Apparently, Bill Frist and Mark Halperin are on Charlie Rose discussing today’s summit right now. (The good news is that Ezra Klein is on too.) I’d watch but I have no desire to take my own life this evening. There are a lot of people out there who believe that our sorry state of affairs …
Never Gonna Get It
At some point, people are going to accept that there were never 51 and most certainly were never 60 votes for the public option. I can say this quite confidently, because had there been that level of support for it, it would have passed! Just like the actual Senate HCR bill passed with 60 votes! …
Your Senators Wonder Why You Never Call
Things look better for HCR than they have in a long time. Nancy Pelosi has the votes to pass a Senate-fix’d bill, or at least she says she does. Harry Reid clearly plans to run something through reconciliation in the next 60 days. Even the public option has a pulse! This is the home stretch …
HCR Update
A lot of pieces moving around the board at once. Here is what I can glean: * House Democrats remain in a holding pattern. The Senate bill will probably never pass on its own. However, votes most likely already exist to pass HCR as long as the Senate can fix the excise tax and those …
Observing the hypocrites as they would mingle with the good people
This, from Steve Pearlstein, turned my stomach: [M]any good people either have been reduced to shameless pandering (John McCain) or are simply giving up and going home (Byron Dorgan, Evan Bayh, Billy Tauzin). Billy Tauzin quit midterm to be become a million-dollar-a-year lobbyist, Evan Bayh is, at best, a minor deficit hypocrite (as Ezra Klein …
Observing the hypocrites as they would mingle with the good peoplePost + Comments (137)
Damned to Mediocrity
I’ll let this Ezra Klein deconstruction of Evan Bayh speak for itself: So: Evan Bayh’s not a major deficit hypocrite. He’s a minor deficit hypocrite. But a deficit hypocrite all the same. In his exit speech, he describes himself as “a lonely voice for balancing the budget and restraining spending.” Of course, there’s no such …
Your Daily Get On The Phone Thread
House and Senate negotiators have apparently just about agreed on…well, something. Look for text to be posted online some time this week. John Cohn and Ezra Klein both take it as good news, so it probably is, but it won’t hurt to get on the phone and remind your elected officials how you feel. Tell …