N.C. Sen. Bill Purcell rose to ask President Barack Obama a question about prescription drugs.

Purcell is a primary care physician and said his patients sometimes struggle to pay for the medicine they need to get better.

"What can we do about the high cost of medicine in America?" he asked.

Obama said that drugs cost 77 percent more in America than in any other country. Research and development as well as marketing costs play into that disparity, Obama said.

"Basically the pharmaceutical industry can get away with it," he said.

Obama said he would push for allowing Medicare to negotiate for the price of prescription drugs. He also said he would want to see debate about how long drug patents should last. Right now, pharmaceutical companies can hold a patent for 12 years. He would consider lowering that to seven years.

"There's no reason why we should not be able to at least pay in the ball park of what other countries are paying for the exact same drug," Obama said.

Myril Linder, 73, of Cary, doesn't buy the argument that a public health care plan won't work.

She's on a public plan: Medicare.

Linder and her husband Willis, 83, are attending President Barack Obama's town hall event today. She said she disagrees with the people who say a public health care plan will lead to a rationing of health care.

"What's the difference? That's the way it is now. That's what President Obama is trying to change," Linder said. "If we do nothing, health care will just get so expensive no one can afford it."

Where is North Carolina's federal stimulus money going?

A bimonthly report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office has a breakdown of where some of the stimulus money has gone so far:

* MEDICARE/MEDICAID: As of April 1, the state had drawn down $414.6 million extra for Medicare and Medicaid programs to offset the budget deficit.

* ROADS AND BRIDGES: As of April 16, the N.C. Department of Transportation had obligated about $165 million for 53 projects in economically distressed areas.

* EDUCATION: As of April 2, the state has been allocated about $952 million to fund education, but it has not yet determined how to spend it.

In addition, North Carolina expects to receive $80 million for worker training, $34.5 million for crime control grants and other money for a low-income housing tax credit program.

Overall, the state is expected to receive $6.1 billion.

U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge will focus on trade matters and oversight issues in his first term on the influential Ways and Means Committee in the House of Representatives.

Etheridge, a Lillington Democrat, is the first North Carolinian named to the committee since 1953. The committee is the source of all tax bills and has jurisdiction over Medicare and Social Security, Barb Barrett reports.

Etheridge was named today to the subcommittees on Trade and Oversight.

The oversight panel will give Etheridge a position to help shape the economic recovery plan being pushed by President-elect Barack Obama. Etheridge this week wrote Obama asking him to including Etheridge's school construction proposal in the plan.

On the trade subcommittee, Etheridge said he wants to not only enforce current agreements but make sure new agreements support North Carolina's workers and products.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole is voting with the Democrats more lately.

The Salisbury Republican has broken with her party more this year than she did in 2007, according to an analysis of her voting record by The Hill, a Washington-based political paper.

Leaving out missed votes and bills that both parties favored, Dole voted against a majority of her party 25.5 percent of the time this year, versus 6.6 percent in 2007, 6.4 percent in the 2005-06 session and 4.3 percent in the 2003-04 session.

Dole was one of seven Republicans who voted for a climate-change bill, among other things:

Some of Dole’s most significant breaks with the GOP include backing a Democratic economic stimulus measure, supporting Medicare legislation that Bush vetoed, endorsing an amendment to expand children's healthcare coverage to pregnant women and voting for an expansive amendment to lengthen dwell-time for troops before they return to Iraq.

In an interview with the paper, Dole said that she is voting for what's "best for the people of my state," saying she was not moving to the middle because of the upcoming election.

Democratic opponent Kay Hagan's campaign e-mailed a link to the story to reporters.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole was fairly bipartisan in the 2003-04 session.

With the candidates for Senate touting their records of bipartisanship, Dome has been taking a closer look at the number of Democrats who signed on to legislation Dole sponsored.

In the 2003-04 session, the Salisbury Republican was the primary sponsor of 16 bills. Of them, eight had no cosponsors and eight had Democratic cosponsors.

A bill to award the Congressional Medal of Honor to British Prime Minister Tony Blair had 48 Republican cosponsors and 30 Democrats, including Sens. Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Joe Lieberman and Chuck Schumer.

Overall, that boosted her Democratic cosponsors to 48, compared to 66 Republican cosponsors, or about a three-to-two ratio.

Her most frequent Democratic cosponsor was fellow North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who signed on to the Blair honors, a bill to recognize the Lumbee tribe, an amendment on a Medicare bill and another amendment.

Previously: Dole's cosponsors in 2005-06 and 2007-08.

A state workers' group may get involved in federal races.

In the past seven years, the State Employees Association of North Carolina's political action committee has stuck to local and state races in its endorsements and independent expenditures.

But after SEANC voted in May to affiliate with the national Service Employees International Union — which has one of the country's top PACs in federal races — it is reconsidering.

SEANC Executive Director Dana Cope told Dome that decisions in Washington on issues such as Medicare funding often affect North Carolina and the group's state political goals. At the same time, it does not want to spread itself too thin.

"We want to get the most bang for the buck," he said.

The group is now coordinating its efforts more with SEIU, which sent flyers in a 2005 Raleigh City Council race and has given to U.S. Reps. Brad Miller and David Price, former U.S. Senate candidate Erskine Bowles and state Sen. Janet Cowell.

