UPDATE — 12:20 P.M. — President Bush said that he is skeptical of Cuban dictator Raul Castro's intent to reform the communist island, but said a shift in U.S. policy will serve as a trial balloon.

"If Raul is serious about his so-called reforms, he will allow these phones to reach the Cuban people," Mr. Bush said, during remarks in the East Room this morning to a crowd that included relatives of Cuban dissidents currently imprisoned by the Castro government.

Mr. Bush said that the U.S. policy change will test Castro's intent to allow Cubans to own cell phones, computers and dvd players.

"The world is watching the Cuban regime. If it follows its recent public gestures by opening up access to information, and implementing meaningful economic reform, respecting political freedom and human rights, then it can credibly say it has delivered the beginnings of change," Mr. Bush said.

But the president said he doubted that Castro truly intends to democratize his country.

"Experience tells us this regime has no intention of taking these steps. Instead, its recent gestures appear to be nothing more than a cruel joke perpetrated on a long-suffering people," Mr. Bush said.

"America refuses to be deceived, and so do the Cuban people," he said.

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President Bush will speak at the White House at 10:20 and will announce a change in U.S. policy toward Cuba: Americans will be allowed to send cell phones to family members in Cuba.

"We are modifying our regulations," said Dan Fisk, senior director for western hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council.

"Americans will be allowed to send a phone and support an account," Fisk told reporters at the White House just now.

Fisk said that it is their "understanding that cell phones from the United States work there," and that the policy change is a way to test Cuban dictator Raul Castro.

"We're saying, 'You're allowing Cubans to have access to cell phones. Fine, we're going to allow Americans to send mobile phones,'" Fisk said.

The Bush administration wants to see if Castro will allow the phones into his country and also allow Cubans to speak freely with one another using the phones.

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times

The White House this afternoon released a statement from President Bush about Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, who was announced today to have a malignant brain tumor.

Laura and I are concerned to learn of our friend Senator Kennedy's diagnosis. Ted Kennedy is a man of tremendous courage, remarkable strength, and powerful spirit. Our thoughts are with Senator Kennedy and his family during this difficult period. We join our fellow Americans in praying for his full recovery.

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times

The White House this morning stridently rejected a report from the Jerusalem Post today that President Bush plans to attack Iran before he leaves office next January.

"An article in today's Jerusalem Post about the President's position on Iran that quotes unnamed sources — quoting unnamed sources — is not worth the paper it's written on," said White House press secretary Dana Perino this morning, in a statement e-mailed to the press around 9 a.m.

At 9:30 a.m., the story was splashed across the Drudge Report in a banner headline.

The story quotes a "senior official in Jerusalem" who alleged that "a senior member of [President Bush's] entourage" mentioned the war plans in meetings last week, when Mr. Bush was in Israel.

Reporters such as the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh have written stories for years accusing the Bush administration of planning an attack on Iran because of the Islamic Republic's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

But the president has insisted that he wants to resolve the issue diplomatically, though he has also refused to rule out the rule of force. Administration critics believe this means he intends to attack.

"Let me respond by reaffirming the policy of the Administration," Mrs. Perino said this morning.

"We, along with our international allies who want peace in the Middle East, remain opposed to Iran's ambitions to obtain a nuclear weapon. To that end, we are working to bring tough diplomatic and economic pressure on the Iranians to get them to change their behavior and to halt their uranium enrichment program," she said.

Vice President Cheney, who has been targeted by critics as the main war hawk inside the White House, had served in President Ford's White House as chief of staff and was a member of Congress in 1979 when Iran took fifty-two hostages from the American embassy in Tehran and held them for 444 days.

Mr. Cheney said in an 1980 interview that his "major criticism" of President Carter's response to the hostage-taking was that he made "repeated public statements that he will not use force to resolve the situation."

"Although he might not decide to use force, he should not make his decision known," Mr. Cheney told the Pinedale Roundup, as quoted in Stephen Hayes' book, "Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President."

"Once you remove the threat of force you remove any incentive for the Iranians to free the hostages," Mr. Cheney said then. "Every single president for the last half-century at some time has had to use force to safeguard American lives."

Mrs. Perino echoed that sentiment this morning: "As the President has said, no president of the United States should ever take options off the table, but our preference and our actions for dealing with this matter remain through peaceful diplomatic means. Nothing has changed in that regard."

