Category: Congress

There have really been only two Republicans in the U.S. Senate that have been openly critical of Tweety to any real extent: Lindsey Graham and John McCain, and their criticism has been generally dismissed as mainly sour grapes from presidential wannabes.

Yesterday, McCain got out of bed, where he had been recovering from recent brain surgery, to come to Washington to cast his crucial vote to open discussion on repealing the A.C.A. He gave a good speech in which he said that Senators should ignore the internet, talk radio, etc., because those people really aren’t concerned with getting anything done for the American people, and that the Senate needs to finally get to work and accomplish some things, because they haven’t been doing their job.

It would have been great if McCain had seized that moment to vote against further discussion of repeal, and made his speech about how it was time to work together with Democrats to fix the problems in the current law.

He didn’t do that for the same reason that no Republican will get off this crazy hobby horse and stop trying to pass something that only 12% of the American people approve of: he would immediately get “Koch”ed in the next primary, i.e. face a hand-picked, well-financed challenger who will rigidly toe the Koch line.

It’s not clear why that would matter to McCain at this juncture, given his health and age, but it’s probably that no one wants their legacy tarnished at the end of their career by a campaign of vitriol, bitterness and accusations against him, which is actually already well under way in McCain’s case. Its spearhead is Kelli Ward.

Kelli Ward was beaten soundly by McCain in the 2016 Republican senate primary in Arizona, and is now running against incumbent Jeff Flake for the other senate seat.

She’s a real piece of work. After McCain was diagnosed with brain cancer and before his surgery, she said that “the medical reality of his diagnosis is grim,” and he should step down and have her take his place. She sounds a lot like Trump when she speaks – lots of bragging, hyperbole, and distortion, as well as liberally quoting “some people”:

“You know, he outspent me nearly 10 to 1. He has a super PAC called Grassroots Action PAC spent over 10 million dollars seeking to destroy my character, my reputation, and my political future.

“However, I have emerged from those ashes much stronger and really I am beating the pants off of Jeff Flake already. You know, some people told me that Jeff Flake would do well to encourage the governor to appoint me because that would take the pressure off of him.”

Note the flag pin. See, that means she loves America. Unlike McCain, who never wore one and therefore does not love America. Earlier this year, she said McCain is too old and will likely die on the job. When McCain got his diagnosis, she ramped it up:

“Senator McCain has an aggressive brain cancer that is both devastating and debilitating. When the time comes that Senator McCain can no longer perform his duties in the Senate at full capacity, he owes it to the people of Arizona to step aside” 

Ward continued, saying that if McCain does leave office, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey would be required to appoint a replacement senator to serve until the 2018 midterm election. When asked if her name was being considered as a replacement, Ward responded: “I certainly hope so.”

“Because, you know, I have a proven track record from years in the state Senate of being extremely effective and of listening to the voice of the people that I represent,” she said.

I don’t really know why, but this ugliness, self-regard, entitlement, and greed reminds me of that scene in “Zorba the Greek” where the bouboulina is sick and being tended to by Zorba. The envious old women of the village get wind that the “foreigner is dying”. They swoop in to her apartment like starving ravens and start grabbing at everything they see – clothes, drapes, jewelry, plates. Everything. And she’s not dead! She’s right there on the bed looking at them.

By the time she does die, there is nothing left of her things. Her lifetime of accumulated mementos and treasures – her legacy – has vanished before her body is cold. Only the parrot survives to give voice to what she was.

For seven years, Republicans have been howling about Obamacare. They’ve never stopped suing, appealing, and trying to weaken and overturn it for one second during that time. In all that time, they’ve never offered a better plan.

They’ve said it’s a job-killer, that it raises healthcare premiums, that it puts the government between you and your doctor. They’ve said it means you’ll have to stand before death-panels of government bureaucrats who will determine if you live or die. And worst of all, it has the name “Obama” right in it!

Meanwhile, tens of millions of people have health insurance with Obamacare that didn’t have it before.

