-
Pelosi was Against ‘Deem and Pass’ Before She Was For It
Tweet Share on Facebook March 16, 2010 Comment (14)Signaling her growing desperation, Nancy Pelosi said Monday that a Rules Committee scheme to "deem" the healthcare bill as having passed the House without being voted on had won her support. "I like it," the speaker of the House told a roundtable of bloggers Monday, "because people don't have to vote on the Senate bill." For Pelosi, winning is no longer the most important thing. It has become the only thing--and apparently by any means necessary.
The White House and congressional Democratic leaders like Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid talk like the changes they are proposing are wildly popular, that they have a mandate to implement them. Their behavior, by contrast, tells a different story.
-
House Democrats’ Healthcare Reform Plans Are Unconstitutional
Tweet Share on Facebook March 16, 2010 Comment (46)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her allies, in an effort to be clever, have overstepped their constitutional bounds. The plan they have put forward for getting Senate-passed healthcare legislation through the House is, according to one prominent constitutional scholar, “unconstitutional.” Writing in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Michael McConnell, the former federal appellate judge who is now director of the prestigious Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, explains that the path Pelosi and company have staked out to move the bill to the finish line doesn’t pass the smell test.
To become law—hence eligible for amendment via reconciliation—the Senate health-care bill must actually be signed into law. The Constitution speaks directly to how that is done. According to Article I, Section 7, in order for a “Bill” to “become a Law,” it “shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate” and be “presented to the President of the United States” for signature or veto. Unless a bill actually has “passed” both Houses, it cannot be presented to the president and cannot become a law.
-
Pelosi’s Comeuppance: Why Democrats May Sack the Speaker
Tweet Share on Facebook March 12, 2010 Comment (19)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
No matter what the outcome of the elections next November, it is time to consider the possibility that the House of Representatives will have a new speaker in January 2011.
Having made heavy-handedness a hallmark of her leadership style, Nancy Pelosi now appears well on the way to receiving her comeuppance, if not from her fellow Democrats then from the American people. National poll after national poll shows public approval of the job Congress is doing is at near-record lows--and someone has to take the blame for that. As the Democrats do not yet appear ready to toss President Barack Obama over the side, Pelosi seems the most likely choice.
She has won herself few friends by trying--over and over--to force the House to vote on healthcare legislation a majority of Americans have said repeatedly they do not want. Rather than negotiate with the Republicans to produce a compromise, Pelosi has insisted that her Democrats go it alone, a decision that is going to cost her party dearly at the polls. A reduced majority--or a new minority--even though it would likely be more liberal than the Democrats' current majority, may not be in the mood to reward Pelosi's ineptness by handing her the gavel for another two years.
-
Senate GOP Vows United Opposition to Health Reform Reconciliation
Tweet Share on Facebook March 10, 2010 Comment (13)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
A unified Senate GOP let the Democrats know Wednesday that it will resist efforts to ram the healthcare bill through Congress using the legislative maneuver known as the reconciliation process.
In a letter to Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, the 41 members of the Senate Republican Conference announced they would vote as a bloc in order to remove the changes needed to "fix" the Senate healthcare bill that are necessary to winning the votes of recalcitrant House Democrats unhappy with the cost of the total package as well as the comparatively weaker language banning abortion funding.
As things currently stand, the House must pass without amendment the version of the healthcare bill approved by the Senate at Christmas in order to get around the possibility of a GOP filibuster. If the Senate bill is amended in the House it would have to go back to the Senate once again, where it would be "dead on arrival" because Reid is now one vote short of the 60 he needs to bring it to the floor.
To get around this problem, congressional Democrats have been working on a strategy involving the reconciliation process where the changes demanded by wavering Democrats necessary to winning their votes for the Senate version of the healthcare bill would be worked out in reconciliation, a parliamentary maneuver typically used to address budget and spending issues that cannot be stopped with the filibuster.
The GOP letter makes its combined objection to the strategy clear.
-
Pelosi: Pass Health Reform So You Can Find Out What’s In It
Tweet Share on Facebook March 9, 2010 Comment (32)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It has been said well and famously that politicians only really commit a gaffe when they tell the truth without meaning to. Add House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the list.
