Washington (CNN) — House Republicans agreed Thursday to adopt a ban on congressional earmarks in spending bills for next year, upping the ante with Democrats in the political battle over fiscal responsibility and pork barrel spending.

“Federal spending is out of control, and the American people know it,” said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Indiana. Earmarks are “emblematic of everything that’s wrong” in Washington, he said.

“Earmarks” refer to federal funding designated for particular projects, with taxpayer money allocated by members of Congress to home-state and home-district projects, often with an eye toward re-election.

Such projects bring money into a congressman’s district, providing jobs and funding projects sought by local constituents.

House Democrats said Wednesday that they will ban earmarks directed to for-profit companies. The move would apply to government spending bills Congress is considering for next year. But key Democratic committee leaders said in a written statement that the new rules are also “intended to become a long-term proposition.”

House Democrats added rules last year requiring members to post their requests online on their own Web sites, but the Appropriations Committee will create a “one-stop” link so the public can view all requests for federal dollars.

According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group that tracks earmark spending, there were 9,500 earmarks this year worth $15.9 billion.

The announcement on earmarks comes as Congress contends with stories about ethics violations and public opinion polls showing the public is fed up with excessive Washington spending.

CNN’s Deirdre Walsh, Evan Glass and Alan Silverleib contributed to this report.

Washington (CNN) — Health care reform takes center stage Thursday as President Obama and top congressional Democrats work behind closed doors to nail down a final agreement.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — who has sounded increasingly optimistic that she will be able to round up the 216 votes needed to pass the Senate health care bill — will host a meeting of the entire House Democratic caucus in the morning.

On the other side of Capitol Hill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will try to build public momentum by framing the issue in more personal terms, holding a news conference with an 11-year-old girl whose mother died of pulmonary hypertension after losing her health insurance.

“We are making progress. A lot of decisions were made,” Reid told reporters Wednesday. “I really believe the goal we’ve been seeking for a long time of health care reform is going to be done. We don’t have it all worked out yet but we made a lot of progress.”

Obama is set to discuss health care in afternoon and evening meetings with African-American and Hispanic members of Congress. He is also planning to take his increasingly populist, anti-insurance industry message back on the road early next week, delivering yet another reform speech in the political battleground state of Ohio.

The president delivered passionate, campaign-style health care stump speeches earlier this week in Pennsylvania and Missouri. Obama has dismissed questionable poll numbers about the Democratic reform plan, declaring the debate over and urging a final up-or-down vote on the matter in Congress.

“The time for talk is over,” he said Wednesday in St. Charles, Missouri. “It’s time to vote.”

GOP leaders, meanwhile, remain furious over the Democratic strategy for passing an overhaul bill. If the House approves the Senate version of the bill, according to Democratic sources, a separate package of changes designed in part to make the overall measure more palatable to House liberals would then be approved by both chambers — getting through the Senate under a legislative maneuver known as reconciliation. Bills passed under in the Senate reconciliation require only a simple majority of 51 votes.

Senate Democrats lost their filibuster-proof 60-seat supermajority with the election in January of Massachusetts GOP Sen. Scott Brown to the seat formerly held by the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Liberal House Democrats contend, among other things, that the Senate bill does not include an adequate level of subsidies to help middle- and lower-income families purchase coverage. They also object to the Senate’s proposed tax on expensive insurance plans.

Separately, a handful of socially conservative House Democrats argue the Senate plan doesn’t do enough to ensure taxpayer funds are not used to fund abortions. Several political analysts have said lingering divisions over abortion may prove to be the toughest hurdle for Democratic leaders to overcome.

Republicans argue that reconciliation, which is limited to provisions pertaining to the budget, was never meant to facilitate passage of a sweeping measure along the lines of the health care bill.

Four Senate Republicans who previously served in the House warned House Democrats in a news conference Wednesday that there is no guarantee the reconciliation strategy will succeed.

A unified Senate GOP caucus will fight to prevent changes promised by the Democratic leadership, they said.

House Democrats “better think long and hard” about voting for the Senate plan if they don’t like it, said Sen. John Thune, R-South Dakota. “If you vote for the Senate-passed bill, you own the Senate-passed bill.”

