How badly did Ben Nelson miscalculate? Clearly, the once-popular former Governor tried to have his cake and eat it too. He didn’t want to take the ‘blame’ for killing the president’s health care rationing bill, but he also did not want to seem like a liberal extremist. So he calculated that he could be a hero to both sides if he led the way on | Read More »
It seems that the further you get from the elites in Washington DC, who have a stake in Harry Reid remaining in power, the more likely you are to find African Americans who have a problem with Harry Reid’s comments about Barack Obama. And while I don’t agree with Doug Wilder on much, he makes a point that Reid and his defenders have attempted to | Read More »
Bart Stupak represents a Congressional district that Republicans have pursued for years. It seems there’s a good chance it may be the next open seat the Democrats have to defend: Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) seems one step closer to running for governor of Michigan, saying he’s “seriously looking at” his chances for the Democratic nomination. Stupak, a conservative Democrat who has pushed for strong pro-life | Read More »
Dan Boren is not making any friends within the House Democrat caucus: U.S. Rep. Dan Boren, Oklahoma’s only Democrat in Congress, predicts his party will lose seats in elections later this year. While such a statement falls in the category of conventional wisdom that historically has the party in power losing congressional seats in mid-term elections, Boren parts company with others within his own party | Read More »
Remember back when Charlie Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, and the rest of the New York Democrats thought that trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City posed no significant security risk? Remember how they said we could easily guarantee the safety of New Yorkers whose memories of 9/11 remained fresh? Well, apparently they’re suddenly worried, because now they’re concerned enough about costs that they’re demanding the | Read More »
By now everyone is well aware of the sweetheart deal that Ben Nelson extracted from Harry Reid for the taxpayers of Nebraska. In exchange for his vote in favor of Obamacare, Nelson made sure that all of America’s taxpayers pick up the cost of the mandatory Medicaid expansion in the bill – and not those of Nebraska. Nelson’s deal is unethical, unfair, and some argue | Read More »
Senator Ben Nelson (D-DeadMeat) continues to try to distance himself from his Obamacare bribe and his vote for the bill: “At the end of the day, whatever Nebraska gets will be available to all states,” Nelson said during a conference call with reporters. In exchange for his crucial support of the reform bill, Nelson was promised federal funding to cover Nebraska’s entire cost of a | Read More »
Ben Nelson said he never asked for Harry Reid to give Nebraska more funding for Medicaid, and now Blanche Lambert Lincoln says that bribe should be deleted from any final health care bill: U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln said a political deal that benefits Nebraska and may have clinched a lawmaker’s support for health care legislation should be removed from the bill. The Democratic senator from | Read More »
We all know the names of the Democratic Senators who face tough re-election runs in 2010: Lincoln, Reid, Specter, Bennet, Dodd, and maybe Gillibrand and Dorgan and a few others. One of the names that’s not usually on the list is Indiana Senator Evan Bayh. While Bayh represents a state that will probably turn reliably red again, he has carefully cultivated a reputation as a | Read More »
What will the top headlines of 2010 be? What headlines would you like to see? The Washington Times wants your ideas, and they’ll publish some of the best ones on New Year’s Day. Head over to the Times for more information: We want your help with our New Year’s Day editorial. We’re looking for the headlines conservatives would like to see in 2010. The headlines | Read More »
Note that the question here is why he’s out to get construction jobs per se. It’s already clear that the Senate Democrat leadership is deeply in love with measures that destroy jobs – be they tax increases, employer mandates, more stringent regulations, costlier electricity, empowerment of unions, etc. But all those things destroy jobs on more or less an equal opportunity basis; they’re just about | Read More »
If the attention of the American people is focused somewhere else, it must be time to quickly push through some radical, self-serving, and impossible-to-defend new agency rule. And with Christmas upon us and Americans paying more attention to the offensive mess that the Senate approved today, it’s probably a good time for the Obama administration to significantly expand how they count jobs ‘saved or created’ | Read More »
While others have reported that a bipartisan group of Senators arrived at the current Senate compromise all on their own, Howard Dean says that’s not true. It seems that he’s responsible for the proposal currently being considered in the Senate. Former Governor Howard Dean helped broker a health care compromise that Senate Democratic leaders say could move the bill forward. Dean’s proposal is designed to | Read More »
When Republicans ran Washington, Democrats regularly complained that they were terrible managers. They argued that because of Republican incompetence, deficits were high, deadlines were missed, money was wasted, and rules were ignored. It called to mind PJ O’Rourke’s famous quote about Republicans: The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it. But if Republicans were inefficient | Read More »
Update: The Times piece quoted here skates too quickly over the questions of how one qualifies for food stamps, and what requirements are imposed on recipients (particularly with regard to work). Put briefly, most food stamp recipients appear to be required to work, but waivers exist, some still receive benefits without working, and (of course) fraud dilutes the requirements. Check out the comment section for | Read More »
Two years ago the Democrats in Congress and the Bush administration got together to deliver a payoff to farmers: they required refiners to use 15 billion gallons of biofuels by 2012. They did not expect that a crashing recession would lead to a reduction in the amount of gasoline the nation consumes – the first such reduction in years. And they also didn’t expect a | Read More »
The truth is out there: Harry Reid has no idea what to do to create jobs. Via Jim Geraghty
This is significant: Senate Democrats have abandoned plans to use a fast-track parliamentary strategy to avert a threatened Republican filibuster and pass a health care overhaul — a signal that they are considering major policy concessions to moderates. The most significant of these could be restructuring or dropping altogether a proposed government-run insurance plan — the so-called public option — that many liberals consider a | Read More »
If Boxer was frustrated that Brigadier General Walsh failed to shower her the proper respect, how will she react when she sees how she’s being treated by the San Diego media? Got that Senator Boxer? One job created in San Diego so far – at a time when the unemployment rate in California is 12.2%. You would think San Diego could have created more jobs than | Read More »
While it was largely lost in the debate over passage of Pelosi-care on Saturday night, it may turn out that the most politically costly vote many Democrats cast was against the Motion to Recommit. Simply put, the Motion to Recommit gives the minority party one last chance to force a vote on a change to the underlying bill. Here’s a summary sent out by the | Read More »
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