Cope said SEIU got permission from his group before giving $5,000 in late March to U.S. Senate candidate Kay Hagan, who was not endorsed by SEANC in the primary and may not be in the general election.

If SEANC decides to get involved in Congressional races, it will have to register as a federal PAC. 

Mort Kondracke thinks there is a political opening in the Washington, D.C., right now.

Speaking at a North Carolina Chamber luncheon today, the longtime political reporter and editor of the Roll Call newspaper said that "poisonous partisanship" has rendered the federal government incapable of solving problems with Social Security and Medicare entitlements and the education system.

He said that there is a chance if the nominees are John McCain and Barack Obama — and to a lesser degree Hillary Clinton — to have a "high-level policy debate from the left and the right" in the election.

But he warned that there is a lot of "institutional resistance" to this happening.

"One group that's institutionally opposed to that is the whole industry of politics and political consultants and pollsters and ad people who exist to demonize the opposition," he said. "Negative ads are their stock in trade."

He also said there will be resistance from the media, which he said profits "as much from peddling conflict and scandal as it does just reporting the news."

The N.C. Association of Educators and the National Education Association have sent a mailer attacking Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richard Moore, Ben Niolet reports.

What the mailer says: "Important message for NCAE retirees. Just the facts: Has Richard Moore really managed our pension fund responsibly? Here are the facts. Fact: Hardworking teachers and state employees regularly contribute money to the pension fund creating a large surplus that Richard Moore inherited when he became State Treasurer. However, in the last four years, Moore has lagged behind his peers in pension management performance. Fact: Richard Moore has not provided the General Assembly with state-mandated reports detailing the performance of the money managers he hires. When asked for the reports, Moore said they were unavailable. Fact: Richard Moore supported cuts to federal entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and military retirement."

The background: Teachers and other state and local employees contribute 6 percent of their paychecks to the state pension fund, a $77 billion fund that Moore oversees. In 2006, employee contributions were $745 million, according to the Treasurer's Office.

The pension fund earned $5.7 billion that year on its investments and had to pay $2.7 billion in benefits. So the employees' contributions would not have even covered the amount the fund owed retirees that year.

The claim that Moore has lagged behind in pension management is based on information compiled by Wilshire Associates, an investment firm. The state's pension fund has not always done as well as others. For example, in 2007, the fund had an 8.3 percent return rate, which was lower than the median rate of 8.7 percent for funds of similar size. Moore has said his goal as treasurer is steady income and not home-run investments.

The fund is required by law to invest 37 percent of its assets in fixed-income investments, which offer slow but steady growth, a Moore spokeswoman said. The chart included on the mailer shows that in one of the four years, the state pension fund performed the same as other state pension systems.

The claim that Moore has not provided reports to the legislature was based on a line from a March article in Forbes magazine that was harshly critical of Moore. According to Moore's office and the legislature's Fiscal Research Division, Moore's office has been in compliance with its reporting requirements. The division was able to provide copies of some of those reports Wednesday. A year's worth of those reports are available on the treasurer's Web site.

The claim about Moore supporting cuts to entitlement programs is based on a response by Moore to a News & Observer questionnaire when Moore ran for Congress in 1994. The newspaper asked, "The 10 largest entitlement programs are Social Security, Medicare, deposit insurance, Medicaid, federal civilian retirement, unemployment compensation, federal military retirement, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income and Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Which, if any, of those programs, would you support cutting to help reduce the federal budget deficit?"

He answered: "I think that I would support on a case by case basis cuts in any and all of those programs. If the way those programs were implemented does not make common sense and are not achieving the goals that they were specifically set up for, they should be changed. As an example, food stamps do not seem to be achieving — at least to a certain percentage of our population — the goals they were set up for. As a former federal prosecutor, I know there is a tremendous amount of fraud. In today's computerization, the concept of a coupon or a stamp may be obsolete and could result in tremendous cost savings."

Is the ad accurate? Not entirely. Employee contributions are a relatively small fraction of what the pension fund earns and did not create a surplus in the fund. In three of the past four years, the pension fund has not performed as well as other similarly sized funds. The claim that Moore has not provided state-mandated reports is false. And in 1994, he did say he supported cuts to entitlement programs if those programs were not working.

U.S. Rep. David Price says earmarks have gotten a bad rap.

In a speech before the Cary Chamber of Commerce this morning, the Chapel Hill Democrat said the recent debate over Congressional earmarks has blown them out of proportion.

Price said the total amount of money spent on earmarked projects is about 1 percent of the federal budget. The bigger problems with spending are the Iraq war, Medicare and Social Security, he said.

A professor of political science, Price argued that the U.S. Constitution clearly gives Congress "the power of the purse," including the right to direct spending. He cited several local projects, including a town water reclamation facility, that were needed.

The issue with earmarks is not spending, since most of the money would be appropriated anyway, he said. Instead, he said, it has been a lack of transparency and "road to nowhere" projects that were not worthy.

Still, he said, there is "a fair amount of exaggeration" about earmarks.

"This earmark process has become kind of a bugaboo and it's going to figure in some of the campaigns," he said. "Everybody should take a deep breath."