Washington (CNN) — President Obama has set them — and they’ve repeatedly been missed.

But with Easter recess coming, Obama’s latest deadline to pass health care reform legislation could be his last one.

Over the summer, as the health care reform battle was brewing in Congress and at town hall meetings across the country, the president called on both the House and Senate to pass legislation by the end of August in order for a comprehensive bill to see its way to his desk by the end of the year.

That didn’t happen.

The White House and members of Congress faced several hurdles, from Republican opposition to divisions within the Democratic Party, on specific items in the proposed legislation.

Deadline one

During his inaugural address, Obama pledged to make health care reform one of his top domestic agenda items. It was also a campaign promise he wanted to uphold.

In February 2009, Obama called on Democrats to begin crafting a health care reform bill that would allow millions more Americans to get health care insurance — and cut down on some of the controversial industry practices.

“The cost of health care has weighed down our economy and our conscience long enough. So let there be no doubt, health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year,” Obama said.

Top Democrats soon got to work. As summer approached, Obama pushed members of the House and Senate to pass their respective versions of a bill by Congress’ August recess.

In a news conference July 22, the president said the deadline was set because of the messages he received from Americans.

“I’m rushed because I get letters every day from families that are being clobbered by health care costs,” he said. “If you don’t set deadlines in this town, things don’t happen. The default position is inertia.”

But in an interview with PBS’s Jim Lehrer, Obama admitted that if something was close to being done and would not make the deadline, it could “spill over by a few days or a week.”

But getting the controversial issue through Congress is not an easy task, even with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. Republican opposition to the plans has been vocal and direct.

Political observers have noted that part of the problem getting Congress to push forward on the legislation was Obama’s lack of personal involvement in crafting the bill. During the summer, he remained mostly out of the legislative weeds and deferred much of the wrangling to Democratic leaders.

“But inertia is what some members of his own party might accuse the president himself of,” Time magazine’s Karen Tumulty said at the time. “And if they had any hope that Obama would get more specific on what he wants to see in a final health care bill, they must have been sorely disappointed.”

Deadline two

After the August deadline passed, the Obama administration kicked into high gear, taking greater control of the bill’s direction. The president indicated that he wanted a final bill passed by the end of the year.

He got his first victory in early November, when the House passed its version of the bill by a vote of 220-215. Only one Republican voted in favor.

Negotiations in the Senate, however, have not been so easy. Concerns by moderates and liberals in the Democratic Party, along with the possibility of a Republican filibuster, threatened to derail the bill’s passage.

In the end, after several late-night sessions over the fall, the Senate passed its bill December 24 on a vote of 60-39. Every member of the Democratic caucus supported the bill, and every Republican opposed it.

Despite the passage in both the House and Senate, it would be impossible to get a final bill passed by December 31, as both versions would need to be merged into one final bill. That process continues to this day.

In January, the president admitted that he had run into a health care reform “buzz saw.”

“Here’s the good news: We’ve gotten pretty far down the road. But I’ve got to admit we’ve had a little bit of a buzz saw this week,” Obama said January 10 at Lorain County Community College near Cleveland, Ohio.

Obama detailed some of the problems that slowed down the process, including “running headlong into special interests and armies of lobbyists and partisan politics that’s aimed at exploiting fears instead of getting things done.”

He added: “And then you’ve got ads that are scaring the bejesus out of everybody. And the longer it takes, the uglier it looks.”

Another problem: Democrats losing their supermajority in the Senate after the GOP upset in the Massachusetts special election to fill the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat.

Republican Scott Brown beat Democrat Martha Coakley to become the 51st Republican senator. Brown, who campaigned against the Democrats’ health care plan, has repeatedly said he will vote against a final bill.

Deadline three

After presenting his health care reform plan, Obama has called for a final up or down vote in Congress within the next few weeks. No Republicans, however, are expected to vote for the nearly $1 trillion package.

Nonetheless, a deadline has been set.

Last week, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said he expects the House to approve the Senate bill by March 18, when the president heads overseas.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer pushed back against that deadline, saying, “none of us has mentioned the 18th other than Mr Gibbs.”

