The well-sourced Carrie Budoff Brown is reporting this at Politico: The White House is encouraging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to cut a deal with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), which would mean eliminating the proposed Medicare expansion in the health reform bill, according to an official close to the negotiations. But Reid is described [...]
Glenn Greenwald has now joined several Swampland commenters in asserting that I somehow raised a “new” argument for the Afghan war escalation over the weekend when I wrote that pulling out of Afghanistan would exacerbate tensions between India and Pakistan, empower the more extreme elements of the Pakistani military, perhaps leading to an Islamist coup [...]
All of which is why the R-Word seems to be on people’s lips today in DC: “My guess is that musty folders on reconciliation got dusted off this morning,” Podesta told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. The reference was to a budget procedure that requires only 51 votes to pass [...]
Evan McMorris-Santaro, over at TPM, points out that Vice Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman said in 2000 that he favored a medicare buy-in for 55- to 64-years-old. From the Bangor Daily News in 2000: In an interview after the town meeting, Lieberman said that health care changes can only come incrementally, which is why the Democratic [...]
I share Joe Lieberman’s opposition to making Medicare available to those in the 55-64 age range. It’s not that I don’t want health care made available to all; it’s that Medicare, as currently constituted, is an unmanaged financial sinkhole. I’d be in favor of Medicare for All if doctors were paid salaries–as the Mayo and [...]
George McGovern was a world war II hero, a principled politician and absolutely right about the foolishness of the war in Vietnam. He is thoroughly wrong about Afghanistan, though. As President Obama painstakingly explained in his West Point speech, Vietnam is a false–indeed, a facile–anology. The war in Vietnam was based on lies–the Tonkin Gulf incident–and [...]
A story from me about the logjam of spending Congress will spend the next three weeks chewing through. The spending issue is becoming increasingly sensitive, especially since three Blue Dogs — fiscal conservative Dems who usually come from swing districts — have now announced their retirement. CW states that Dems weren’t likely to lose the [...]
The Senate health reform bill is in a procedural holding pattern right now. Even though the body will be in session over the weekend, Majority Leader Harry Reid has put off votes on the bill while he waits for the Congressional Budget Office to evaluate a new Democratic proposal that could strip the public option [...]
I’m a bit tardy on this, but really, is it ever too late? Our White House Photo Blog offers us this glimpse from last weekend’s Kennedy Center Honors festivities:
