Moscow Mitch McConnell is going to see two more powerful judges confirmed this week, including yet another that the American Bar Association has found unqualified for the bench. His conveyor belt of judges will continue, as will his boycott of legislating on behalf of American people. But on that second issue, he's getting some pushback from a powerful fellow Republican.
The Republican Senate is going to rubber-stamp two key judges this week. Lawrence Van Dyke, 46, is currently in the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, where he hangs out with Trump's climate change deniers. The ABA says of Van Dyke, based on 60 interviews with the committee, that he "does not have an open mind, and does not always have a commitment to being candid and truthful." He and Patrick Bumatay, 41, will become the next judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, and thus Trump and McConnell will have succeeded in getting a Trumpist majority on the circuit that has been most effective in thwarting Trump policies.
There's nothing Senate Democrats can do about these judges, other than use their appointment as fodder against Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and Thom Tillis and the other Republicans who will happily vote for these young extremists who aren't qualified to be judges. They can also continue to spend their time on the Senate floor trying to bring up critical legislation that the House is passing, legislation that would be great for those Republicans who are up for reelection in 2020 to campaign on. The newest is the Elijah Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act. That would give Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices. "It’s a huge move; it would have a transformational impact on drug prices," a senior Democratic aide told the Daily Beast. The aide said that it will put pressure on McConnell because "It crosses party lines in a way that other issues don't. […] There isn't a constituency out in America that favors astronomical drug prices."
The aide said, "I think it will be very difficult for him to stand against it." Don't count on that. At this very moment, McConnell is fighting with one of his own Republican committee chairmen, Sen. Chuck Grassley, over a drug pricing bill, one that Donald Trump supports. McConnell reportedly thinks it's bad policy—but more likely the fight is because some Republicans have said they're opposed to it, probably because Grassley worked on it with his committee's ranking member, Democrat Ron Wyden from Oregon. But Grassley isn't going to let it go. "Eventually, McConnell's going to realize that this is very important for Republicans maintaining control of the Senate," Grassley told reporters last week.
Grassley also says that he has Trump on his side, and Trump will help him line up Republicans. "The White House, everything they've been doing, and I recently had a conversation with them to get an update, they're doing exactly the right thing," Grassley said. He might be right. "Grassley-Wyden is a genuine bipartisan agreement to lower prescription drug prices that the White House is fully behind," White House spokesman Judd Deere told The Hill. The White House sent out a statement in support of the bill last Friday. In a floor statement Monday, Grassley pressed on: "The Senate must demonstrate courage and finally pass this very important bill because very few members of Congress can miss the cry of their citizens that drug pricing is high and they expected Congress to do something about it and this bill answers that cry."
So have fun with that, Mitch.
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