It was only after the election that gave them control of both houses of congress and the presidency, that the Republicans added “Replace” to their promise to “Repeal”. Before that, it was just get rid of the A.C.A. and let the devil take the hindmost. And it was easier to stand on the sidelines and criticize than attempt to provide something useful to the American people, especially since the health care coverage of congress-people was assured in any case.

When they finally got the power to “Repeal” Obamacare, they realized they’d better come up with something to “Replace” it with after all. Otherwise their hypocrisy and blind obstructionism would be revealed for what it was.

What’s the biggest problem Republicans have claimed to have with Obamacare? The “Individual Mandate”, meaning it forces people to buy health insurance whether they want to or not. This was bad, because, you know, Freedom!

I’m going to leave aside the argument that the health of any individual affects the health of all. You may have the “freedom” to reject vaccines for contagious disease, but when you raise your own chance of getting them, you raise mine, too. And if you go uninsured to the Emergency Room for your care, well, you’re costing all of us anyway.

For the moment, I’ll just stay on the “evil” of asking you to pay for something you think you don’t need. In fact there are similar mandates all over the place that everyone accepts without complaint. It’s all part of a little thing we like to call “society”.

You can’t buy a car without buying car insurance. You have to pay into the Social Security system whether you want to or not. Your income tax is a “mandate”, forcing you to support all manner of things you object to, from military adventurism to plush benefits for those in congress, including a health care program better than any you’ll ever have. You have to pay property or other taxes to pay for schools whether you have kids or not, and a fire department even if you never have a fire. This list goes on and on – life is absolutely chock-a-block with Individual Mandates.

Republicans know full well that their objection to the “Individual Mandate” is a red herring, What they actually object to is any government program that supports people other than their own greedy selves.

Obamacare is paid for with a 3.8% tax surcharge on individual income over $125,000, thereby creating the dreaded “transferring of wealth”. Call me a communist, but it wouldn’t kill them to transfer a little wealth back to the have-nots after decades of the actual transfer going their way – creating the greatest disparity between rich and poor we’ve ever had and decimating the ranks of what used to be known as the “middle class”.

The problem now is that any effort to “Replace” will have the same effect. And, of course, there’s also the problem that their constituents don’t want to lose health coverage and don’t really want to see others lose it either.

So why insist on this pointless cruelty, when even the man-baby called their ideas “mean”?

Finally we come to the bottom of it all. The reason they keep going with this craziness is that they’ll lose their jobs if they don’t continue with their absurd crusade. The Kochs will see to it. 

Do you think Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is the cause of all the problems we have in this country? Think again.

In the aftermath of the most recent Democratic Party failure, the defeat of Jon Ossoff in the special election for Georgia’s 6th congressional district seat, I’ve seen approximately 10 zillion articles explaining the result as a repudiation of Nancy Pelosi.

The winner, Karen Handel had campaigned heavily on the made-up notion that Ossoff was a Pelosi admirer and therefore must be defeated. Here is an “explanation” piece about the Georgia election entitled “Nancy Pelosi is not where we need to go”, that says, in part,

Nancy Pelosi is not where we need to go. She’s failed leadership. While she might be doing some great things in her district, the truth is she’s the person who’s been leading this front that we’ve been running on for years, so she has to go as leadership.

What she’s doing isn’t working. She’s the leadership, it’s failed and, ultimately, it’s her responsibility.

Her name alone is apparently some sort of dog whistle about what’s wrong.

What’s going on? Maybe it’s because I don’t follow politics as closely as I should, but I am completely unaware of the damage Pelosi is doing and has done to America that makes her so radioactive. I mean, I get it, she’s the Minority Leader in the House, so she’s perhaps the most “powerful” Democrat left standing at the moment, but is that it?

Obama and Hillary are out of the picture (though Trump is still campaigning against both of them), so, um, we have to pretend Nancy Pelosi is the devil?

As far as I can make out, the knock on Pelosi is that she is from San Francisco, and that’s enough. That makes her “cosmopolitan” and not really “American”, a member of the 1% not like the rest of us, and someone who is heavily immersed in the “culture” that San Francisco represents, i.e. “progressive”.  She therefore is the poster-child for Everything That’s Wrong With America.

