I am sure that at this point, the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats would be delighted and relieved to ram health care reform through Congress. I almost don’t blame them; the process has been long and arduous, to say the least. But the rules keep getting in the way:
Republicans said they won a parliamentary victory as they try to fight Democrats’ efforts to pass legislation to overhaul the U.S. health-care system.
Republicans said President Barack Obama has to sign a Senate health-care bill into law before the House and Senate can approve changes to it under a process called reconciliation. The Senate parliamentarian told Republicans that a reconciliation bill has to “make changes in law,” said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“This would be another headwind for Democrats in the House” who oppose provisions in the Senate bill, said John Sullivan, a health-care analyst at Boston-based Leerink Swann & Co. “Their biggest fear has been that they vote for the Senate version and they never get the relief they’re looking for.”
But that doesn’t mean we can’t take note of the developing trend lines:
Embattled incumbents with ethics problems. Allegations of sexual harassment leading to a competitive open seat. Dems have seen this movie before — only last time, it happened to the other guys.
Now, a beleaguered Dem majority has to hope their party can withstand a building wave that favors the GOP, and that effort isn’t made any easier by countless, and mounting, self-inflicted errors.
It may indeed “make sense” for Barack Obama to pose as an outside-the-Beltway type of figure, as Ron Fournier indicates, but anyone who buys the idea of the President of the United States being some kind of a leader of the revolt against an establishment–especially an establishment that has his own party control both chambers of Congress–deserves to get swindled at the polls.
It is nice to see that Charlie Rangel has finally been forced to give up his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee, but the issue should have been forced a long time ago. Instead, the House Democratic leadership sought to protect Rangel for as long as possible; this despite promises of “the most ethical Congress in history,” “draining the swamp,” and battles against the “culture of corruption” that supposedly only existed when Republicans controlled Congress.
I am sure that some people will try to sell Rangel’s (temporary) departure from his chairmanship as some kind of profile in courage for him, and for the rest of the Democratic leadership. But no one should be fooled.
A very good essay by Peter Beinart:
Independents are the most fickle, the most cynical, and the least ideological people in the American electorate. When they’re unhappy with the state of the country, they tend to stampede the party in power—less because they disagree on the issues than because they decide that the folks running government must be malevolent and corrupt. In Washington, congressmen violate ethics rules all the time. But when independents get in one of their sour moods, these infractions become matches on dry tinder. In 1994, the scandals concerning Rostenkowski and the House bank helped sweep the Gingrichites into power. In 2006, according to exit polls, the scandals surrounding mega-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Rep. Mark Foley did more to lose the GOP control of Congress than did the Iraq war. Pelosi became speaker, in fact, by running against the GOP’s “culture of corruption” and promising the “most ethical Congress in history.”
Now Republicans are hurling those phrases in her face. Democrats, who in April 2006 held a 17-point advantage as the party less “influenced by lobbyists and special interests,” have seen that margin dwindle to eight points, according to the Pew Research Center. The National
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February 28, 2010 – 11:12 pm
And I am Marie of Roumania:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave no indication that her support was wavering for embattled Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, in the wake of his admonishment by the House ethics panel last week.
“It said he did not knowingly violate House rules. So that gives him some comfort,” the speaker told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. Rangel was publicly admonishment by the panel for violating House rules by failing to properly disclose financial details of trips he took to the Caribbean in 2007 and 2008.
The ethics panel didn’t find sufficient evidence to conclude that Rangel knew that misleading information was provided to the ethics committee before the trips were approved. His office said in a statement last week that the ethics committee “found that the chairman himself had no actual knowledge that the trip in fact violated House rules.”
February 28, 2010 – 7:01 pm
. . . A bill can be bipartisan without bipartisan votes.
–Nancy Pelosi, who believes that because “Republicans have left their imprint” on the health care bills, the bills are bipartisan. Never mind that back when Republicans controlled Congress, this wasn’t Pelosi’s standard for bipartisanship.
February 26, 2010 – 4:01 pm
Now that the House Ethics Committee has rendered its judgment, and has found that Congressman Charlie Rangel broke Congressional gift rules by taking trips to the Caribbean financed by corporate interests, is it too much to ask that he pay the consequences?
Beyond the trips, Rangel faces more troublesome allegations regarding his failure to pay taxes on a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic, the use of his congressional office to raise money for the wing of a New York college named in his honor, revised financial disclosure forms that show more than $500,000 in previously unreported wealth, and his use of a rent-controlled apartment for his political committees.
Rangel said Thursday that he met with ethics investigators about a month ago to discuss those issues but he offered no details of those discussions.
Since Rangel asked the ethics panel in the summer of 2008 to scrutinize his activities, which had become a source of controversy, Democrats have defeated a series of GOP resolutions calling for his resignation as Ways and Means chairman.
February 25, 2010 – 11:10 pm
After the President’s sparring session with House Republicans during their retreat, I stated that the rhetorical confrontation I really wanted to see was a debate between Barack Obama, and Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.
Here is why:
February 24, 2010 – 4:26 pm
Congress is now very unpopular:
Voter unhappiness with Congress has reached the highest level ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports as 71% now say the legislature is doing a poor job.
That’s up ten points from the previous high of 61% reached a month ago.
Only 10% of voters say Congress is doing a good or excellent job.
Nearly half of Democratic voters (48%) now give Congress a poor rating, up 17 points since January. The vast majority of Republicans and voters not affiliated with either party also give Congress poor ratings.
Seventy percent (70%) of voters say Congress has not passed any legislation that would significantly improve life for Americans, up 10 points over the past month and the highest level of dissatisfaction measured in regular tracking in over three years. Only 15% say Congress has passed such legislation.
Forty percent (40%) of voters nationwide now say it is at least somewhat likely Congress will seriously address the most important issues facing the nation. That’s down from 59% last March. Only 9% say it is Very Likely Congress will address these issues.
February 23, 2010 – 5:21 pm
Here’s the problem that reconciliation predictions run into: there’s simply no way to do the math.
February 22, 2010 – 5:44 pm
Because credit card companies simply find ways to circumvent them. Port-siders who are in love with regulation believe that this is proof positive that credit card companies are evil, and that this is the end of the story. But Nick Gillespie points out that the narrative is just a bit more complicated than that:
