In another sign of how thoroughly Democrats were waylaid by Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts, the Center for American Progress, progressives’ leading think tank, has been noticeably silent on how Democrats should proceed now on health care.
Health Care For America Now, the big pro-reform coalition, is officially coming out for the “Plan B” approach to health care reform: passing the Senate bill through the House in conjunction with using reconciliation in the Senate to pass a companion bill to fix the problems with the Senate bill.
Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden has announced that he will not be running for U.S. Senate.
In response to Jon Stewart’s ridicule, Keith Olbermann admits he’s been “a little over the top” lately. Watch.
At its winter meeting this week in Hawaii, Republicans will consider imposing a litmus test on its candidates to make sure they are conservative enough. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
A longtime reader and Dem operative sounds off on political reporters …
I just read the piece about filibuster by your reporter correspondent, and it is useful for what it says about 1994, but even more useful for explaining why “the reporters who cover congress” play a far bigger role in the disfunction of the political process then they are willing to countenance.
Your correspondent’s “pox on both their houses” re: the filibuster is, simply horse#$%^. He states:
It all boils down to this: One party likes the filibuster when it is in the minority and hates the filibuster when it is in the majority.
Remember, just a few years ago the Democrats were filibustering all kinds of judges. They loved it then. Republicans hated it while they were in charge during that same period, and now they love using it.
This statement ignored two easily checkable facts. 1) in the last two congress their has been an exponential increase of in the use of the filibuster. It’s not hard to find 2) Judges were different. You know how I know? REPUBLICANS TOLD ME SO! They argued the filibuster was unconstitutional because it was judges – they were extremely careful to say that they wanted to preserve the filibuster for legislative issues.
I got a lot of good answers and commentary on my question yesterday about whether or how much the possibility of a filibuster against Health Care Reform was floated in 1994. The one below goes over some key details as well as provides some broader perspective. The key is that when Health Care even got down to the legislative phase in 1994 it was clear that the Democrats couldn’t even muster 50 votes for a bill, despite having a 56 seat majority (but not for long). So even though a filibuster was pretty clearly in reserve, it was sort of beside the point since the Dems couldn’t even manage a simple majority. It’s this reality that stands out so memorably in my mind when I consider what the Dems should do now with a bill passed out of the senate in the House’s hands.
From our reader …
If you want to use any of this, you can quote me, but not by name.
I covered health care during the Clinton years as well. The difference is that the bill never was in a position to get through the Senate. After about 10-12 days of
work in the Senate (deep into August), it became apparent very fast that the bill wasn’t going anywhere.
From The State …
Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer has compared giving people government assistance to “feeding stray animals.”
Bauer, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor, made his remarks during a town hall meeting in Fountain Inn that included state lawmakers and about 115 residents.
“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better,” Bauer said.
In South Carolina, 58 percent of students participate in the free and reduced-price lunch program.