The comments section of the piece linked above has many mentions of Pelosi. All agree that she is the problem, but they’re all over the map about why. This one explains she’s not strong enough:

Time to face the facts, the Democrats are all but uselessly ineffective. They don’t have the machine, the rigged districts not the balls to deal with the GOP. It’s like watching a Girl Scout go up against The Hell’s Angels. Is it lack of guts, naivte, or just ineptness? Whatever it is, they can’t save us from even the likes of trump. An inconsequential bunch of flower children unable to stand up to real force. Step one, get some spokespersons. Nancy Pelosi may well be a brilliant strategist or diligent soldier but she is not the bulldog we need to hear from. Reserved and well spoken work best when the enemy knows you can actually bring something, other than shaming words, to the fight. They don’t see it. Take the gloves off or just go home, we don’t need anymore of your empty kumbaya pleading. It’s a knife fight, get up, get ready and go to battle!

While this one says she has the wrong focus:

I agree that Ms. Pelosi has to go. She is too closely aligned with Identity politics that panders (not addresses) to every minority concern. We as a nation must begin to break free of identifying ourselves as Liberals or Conservatives.

They don’t agree on why Nancy Pelosi is the problem, but they agree that she is.  And from the Republican point of view, Nancy Pelosi is the gift that keeps on giving.

I really don’t get it, which, I guess, is why Trump is president and so many of us are wondering how it could happen.

Have you figured it out yet? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not to get answers to your questions.

Appearing before the Senate Intelligence committee last week, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers repeatedly said they would not discuss their private conversations with Donald Trump.

They said they didn’t feel that the public setting of the hearings was an appropriate venue. Democrats were stunned by this. They went back and forth about it, with the senators pointing out there was no basis on which they can legitimately refuse to answer, that Executive Privilege was not being invoked, demanding what the legal justification for refusing to answer is, etc. etc. etc. yadda yadda yadda.

But the bottom line is that if you’re called to answer questions before a congressional committee, and you don’t feel like answering, well, then don’t. No consequences for you. No charges of “Contempt of Congress”. Nothing.

Same thing yesterday when Attorney General Jeff Sessions appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He just didn’t feel like answering, so he didn’t. No, he didn’t claim “Executive Privilege” or any other real reason,  only that,

 “It’s longstanding policy in the Department of Justice not to comment on conversations that the attorney general has had with the president of the United States for confidential reasons that really are founded in the co-equal branch powers of the Constitution of the United States.”

Chuck Schumer, a member of the committee  from  New York said,

“Unfortunately, the Attorney General repeatedly refused to answer pertinent questions from members of the Senate Intelligence Committee without offering a scintilla of a legal justification for doing so.

This is part of a repeated and troubling pattern from Trump administration officials who clam up and refuse to answer questions about the Russia investigation, even though cabinet officials have had no qualms talking about their conversations with the President.” 

That’s it. That’s all they have for you.  Hope it makes you feel better.

So what’s the purpose of such hearings? Well, it’s grandstanding, of course. It’s a chance for an otherwise powerless and locked-in-partisan Senator or Congressman to show the people back home what a gallant, incorruptible standard-bearer he or she really is, hopefully gaining some support at the ballot box in the process.

The other day, I said Trey Gowdy, the U. S. Rep. from South Carolina’s fourth district, seemed more like a demented piranha then a lawmaker to me. To see some support for both that observation as well as today’s point about the purpose of hearings, and also to make yourself sick, check out his “questioning” of M.I.T. Professor of Economics, Jonathan Gruber. You’re welcome.

Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed as the next Supreme Court Justice. This will be done by Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, invoking the “nuclear” option, meaning he will move to change the rules by which the Senate confirms justices.

Historically, 60 votes were required, which in today’s senate, would mean eight democratic senators would have to vote to approve a nomination. After the expected change, a simple majority of 51 senators will be sufficient to approve (actually, 50 plus Pence), so Republicans can install a judge of their choosing without requiring a broader consensus.

