Barack Obama, Gop | featured news

The Obama administration's aggressive plan for strict scrutiny of hedge funds and other freewheeling investors, part of the biggest expansion of financial restraints since the Great Depression, is drawing instant opposition from Republican lawmakers and the rules' targets. And skeptics are questioning whether the new rulebook would work anyway.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal took a swipe at federal spending to monitor volcanoes in the GOP response to President Obama's address to Congress. That has the mayor of one city in the shadow of Mount St. Helens fuming. "Does the governor have a volcano in his backyard?" the mayor of Vancouver, Washington, said.

An array of Republican governors said they would reject at least some of the funding available under the Obama administration's economic-stimulus package.

Top Republican lawmakers today called on President Obama to change his political strategy, arguing that the passage of a massive stimulus bill on a party-line vote showed he has failed to deliver the "change" he promised. Sen. John McCain told CNN's "State of the Union With John King" that the president was off to "a bad beginning." Sen. Lindsay Graham was blunter: "If this is going to be bipartisanship, the country's screwed."

In a rare move, the president was meeting with the Republican conference in an effort to draw support for his $825 billion economic stimulus plan.