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times

And apparently Bin Laden is the queen bee. At least that's the implication from President Bush's metaphor, in an odd exchange with NBC's Richard Engel, taped yesterday in Egypt and aired this morning on "The Today Show."

MR. ENGEL: If you look back over the last several years, the Middle East that you'll be handing over to the next president is deeply problematic. You have Hamas in power, Hezbollah empowered, taking to the streets, Iran empowered, Iraq still at war. What region --

PRESIDENT BUSH: Richard, those folks were always around. They were here. What we're handing over is a Middle East that, one, recognizes the problems and the world recognizes them. There's clarity as to what their problems are.

MR. ENGEL: The war on terrorism has been the centerpiece of your presidency. Many people say that it has not made the world safer, that it has created more radicals, that there are more people in this part of the world who want to attack the United States.

PRESIDENT BUSH: This is the beehive theory. We should have just let the beehive sit there and hope the bees don't come out of the hive? My attitude is the United States must stay on the offense against al Qaeda, two ways.

MR. ENGEL: (But have you ?) smashed the bees?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Excuse me for a minute, Richard -- two ways. One, find them and bring them to justice, what we're doing; and two, offer freedom as an alternative for their vision. And somehow to suggest the bees would stay in the hive is naive. They didn't stay in the hive when they came and killed 3,000 of our citizens.

It brings back bad memories of Joaquin Phoenix in his creepy role as a roman emperor in "Gladiator."

Watch the full interview below.

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times

The White House today said they were caught off guard yesterday by the reaction to President Bush's comments about appeasing "terrorists and radicals" in the Middle East, which were interpreted to be a hit at Sen. Barack Obama.

If anything, the White House expected the president's criticisms to be seen as a slap at former President Carter, said Ed Gillespie, counselor to the president.

"There was some anticipation that someone might say, oh, it's an expression of - a rebuke to former President Carter for having met with Hamas. That was something that was anticipated," Mr. Gillespie told reporters on Air Force One, as Mr. Bush traveled from Israel to Saudi Arabia earlier today.

But instead, Mr. Obama yesterday issued a denunciation of Mr. Bush's remarks to the Israeli Knesset, during a celebration of Israel's 60th anniversary, claiming it was a "false political attack" against him.

Mr. Bush did not mention Mr. Obama, the Illinois Democrat who is likely to vie for the presidency as his party's candidate, or Mr. Carter by name. He did compare meeting with Hamas or Iran to meeting with Hitler prior to World War II, labeling this "the false comfort of appeasement."

Following Mr. Obama's response, the Democratic party exploded in a series of condemnations from each member of the congressional leadership.

Even the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, got into the fray, using the incident to hit Mr. Obama, which then prompted another response from the Obama campaign.

Mr. Gillespie pronounced himself flummoxed.

"I'm surprised and curious as to the reaction," he said.

"We did not anticipate that it would be taken that way, because it's kind of hard to take it that way if you look at the actual words of the president's remarks, which are consistent with what he has said in the past relative to dealing with groups like Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda, relative to standing by Israel, relative to concerns about Iran developing the prospect of a nuclear weapon," Mr. Gillespie said.

Mr. Gillespie implied that Mr. Obama's reaction to the president's speech was driven by media interpretations of Mr. Bush's comments.

"We don't necessarily live in a world where people just report what the president says, they have to report what they think it means," he said.

"I would urge people to write what the president said … and allow readers to look at his words and form their own conclusions. But we live in a world of news analysis and commentary, and I understand that, so people are free to do it," Mr. Gillespie said.

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times

Sen. Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders knocked President Bush today for his comments in a speech to the Israeli Knesset regarding foreign policy in the Middle East.

The White House snapped back that Mr. Bush's speech was not referring to Mr. Obama and accused the Democratic presidential candidate of thinking "the world revolves around" him.

Mr. Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, said that the president had "use[d] a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack" against him.

Mr. Bush said earlier today in Jerusalem that "some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along."

"We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history," Mr. Bush said to applause.

Mr. Obama issued a statement calling Mr. Bush's comments "sad."

"It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel. Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power -- including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy -- to pressure countries like Iran and Syria," Mr. Obama said.

"George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel," he said.

Rep. Rahm Emmanuel, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, also criticized the president's comments.

But White House press secretary Dana Perino said Mr. Bush was simply restating a "long-established United States policy" and denied that the comments were a criticism of Mr. Obama.