This is a very, very bad thing. It will mean that any incentive to work with colleagues “on the other side” will be more or less formally removed from the Senate, the last place where it existed. It will mean that Trump can now nominate any crazy person he wants for future picks, and given his public criticism of any judge that has correctly ruled against him, as well as his outrageously inappropriate picks for cabinet positions, one can only imagine what we’re in for now. And when you think of the thousands of lawsuits the man-baby has been part of, and his thin-skinned obsession with revenge, it’s just that much worse.

As Senator Blumenthal said, the reason they call it the “nuclear option” is because it has long-lasting negative impacts.

Though Gorsuch may be qualified based on his resumé, he has been evasive in answering questions – he hasn’t really answered any at all during his hearings – and is sure to vote the way conservatives want him to on virtually all matters. These things are reason enough for Democrats to oppose him, though in the past they might not have. This time is different and their opposition is less reasonable (but completely understandable, if that makes any sense).

As everyone knows, Merrick Garland was nominated to the Supreme Court last year by Barack Obama. Everyone also knows Garland was a great pick, qualified by any measure, and a non-ideological centrist who should have had no problems in confirmation hearings. But no hearings were held and no Republican even gave Garland the courtesy of a private meeting to get to know him.

Instead, they chose to have an 8-Justice Supreme-Court for a year, one that was divided along “party lines”, though the very idea of such a division in the judiciary runs counter to everything the founding documents intended. Republicans did this because they think that judges cannot be impartial, or because they want one who they know is not.

They felt completely justified in this absurd behavior because the Democrats managed to get the Affordable Care Act passed without any Republicans voting for it, basically by resorting to the same kind of tactic Republicans will now use to install Gorsuch. The reason for Republican opposition to the A.C.A. was that passing it would be a major success for Obama, something they just couldn’t tolerate. At that time, Mitch McConnell was furious about it, saying it was “absolutely clear that they intend to carry out all of their plans on a purely partisan basis. Look … we expect to be a part of the process.”

Republicans have never stopped suing, complaining, and campaigning against the A.C.A. and the Democrats’ tactics, and had pledged to repeal it the first day of the Trump administration. Interestingly, they were unable to do it, primarily because they had no alternative, which really does clarify their original motives to oppose it.

The Democrats only resorted to this tactic in the first place because of the now-infamous Republican obstructionism for any initiative or appointment at all made by Obama during his eight years. In other words, it was and is Republican intransigence that has brought us here, though I’m sure any Republican reading this will have exactly the opposite view. I would ask them to first have a quick look at this piece from the failing New York Times for some arguments that support my view of it. But then, it’s the NYT, so feel free to disregard as fake left-wing propaganda, amirite?

Compromise is dead. What about conscience?

To me, the most telling part of the whole Gorsuch debacle is that four Democrats have decided to break ranks and vote for Gorsuch. Aha!, I hear you exclaim. So reason is not dead, compromise is still possible, and  some people do still vote their conscience even in the face of political pressure not to!

Not so fast.

The four Democrats who are voting for Gorsuch are all up for re-election in a state that was won by Trump. Their reason for this vote is even worse than those who have blind commitment to their “team” – it’s simple self-interest. They fear that if they oppose Gorsuch they will lose their job, and losing your job is now a much more important consideration than doing the right thing.

Joe Manchin III (D-W. Va.),  Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), and Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.) are the four and they have been the focus of a $10 million ad campaign by the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, which is pressuring Democrats facing reelection next year in states that Trump won in November to vote for Gorsuch.

The way out of this mess is for McConnell to accept a vote not to confirm and move on to the next nominee (Merrick Garland would be a fabulous choice at this point). The Republicans have a slap in the face coming, and they should just take it for the good of the country and to avoid negative consequences for the next three years and beyond. It’s the way to relieve the bitterness of partisanship rather than exacerbate it and cast it in stone, and it’s a way to claw back some of the authority granted to congress by our founding documents. This authority has been too swiftly, eagerly, and dangerously ceded to Trump and his itchy Twitter-finger.

That won’t happen though – it would require both conscience and compromise. McConnell is not the man for either.

Ugh. Boring subject no one really cares about, I’m guessing. Feel free to merrily click away from here if you’d rather not read about how the Party of No is really the Party of No Shame. You probably don’t need any more convincing anyway.

