Steny Hoyer’s* seat. I talked with Charles back in August, back when it was merely very, very likely that Lollar was running; I liked what I heard. He’s running as a strong conservative, with an emphasis on fiscal responsibility - but without ignoring the social issues, either. Below is video from his speech to the Cecil County Tea Party on the Fourth of July:
*Interestingly, Hoyer was the last Democrat that I ever voted for, which is a mistake that I wouldn’t make again even if I still lived in the district. We don’t really have time for quote-unquote ‘conservative’ Democrats whose only difference between them and their liberal compatriots is in how much the rubble bounces.
Assuming that there’s any sort of on-message at this point. Via Hot Air, here’s the latest cloud of ink from a Democrat perhaps worried about the way things are going:
Hoyer (D-Md.) emphasized his support for a public option in a teleconference call with reporters, but also said he wants to ensure Congress sends a bill to the president.
“I’m for a public option, but I’m also for passing a bill,” he said. Democrats believe the public option is necessary, useful and important, he added, “be we’ll have to see.”
No doubt we’ll soon enough get a clarification of the explanation of the correction of the restatement of whatever the heck it is that the Democrats want to do this week. Although what are progressives going to do with Steny, anyway? Give money to Charles Lollar?
Well, they should. But that’s just the Marylander Republican talking.
Moe Lane
PS: In other words, it is not yet time for me to publicly join in the Crowder Victory Dance. And I am sure that the world finds this delay much to its liking.
At a health care town hall today, President Barack Obama told a New Hampshire audience that he has never claimed to be an advocate of a single-payer health care system, alleging that his Republican opponents were employing “scare tactics” to derail substantive health care reform.
“I have not said that I am a supporter of a single-payer system,” he said, channeling former presidential contender John ‘I voted for it before I voted against it’ Kerry.
But in August of last year, Obama touted single-payer systems as a promising solution to the ailing health care system at a New Mexico town hall. Eliminating private insurance companies and instead opting for a pseudo-Medicare system with the government footing the bill for all health care-related expenses, he said, would be a more effective means to provide greater coverage than our system’s current iteration.
“If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system,” said then-Senator Obama. “I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody.”
Evidence of Obama’s open embrace of single payer health care systems dates farther back than 2008, much to the chagrin of the White House’s professional wordsmiths, who no doubt spent hours retooling the president’s message for today’s town hall.
Unequivocally expressing his support for a government-run health care system, Obama said to a crowd of AFL-CIO members in 2003, “I happen to be a proponent of single-payer, universal health care coverage.”
Obama’s evolution on the extent to which the federal government should meddle in the private marketplace of health care coverage is one that speaks to the White House’s justifiable concern they may be losing the debate. Obama and Congressional Democrats are anxious to stem the tide of fleeting public opinion, and both have gone to great lengths to cast their opponents as fear mongers.
Yesterday morning USA Today ran an Op-Ed by Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, which for ease of discussion I will attribute to Pelosi. The title is ‘Un-American’ attacks can’t derail health care debate, which frankly I find amusing since I don’t recall a debate on that or any other subject this year, actually happening on Capitol Hill. She bounces back and forth between oooohing and aaaahing about how awesome (butterflies, rainbows, unicorns, fairy dust) government takeover of your personal health care decisions would be, and berating freedom-loving Americans (bad conservatives! Flyover country! Hitler! Astroturf! Limbaugh! Goblins!) for strongly expressing their opinions to their elected representatives, and oppressively running into union thug fists with their faces.
She’s right about one thing: Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.
As it happens, “drowning out opposing views” is an area of expertise for Speaker Pelosi.
I had the opportunity to speak with Charles Lollar, Charles County (Maryland) Republican Central Committee Chairman, in a phone interview last week. Below are some of the things that we discussed.
First off, a bit of background: Charles Lollar is a business owner and member of the Marine Corps Reserve who has been spending the last few years promoting things like the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights. Lollar credits his family upbringing to his fiscal attitudes, particularly when it comes to the importance and value of hard work. His name has been floated as a possible gubernatorial candidate for Maryland 2010 election; however, he has recently started an exploratory committee involving running as a challenger to Steny Hoyer’s Congressional seat.
(Via RS Diarist rechief) Turns out that the Drudge rumor was right: Pelosi & Hoyer really did write an op-ed with the title ‘Un-American’ attacks can’t derail health care debate. And it’s precisely what I expected, too. Which is to say, an op-ed that can write this:
Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.
…without even a hint of a sign of a suggestion that the authors mean by that condemnation the physical violence done to conservatives by SEIU members (noted here and here). Which is actually not surprising: they don’t. It’s them that are doing it, so it’s by definition OK. And if you don’t like that observation of mine, then the Democratic party’s leadership is perfectly welcome to prove me wrong by issuing a terse statement saying that they do not support SEIU’s violent tactics. Until then, they can own the actions of their blueshirts.
The House Democrats have shut their Republican counterparts out of the legislative process. Normally, the minority gets the right to offer amendments over spending bills, but the House Democrats have decided not to allow the GOP that right.
The Democrats claim the GOP is slowing things down — you know, so members have time to actually read the legislation they are voting on, etc. Nonetheless, Rep. Eric Cantor has offered to compromise with the Democrats on the issue. The GOP would be allowed to offer up to 20 amendments and would abide by time limitations. Democrats won’t commit.
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on Monday formally asked House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) to cut Republicans back into the debate on spending bills, promising they would offer a maximum of 20 amendments to each bill and would abide by a set of time limitations during the debate.
Cantor had proposed the deal verbally on Friday; Hoyer has not yet responded, and a Democratic aide voiced doubt that the majority will sign on.
Why won’t the Democrats commit? Because the GOP can’t keep its members toeing the party line. My friend Paul Broun (R-GA) tried to shut the House down the other day. He made a motion to adjourn. The Speaker called a recess instead of putting it to a vote because Broun would have won.
With the GOP routinely able to outmaneuver the Democrats under the Democrats’ own rules, the Dems don’t want to play nice.
Here’s the problem for the Democrats — majorities do not last forever. The GOP will one day take over the House again. And payback is hell.
Reminiscent of the no-bid, cost-plus contracts awarded in the Bush administration to defense contractors, ABC News reported last night the Obama Administration awarded a five-year $18 million contract to Smartronix, a Maryland-based IT firm with connections to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, for the redesign of Recovery.gov.
Launched in February to track the expenditures of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Recovery.gov was to be the pinnacle of web-enabled transparency, according to President Barack Obama.
“The site is the tip of the iceberg for the effort that will go into taking spending tracking and accountability to the next level,” one administration official said of their intended level of transparency.
But now, it seems, the administration has failed to deliver on two pledges central to the Obama campaign’s rhetoric: fiscal responsibility and unrivaled transparency.
An acerbic Ed Morrisseyasks, “Since when does it cost $18 million for a website, even one with a database requiring updates on a quarterly basis?”
So. Last week, Representatives Cantor and Hoyer had a bit of an exchange over where the money we’re giving the International Monetary Fund is going. Cantor wants to know why we’re going to be giving countries that don’t like us at all the opportunity to take our money, and Hoyer wants to know why Cantor is ignoring the way that Hoyer is brandishing Reagan’s name like an apotropaic talisman:
CANTOR: Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time. I will tell the gentleman, New York Times, May 27, 2009, pointed out Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group involved in Lebanon and its government, had talks with the IMF to discuss the possibility of the extension of credit…We are very, very concerned. There is a real possibility that some of the world’s worst regimes will have access to additional resources that will be provided to the IMF, and is he not concerned about that?
[possible snip: the Congressional Record transcript is down]
HOYER: The reason the Reagan administration and the first Bush administration–and I might say, although I don’t have a quote from the second Bush administration, the second Bush administration, as well, was a supporter of the IMF as the gentleman, perhaps, knows.
The fact of the matter is the United States will play a very significant role in the decisionmaking of the IMF because we’re a very significant contributor. It is a red herring, from my perspective, to raise the fact that money could go somewhere. Of course money could go somewhere.
…which Hoyer then followed up with this inadvertent comment, which the Hill’s Blog Briefing Room mercifully omitted:
Roll Callreports that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is effectively siding with Republicans who want more aggressive scrutiny of ethical charges against leading Democrats. He plans to offer a motion to reveal whether the Ethics Committee is investigating corruption charges against senior Democrats (notably John Murtha and Pete Visclosky) with regard to their dealings with a defunct lobbying group:
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) plans to offer as early as Wednesday afternoon a privileged resolution to force the ethics committee to disclose whether it is investigating senior Democratic appropriators’ ties to the PMA Group, Democratic sources say.
Hoyer’s move follows eight attempts by Republican anti-earmark crusader Rep. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) to jump-start a probe — and aims to pre-empt Flake’s ninth stab at the issue, which was due for a vote on Thursday. It marks a sharp break from Democratic leaders’ previous approach to the burgeoning controversy involving the now-defunct lobbying firm, which amounted to them trying to keep their ranks in line opposing the Flake resolutions.
