Pelosi's Fix for Obamacare

On Thursday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi promised her caucus would propose their own fix for Obamacare's IYLYPYCKI problem by Friday at the latest.  It would complement the President's so-called "administrative" fixes.

It's Saturday, and we're still waiting.  Add another broken promise to the Democrats' record.

Insurance Anti-Trust Legislation, Addendum

If this keeps up, Nancy Pelosi will soon propose compensation caps for tort lawyers!

Insurance Anti-Trust Legislation

What an amazing opening for Republicans who want insurance companies to be able to compete across state lines. The approach writes itself: Democrats want to repeal anti-trust protection for insurance companies? Great! While we're at it, let's eliminate state regulation and open up the playing field so insurance companies can truly compete nationwide. Now we're talking real health insurance reform!

Shurtleff Officially Runs

Reports Reid Wilson and Aaron Blake in The Hill. They point out Bennett isn't quite as vulnerable as Chris Cannon:

Even a Shurtleff campaign poll leaked to The Salt Lake Tribune on Tuesday showed Bennett with a 71 percent favorable rating among delegates to the nominating convention. Among those delegates, Bennett holds a 38-31 lead.

I'm hoping that the challenge alone will do some good, forcing Bennett to reevaluate his career.

Couldn't Happen to a Better Guy

Senate strips Sen. Specter of committee seniority.

Wonder what this does to his election prospects.

Update: John Hinderaker says and asks the same thing, only better and earlier.

More: WaPo reports Specter could recover his seniority next year after midterm elections, but there are no guarantees, and Specter's office isn't responding to questions.

I predict Specter will still win reelection. He's a master survivor, he'll find some way to spin the controversy. He'll be a model Democrat and will continue to send the bacon home to PA.

And Senate Majority Leader Reid comes out the clear winner: he's got a filibuster-proof majority and a former Republican as an indentured servant. Will Pennsylvanians really accept that? I wouldn't, but conclusive medical tests have proven I'm weird that way.

Rangel Is Rich

AP reports Pres. Obama wants to eliminate tax deferrals for overseas profits. Not sure, but if it goes through I believe the U.S. would be the only developed nation with such a law.

Meanwhile, Rep. Charlie Rangel had this to say about the proposal:

For too long, our tax laws have rewarded companies that invest and keep their money overseas and turned a blind eye to the use of tax havens by the wealthy.

This from the same dude that put his money in the Dominican Republic, and didn't even pay taxes on it there, let alone in the U.S.

If Anyone Still Doesn't Understand the Tea Party Protests...

...this is what they're about.

And judging by what I see on Fox, CNN and MSNBC, there's a lot of pundits out there who only think they understand the protests.

Attention all journalists and pundits: just because you found a few citizen protesters who couldn't express their views in front of a camera doesn't mean they don't have good reason to protest.

Attention Fox news: stop gravy training. We all know you don't give a crap about real politics, you only care about advertising revenue.

Democrats May Be Smarter than Republicans

A.P. reports Roger Pearson, Democrat from Connecticut, is considering a run against Sen. Dodd in 2010. Pearson is unhappy with Dodd's handling of the finance crisis. He also has some sharp things to say about Dodd's ethics.

Pearson hasn't announced an official run yet, and it's far too soon to tell how well he would do in a primary against Dodd. But if he does defeat Dodd, then you have to give Connecticut Democrats credit for being smarter than Alaskan Republicans, who re-nominated Sen. Stevens amidst his recent corruption scandal and after he had been indicted. Stevens' case is now being thrown out, but it's good he lost his re-election bid: he's among the most corrupt scumbags that ever walked the Senate floor. Had Alaskan Republicans been principled, they would have replaced Stevens much earlier. Or if they had even been smart, they would have replaced him in 2008, and would have had a much better chance of holding that seat.

(h/t Insta)

Return of the One Man "Filibuster"

Jonathan Chait, in an otherwise good TNR article, shows he doesn't understand Senate procedure as well as he thinks he does...

During the same time period, the Senate has developed a new, anonymous one-person filibuster called a "hold."