“We are trying to do this as soon as possible,” Hoyer added. “That continues to be our objective.”

Democratic sources have said that after the House acts, a separate package of changes designed in part to make the overall measure sell-able to House liberals would then be approved by both chambers, getting through the Senate under a controversial legislative maneuver known as reconciliation. Bills passed that way require a majority of only 51 votes.

Jerusalem (CNN) — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says it is difficult to have any negotiations with Israel unless it revokes plans to build new homes on disputed land in Jerusalem, Abbas’ top negotiator said Thursday.

Abbas made the comment while speaking to Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, negotiator Saeb Erakat said.

Abbas told Moussa he has asked the United States to demand that Israel stop the construction.

Israel announced Tuesday it would build 1,600 new apartments on land that both Israel and the Palestinians claim. The Palestinians contend the area is in Arab East Jerusalem; Israel’s Interior Ministry says it is not.

The dispute came during a visit to Israel and the West Bank by Vice President Joe Biden. He criticized Israel’s decision to build the apartments, saying Wednesday that it undermines the trust both sides need for negotiations.

The timing of the announcement left many wondering whether it was a calculated slap in the face of the United States or simply undiplomatic timing. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has said it was the latter, and Thursday the office said Netanyahu had spoken to Biden and “expressed his regret for the unfortunate timing.”

Netanyahu also summoned Interior Minister Eli Yishai and expressed his displeasure, his office said.

“In light of the ongoing disagreement between Israel and the U.S. on building in Jerusalem, the prime minister said there was no need to advance the planning process this week and instructed the interior minister to adopt procedures to prevent such an incident from recurring,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.

Planning of the building project has taken several years and final approval won’t come for more than a year, Netanyahu told Biden, his office said. Actual construction is likely to take several more years, he said.

Speaking Wednesday in Ramallah, on the West Bank, Biden said the United States will hold both Israel and the Palestinians responsible for any steps that make peace between them more difficult.

Watch an Israeli spokesman explain the timing

Biden said he “immediately condemned” Israel’s plans to build the new apartments.

His unusually blunt criticism came after Israel and the Palestinians had agreed earlier in the week for indirect talks, to be carried out with U.S. envoy George Mitchell. Indirect talks are a step toward direct negotiations.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said his side appreciated “the strong statement of condemnation by the U.S. administration.”

Biden arrived in Israel on Monday and has met with both Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres. He delivered a major speech at Tel Aviv University on Thursday titled “The Enduring Partnership Between the United States and Israel.”

Biden also plans a one-day trip to Jordan at the end of the week, when he plans to meet with King Abdullah.

CNN’s Michal Zippori contributed to this report.

Washington (CNN) — Steve Hildebrand was one of the top advisers who helped put President Obama in office, but he has a stark warning for his old friends at the White House and on Capitol Hill.

“I think that there is a real shot we Democrats are going to get slaughtered in elections this fall if we aren’t leading the efforts to reform Washington,” Hildebrand said. “We campaigned in ‘06 and ‘08, and if voters don’t see that change, we haven’t lived up to that promise.”

Hildebrand, a highly regarded strategist in Democratic circles who helped deliver the crucial state of Iowa for Obama, is an outside consultant pushing issues such as campaign finance and lobbying reform.

He came to the White House on Wednesday for a quiet meeting with the president’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, to express a fear that Republicans are seizing the high ground on cleaning up Washington, on issues such as the ethics probe of Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-New York.

Hildebrand is pushing for a strong outside body to oversee congressional ethics so that lawmakers are no longer policing themselves, and he is lobbying on behalf of the Fair Elections Now Act, which would limit federal campaign contributions to $100 to try and cut the influence of big money donations.

“Voters want solutions, but voters know that it starts with getting money out of politics first,” Hildebrand said before his meeting with Axelrod. “And I’m going to push that with David, I’m going to push that with anyone that will listen.”

Pressed on whether the president is doing enough on lobbying and campaign finance reform, Hildebrand said, “I don’t think anyone in Washington is doing enough on this.”

