| New procedural tricks
This one nearly created a case of coffee screen. Remember how we all thought that the budget reconciliation process was going to be the silver bullet of heath care reform? You should. I wrote about it. Well the Senate Republicans are so set on achieving their goal of only offering health care services to rich people (and letting everyone else die quickly) that they are looking for new and better procedural tricks.
And they found one:
Republicans find loophole in budget ploy to push healthcare
Republicans say they have found a loophole in the budget reconciliation process that could allow them to offer an indefinite number of amendments.
Though it has never been done, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) says he's prepared to test the Senate's stamina to block the Democrats from using the process to expedite changes to the healthcare bill.
Experts on Senate procedural rules, from both parties, note that such a filibuster is possible. While reconciliation rules limit debate to 20 hours, senators lack similiarconstraints on amendments and could conceivably continue offering them until 60 members agree to cut the process off.
And here is the key point in all of this:
A former Senate Republican leadership aide said: "The limit is on debate, not on consideration of amendments."
And the part that is even scarier is that there is really no telling what insane amendments might even pass.
This summer and fall, every single Democrat who is facing a Republican incumbent needs to remind the voters that the reason Congress is doing nothing is that the Republicans 1) won't negotiate in good faith and 2) they will obstruct everything they don't like.
For what it's worth, President Obama is pushing Congress to pass a bill.
President Obama sought to rally his party on Wednesday as it heads into a potentially difficult election year, urging fellow Democrats to remember why they ran for office in the first place and to "finish the job" on health-care reform and other tough issues.
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Maxed Out
Tomorrow, the House is expected to vote to raise the debt ceiling. This figure is the statutory limit on government borrowing. Currently, the cap is $12.4 trillion and we are nearly maxed out:
Treasury expects to hit debt limit in February
WASHINGTON -- The Treasury Department said Wednesday it expects to hit the government's debt ceiling by the end of February, putting pressure on Congress to raise the limit from its current level of $12.4 trillion.
Treasury said it is working closely with Congress to raise the ceiling. The Senate has approved legislation to increase it by $1.9 trillion to $14.3 trillion. A ceiling that high would equal about $45,000 for every American. The House is expected to vote on the increase Thursday.
I wonder when Congress will start getting calls from the nation's creditors looking for their money?
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Don't Ask, Don't Tell and Don't Listen to Duncan Hunter
A lot of key people want to repeal the military's onerous Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. Rep. Duncan Hunter (who ran for president, by the way and got .2 percent of the vote in the South Carolina primary) says that a repeal opens the door to, er, um, something or other...
Rep. Hunter: Repealing 'Don't Ask' Will Hurt Military
Rep. HUNTER: No, because I think that its bad for the cohesiveness and the unity of the military units, especially those that are in close combat, that are in close quarters in country right now. Its not the time to do it. I think its - the military is not civilian life. And I think the folks who have been in the military that have been in these very close situations with each other, there has to be a special bond there. And I think that bond is broken if you open up the military to transgenders, to hermaphrodites, to gays and lesbians.
BLOCK: Transgenders and hermaphrodites.
Rep. HUNTER: Yeah, thats going to be part of this whole thing. Its not just gays and lesbians. Its a whole gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual community. If you're going to let anybody no matter what preference - what sexual preference they have that means the military is going to probably let everybody in. Its going to be like civilian life and the I think that that would be detrimental for the military.
ZOMFG! Max Klinger gets to go home to Toledo.
Meanwhile, the adults were discussing the issue, too.
Senate Armed Forces Committee Chair Carl Levin says repeal it.
Arlen Specter has been pushing for a repeal of both DADT and DOMA at least since he has been a Democrat.
The Pentagon "forcefully" says repeal it.
Even Orrin Hatch is open to the idea.
Rachel Maddow caught Shadow President John McCain equivocating on the issue.
Our biggest road block is House Armed Services Committee Chair Ike Skelton who does not want to broach the issue.
Congressman Ike Skelton, a Democrat serving the socially conservative 4th District of western Missouri, is the powerful chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. And while Skelton's counterpart in the Senate held a hearing yesterday to examine "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," Skelton refuses to consider the topic.
A bill currently floating around Congress that would allow gays to serve openly in the military already has 187 co-sponsors -- leaving it just 31 votes short of the 218 it would need to pass the House. Yet the bill (H.R. 1283), is likely to die on the floor because Skelton refuses to hold a hearing on the legislation in his committee.
Don't get too worried about that. There are ways to force a bill out of committee if a majority of the chamber wants to bring it to a vote. The silver lining here is that it seems it will be the House, rather than the Senate holding things up on this fight.
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Ike, Ike, Ike
As long as we are talking about Ike Skelton, he is also trying to keep the EPA from doing its job to fight Global Warming.
Senior Democrats floating bill to block EPA on plans for greenhouse gas rules
Reps. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) - who head the Agriculture and Armed Services committees, respectively - introduced a plan Tuesday that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from placing limits on heat-trapping emissions from power plants, factories and other sources.
"I have no confidence that the EPA can regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act without doing serious damage to our economy," Peterson said in a prepared statement. "Americans know we're way too dependent on foreign oil and fossil fuels in this country - and I've worked hard to develop practical solutions to that problem - but Congress should be making these types of decisions, not unelected bureaucrats at the EPA."
This is the bill that Lisa Murkowski is pushing in the Senate.
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The Most Important News of the Day™
I just got back from visiting some old friends in a very rural county that is being overwhelmed by natural gas drillers. While natural gas is going to be important in reducing carbon emissions, we need better regulations to protect the environment from harmful drilling practices, like fracking. This process, which pollutes groundwater is legal because of Haliburton. Now my beloved area is crawling with, among other things, Haliburton trucks.
I bring this up as a lead in to this story:
Barton's gas well stake raises ethical questions
WASHINGTON - Rep. Joe Barton has earned nearly $100,000 from an interest in natural gas wells that he purchased from a longtime campaign donor who also advised the congressman on energy policy, according to interviews and records.
At a hearing last month of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Barton said he was "a small, small partner in a natural gas well in Johnson County in the Barnett Shale that is probably my 4-year-old son's college education." He later told a reporter that he couldn't remember precisely how he obtained the interest.
Land records show that Barton, R-Arlington, purchased his interest from Walter G. Mize, a Cleburne businessman who donated more than $30,000 to Barton's campaigns.
That's Joe Barton, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
And with that, I bid you good day. |
