Regardless of what you think about the current health care legislation being debated on Capitol Hill, being able to read it before it goes to the floor for a vote is the right thing to do and I’m glad to see a Senator from Missouri calling for it.
But will the Dems listen?
From Politico:
As the health [...]

It’s pretty easy…the only people that voters like less than Congressional Democrats and Congressional Republicans.
Add in the facts that Republicans have no coherent plan, no definitive leadership and are allowing right wing pundits to organize and promote this Tea Party movement and you have a reality where Dems might actually pick up seats next year.
Personally [...]

Justin Gardner (Donk Quixote) and Mike Wallach (Phanto), endeavor to tilt at windmills (With apologies to Miguel de Cervantes). Justin is a registered Democrat, considers himself an independent but views the world from the left side of the political spectrum. Mike most recently registered as a Republican, but considers himself primarily a fiscal conservative, deficit hawk, and a libertarian leaning independent. They find common ground in the Health Care Reform debate.

If I was a betting man, I’d put the over/under at a net 12 seat gain for the GOP in the House of Representatives.

In my last post I detailed some of the roadblocks that have kept the Democratic leadership in Washington from finding a way to pass a major health care reform bill with a public option. They’ve whittled the cost of the bill down a few hundred billion dollars by negotiating concessions from drug companies and hospitals, [...]

2008 Senator Lindsey Graham seems to disagree with 2009 Lindsey Graham.
This is Mike Fritz and David Murdock from ANP.
Senator Lindsey Graham was a passionate critic of the Bush Justice attorneys during this past summer’s Armed Services Committee hearings on interrogation.
Lately, however, Graham seems to have had second thoughts on the matter. At a recent Judiciary [...]

David Brooks identifies a key problem with the health care reform legislation milling around Congress: it may not save us much money:
If you read the C.B.O. testimony and talk to enough experts, you come away with a stark conclusion: There are deep structural forces, both in Medicare and the private insurance market, that have driven [...]

The current Congress loves nothing more than marshalling the power of government to save failing businesses. As Justin previously wrote, the latest is an effort to rescue newspapers:
“Despite the 24/7 availability of news from print, broadcast and digital sources, there remains one clear fact: When it comes to original in-depth reporting that records and exposes [...]

On Thursday, President Obama announced support for a new bill aimed at protecting credit card holders.
As early as next week, House Democrats expect to act on a bill that would make it harder for the industry to slap new fees and rates on cardholders while also requiring clearer disclosure of the costs and risks for [...]

At the center of President Obama’s overhaul strategy for Wall Street are the “stress tests” which will be applied to all financial institutions. But how accurate will the test results be? That will depend on whether the treasury takes off-balance-sheet assets into account, experts say.
This is Danielle Ivory, reporting from the American News Project and [...]

Thanks to a little-known congressional budget procedure called “reconciliation,” Democrats could pass sweeping healthcare reform without fear of a Republican filibuster in the Senate. When President Clinton wanted to use the rule in 1993, Democratic leaders in the Senate decided they didn’t want to abuse Senate rules on such important legislation. Sixteen years later, [...]

While President Obama has often criticized his predecessor’s frequent use of signing statements meant to alter the effect of new laws, our new president didn’t take long to issue a signing statement of his own, tacking one onto the spending bill he signed today.
[In the signing statement,] he objected to provisions of the bill that [...]

 

Thanks to the powerful stand taken by two Democrats, Evan Bayh, a centrist after my own heart, and Russ Feingold, a staunch, principled liberal, both of whom will vote against the $410-billion spending bill as long as it contains 9,000 earmarks, the Senate leadership came up one vote short on moving the bill forward.
 

Congress [...]

It’s not just out-of-touch Republicans and us lonely Centrists who are disturbed by the profligate spending of Congress. Joining the call for fiscal sanity is none other than Democratic Senator (and one-time VP hopeful) Evan Bayh. In a Wall Street Journal editorial, he writes:
This week, the United States Senate will vote on a spending package [...]

In 2008, both major presidential candidates promised to curtail earmarks. The only one who has yet to blink on the issue lost his fight today to reign in the excesses of the new spending bill.
John McCain just can’t win.
The story:
The Senate voted overwhelmingly to preserve thousands of earmarks in a $410 billion spending bill on [...]

Democrats in Congress have no intention of joining President Obama in his fight against earmarks. And it looks like Obama is going to give in, at least on the $410 billion spending bill which Obama will sign, despite copious earmarks.
Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group, identified almost 8,600 earmarks totaling $7.7 billion; Democrats say [...]

The Obama Administration might be talking about fiscal responsibility, but such wisdom doesn’t look likely to arrive in Washington this year. On the heels of the massive stimulus package comes the next wave of spending.
On Wednesday, the House will consider a proposed $410 billion spending plan for the rest of fiscal 2009 — and there’s [...]

This is how your Congress works. No one read the Stimulus bill.