"There are many who have suggested these types of negotiations with people that President Bush thinks we should not talk to. I understand when you're running for office you sometimes think the world revolves around you -- that is not always true and it is not true in this case," she said.

"The speech was not about '08 politics," Mrs. Perino said. "If they want to try to make it about '08 politics -- and obviously be helped by the media -- so be it."

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times

Paul Clement resigned today from his post as solicitor general, effective June 2, the Justice Department has announced.

Mr. Clement, 41, is regarded by many as one of the brightest young stars of the conservative legal firmament, and argued 49 cases before the Supreme Court for the Bush administration.

But some in the White House, particularly Vice President Cheney, were not happy with Mr. Clement's arguments in D.C. v. Heller, the gun rights case heard by the court in March.

Mr. Clement argued that the second amendment allows individuals to bear arms, but he also allowed some room in his interpretation of the second amendment for the control of firearms by the government.

The solicitor general asked that a 2007 Court of Appeals ruling be returned to the D.C. Circuit because its assertion of an individual right to bear arms was too broad.

Mr. Cheney wanted the court to rule that there should be no government control over firearm ownership and use, and signed his name to an amicus brief arguing so.

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Correction — Reader Jeff Showell e-mailed me and rightly pointed out that the last sentence above was incorrect.

"I believe that the brief asked that 'strict scrutiny' be the standard of review for gun laws, but did not say what you wrote. I cannot imagine any sane politician stating that there should be no government control at all over guns," Mr. Showell wrote.

Belatedly, here is the link to the brief signed by Mr. Cheney.

Stephen P. Halbrook, the attorney who filed the brief on behalf of Mr. Cheney, 55 senators and 250 House members, wrote that "a holding by this Court that the District's pistol ban violates the Second Amendment would not apply to such firearms which are restricted under other categories."

"This case involves nothing more than the right of law-abiding persons to keep common handguns and usable firearms for lawful self-defense in the home," the brief says.

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times

As Senate Republicans today completely abandoned him on the issue of suspending deposits to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, President Bush reversed himself and said he will consider a suspension, which he only recently outright rejected.

"They're trying to pass a deal to stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We'll look at that," Mr. Bush said in an interview with Politico.com for Yahoo News.

The Senate today voted 97-to-1 to pause SPR deposits, and a House vote looked likely to pass the measure overwhelmingly as well.

At his last press conference two weeks ago, Mr. Bush said suspending SPR deposits would make no difference in gas prices.

"I have analyzed the issue, and I don't think it would affect price," Mr. Bush said. "The purchases for SPR account for one-tenth of one percent of global demand."

The U.S. deposits about 70,000 barrels of oil a day into the SPR, imports about 12 million barrels a day, consumes about 20 million barrels a day, and the worldwide demand is 85 million barrels a day.

The White House says that SPR deposits have to be measured against global demand and not just U.S. consumption.

A White House spokesman also said that after stopping SPR deposits for the summer of 2006, the White House concluded that "it did not have an effect."

We posted some analysis of this conclusion the day after the president's press conference.

Yesterday, White House press secretary Dana Perino reiterated the president's opposition to the idea of suspending SPR deposits, saying "our position hasn't changed."

"We don't believe that it would have a big enough impact on prices for anybody to really notice," she said.

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UPDATE — 6 p.m. — White House spokesman Scott Stanzel told me by e-mail that the president "will not veto legislation based on the SPR provision, which is what he was signaling today."

"He maintains his view that halting the filling of the reserve will not have a meaningful impact on oil prices or gas prices. The Senate made clear today that they want to attempt that measure," Mr. Stanzel said. "The president hopes that this vote on the SPR will not distract members of Congress from the things they could be doing that would actually make a difference for the future, like opening up new domestic supply in an environmentally sensitive way in ANWR [Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] and the OCS [Outer Continental Shelf]."

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times

First lady Laura Bush today revealed that caterer ovens were overturned and a large tent was damaged by tornado-force winds on Friday night at President Bush's Crawford ranch, less than 24 hours before Jenna Bush's wedding.

Speaking to spouses of U.S. senators at a White House luncheon today, Mrs. Bush said the wedding on Saturday was "just perfect" but said "we did have a little, one setback on Friday night."

"While we were off in another town at the rehearsal dinner there was a tornado," she said, prompting laughter from a lunchtime crowd that was no doubt surprised at the revelation.

