-
Democrats Have Only Themselves to Blame for Filibuster Problems
Tweet Share on Facebook December 31, 2009 Comment (17)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It is profoundly ironic that Senate Democrats, who are now numerically strong enough to do whatever they want, continue to complain about the Republican use of the filibuster to slow the progress of the healthcare bill. It is true, as my bloleague Robert Schlesinger wrote here several days ago that its use has increased over the last several decades. As Gordon S. Jones, editor of The Imperial Congress, told me in an E-mail, the increase in the reliance of both parties to slow the pace of legislation "correlates perfectly" with the majority party's growing tendency to eschew consensus, compromise, and bipartisan support for legislation.
-
Obama Isn't Weak on Terrorists, But He Is Weaker
Tweet Share on Facebook December 30, 2009 Comment (23)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
"Belief that the bad guys are winning the War on Terror is now at its highest level in over two years," pollster Scott Rasmussen reported Wednesday, and nearly half of U.S. voters now say "America is not safer than it was before 9/11."
This shift in opinion, while dramatic, is hardly surprising.
The botched Christmas Day terror assault on a U.S. airliner has a lot of politicians pointing fingers and even more scrambling for cover. The American people are once again rethinking what the appropriate approach to the war on terror should be. And President Barack Obama and his team are headed for the barricades, with presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs throwing up one of the first with his plea that this issue should not be "a tug-of-war between the two political parties."
He wants the politicians in Washington to "resolve in the New Year to make protecting our nation a nonpartisan issue."
While laughable on its face—Gibbs and Obama made national security an uber-partisan issue during the 2008 presidential contest—it's a serious indication that the White House is concerned the blame for the most recent terror attempt will fall on their doorstep, something Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's declaration on CNN that "the system worked" is not helping to prevent.
-
Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus--Still
Tweet Share on Facebook December 24, 2009 Comment (4)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Back in 1897, a young girl named Virginia O'Hanlon wrote the following to the editor of the New York Sun:
DEAR EDITOR,
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.' Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?
Signed,
Virginia O'Hanlon
115 West Ninety-Fifth Street
NYCThe response, which appeared in an unsigned editorial later attributed to the legendary Francis Church, may be the most reprinted news copy of all time.
-
CBO: Senate Health Reform Bill Won't Help Medicare
Tweet Share on Facebook December 23, 2009 Comment (6)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The Congressional Budget Office cast doubt Wednesday on claims that the healthcare bill currently before the United States Senate would help Medicare remain solvent. The nonpartisan agency, which is charged with determining the cost of proposals before Congress, said in a letter that proponents of the bill were in effect double-counting the impact of the savings the legislation would generate. The $246 billion the CBO estimated the legislation would save Medicare "can't both finance new programs and help pay future expenses for elderly covered under the federal program," as the current bill has it doing, the budget office said, "Nor could those savings be used to extend the solvency of Medicare, set to run out of money in 2017," Bloomberg reported.
Part of the problem, of course, is the bill's total cost, which has ballooned as a result of the old-fashioned political pork barreling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had to use to sweeten the pot in order to get to 60 votes.
-
Alabama Democrat Switching Parties in Blow to Obama, Pelosi
Tweet Share on Facebook December 22, 2009 Comment (16)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
U.S. Rep. Parker Griffith dropped a big lump of coal in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Christmas stocking Tuesday when he announced he was joining the GOP. Griffith, a practicing physician and former member of the Alabama State Senate, came to Congress in 2008 by defeating Republican Wayne Parker 51.26 percent to 48.2 percent in a district where Republican John McCain beat Barack Obama by nearly 2-to-1. Griffith's decision to cross the aisle gives the Republicans a much needed boost, handing them control of a seat—across Alabama's northern tier—they have long coveted but never won.
The switch comes at a particularly bad time for Pelosi, who is busy trying to persuade the members of her caucus to once again vote in favor of a healthcare bill that the public neither likes nor, according to the latest polls, very much wants. In fact Griffith himself says what Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Pelosi want to do to the U.S. healthcare system is one of the primary reasons he is changing parties, according to a report that appeared in Politico.