Hildebrand sounds baffled that his party is allowing Republicans to capitalize on scandals involving Rangel and ex-Rep. Eric Massa, a New York Democrat, just as Democrats did in the last two elections.

“Point is things are happening today in Washington under Democratic leadership that were happening under Republican leadership that we went after pretty hard as a party,” Hildebrand said. “We went after that culture of corruption, and I don’t believe there is a culture of corruption, but I do believe there is an image problem that Washington in general has to deal with. And Democrats are in trouble now and if they don’t do anything.”

After their meeting, Axelrod told CNN that Hildebrand is a “very passionate advocate” who has some “fair criticism” of fellow Democrats.

But Axelrod pointed out he believes Obama has been aggressive in trying to curtail the influence of lobbyists within the executive branch by banning them — with a few exceptions — from serving in the administration or on presidentially appointed boards or commissions.

Axelrod noted that in his State of the Union address, Obama pushed Congress to enact more lobbying disclosure regulations and to pass legislation to push back on a recent Supreme Court decision that could flood more special-interest money into federal elections

Axelrod said the administration will keep fighting to reform Washington.

“I’m as committed to that as I was on the first day” of the new administration, Axelrod said.

Hildebrand is known for speaking his mind. In September, he told Politico he was “losing patience” with the White House, and he said the president needed to be “more bold in his leadership.”

But a few weeks later, the president praised Hildebrand at a White House reception celebrating gay rights, introducing him as, “Somebody who helped ensure that we are in the White House, Steve Hildebrand.

“Please give Steve a big round of applause,” Obama told the crowd.

Hildebrand, who is openly gay, said he gives the president credit.

“When the president signed the bill, the hate crimes bill last fall, it was the first piece of legislation ever in the history of Congress to affirm the rights of gay people in this country.” he said.

And overall, Hildebrand said, the president deserves a B plus for his efforts to stabilize the economy and overhaul health care.

“I’m thrilled we’re on the cusp of health care reform,” he said. “It’s so important and necessary. I’m thrilled the president has not given up and has been persistent.”

Washington (CNN) — President Obama will announce Thursday new details of his free trade agenda that is intended to grow the economy, a White House official said.

In his State of the Union address in January, Obama set a goal of doubling exports over the next five years to support two million American jobs. The National Export Initiative, he said, would be a government-wide, presidential-level export promotion strategy aimed at championing U.S. workers and businesses by providing the necessary tools to keep the nation competitive and help create new jobs.

Obama is expected Thursday to lay out specific goals of the initiative, the official said. They include:

– Improving access to financing for businesses that want to increase exports.

– Enforcing existing trade deals and leveling the playing field for American businesses and workers.

– Promoting and advocating for U.S. businesses and products overseas.

Obama is also committed to opening new markets, protecting intellectual property by employing new technology, and encouraging public-private partnerships to help American businesses grow their exports and create more jobs.

Obama will also sign an executive order that will create an export promotion cabinet comprised of representatives of the federal agencies, including the departments of State, Commerce, Agriculture and Treasury, whose work affects exports, the official said.

He plans to re-establish the president’s export council, a private sector advisory committee on international trade. He plans to name Jim McNerney, president and CEO of The Boeing Company, and Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox Corporation, to lead the council, the official said.

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk promoted Obama’s initiative in a speech at the National Press Club earlier in the week.

“In the last quarter of 2009, some economists believe that exports alone accounted for more than half of all U.S. economic growth,” Kirk said, according to the Press Club’s Web site.

But he said that new trade agreements would be a tough sell among Americans stung by the recession. The president will also have to overcome opposition from labor unions and some Democrats in Congress.

Kirk said the initiative will require restoring “belief in the wisdom and the value of our trade policy.”

Washington (CNN) — House Democrats said Wednesday that they will ban earmarks directed to for-profit companies.

The move, announced by the Appropriations Committee and its Defense subcommittee, would apply to government spending bills Congress is considering for next year. But the committee said in a written statement that the new rules are also “intended to become a long-term proposition.”

Out the door will be earmarks directed to private firms, many of them military contractors who frequently obtain multimillion-dollar no-bid contracts through the process. Instead, those companies will be allowed to apply directly for funding to the Defense Department, which will decide what projects it wants to fund.