A pair of stories (HT: Hot Air Headlines, here and here) illustrate the sudden appearance of troubles for the Speaker of the House rather neatly. First, the general:
Democrats charged Tuesday that the CIA has released documents about congressional briefings on harsh interrogation techniques in order to deflect attention and blame away from itself.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — A source close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now confirms that Pelosi was told in February 2003 by her intelligence aide, Michael Sheehy, that waterboarding was actually used on CIA detainee Abu Zubaydah.
This appears to contradict Pelosi’s account that she was never told waterboarding actually happened, only that the administration was considering using it.
It is a very open secret in Democratic circles that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) do not have the best of relationships. The pair were rivals for the speaker’s gavel after the Democrats took control of the House in 2006. Later, Pelosi backed the notoriously corrupt Jack Murtha (D-PA) for Majority Leader against Hoyer. Tensions have simmered beneath the surface ever since.
But now that Speaker Pelosi finds herself embroiled in a growing scandal over what she knew and when she knew it regarding the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorist detainees, those tensions are about to boil over. Hoyer is backing an inquiry into the interrogations, sought by Pelosi, but said today that the Speaker herself should be a target of the investigation. [sub. req.]
I will “eliminate” earmarks that have “no legitimate public purpose” from bills that cross my desk!declared President Obama today at a White House press availability held to announce his intent to sign an $410,000,000,000.00 omnibus spending bill containing 9,000 earmarks with no legitimate public purpose.
Congressional earmarks should be posted on lawmakers’ websites “so the public and the press can examine them and judge their merit for themselves,” Obama said, adding that each earmark request should “be open to scrutiny at public hearings, where members will have to justify their expense to the taxpayer.”
Pork-filled bills like this “will not happen when the president has the full legislative and appropriations process in place,” said OMB head Peter Orszag on CNN. (When the president has the full legislative apparatus in place? Last I checked, that was a bit of a different branch of government than the one Mr. Obama “leads”….)
“I don’t think the White House has the ability to tell us what to do,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), who has apparently been living in a cave since November 4, 2008, as he appears to have missed the fact that Hope and Change have come to Washington, and that opposing the President’s will on any count means being anti-American and hoping your country fails (because as we all know, now that it’s a Democrat in the White House, “if the president fails, the country fails“).
The claim that President Obama and Speaker Pelosi were going to bring “unprecedented transparency, rigorous oversight and clear accountability” to government, “so taxpayers know how their money is being spent and whether it is achieving results,” has proven to be even less grounded in truth than skeptics like myself initially expected.
Note Exhibit A, at right: the conference report on the $800 billion “stimulus” bill, which would increase America’s debt by an amount equal the 15th largest economy on the planet. House Democrats are already ignoring the 48-hour review period they voted to impose on the bill; now, as you can see in the image, the conference summary (.pdf here) has been marked “confidential” by those same leaders who claimed transparency would be a hallmark of their governance.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) released the following statement about the “stimulus” and the floor action schedule for tomorrow:
The House is scheduled to meet at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow and is expected to proceed directly to consideration of the American Recovery and Reinvestment conference report. The conference report text will be filed this evening, giving members enough time to review the conference report before voting on it tomorrow afternoon.
Let’s pretend the conference report is to be distributed right now — 5:30pm EST — to House members (in reality, it likely won’t be until later tonight). That would leave 15 1/2 hours, or 930 minutes, for consideration of the 1,434-page conference report before floor action on the bill commences — one and a half pages a minute from now until the morning, with no stops for any reason whatsoever.
Leave aside, for a moment, the fact that the House — including Hoyer himself — unanimously voted in favor of a 48-hour review period for the porkulus before action was taken on it. Is one night really enough time to read for the first time and consider a bill that would borrow and spend an amount of money that, if it were GDP, would make it the fifteenth largest economy in the world?
Of course not. Unfortunately, this type of a move from the supposedly transparency-loving Democrats isn’t exactly unprecedented.
A group of more than 50 House Democrats has penned a letter to Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) imploring him to “restore this institution” and see that the House returns to a “regular order” process of legislating.
The letter, signed by a large number of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition and the centrist New Democratic Coalition, has not yet been sent. Members are still gathering signatures in an effort to send the strongest signal possible to all top House Democrats that the caucus is up in arms over the top-down method of legislating employed by Democrats since late last year.
Hoyer, and not Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was chosen as the recipient not because he is viewed as the prime enemy, but “because this group has no better friend in this fight” than the majority leader — who is widely respected across the ideological spectrum for his adherence to rules and procedures — an aide said.