Speaking Tuesday to the 2010 Legislative Conference for the National Association of Counties, Pelosi began the windup of her healthcare pitch by alluding to the controversies over the healthcare bill and the process by which it has reached its current state. Then, just after saying, "It's going to be very, very exciting," Pelosi gaffed, telling the local elected officials assembled that Congress "[has] to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it, away from the fog of controversy."
-
Government’s GM-Chrysler Ties Make Toyota Probe Look Bad
Tweet Share on Facebook March 9, 2010 Comment (17)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There are a lot of places a politician does not want to get caught in Washington. One is leaving the scene of an accident. Another is coming out of a strip club. A third is in the middle of an apparent conflict of interest.
The charge that an appearance of a conflict of interest exists is, more often than not, used as a smear, as a way to blacken someone's reputation without having all the facts in order. It's hard to defend against, something on the order of deciding how answer the question "Hey buddy, when did you stop beating your wife?" in a way that doesn't add to your troubles.
An apparent conflict of interest, being largely subjective and based on the way an aggrieved party or crusading journalist interprets the facts, is a difficult thing to explain. Which makes it far more difficult to deal with than an actual conflict of interest--which these days is usually dispatched easily by admitting to it or reporting it, apologizing, and then seeking and receiving a waiver from the controlling legal authorities, which allows everyone to go forward as if nothing untoward happened.
For that reason, apparent conflicts get far more attention than actual conflicts. And it's a shame.
Take the case of Toyota. The giant Japanese automaker is now being investigated by several federal agencies and--thanks at least in part to pressure from the White House--at least one committee of the U.S. Congress, which are looking into allegations that many of the cars it currently manufactures have safety problems.
-
Senate’s Weak Abortion Language Could Kill Obama Health Reform Bill
Tweet Share on Facebook March 5, 2010 Comment (20)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Though President Barack Obama and the White House would have people believe otherwise, the anti-abortion funding provisions included in the Senate-passed version of the healthcare bill are significantly weaker than the so-called "ironclad" prohibitions that Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak added to the bill in the House. The differences matter, so much so that Stupak and a handful of colleagues--enough to kill the Senate bill if it is brought up in the House--are threatening to vote 'No' unless the language to block federal funds from paying for abortions and abortion-related services is strengthened.
They have the votes to do it. The bill only passed by the barest of margins the first time. Now, Pelosi has to find four additional "aye" votes on top of her original majority because the only Republican to vote for the bill--Louisiana's Joseph Cao--has announced his opposition while three other votes in favor have been lost due to death or resignation from Congress.
-
Barack Obama Opposed Reconciliation Before He Supported It
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2010 Comment (22)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Senior Democrats conceded Wednesday that using the reconciliation process was their last, best, and perhaps only hope of getting a healthcare bill through Congress and to President Barack Obama's desk for his signature. According to Sen. Tom Harkin, Senate Democratic leaders have made the decision to go the "all or nothing" route rather than try to continue negotiations with the Republicans on a bipartisan compromise. Before they can do that however, the Iowa Democrat told Politico, the House of Representatives would first have to pass--unchanged--the legislation that cleared the upper chamber last December. At the same time, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has to demonstrate he has the votes to pass the reconciliation bill in the Senate.
Using reconciliation to make substantive changes in federal law, as the healthcare bill would do, is not unprecedented--but it is almost never used on issues of this magnitude outside of Congress's authority where deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility are concerned. "Reconciliation is therefore the wrong place for policy changes," then-Sen. Barack Obama said in December of 2005.
-
Use Stimulus Money for Tax Relief
Tweet Share on Facebook March 2, 2010 Comment (11)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In the battle of ideas over the best ways to stimulate the still lagging U.S. economy, South Dakota Sen. John Thune is attempting to get to the head of the pack by proposing a series of tax incentives to help small business.
As part of the current Senate debate over the so-called "tax extenders bill," Thune has proposed a series of incentives designed to help small business invest in new capital and hire more workers.
Specifically, Thune is asking the Senate to approve language that would:
