The first day of negotiations to merge the Finance and HELP bills is now underway downstairs in S219 of the Capitol Building – just past the bathrooms off the Senate floor (I’m in the third floor press gallery). At the antique-looking wooden conference table: Harry Reid (at the northern head of the table) flanked by [...]
That didn’t take long. Susan Collins is signaling she’s open to voting for health care reform if Dems can “fix the flaws” in the bill…
So, four months after its first deadline, the Finance Committee is finally done. Now the spotlight turns to Harry Reid. The fates must have some small sense of irony to burden the largest bill of just about anyone’s career (unless you’re Bobby Byrd and were here for the passage of the Civil Rights Act) on [...]
Pete Wehner thinks I’m insane. He seems perfectly rational, of course, defending Krauthammer’s colonialist–no neo- needed here–contention that Iraq is a “prize” that Obama is squandering. Occasionally, the wingers let their true colors fly: this is one such moment. We should be grateful for the clarity.
Olympia Snowe didn’t make a liar out of Max Baucus, who had been predicting for months that he would have at least some GOP support when passing his health care reform bill out of the Finance Committee (all along most of us read this as one person: Snowe). For the chairman this must be a [...]
The last of five Congressional committees with jurisdiction over health care has passed a reform bill. Senator Olympia Snowe was the only Republican to vote with the Senate Finance Committee Democrats, bringing the tally to 14 to 9. Snowe said earlier today that her vote of support today does not guarantee she will vote for [...]
Republican Olympia Snowe just indicated in her closing statement that she plans to vote yes on the Senate Finance Committee’s health reform bill. Her vote is probably not necessary for passage – Democrats hold 13 of 23 seats on the committee – but her support could be crucial to getting a bill passed on the [...]
I have a piece on Time.com today examining the claims made in a study released by the health insurance lobby over the weekend. The industry took a pummeling on Monday for releasing what many viewed as a skewed report based on cherry-picked information.
Charles Krauthammer has disgorged a magnum opussy sort of rant on the cover of the week’s Weekly Standard, based on a lecture he gave to the Manhattan Institute, a neoconservative think tank that has actually done some creative thinking about urban issues over the years. Nothing creative about Krauthammer’s thinking, though, which stands as an [...]
