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Did House Democrats Buy Moderate Votes on Global Warming Bill?
Tweet Share on Facebook July 17, 2009 Comment (10)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Back in the days when the Republicans controlled the U.S. House of Representatives, the Democrats repeatedly accused them of abusing the power of the majority to further their agenda. In one particularly onerous charge, repeated for days in the media, they accused the GOP of trying to "buy" the support of then-Rep. Nick Smith, R-Mich., for President Bush's signature Prescription Drug Reform package with the promise of campaign contributions for his son, who Smith hoped would succeed him in Congress.
To show how seriously the Democrats took the issue, then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., stood in the well of the House in December of 2005 to offer a privileged resolution which, in part, accused the Republicans of "bullying and threatening Members to vote against their conscience."
Pelosi's resolution, which also accused the Republicans of "violat(ing) their own rules and the customs and decorum of the House to win votes," called on then-Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., to take whatever actions might be necessary to prevent further abuse of the House rules.
But that was a long time ago. Things are different now that Pelosi is Speaker and the Democrats have a comfortable majority—or are they?
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Democrats' Rube Goldberg Healthcare Bill Could Raise Taxes to Pre-Reagan Levels
Tweet Share on Facebook July 16, 2009 Comment (5)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The healthcare reform bill introduced Tuesday by members of the House of Representatives is something only Rube Goldberg could love. More than that, it's a bureaucratic nightmare that contains so many "revenue enhancers" and "pay fors" that it could send tax rates skyrocketing back near where they were before Ronald Reagan was president.
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Obama Running TV Ads Aimed at Democratic Senators on His Bloated Healthcare Plan
Tweet Share on Facebook July 15, 2009 Comment (15)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
What would a government-led healthcare system that includes a public option look like? Thanks to a group of Democrats in the U.S. House, who introduced a version of their healthcare plan Tuesday, we know. It looks like a 14-year-old boy's bedroom or, to put it another way, it's a mess.
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Sotomayor Does Not View the Constitution as "Settled Law"
Tweet Share on Facebook July 14, 2009 Comment (11)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
An exchange between Wisconsin Democrat Herb Kohl and Sonia Sotomayor during her first day of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee made me think of Animal House. Kohl, who before becoming a constitutional scholar was the owner of a professional basketball team, quizzed Sotomayor on her views about privacy as relates to the U.S. Constitution. "As you know Judge," he asked Sotomayor, "the landmark case of Griswold v. Connecticut guarantees that there is a fundamental constitutional right to privacy as it applies to contraception. Do you agree with that? In your opinion, is that settled law?"
"That is the precedent of the court, so it is settled law," she said.
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Only in the World of Washington Make-Believe Do Attacks on Ricci Help Sotomayor
Tweet Share on Facebook July 13, 2009 Comment (8)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Leave it to the uber-liberal People for the American Way to draw the first blood, extraneous or otherwise, in the Sotomayor confirmation debate.
On Friday PFAW sent around an E-mail to reporters urging them to take a closer look at Frank Ricci, a New Haven, Conn., firefighter, who was the lead plaintiff in the Ricci v. DeStefano workplace discrimination case recently decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. In that case, Ricci and a group of his colleagues sued the city, challenging its decision to throw out the results of a promotion exam on which no black firefighters scored high enough to advance within the department.
The case was appealed to the Supreme Court after a majority of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit—including Sonia Sotomayor—issued a terse ruling that sided with city of New Haven, affirming that the city could, in fact, toss out the results of the exam simply because it feared it could lead to a lawsuit on behalf of the black firefighters who failed to pass it.
That E-mail, which was written about by the Washington bureau of the McClatchy newspapers, calls on reporters to probe what PFAW called Ricci's "troubled and litigious history" in the workplace. As if that matters as to whether Sotomayor is qualified to be an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.
In the real world, it doesn't; but in the world of Washington make-believe, the brightest of the bright minds behind Sotomayor—you know, the people who invented "Borking" and made it a spectator sport—somehow seem to think that discrediting Ricci will improve her chances of winning confirmation.
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Where Is Obama’s Stimulus Money Going?
Tweet Share on Facebook July 10, 2009 Comment (17)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It's little wonder that congressional approval ratings are in the basement.
