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Obama ending Israel visit with stops at Holocaust memorial , wreaths for state heroes
• JERUSALEM (AP) -- President Barack Obama says Israel's Holocaust memorial illustrates the depravity to which man can sink but says it is also a reminder of the rescuers and the "righteous among nations who refused to be bystanders."
• Obama visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial Friday as he wrapped up a three-day trip to Israel. He said the memorial represents a call to confront bigotry and racism, "especially anti-Semitism."
• Obama also laid wreaths at the graves of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism who died in 1904 before realizing his dream of a Jewish homeland, and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995.
• He was also touring the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem
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Senate Democrats on track to pass budget protecting safety net and raising taxes
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats controlling the Senate appear on track to pass their first budget in four years, promising a second, almost $1 trillion round of tax increases on top of more than $600 billion in higher taxes on the wealthy enacted in January.
• The nonbinding but politically symbolic measure would protect safety-net programs for the poor and popular domestic priorities like education, health research and federal law enforcement agencies from cuts sought by House Republicans, who adopted a far more austere plan on Thursday morning.
• The Democratic plan caters to party stalwarts on the liberal edge of the spectrum just as the House GOP measure was crafted to appeal to more recent tea party arrivals. The $1 trillion in new revenue would accrue over the coming decade and would be coupled with a net $875 billion in spending cuts, generated by modest cuts to federal health care programs, domestic agencies and the Pentagon and reduced government borrowing costs.
• The GOP budget proposal, similar to previous plans offered by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., demonstrates that it's possible, at least mathematically, to balance the budget within a decade without raising taxes. But to do so Ryan, his party's vice presidential nominee last year, assumes deep cuts that would (Continued on page 31)
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