Defense earmarks include research proposals, systems upgrades and equipment production.

The Appropriations Committee said the earmark restrictions would have prohibited 1,000 earmarks this year, amounting to $1.7 billion.

In addition, the Appropriations Committee said it plans greater oversight of earmarks going to nonprofits, directing executive agencies to audit 5 percent of all of those earmarks to make sure they are, in fact, being used as intended.

“Earmarks” refer to federal funding designated for particular projects, with taxpayer money allocated by members of Congress to home-state and home-district projects, often with an eye toward re-election.

But such earmarks bring money into a congressman’s district, feeding jobs, road and other projects sought by constituents.

House Democrats added rules last year requiring members to post their requests on their own Web sites, but the committee will create a “one-stop” link so the public can view all requests for federal dollars.

According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group that tracks earmark spending, there were 9,500 earmarks this year worth $15.9 billion.

The announcement on earmarks comes as Democrats are contending with stories about ethics violations and opinion polls showing that the public is fed up with excessive Washington spending. In recent years, members of both parties have come under fire for accepting millions in campaign contributions from lobbyists pushing for earmarks for their for-profit clients.

In an effort not to be outdone by the Democrats, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said the House GOP will meet Thursday to talk about banning all earmarks.

“Clearly, our members have some strong feelings on this, but I think it’s time for our conference to sit down and have a real adult conversation about whether we’re really willing to do what’s necessary to come all the way back,” Boehner said.

Boehner, who does not request earmarks and made such reforms a cornerstone of his campaign for the leadership, said the GOP proposal would go further than the Democrats’ plan.

“There’s no way to be half-pregnant on this issue,” he said.

Reforming the spending process on Capitol Hill is historically a contentious issue for both Democrats and Republicans. Efforts by Boehner to get his GOP colleagues to refrain from requesting pet projects for their districts have failed. And votes on the House floor to stop the practice of setting aside money for individual members’ districts have fallen short, with members of both parties arguing that it’s part of their responsibility to bring home federal money for local needs.

Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wisconsin, has defended the prerogative of Congress to allocate such spending, saying on the House floor as recently as February 2009, “the fact is without the earmarking process, the White House and its anonymous bureaucrats would make every single spending decision in government.”

House GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence, who in recent years pledged not to request any spending, said it’s time to respond to calls from the public to cut back on spending.

“The American people are sick and tired of business as usual in Washington, D.C., and earmarks have become emblematic of everything that’s wrong with government spending,” he said.

Pence would not say whether the GOP conference would take a vote on the issue Thursday, but the deadline for members requesting earmarks is later this month.

The Democrats’ plan has been applauded by an unlikely ally in the Senate.

House Speaker “Nancy Pelosi and I don’t agree on many things, but if she’s willing to take a stand for taxpayers, I’ll work with her to put an end to the earmark favor factory,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina. DeMint also pledged to force the Senate to vote on a similar policy this week.

But Sen. Dan Inouye, D-Hawaii, who chairs the Senate spending panel, immediately slammed the House Democrats’ earmark plan.

“I don’t believe this policy or ceding authority to the Executive Branch on any spending decision is in the best interests of the Congress or the American people. In my view, it does not make sense to discriminate against for-profit organizations. I am not sure why we should treat for-profit earmarks any differently than non-profit earmarks,” Inouye said in a written statement.

Washington (CNN) — President Obama is set to turn up the heat on private health insurers again Wednesday, taking his increasingly populist health care overhaul pitch on the road to the political battleground state of Missouri.

In addition to hitting insurers — which he also did in a campaign-style speech in Pennsylvania on Monday — the president is set to tackle the issue of Medicare fraud.

Earlier in the day, Obama dispatched Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to address the annual conference of America’s Health Insurance Plans, an insurance industry lobbying group.

“You have a choice,” Sebelius said. “You can choose to continue your opposition to reform … or you can choose to take the millions of dollars you have stored away for your next round of ads to kill meaningful reform and use them to start giving Americans some relief from their skyrocketing premiums.”