He's talking about unanimous consent. From the Senate's own glossary:

unanimous consent - A Senator may request unanimous consent on the floor to set aside a specified rule of procedure so as to expedite proceedings. If no Senator objects, the Senate permits the action, but if any one Senator objects, the request is rejected. Unanimous consent requests with only immediate effects are routinely granted, but ones affecting the floor schedule, the conditions of considering a bill or other business, or the rights of other Senators, are normally not offered, or a floor leader will object to it, until all Senators concerned have had an opportunity to inform the leaders that they find it acceptable.

In other words, what Chait terms a "hold" is really just an objection to a motion for unanimous consent. That objection can be easily overridden with a regular motion and a regular vote.

Senate leaders have been using unanimous consent to pass more and more legislation. Chait's problem is that a few Senators, led by Sen. Coburn of Oklahoma, have noticed that this procedure is being used to pass stealth pork: pet spending bills that they don't want debated on the Senate floor. Sen. Coburn and his allies have been reviewing each motion and objecting to the more egregious stuff, thus preventing their passage via unanimous consent. Some have characterized this as a filibuster, but as noted above it's easily overridden: the non-unanimous bills need only be presented on the floor for a straight vote (at which point they become subject to debate and, possibly, a real filibuster, but that's another discussion). In fact, Majority Leader Reid got frustrated with Sen. Coburn objecting to his pork, and bundled several bills into the so-called "Coburn Omnibus", planning to ram them through a floor session. Republicans banded together to filibuster the bill, and it failed, but if the bills hadn't been such obvious pork they probably would have passed. (I believe some of the more widely-supported measures were in fact reintroduced earlier this year and passed, but not by unanimous consent).

Eliminating the so-called one-man "filibuster" would gut the nature of unanimous consent. Imagine what it would be like if the Senate leadership could make any motion and, without debate or even a floor hearing, pass it over the objection of any Senator.

I don't think that's what Chait had in mind. He should study up on Senate procedure before calling for any more reforms to the uanimous consent rule.

Dodd Under Fire

A combination of scandals have rocked Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT). He's looking less and less likely to survive his reelection campaign next year.

But it's important to note that prominent Republicans on the Senate Banking committee are likely to have many of the same problems. Since 2003, the ranking Republican, Sen. Shelby of Alabama, has received over $90000 in campaign contributions from Citigroup, and thousands more from Price Waterhouse, JPMorgan, and other financial institutions. He's also received $37,500 from Cerberus Capital Management, which is a private investment company (i.e. hedge fund).

The second ranking Republican, Sen. Bennett of Utah, has since 2003 received over $200,000 from financial institutions, including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, American Express, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and, most notoriously, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In fact, Sen. Bennett is the 7th largest recipient of Freddie Mac donations for 2008.

Dodd's problems have been largely of his own making. But many of those problems would have gone unnoticed without journalistic digging. Who knows what would happen if journalists started digging at Shelby, Bennett, and others? If Republicans really want to shed the corruption label, they need to clean house, starting with some of their most senior members.

(h/t Instapundit for the Dodd links)

Bennett Votes to Keep Earmarks

From a NYT blog...

Nine Republicans voted with Democrats against Mr. McCain’s amendment: Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Robert Bennett of Utah, Christopher Bond of Missouri, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Richard Shelby of Alabama, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

Dude needs to go.

"Down Payment" on Universal Health Care

Pres. Obama proposes $634 billion for health care reform. No details in this particular article.

This is gonna be tough to oppose. He's ramming it all together as a single budget. If Republicans balk at the whole bill, they'll be accused of obstructionism and undercutting the economy. If they try to excise the most offensive spending (in particular the so-called health care reform), they risk having two or more Senators peeled off as they were for the stimulus.

I Love This Guy

Tom Coburn on President-Elect Obama's historic victory:

The unmistakable mandate from the 2008 elections is one that applies to both parties in equal measure--it's time to define a "new kind of politics" not just with our words but with our actions. If anything, a "new kind of politics" means elected officials putting aside their careerist aspirations in pursuit of solutions that work.

And then some tough love for his own party:

What led the Republican Party to this day was not the application of conservative principles but the abandonment of those principles while hypocritically appealing to those tenets. The past few years have shown a strong correlation between electoral success and fidelity to limited government conservatism. The more Republicans abandoned conservatism, the more voters abandoned Republicans.