-
Data Shows that the Stimulus Package Was a Waste of Money
Tweet Share on Facebook December 19, 2009 Comment (155)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
To put it kindly, the stimulus package that President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rushed through Congress at the beginning of his presidency has been a flop. It is not just that the $789 billion package has not had the effect the White House promised it would; it's that it may actually have been counterproductive, actually lengthening the recession by effectively taking money out of the private economy, where it could have been used to create jobs and for investment purposes. Instead it has been parceled out by the government, which has been unable to track where it has gone or what impact it has really had on job creation. And that has led to any number of fallacious statements by senior administration officials about jobs "created or saved."
-
Catholic Bishops Weigh in Against Abortion Compromise in Health Reform Bill
Tweet Share on Facebook December 18, 2009 Comment (30)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Last-minute efforts to craft a compromise acceptable to Senate healthcare holdout Ben Nelson of Nebraska on the issue of abortion were dealt a blow late Friday when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops weighed in against it. Daniel DiNardo, the archbishop of Galveston-Houston, Texas, and chairman of the conference's Committee on Pro-Life Activities, said in a statement that the proposed compromise being pushed by Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. Bob Casey was insufficient to fix the problems in the healthcare legislation currently being debated in the U.S. Senate. The current bill, DiNardo said, would continue to be "morally unacceptable unless and until it complies with longstanding current laws on abortion funding such as the Hyde Amendment."
"Senator Casey's good-faith effort to allow individuals to 'opt out' of abortion coverage actually underscores how radically the underlying Senate bill would change abortion policy. Excluding elective abortions from overall health plans is not a privilege that individuals should have to seek as the exception to the norm. In all other federal health programs, excluding abortion coverage is the norm. And numerous opinion polls show that the great majority of Americans do not want abortion coverage," DiNardo said.
Casey's effort to improve the bill, the Catholic clergyman continued, "do not change the fundamental problem with the Senate bill: Despite repeated claims to the contrary, it does not comply with longstanding Hyde restrictions on federal funding of elective abortions and health plans that include them." DiNardo urged the Senate to include language in the bill that would block federal funds from going to elective abortions and promised continued opposition to the legislation until their concerns were addressed.
-
Health Reform's Dirty Little Secrets: Rationing and Arbitrary Medical Decisions
Tweet Share on Facebook December 17, 2009 Comment (22)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
One of the few practicing physicians in the United States Senate, Dr. Tom Coburn should be considered something of an authority on the state of healthcare in America. In Thursday's Wall Street Journal, the Oklahoma Republican makes a persuasive case as to why the Obama-Reid-Pelosi approach to reform, so-called, deserves the fisheye. The dirty little secret of healthcare reform is that it is not at all about improving the quality of healthcare, as Coburn hints in his op-ed and as President Obama explained more directly to ABC's Charlie Gibson. The real objective of healthcare reform, the dirty little secret if you will, is to bring the cost of healthcare under control.
-
Health Reform Politics Proving Hazardous to Democrats
Tweet Share on Facebook December 16, 2009 Comment (4)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
President Obama invited the 60 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus down to the White House Tuesday for a healthcare pep talk. Apparently, it didn't do much good. The president's advice, according to sources inside the U.S. Senate, was for his fellow Democrats to try to have more fun trying to get the bill through; so much for the teleprompter. And so much for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is seemingly on his own now that senior White House communications personnel are putting out the word that the bill needs to be done before Christmas or it won't get done at all.
Reid has, for some time, been announcing that he has a deal, an agreement on language the 60 senators who are not Republicans will support, dislodging the bill from limbo and freeing it from a filibuster--but that's not really true. The senior senator from Nevada has talked about concepts and asked the Congressional Budget Office to figure out how much certain approaches will cost, but he has not been able to come up with a solution that satisfies his party colleagues on what now appear to be the three key problems with the bill: the tax hikes, the increase in insurance premiums, and the cuts in Medicare that are needed to pay for it. For every Democrat and independent he appears to win over, he seems in danger of losing one or two more.
-
As Obama's Approval Rating Sinks, His Hubris Grows
Tweet Share on Facebook December 15, 2009 Comment (32)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The lower President Barack Obama's approval numbers go the more certain he seems to be about his vision for the country. In the Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll for December 15, 41 percent of those surveyed across America give Obama's performance as president a highly negative review.
On healthcare, the issue that is at this moment at the forefront of the debate, 56 percent of those surveyed by Rasmussen now say they oppose the bill working its way through the Senate. Yet he continues to press ahead with signature issues like healthcare as though the sentiments of the electorate mattered not at all to him, never once pausing to admit that he has been wrong about anything or that he has failed to live up to the promises he made during his presidential campaign.