More than 1,000 protesters, including representatives of organized labor, marched through downtown Washington on Tuesday to the Ritz Carlton, site of the conference.

The marchers were led by, among others, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a prominent backer of overhaul legislation.

The health care debate is “about one thing,” Dean said. “Are you for the insurance companies or are you for the American people?”

The increasingly sharp rhetoric from the administration and elsewhere is designed both to bolster sagging health care overhaul poll numbers and to intensify pressure on wavering congressional Democrats.

Obama has called for a final up or down vote in Congress within the next few weeks. No Republicans are expected to vote for the nearly $1 trillion package.

“Democrat leaders aren’t listening to the American people,” House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Wednesday morning. They want to “shove this government takeover of the health care system down the throats of the American people,” he said.

Only 25 percent of Americans believe that Congress should pass a health care bill similar to one that Democratic leaders have been working on for the past year, according to a February 12-15 CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll. But the survey also noted that Americans overwhelmingly approve of many of the bill’s specific provisions.

GOP leaders are livid over the Democratic strategy for passing an overhaul bill.

If the House approves the Senate version of the bill, according to Democratic sources, a separate package of changes designed in part to make the overall measure more palatable to House liberals would then be approved by both chambers, getting through the Senate under a legislative maneuver known as reconciliation. Bills passed under reconciliation require only a bare Senate majority of 51 votes.

Senate Democrats lost their filibuster-proof 60-seat supermajority with the election in January of Republican Sen. Scott Brown to the Massachusetts seat formerly held by the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Liberal House Democrats contend, among other things, that the Senate bill does not include an adequate level of subsidies to help middle- and lower-income families purchase coverage. They also object to the Senate’s proposed tax on expensive insurance plans.

Separately, a handful of socially conservative House Democrats argue that the Senate plan doesn’t do enough to ensure that taxpayer funds are not used to fund abortions.

Republicans, meanwhile, contend that reconciliation, which is limited to provisions pertaining to the budget, was never meant to facilitate the passage of a sweeping measure along the lines of the health care bill.

Four Senate Republicans who previously served in the House held a news conference Wednesday to warn nervous House Democrats that there is no guarantee the reconciliation strategy will succeed.

A unified Senate GOP caucus will fight to prevent changes promised by the Democratic leadership, they said.

House Democrats “better think long and hard” about voting for the Senate plan if they don’t like it, said Sen. John Thune, R-South Dakota. “If you vote for the Senate-passed bill, you own the Senate-passed bill.”

If the House passes the Senate bill, “the Senate bill will become law,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina. “We’re here to guarantee” the measure won’t be changed by the Senate.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi, predicted such a turn of events would be politically catastrophic for the Democrats.

If Senate bill passes, it will be “the paramount issue that will see a lot of Democrats going home for good after the November elections,” he said.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Simmering tension between the White House and U.S. Supreme Court spilled into public this week when Chief Justice John Roberts labeled the political atmosphere at the State of the Union address “very troubling.”

With six members of the court a few feet away in the audience, President Obama used the occasion to criticize the conservative majority’s ruling in a campaign finance case.

Roberts on Tuesday told students at the University of Alabama that such partisanship at the annual address in Congress leaves him questioning whether the justices should continue to attend, as most do, in accord with tradition.

“It does cause me to think whether or not it makes sense for us to be there,” Roberts said. “To the extent the State of the Union has degenerated into a political pep rally, I’m not sure why we’re there.”

Roberts, 55, was among the five justices who ruled in favor of loosening congressionally mandated restrictions on so-called “corporate” spending in federal elections. The decision opened up spending for a range of corporations, unions and advocacy groups.

The White House was quick to attack Roberts indirectly, focusing on the ruling itself, and Obama continued the criticism in his January address, saying, “With all due deference to the separation of powers, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.”

Political fallout from the ruling continues. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing Wednesday on legislative efforts to blunt the impact of the court’s decision.

Roberts on Tuesday said people have a right to respond to what the courts do, but context should be considered.

