, his NYU colleagues say. The artwork, titled "The 3rd I," is intended as "a comment on the inaccessibility of time, and the inability to capture memory and experience," according to press materials from the museum, known as Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. Because Mr. Bilal is an active professor, teaching three courses this semester and scheduled to teach this spring, his special camera could capture not just his personal activity, but also his interactions with students.