President Obama in a short Rose Garden statement just thanked lawmakers for taking a “courageous vote” on health care last night. He said he is “absolutely confident” the Senate will do the same.
He didn’t single out Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA), the only Republican to break ranks and support the measure.
Read more about Cao here and learn his take on the vote here.
There are many events in life that, while more or less predictable in themselves (House passage of the health care bill), turn out to have an impact and significance that is only truly apparent after they occur. The passage of the House health care reform bill last night strikes me as one of them. Read More
TPM Reader BK disagrees that health care reform’s greatest vulnerability will be the 2010 election.
Actually, its greatest point of vulnerability will be the 2012 election, since much of it doesn’t take effect until 2013. The mandates that will drive up costs will take effect before then–young people will pay much more since premiums will be equalized for all age groups and private companies will have to cover even sick people. Since there will be no opt-out or no competition, they will be able to charge whatever they want.
President Obama meets today at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
A purge of top executives at Washington’s conservative “other” daily could lead to the departure of Executive Editor John Solomon less than two years after he made the jump from the Washington Post.
A fringe anti-gay group is protesting this morning outside the Obama girls’ school.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is in Washington today and he will meet with President Obama early this evening at the White House. It would be fascinating to hear what they have to say to each other. Because even though the health care debate, Afghanistan and other stories have pushed the Israel-Palestine question off the front pages in the US, it’s hard to see where Netanyahu hasn’t gotten the US to cave on the critical issue of settlements.
A brief review is helpful. Read More
Earlier we mentioned the staff shake-up at the Washington Times — and the possible departure of Editor John Solomon. Now there’s another weird wrinkle. The day before Jonathan Slevin was promoted to be president and acting publisher of the paper, the Times was forced to admit that he had violated Times policy by choosing the author who would review his own book in the Times pages.
With a health care bill now through the House, attention now turns to the senate. And with that in mind, we’ve put together a list of the six senate Dems who stand between you and a health care bill on the president’s desk. What does each want, need, care about, and more. We’ll have it for you shortly.
First, Bonner & Associates got caught sending out forged letters to members of Congress for Big Coal clients. Then after Bonner got called up to the Hill he told Congress he’d hired AU Professor James Thurber as his firm’s new ethics counselor. But things started to spin out of control when only a few days later Thurber placed an ad in Roll Call praising Bonner.
Now Thurber seems to be throwing Bonner under the astroturf ethics bus.