In the U.S. Senate, a filibuster is a debate aimed at delaying a vote on legislation. The word comes from the Dutch word for pirate. The cloture rule, adopted in 1917, says that a two-thirds vote of the senate can end a filibuster. It was first used in 1919 to stop debate on the Treaty of Versailles. Even with the cloture rule, filibuster can still be effectively used, since a two-thirds vote is hard to come by.

In recent years, Republicans have gone crazy with filibusters to prevent a  Democratic president from doing anything at all, and particularly appointing judges.

Here are some charts I took from Mother Jones showing how the use of cloture votes has increased. The first shows the number of cloture votes by year, indicating who controlled the Senate and the White house using colors.

The next chart shows the cloture votes when a single party controlled the Senate and White House. This chart shows that while both parties have used the filibuster in the past, its use in the Obama years has skyrocketed.

The filibuster was primarily used to block judicial and executive-branch nominees Mother Jones notes:

Democrats had struck one deal after another with Republicans to try and rein in their abuse of the filibuster, but nothing worked. A few nominees would get through, and then another batch would promptly get filibustered. The chart below tells the tale. Under George Bush, Democrats mounted filibusters on 38 of his nominees. That’s about five per year. Under Obama, Republicans have filibustered an average of 16 nominees per year.

This chart tells that story:

Mother Jones:

Republicans announced their intention to filibuster all of Obama’s nominees to the DC circuit court simply because they didn’t want a Democratic president to be able to fill any more vacancies. At that point, even moderate Democrats had finally had enough. For all practical purposes, Republicans had declared war on Obama’s very legitimacy as president, forbidding him from carrying out a core constitutional duty. Begging and pleading and cutting deals was no longer on the table.

To get around the use of a filibuster for legislation, the Senate can limit debate to 20 hours by using the “reconciliation” process , which limits debate, effectively taking the filibuster out of play. They simply can de-fund something when preparing a budget.  During the Obama administration, reconciliation was used to pass the A.C.A. because Democrats could expect no compromise from Republicans, no matter how moderate a nominee was or beneficial a law would be. Even if something or someone Republicans had previously championed  was proposed by a Democrat, the answer would be no. Democrats had a majority of 59 in the senate, which was historically plenty to pass legislation, but not a super-majority of 60, which would be enough to end any filibuster.

Republicans were, and have remained, apoplectic about the A.C.A. being passed in this way. In 2009, Mitch McConnell said that using reconciliation would “make it absolutely clear that they intend to carry out all of their plans on a purely partisan basis. Look … we expect to be a part of the process.” He also talked about how using reconciliation on health care would be a “disservice to the American people” because it would deny a “full and transparent debate.”

Well, folks, this week that very same Mitch McConnell, now Senate Majority Leader, has done the very thing he railed against just a short time ago, when the shoe was on the other foot. He used reconciliation to de-fund the A.C.A.

It goes without saying that they have offered nothing to take its place. For the last eight years, the Obama administration has been asking them for their ideas on this. They had none. They have none.

 For those of us who are hoping someone will have the courage and principle to say “no” to Trump about anything at all in the next four years, we need to look some place else. The Republican controlled Senate and House will not rise to this challenge. They have no shame. They are the Party of No Shame. And hypocrisy. And corruption.

When J.F.K. nominated his brother for Attorney General in 1960, the question of nepotism immediately arose.  Kennedy shrugged off criticism, joking that he thought it would benefit his brother Bob to get some legal experience before going out to practice law.

R.F.K ultimately turned out to be an excellent and courageous Attorney General, leading the country’s civil rights and anti-corruption efforts. But that was beside the point for most people, Democrats and Republicans alike.

The Nation blasted the appointment as “the greatest example of nepotism this land has ever seen,” while Newsweek called it a “travesty of justice.” Irresponsible, said a New York Times editorial: “It is simply not good enough to name a bright young political manager, no matter how bright or how young or how personally loyal, to a major post in government.”

So in 1967,  5 U.S. Code § 3110, the  federal anti-nepotism law, was passed. It was referred to by most people as “the Bobby Kennedy law”, and it was sponsored by a Democrat, Rep. Neal Smith (D-Iowa).

The law says, “A public official may not appoint, employ, promote, advance, or advocate for appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement, in or to a civilian position in the agency in which he is serving or over which he exercises jurisdiction or control any individual who is a relative of the public official.”. The law defines exactly who is a relative and specifies son-in-law in this definition.

Today, Donald J. Trump appointed his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as Senior White House Advisor, a clear violation of the law. But laws do not apply to Donald J. Trump. Congress will not only be complicit, but will facilitate his actions in defiance of the law. There is nobody that will say no to the man-baby. He will do what he wants.

Here’s how the Republicans will justify their actions in this case. The anti-nepotism law does say, “An individual appointed, employed, promoted, or advanced in violation of this section is not entitled to pay, and money may not be paid from the Treasury as pay to an individual so appointed, employed, promoted, or advanced.”  They will say that as long as Kushner forgoes pay, everything is cool.

But it’s not cool. They are ignoring the part that says “in violation of this section”.  It’s against the law for Kushner to take the job, and, if that part of law is violated, it is further against the law to be paid.

Doesn’t matter. It will be done Trump’s way. Resistance is futile. Kellyanne Conway, Mitch McConnell, and others will shortly be explaining on all media how the push-back (if anyone actually dares to push back) is just sour grapes from sore losers.

They don’t need no stinkin’ badges.

First, they’ll come for your health care.

Why is “Obamacare” so terrible? 20 million people who didn’t have health insurance before the ACA have it now. Why has gutting/overturning it been the singular obsession of the right since day one? Well, it’s the death panels, of course.

No, seriously.

The most common complaint is that it requires everyone to purchase health insurance, and Americans don’t like to be required to do anything, especially by the gummint. Young people in particular resent the requirement, as they are less likely to need the insurance they must buy. In Massachusetts, we’ve had this requirement for a while – we call it Romneycare – so the ACA didn’t really strike anyone here as anything new or horrible.

Another complaint is that some people really can’t afford it. In the past, the uninsured have either let their health problems go untreated, or have sought emergency room treatment. In either case, the rest of us paid for it one way or another. You would think this would be a reason for the right to support Obamacare. Wrong.

Republicans must oppose Obamacare for two reasons, one political and one financial. They cannot confess to either and cannot speak in an honest way about them.

The principle political objection to Obamacare is Obama. It represents a great achievement for a democratic administration and that cannot stand.

The more important objection to Obamacare, and any other scheme that attempts to address the health needs of all Americans, is the financial interests of some very powerful adversaries are at stake. In this country (only in America!), your health is a profit center, and any form of universal healthcare is going to be a drag on profits.

The principle beneficiaries of your poor health are the drug companies (aka Big Pharma), doctors (represented by the AMA), and for-profit hospitals, who would all like to increase their bottom line while lowering costs.

The principle beneficiaries of your good health are the insurance companies, and here’s where the real problem lies. They are highly incentivized to raise revenues (your premiums) and reduce costs (your benefits).

One of the arguments against further government involvement in health insurance is that “you wouldn’t want some government bureaucrat between you and your doctor, would you?” Well, first of all, you already have an army of insurance company bureaucrats between you and your doctor, and, yes, I would prefer a bureaucrat who has no real reason to deny me benefits to a capitalist who hopes to get a gold-plated toilet installed in his Gulfstrem G5 by letting my health deteriorate.

And then there’s the issue of the new tax of 3.8% on income over $250,000 for a married couple has been imposed to pay for it all, and some people are pretty upset about that.

Trump has pledged to repeal Obamacare and there is little doubt that this will now happen. What is the alternative? What will they do with the 20 million newly insured? It will be interesting, and probably disheartening, to see.

The broader lesson here seems to be that there is no point in a democratic administration getting any law passed. It’s only temporary if it happens.

But to the victor goes the spoils. Let’s raise a glass and toast all the red-blooded, red-staters who “won”, or at least think they did: À votre santé!