"So … all the catering ovens were turned over and the sides were ripped off the tent. But everyone worked wildly and you couldn't even tell the next night," Mrs. Bush said.

No mention was made by White House staff or the president over the weekend, though Mr. Bush did speak to reporters briefly yesterday before leaving Texas to return to Washington.

The rehearsal dinner for Jenna Bush and Henry Hager was held Friday evening at 6:30 p.m., in Salado, an hour south of Crawford.

Sally McDonough, the first lady's spokewoman, attended the rehearsal dinner at the Old Salado Springs Celebration Center, and told me by phone that the storm hit there as well.

"The storm really was very bad. We were at the rehearsal dinner and the sky was lighting up," Mrs. McDonough said.

Mrs. McDonough said she could not confirm whether a twister funnel actually touched down on the president's ranch, but said that those who were at the ranch said "there were hail size droppings on Crawford and there was damage across the area."

No injuries or serious structural damages were reported, Mrs. McDonough said.

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times

President Bush's trip to Israel next week will do nothing for the Arab-Israeli peace process and will in fact resemble an existential Samuel Becket play, Middle East experts said this morning in a briefing.

"In some ways this is the road show cast of 'Waiting for Godot,'" said Anthony Cordesman, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to reporters who will travel with the president to the Middle East.

"Basically you're going out there with the president to basically set a marker while everybody waits for the next president," Mr. Cordesman said.

Jon Alterman, director of CSIS's Middle East program, was equally morose in his predictions for Mr. Bush's trip.

"It's hard to remember a less auspicious time to pursue an Arab-Israeli peace agreement," Mr. Alterman said.

Mr. Bush is traveling to Jerusalem on Tuesday to celebrate Israel's 60th anniversary, and will also try to push forward talks begun last fall in Annapolis to define the contours of a Palestinian state.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas agreed last fall to reach an agreement by the end of Mr. Bush's time in office, but Mr. Alterman said that "a peace deal will not be concluded while President Bush is in office."

"Right now neither leader has the power to make peace," Mr. Alterman said.

In fact, Mr. Olmert "is in crisis ... and is perhaps days from being forced from office," Mr. Alterman said (read Josh Mitnick's piece in our paper today for more on that).

In fact, Mr. Alterman said that among Israelis there is "a real sense that this isn't what it was supposed to be, that Israel's 60th anniversary is a story of survival but not a story of triumph."

Many Israelis are thinking they "may remain in conflict for its entire existence as a state," Mr. Alterman said.

"There is this tone of sobriety which pervades a lot of discussions," he said.

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UPDATE — 11:49 a.m. — Cordesman and Alterman are equally pessimistic about the president's ability to move the Saudi Arabians on oil production, during his visit to Riyadh next week.

Mr. Cordesman said the U.S. has little to offer Saudi King Abdullah.

"We can't deliver on peace, we can't deliver on arms transfers, we can't deliver on the Iraq that Saudi Arabia wants," he said. "The market isn't being driven by us. It's being driven by China, by India … which guarantees a market into the long term."

The Saudis, Mr. Alterman said, will "be polite, but they're not really going to put themselves out to help this president."

The Saudis did pump more oil during the first Gulf War to keep prices low, but "this relationship has been unalterably changed, partly by Sept. 11, partly by what's happened in Iraq, partly by a Saudi sense that the United States isn't nearly as competent as they thought," Mr. Alterman said.

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times

U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab this afternoon condemned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her scuttling of a trade pact with Colombia, saying she is hurting U.S. workers over nothing more than partisan politics.

"Delaying the vote on the Colombia [Free Trade Agreement] does not create one American job, it does not put one more dollar in anyone's pocket, does not save one life, does not help one union to organize, or protect one endangered species," Schwab said during remarks at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

"I talk to dozens of our trading partners around the world, and they cannot fathom why Congress appears to be abandoning key allies," she said.

Schwab denounced politicians who "demagogue and prey on anxieties and fear," in a knock not only at Pelosi, a California Democrat, but also at the Democratic presidential candidates, who have both said they might withdraw the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement.

"We do a disservice to the American people by pretending that somehow trade is the culprit of our economic problems and anxieties," she said.

Nearly one year after the Bush administration reached an agreement with the Democratic-led Congress to move forward FTAs with Peru, Colombia, South Korea and Panama, only the Peru deal has been passed.

Last month, Pelosi changed congressional rules requiring a vote on trade pacts within 60 days of their submission by the president.

"The promise of May 10 [2008] remains unfulfilled," Schwab said.

Howard Rosen, executive director of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Coalition, faulted the Bush administration, and the Labor Department specifically, for dragging its feet on talks to help workers who lose their jobs due to free trade.

"[President Bush's] rhetoric has not translated into action," Rosen said.

But Schwab defended the administration, blaming congressional Democrats for failing to negotiate on TAA.

"The House has yet to seriously engage with us despite our repeated requests. So again, we wait," Schwab said.

Schwab said that since Pelosi changed congressional rules, "the burden to move forward is 100 percent on the Speaker of the House and the House Democratic leadership. It is no longer a shared burden."

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times

When first lady Laura Bush yesterday took the unprecedented step of speaking about Burma to reporters in the White House briefing room, she rebuked the Burmese military junta for going forward with a planned constitutional referendum this Saturday, which she said is designed to give the regime "false legitimacy."

Now that she's taken such a high-profile position on this issue, it begs the question: Is she going to be getting briefings Saturday on whether the referendum goes forward, as her daughter Jenna gets ready to tie the knot that evening?

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times

My story on Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is up on the Web site this morning. The governor allowed me to spend a few hours with him in Baton Rouge and Shreveport, and he said he has no interest in being the running mate to Sen. John McCain, and criticized the Bush administration for its approach to healthcare and immigration. Click here to read it.

The 36-year old governor has said for weeks now that Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, is not going to ask him to be his vice-president candidate. And Mr. Jindal makes a compelling case for why he should stay in his current job (see the story in today's paper).

But in this morning's New York Times, William Kristol becomes the third prominent conservative columnist (after Gerald Seib and Bob Novak) to mention Mr. Jindal as a real possibility for the GOP's No. 2 spot, and reports that the McCain campaign is thinking seriously about Mr. Jindal, following Mr. McCain's trip to Louisiana on April 24 and 25.

And the McCain campaign knows the environment for Republicans remains toxic. They noticed that on Saturday night Republicans lost their second House seat in a special election in two months — this one in a district they had held since 1974 and that Bush had carried by almost 20 points in 2004.

Another McCain staffer called my attention to this finding in the latest Fox News poll: McCain led Obama in the straight match-up, 46 to 43. Voters were then asked to choose between two tickets, McCain-Romney vs. Obama-Clinton. Obama-Clinton won 47 to 41.

That reversal of a three-point McCain lead to a six-point deficit for the McCain ticket suggests what might happen (a) when the Democrats unite, and (b) if McCain were to choose a conventional running mate, who, as it were, reinforced the Republican brand for the ticket. As the McCain aide put it, this is what will happen if we run a traditional campaign; our numbers will gradually regress toward the (losing) generic Republican number.

Maybe that's why, in separate conversations last week, no fewer than four McCain staffers and advisers mentioned as a possible vice-presidential pick the 36-year-old Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal. They're tempted by the idea of picking someone so young, with real accomplishments and a strong reformist streak.

It might also be a way to confront the issue of McCain's age (71), which private polls and focus groups suggest could be a real problem. A Jindal pick would implicitly acknowledge the questions and raise the ante. The message would be: "You want generational change? You can get it with McCain-Jindal — without risking a liberal and inexperienced Obama as commander in chief." I would add that it was after McCain spent considerable time with Jindal in New Orleans recently, and reportedly found him, as he has before, personally engaging and intellectually impressive, that the campaign's informal name-dropping of Jindal began.

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UPDATE — 9:40 a.m. — The Club for Growth's Nachama Soloveichik has a back to earth column on the "Jindal obsession" that says he is not experienced enough and includes a list of questionable votes.

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In his speech at the National Press Club on Friday, Mr. Jindal joked about how the Press Club had had "a pretty exciting Monday," referring to the speech there by Sen. Barack Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

"My disclaimer is I don't intend to be nearly as entertaining or as newsworthy as Reverend Wright. So I hope I'm not going to disappoint you," said Mr. Jindal, the son of Indian immigrants.

"Indeed, the day after I was elected governor, we had a press conference," Mr. Jindal continued. "And I was asked by the Louisiana press corps how I intended to celebrate my victory. And I warned them: I said, my intention is to go down in history as one of Louisiana's most boring, but hopefully most effective, governors. My wife tells me we've got the boring part down just fine. Now we've got to work on the effective."

Mr. Jindal, the youngest governor in the U.S., brought the House Speaker and State Senate President, a Republican and Democrat, to the Press Club with him for his speech. He says often that Hurricane Katrina has offered Louisiana a unique chance to reform, and elaborated on that theme.

"I'm not here to tell you that Katrina was a good thing. We lost over 1,000 people, hundreds of billions of dollars of damage. But we have got a chance to rebuild better than what was there before the storms," Mr. Jindal said.

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times

President Bush today said his daughter's upcoming wedding, a week from tomorrow, is consuming a lot of his thoughts.

The president, speaking to a group of people at a technology manufacturing firm near St. Louis, Mo., talked for 20 minutes about the economy, and then said he would take questions.

He said audience members could ask him about anything on his mind.

"I got a lot on my mind by the way," Mr. Bush said, walking around a ring in the middle of the audience, holding a microphone and shrugging. "I'm getting ready to march down the aisle."

Mr. Bush will give away his daughter Jenna to Henry Hager at the Bush family ranch, in Crawford, Texas, on Saturday, May 10.

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times

UPDATE — 3:30 p.m. — White House spokesman Tony Fratto was asked at the midday briefing on ethanol's role in driving up global food prices, and said it is unfairly taking the blame for the problem.

Here is a transcript of his comments:

MR. FRATTO: I don't want to minimize it. I also don't want to overplay it. And I've seen a lot of, you know, reporting that has tried to draw a direct link between, you know, ethanol and food prices.

And if you really take a look at the breakdown of food prices in this country, and the contribution because of biofuels, it's not as significant as some of the reporting that I've seen has made it appear, you know, for a lot of different reasons.

One, there are a lot of other factors that are affecting our food prices. You know, we have competition for exports. We have the, you know, increasing cost of energy that makes things like fertilizer more expensive. It makes transporting and distribution of food more expensive.

But the biggest thing if you ask, you know, why in certain countries do you see, you know, much higher increases in the price of food than you're seeing in the United States?

That's because the vast majority of the food that we eat in the United States is processed or served in restaurants, and a lot of the cost comes from these other value-added efforts, whether it's the packaging, the marketing, the distribution, serving it to you at your table. And that's where most of the cost comes from.

Also remember that, you know, the biggest impact on price with respect to, you know, grains in this country is, you know, pretty much limited to corn, where, you know, you're seeing corn prices rise. And that's only a portion of most food products.

If you go to a developing country, you know, if you go to — or even if — you know, even if you go to Mumbai and walk — in India and walk into a market, you know, what you'll see are stacks of flour and rice and, you know, milk in large containers. You know, these are people who are living on, you know, one or two or three dollars a day, and they're buying commodities. So if the price of rice doubles in Thailand at the local market, and you're used to spending 70 cents out of a dollar — you know, the dollar a day that you earn — on food, now all of a sudden you're — you know, you need to cut back your food.

And so it is a very acute problem in poor countries that, you know, the bulk of their food purchases are — you know, are commodities with not a whole lot of value added to them. It's less acute a problem in this country. And I don't say that to minimize it. A lot of families out there, you know, who buy the staples, you know, who are buying milk and eggs and bread and seeing these price increases, it's significant for them, and it's something that we — you know, we're keeping a close eye on. It just has not had the same explosive effect in this country that you would find in poorer countries.

Q Just to get to — biofuels are unfairly taking a lot of the blame for this.

MR. FRATTO: Yeah, they're just one of a handful of reasons for and not the biggest reason.

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The White House this morning cautioned against rushing to judge ethanol as a root cause of escalating global food prices.

"There's been a lot reported, maybe too much attention, to biofuels and maybe not enough to all of the other factors that affect food prices, especially in this country, where it is a tiny slice of increased food prices," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

The Washington Times' Stephen Dinan this morning reported on members of Congress who are looking to roll back ethanol-boosting legislation:

Members of Congress say they overreached by pushing ethanol on consumers and will move to roll back federal supports for it — the latest sure signal that Congress' appetite for corn-based ethanol has collapsed as food and gas prices have shot up.

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said Democrats will use the pending farm bill to reduce the subsidy, while Republicans are looking to go further, rolling back government rules passed just four months ago that require blending ethanol into gasoline.

On Tuesday, President Bush said that "85 percent of the world's food prices are caused by weather, increased demand and energy prices — just the cost of growing product — and that 15 percent has been caused by ethanol, the arrival of ethanol."

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times