Tom Price

Congressman Tom Price, a Republican, has said he will not announce a decision about running next year for the Senate in Georgia until May, but a pair of fundraising emails obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD indicate the GOP congressman may be leaning toward getting in the race. Here's an excerpt from Price's first email to donors, sent Thursday:

Dear Friends:

The first quarter FEC reporting deadline is fast approaching on March 31st! We are off to a strong start with fundraising this year, and we are extremely close to reaching our first quarter goal.

Republican Karen Handel, the former Georgia secretary of state, gubernatorial candidate, and vice president for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, is moving closer to running for the Senate next year to succeed Republican Saxby Chambliss. Georgia political blog Peach Pundit reports:

Two-term Republican senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia will reportedly retire at the end of 2014. Jim Galloway at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has the details:

House Republican Tom Price of Georgia refused to say whether he would challenge Senator Saxby Chambliss in the 2014 GOP primary. In a Tuesday afternoon appearance on CNN, Price was asked by host Brooke Baldwin if he would "mount a primary challenge" against Chambliss. He at first dodged the question.

"What we're trying to do right now is to solve the remarkable challenges that we have. Any discussion about 2014 is extremely premature," Price said.

Georgia-based blogger and radio host Erick Erickson will not be running for the U.S. Senate, Erickson writes at RedState.com:

In politics, self-awareness matters. It does. When I was a political consultant, I told my clients my first two rules. The first was to know when you were in the minority, even when you thought you were right. The second was to know yourself as others see you.

Saxby Chambliss, the two-term senior senator from Georgia, could face a Republican primary challenge in 2014.

Washington Republican Cathy McMorris Rodgers was elected by the House Republican conference as its chair for the upcoming Congress, reports Jill Jackson of CBS News. McMorris Rodgers, who defeated Georgia congressman Tom Price for the position, will rank fourth in the House leadership. Price had significant support from House conservatives like Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Jeb Hensarling of Texas, but McMorris Rodgers was understood to be the favorite of most of the Republican leadership team.

When it comes to finding a leadership role in the next Congress, Tom Price is running out of options. Price, a stalwart conservative House member from Georgia, is the outgoing Republican Policy Committee chairman, which ranked him fifth in the GOP House leadership.

As they filed out of the Capitol Thursday evening, a few Republican House members told THE WEEKLY STANDARD what they thought of President Obama's address to Congress on jobs:

Can the debt deal pass the House of Representatives? House speaker John Boehner has said he believes he has the votes from the Republican caucus, and Steny Hoyer, the Democratic minority whip, says he can deliver 80 to 100 votes from his side of the aisle.

Downplaying the role of the controversial Independent Patient Advisory Board (IPAB), Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said today that the Affordable Care Act “leaves all final decisions” on changing Medicare payment costs in the hands of Congress. “IPAB is a backstop, a failsafe, to make sure Medicare is solvent for years to come,” Sebelius said at a hearing before the House Budget Committee this morning. “It’s up to Congress whether to accept the recommendations [of IPAB] or to come up with recommendations of their own.”