“Some people, I think, have an obligation to criticize what we do, given their office, if they think we’ve done something wrong,” he said in response to a student’s question. “So I have no problems with that. On the other hand, there is the issue of the setting, the circumstances and the decorum. The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering, while the court, according to the requirements of protocol, has to sit there, expressionless, I think is very troubling.”

Members of Congress sat behind the justices at the January 27 address, many applauding when Obama made his remarks about the court’s election spending case.

Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said Wednesday that Roberts would have no further public comment on the issue.

Sources close to Roberts said he has grown increasingly frustrated at what he views as the growing partisanship aimed at the federal courts, particularly the Supreme Court.

“The incident at the State of the Union only reinforced his concern the courts have become a political football,” said one colleague, who has spoken with the chief justice since the speech.

“He’s tried — publicly and privately — to reach across the branches and sought to reinforce a level of mutual respect and understanding for their work. He felt like those Obama’s remarks really hurt what the court is perceived to be doing.”

These sources spoke on condition of anonymity since they are not authorized to comment officially on Roberts’ behalf.

The chief justice invited Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to a private reception at the court shortly after the two were elected in December 2008. The meeting with the justices was designed as a friendly get-together with the incoming president, a former constitutional law professor.

Justice Samuel Alito was the only one of the nine-member bench not to attend. He was criticized for his reaction to Obama’s remark in January. Cameras captured him shaking his head and apparently mouthing the words “not true” as the president spoke.

As a U.S. senator from Illinois, Obama voted against both Alito and Roberts during their confirmation hearings to the high court.

Justices Antonin Scalia and John Paul Stevens have said they do not regularly attend the annual address because of its partisan nature. Scalia has said the justices — wearing their robes — are forced to “sit there like bumps on a log” and are not supposed to show any reaction to what is being said.

Roberts also told the Alabama students the process of Senate confirmation of top judicial nominees has become too partisan, criticizing lawmakers who use the hearings to score political points.

“I think the process has broken down,” he said.

New York (CNN) — New York state’s top police official announced Wednesday he was quitting, the second acting superintendent to step down in as many weeks.

In a letter to embattled Gov. David Paterson, Pedro Perez denied his resignation was connected to the ethics scandals embroiling Albany.

“My retirement is not premised on the current investigation by the Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, as I know my decisions were honest and rightly motivated,” Perez said in the letter, which the New York State Police released.

Perez’s resignation takes effect Friday and ends his 28-year career as a police officer, his letter said.

His predecessor, Harry Corbitt, quit March 2, less than a week after the abrupt resignation of Denise O’Donnell as New York’s deputy secretary for public safety. O’Donnell said Corbitt had misled her about state police involvement in a scandal involving a top aide to the governor.

The Democratic governor has been mired in controversy since news reports emerged alleging an aide was involved in a domestic violence incident with a woman and that state police later allegedly pressured the woman to keep quiet.

The aide, David Johnson, has been suspended without pay.

Corbitt has said he did not dispute O’Donnell’s account of what he told her but said, “The conclusions she appeared to draw from these statements were incorrect.”

Separately, the New York State Commission on Public Integrity on March 3 accused Paterson of an ethics violation for allegedly accepting free tickets to the first game of last year’s World Series.

The commission also said Paterson lied under oath about intending to pay for the tickets.

Paterson’s spokesman, Peter Kauffmann, resigned the next day, saying he could not keep doing his job “in good conscience.”

The governor’s office said it was reviewing the commission’s findings.

“Gov. Paterson maintains his innocence and intends to challenge the findings of the commission both with respect to the law and the facts,” the office said.

The governor could face up to an $80,000 fine for violating the state’s gift ban for public officials, and up to $10,000 if he is found to have used his official position to secure unwarranted privileges.

The commission has asked Cuomo, the state’s attorney general, and the Albany County district attorney to investigate.

Cuomo is a possible Democratic contender for the governor’s office in 2010.

Paterson, a former New York lieutenant governor who stepped into the governor’s mansion when Eliot Spitzer resigned in 2008 over a prostitution scandal, has abandoned his campaign for election to a full term, saying it was not the “latest distraction but an accumulation” of obstacles behind his decision.

CNN’s Mark J. Norman contributed to this report.