Third Floor U.S. Senate
The GOP Senate conference is downstairs having their weekly policy lunch on the second floor of the Senate. I hear Kentucky’s Jim Bunning is getting an earful in the meeting and rumors are swirling that he may cave and accept Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s offer to have a vote on his plan to use stimulus …
Inside Heath Policy (pay wall) gets a peek at a Democratic memo nailing down specific target dates for passing health reform. The three steps outlined in the missive largely track with what we already know to be the most realistic path to passage, and they gel with the Easter recess deadline being bandied about by Democrats and …
Common ground? Not so much. Here’s my story for TIME.com.
I didn’t think it was possible for Senator Jim Bunning, a Kentucky Republican, to get more unpopular with his colleagues: he was forced, feet dragging, to announce he wouldn’t run for reelection after fellow Kentuckian and minority leader Mitch McConnell wouldn’t even endorse him. But tonight, he is pariah to a whole new level. …
The White House health care summit is set to begin at 10 a.m. EST today at Blair House. Kate Pickert and I will be watching throughout the six hours, and will be posting developments as we see them. Please join us here in Swampland throughout the day, and let us know what you think of the proceedings.
In the meantime, here are a few …
The Senate just passed Harry Reid’s jobs bill 70-28. Reid plans on repeating this strategy over and over and over again till Election Day. Okay, maybe not Election Day – but definitely until Easter recess.
–As Kate writes, political posturing pervades ahead of Thursday’s health care summit with Democrats and Republicans scrambling to score points. There’s plenty of that to come in the next 48 hours.
–To wit: Obama communications chief Dan Pfeiffer offers to post a Republican plan on the White House blog in a transparently backhanded …
Tonight the Senate will vote for cloture on Harry Reid’s stripped down jobs bill. No one knows – not Mitch McConnell and not the majority leader – if Reid will have the votes (so their offices say). But tonight’s vote is exactly the kind of thing that American voters have come to hate about the Senate: the bill is widely …
–One of the few areas of comity and cooperation between the parties during the Obama administration has been education policy. The Washington Post reports this morning that Democrats and Republicans in the House are taking a bipartisan stab at rewriting No Child Left Behind.
–It looks like the White House may have a deal on forming …
–Despite the high profile retirements and a Majority Leader on the ropes in Nevada, the chances of the GOP flipping the Senate in November remain slim, albeit not impossible. Adam Nagourney looks at the map in today’s Times, concluding that Republicans would have to run the table in all competitive races to have a shot.
–Everybody …
In case anyone was wondering what an earth happened last week with the jobs bill hokey pokey, here’s a time.com story from me looking into what went on behind the scenes. The most troubling aspect of all this? That Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin are apparently further screwing up a screwed up Senate in their fight over Reid’s corpse. …
The White House just released details for the Feb. 25 bipartisan health care summit President Obama called for. (h/t Greg Sargent) Here are the invitees and here is a letter about the format, in which Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says that before the summit, “we will post online the text of a proposed health …
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and the top Republican on the committee, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, unveiled a long-anticipated bipartisan jobs bill this morning but clearly they didn’t run their plan past the leadership — or at least didn’t gain leadership support before they proceeded. This afternoon, Senate Majority Leader …
