Democrats of course are happy to watch House GOP flail:
“Just record this smile on my face,” said an impish Sen. Reid, asked about the House GOP failure to vote on a border bill.
— Ashley Parker (@AshleyRParker) July 31, 2014
On Tuesday I explained that after eight years using Skype as TPM’s digital nervous system, we signed off the service for good. I’ve been surprised about the number of people, publicly and privately, who’ve asked me and other staffers what system we switched to. I didn’t expect it. But it seems like there’s a lot of interest. So here goes.
It’s almost sad that Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) has to note this. House Republicans can’t sue President Obama for overusing his executive powers and then ask him the next day to act unilaterally to solve the border problem with executive orders.
After pulling their own bill yesterday in the face of conservative opposition, House leaders elected to pass a symbolic bill and leave town.
It’s amazing that anyone has actually convinced themselves that Obamacare was intended to deny subsidies in states that didn’t set up their own exchanges. But if you did, here’s the proof that you’re wrong.
You can all rest assured since the team of Michele Bachmann and Steve King led the charge in getting the GOP’s own immigration bill torpedoed and are now cheering the new phony bill as one of history’s great pieces of legislation. So all good.
Back in 2012, police found the current Democratic candidate for Governor of Ohio in a car with a woman who is not his wife past 3 AM in an empty parking lot. FitzGerald, the candidate, says nothing untoward happened. The woman was a friend from a delegation from Ireland and he was trying to make sure he had the correct directions to get her back to her hotel.
Before House Republicans jet for August Recess, they want to get that vote on the child migrant crisis. As Sahil Kapur explains here, the vote is pretty much a show since Obama has promised to veto a weaker version of the bill and the Democratic-controlled Senate won’t touch it. But Republicans, who have estimated votes to start at 8:00 or 8:30 p.m. and finish around 11:00 p.m. ET, are showing the world that they’re working hard on this problem. The question is if enough people who believe it are watching.
Over the last couple days, TPM’s Dylan Scott has been taking a deep look at the emerging Obamacare Subsidy Truth Movement and the history of the legislation that gave rise to it. I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss them because they’re exceptionally good pieces and examples of the longer, reported pieces we’ll be doing more of. The first piece looks at the chaotic, late phase of the passage of the ACA, with House Democrats wanting a single federal exchange and the Senate wanting a state based approach. The battle over which side would win was short-circuited by the surprise election of Sen. Scott Brown, which robbed Senate Democrats of their filibuster proof majority and essentially forced the House to accept the Senate’s bill more or less intact.
House GOP’s $694 million border supplemental bill passes 223-189, with only four Republicans and one Democrat breaking rank.
Well, House Republicans did it, they passed a symbolic bill to say they’ve dealt with the migrant crisis and threw in a little rebuke to Dreamer kids while they were at it. Now they can go home and confidently say they did something. Even if it was actually nothing.