Congress went hog wild in a frenzy of increased spending, supposedly to stimulate the economy, but the U.S. unemployment rate has continued to rise. And the cost of the pork continues to add up, the latest example being the $18 million—half of which is being paid out up front with the remainder coming in payments over several years—to redesign the website that is supposed to help the American people see where all the stimulus money is going.
Not design the website—redesign it, since whoever was in charge of it apparently could not get it done right the first time.
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Obama, Reid Don't Have 60 Senate Votes for Global Warming "Cap and Trade" Bill
Tweet Share on Facebook July 9, 2009 Comment (15)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The House-passed Waxman-Markey global anti-climate change bill is an obvious job killer. So much so that, as written here previously, it authorizes (but doesn't appropriate) more than $4 billion to pay laid-off workers in the energy sector up to 70 percent of their weekly salary for a period of three years if their jobs go away because of the carbon caps. At the same time, the United States—rather than being congratulated for getting on the bandwagon after eight years of George W. Bush's insistence that America and the rest of the world solve the problem by developing new technologies and in ways that each country should determine for itself—is being hammered by the rest of the industrialized world.
As summarized Thursday by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, on its "Morning Bell" blog, the New York Times reports that "The world's biggest developing nations, led by China and India," are refusing to commit to specific goals to reduce greenhouse gases by 2050. In fact, India's Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, told Bloomberg that "India will not accept any emission-reduction target—period." To emphasize the point, Ramesh said: "This is a non-negotiable stand."
So much for the president's global charm offensive; without China and India on board, any effort to limit global greenhouse gas emissions only ends up hurting the U.S. economy without doing anything about the problem as the White House and supporters of the Waxman-Markey approach define it. But the really bad news for the White House is the fire the pending cap-and-trade legislation is drawing here at home.
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Democratic Leader Laughs at Reading the Healthcare Bill Before Passing It
Tweet Share on Facebook July 8, 2009 Comment (23)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the U.S House of Representatives, provided a valuable window on the mindset of the chamber's leadership Tuesday when he all but admitted that few if any members of Congress would read the healthcare reform bill before voting for it.
"If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn't read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes," Hoyer told CNSNews at his regular weekly news conference.
Of course it is not as bad as all that because "... staff and review boards, they read [the bills] in their entirety. They go over it with members, and members read substantial portions of the bill themselves," Hoyer allowed before veering off in another direction.
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The Real List of the Best Children's Books
Tweet Share on Facebook July 7, 2009 Comment (3)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Earlier today, my bloleague John Aloysius Farrell—picking up where the New York Times's Nicholas Kristof left off—posted here on Thomas Jefferson Street about the 10 greatest children's books of all time. My oldest child of four having just turned 20 years of age, I consider myself somewhat knowledgeable on the subject of children's literature. And, as Mr. Farrell invited others to weigh in on the discussion, I shall.
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Numbers Adding Up Against Obama's "Cap and Trade" Bill in the Senate
Tweet Share on Facebook July 7, 2009 Comment (75)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It was hard for the Democrats to get the 219 votes they needed to pass the "cap and trade" climate change bill in the U.S. House two weeks ago. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, may have rolled the dice but, veteran Capitol Hillers say, it was only the intervention of President Barack Obama and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that managed to close the deal.
They did it by pitching the vote as a referendum, at least internally, on Obama's presidency rather than on the underlying issue. No president likes to lose, least of all on a signature issue like the need to combat climate change, so the White House ratcheted up the stakes and, one presumes, took down names.
Of course the Democrats had help from eight Republicans, who are now on the receiving end of criticism of their own. It's gotten so thick, reports one senior Republican aide, the defecting GOPers are looking to members of the leadership to bail them out. Those requests have, thus far, fallen on deaf ears, the attitude being that those eight Republican "Aye" votes allowed eight potentially vulnerable Democrats to skate on what was, for them, a tough vote.
Peter Roff
Peter Roff is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report. Formerly a senior political writer for United Press International, he’s now affiliated with several public policy organizations including Let Freedom Ring, and Frontiers of Freedom. His writing has appeared in National Review, Fox News’ opinion section, The Daily Caller, Politico and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @PeterRoff.
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