Good afternoon, Daily Kos readers. This is your afternoon open thread to discuss all things Hill-related. Use this thread to praise or bash Congresscritters, share a juicy tip, ask questions, offer critiques and suggestions, or post manifestos.
This is the most important news of the day... okay, only the last part of the diary is "The most important news of the day."
As always, this is a crosspost from Congress Matters.
Here's some of my own thoughts.
If you care anything about the Health Care debate, you may want to be watching C-Span right now. Just sayin'.
Speak of which, what are you doing for Christmas? We have a good idea where the Senate might be that day.
A fragile gentleman's agreement between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is breaking down, and now, three days into the health care debate, having held not a single vote on a single amendment, Democrats are saying enough is enough. And if they have to stay in session through Christmas to pass the bill, that's what they'll do.
Oh, and we won't see a public option amendment to this thing until next week.
Under Carper's proposal, the bill would establish a national public insurance program founded by the government but managed by a non-governmental board. In addition, the plan would be unable to access any taxpayer dollars beyond its initial seed money. This public option would operate alongside private insurance and, potentially, the nonprofit healthcare cooperatives and state-based public plans authorized by Reid's bill.
This plan is fluid and final details are expected to be ironed out in the coming days.
Also on the health care front, Slate's Timothy Noah asks a key question: Will Health Reform Lower Premiums?
A note to the health insurance industry: we are having this debate because you have made insurance unaffordable to a lot of people. End of story.
The same author also lets us know how the freaking gun lobby got in the game.
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In the other Chamber, the House has only scheduled 17 days of work in January and February and plan to wrap up work by Oct. 8 so they can campaign.
“The House vote schedule for 2010 allows ample time for us to build on our work from this year, so that we continue creating jobs and addressing our nation’s long-term fiscal problems,” Hoyer said. “The schedule also ensures that members have the opportunity to conduct important work in their districts and hear directly from their constituents about the challenges they are facing.”
Well, the House was much more productive than the Senate this year.
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And speaking of elections, two Democrats from red states are planning to retire in 2010.
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The New York State Senate is debating same-sex marriage. TPM has the video feed. We have really no clue how this vote is going to shake out.
Well these spineless jerks voted it down.
Someone explain to be again why this is such an issue. Just let them marry already.
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Yesterday, I mentioned that David Obey has a plan to pay for the troop surge in Afghanistan. Rep. John Murtha, chair of the Armed Forces Appropriations Subcommittee is having none of it.
Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the House’s top defense appropriator, said Wednesday that he does not believe Afghanistan poses a national security threat to the United States.
Murtha said Obama’s speech announcing the 30,000 troop increase to Afghanistan was very “impressive,” but it failed to change his mind about the situation in the country.
~snip
Murtha also hit back at any notion that additional war money would be included in the regular 2010 defense appropriations bill now in conference negotiations between the House and the Senate. Murtha told reporters that Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), the Senate Appropriations chairman, both oppose that idea as well.
Interesting coming from the guy who routinely got earmarks for defense contractors, who for some odd reason set up shop in rural Pennsylvania, and then accepted a pile of campaign contributions from those same contractors.
And the Armed Services Committees are holding hearings on the surge this week.
Mr. McCain called the quick build-up and draw-down “logically incoherent” and pressed both Mr. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about whether the president would withdraw them unconditionally.
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Also yesterday, I mentioned that Congress has released records of members' expenditures. Today, The Sunlight Foundation announced they have organized the data into something useful and searchable.
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The Obama Administration actually believes in modern medicine.
The Obama administration on Wednesday approved the first human embryonic stem cells for experiments by federally funded scientists under a new policy designed to dramatically expand government support for one of the most promising but also most contentious fields of biomedical research.
The National Institutes of Health authorized 11 lines of cells produced by scientists at the Children's Hospital in Boston and two lines created by researchers at the Rockefeller University in New York. All were obtained from embryos left over by couples seeking treatment for infertility.
At least we are past the bloodletting and leaches that the Bushies preferred.
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This would be too funny if it were not so serious and important.
Republican senators feel burned by Al Franken — and not by his old jokes.
The Republicans are steamed at Franken because partisans on the left are using a measure he sponsored to paint them as rapist sympathizers — and because Franken isn’t doing much to stop them.
~snip
In a chamber where relationship-building is seen as critical, some GOP senators question whether Franken’s handling of the amendment could damage his ability to work across the aisle. Soon after Tennessee GOP Sens. Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander co-wrote an op-ed in a local newspaper defending their votes against the Franken measure, the Minnesota Democrat confronted each senator separately to dispute their column — and grew particularly angry in a tense exchange with Corker.
Someone call the Whaaaabulance and someone else do some research and find the last time Republican Senators genuinely tried to be bipartisan on a major issue. I think it was sometime in the late 1980s.
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John Kerry says part of the solution to Global Warming is to help developing countries cope with the problem.
The proposed 2010 budget from the Obama administration would devote $1.2 billion per year to international climate funds. The Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House would direct about 7 percent of the revenues of a cap-and-trade plan to international adaptation and technology funding in the initial years, which could total around $5 billion per year by 2020, according to an analysis by Resources for the Future. The proposed Senate bill offers similar levels of funding.
It is called global warming for a reason.
In related news, Lou Dobbs and Jim Inhofe don't think the president has the authority to negotiate international treaties. Hold on. It gets better....
How does this grab you?: His Majesty Barack Obama, King of the 50 American States; Duke of Puerto Rico; Emperor of Guam; Count of the Virgin Islands; High Protector of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kenya; and Baron of the Marianas Islands and escorted by Her Highness Michelle Obama, Queen of America, Crown Princess Malia and Princess Sasha.
GOD SAVE THE KING!
No really:
DOBBS: Who the hell does this president think he is?
INHOFE: I don’t know, because you can’t do that. And I think it’s certainly disingenuous to mislead countries into thinking that a president … You know, this is not a kingdom. He’s not able to do that.
DOBBS: Not yet!
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Finally, in the most important news of the day (I should copyright that), we have a twofer:
First Kathleen Parker rightly scolds us for all of the attention we have paid to Tiger Woods hitting a fire hydrant.
Might we interrupt this terribly unimportant episode in the private life of a professional golfer to point out that it's nobody's business? This isn't breaking news. This is breaking gossip.
The news ended with the report that Woods had run into a fire hydrant outside his Windermere, Fla., home and has decided not to play in his own tournament because of minor injuries suffered. That should be a wrap.
And finally, the very latest on the gate crashers: A new field of inquiry: Salahis' polo cup
Tareq and Michaele Salahi's signature social event, the annual Land Rover America's Polo Cup, bills itself as the "world's most prestigious and largest . . . charity polo event," benefiting the Salahi-run charity Journey for the Cure. Its next U.S. gala is scheduled for June on the Mall.
~snip
But many sponsors listed by America's Cup for 2010 -- including Land Rover, Cartier, the St. Regis Hotel in Washington and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. -- say they are not sponsors for that event. Many vendors in previous years said in interviews that the Salahis have not paid for their services in the event's three-year history, expenses totaling about $500,000. Many have filed lawsuits, and the couple has countersued often. And there is no record of any president attending any of the polo cups.
We have polo on the National Mall?