In reading the comments of CBO Director Doug Elmendorf from yesterday, a number of Swampland commenters asked what, precisely, might be done as part of health reform to (1) put more downward pressure on health costs overall and (2) make it deficit-neutral, as President Obama has promised.
Today, OMB Director Peter Orszag reminds …
From this morning’s Washington Journal. If only it were REALLY like this:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8f9xVAg6Ic&hl=en&fs=1&]
Read this quote, from Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf, testifying before the Senate Budget Committee. You are going to hear it repeated often by opponents of the health reform bills that have been unveiled thus far.:
There was more than little poignance in this statement that was just issued from Hyannis Port. It concerns something that happened minutes ago in the historic Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building:
Most lawyers (and any one who’s seen Legally Blonde) know well Aristotle’s famous phrase: The law is reason free from passion.
The Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are either playing a very delicate game of good cop/bad cop with President Obama’s nominee to the nation’s highest court, Sonia Sotomayor, or they’re fracturing as a conference and a large number of Rs could end up voting for her.
Last week, I wrote a story about how the question of abortion coverage is complicating the House’s efforts to write a health reform bill. It has also arisen in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. If you watch this clip, which our friends at the C-SPAN Video Library provided me, you can see how tricky this question …
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus had hoped to be unveiling a bill around now, but instead is looking for ways to fill a gaping funding hole on the order of $300 billion or so over the next 10 years. That’s because Majority Leader Harry Reid has told him that his original plan to tax high-end health benefits–a proposal that …
A tricky question for those who are drafting the legislation.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is meeting with Finance Committee ranking member Charles Grassley and other key Republicans at 12:30 EDT. Time is running out against a self-imposed deadline to pass health care legislation by the August recess. Reid’s message, I am told, will be that Democrats are getting impatient with the mixed …
TIME’s Sophia Yan was there in the Senate Chamber today for the swearing in of Democrat #60. She reports:
Former-comedian-turned-Senator Al Franken was officially sworn into office
this afternoon to a packed Senate gallery, 246 days after Election Day.
“It was Al who told me that the third year of his campaign would be
…
The constitution doesn’t require much participation from the American people. It protects their rights — free speech, to bear arms, a fair trial, etc – but it doesn’t even make voting mandatory. The one action it does require is for citizens to stand up and get counted, which is why every 10 years the census bureau floods the …
Yes, there are other races going on outside of the presidential campaign. Here’s a rolling package that will update daily of the top congressional races (I did the Warner/Gilmore race which is not exactly a nail biter but is the Dems most likely pick up in the Senate). And for the trifecta: will Schumer get his 60 seats?