Infidels Paradise

Posts Tagged ‘congress’

The Hill

Republicans are preparing to raise points of order and other roadblocks to the healthcare bill, a member of the Senate GOP leadership said Tuesday evening.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the fourth-ranking Senate Republican who serves as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, said the GOP is prepared for a number of scenarios in which they would seek to slow down or halt passage of healthcare legislation once it comes back before the Senate.

“I still think it creates a lot of problems when it comes back to the Senate because there will be lots of points of order that will lie against the bill in the Senate, and obviously, we will, hopefully, have the opportunity to raise some of those,” Thune said of the health bill during an appearance on Fox News.  Read more...

Yes smile Comrade, the country thinks you are doing a terrible job

Rasmussen

Voter unhappiness with Congress has reached the highest level ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports as 71% now say the legislature is doing a poor job.

That’s up ten points from the previous high of 61% reached a month ago.

Only 10% of voters say Congress is doing a good or excellent job.

Nearly half of Democratic voters (48%) now give Congress a poor rating, up 17 points since January. The vast majority of Republicans and voters not affiliated with either party also give Congress poor ratings.  Read more...

Tampa Bay

In the latest sign of turbulence for Charlie Crist’s wounded U.S. Senate bid, key staffers are starting to leave the campaign.

Political director Pablo Diaz, one of the first two staff members hired for the Senate campaign, is departing at the end of the month for “a new opportunity.” Sean Doughtie, a well-regarded new media consultant who had worked with Crist for years, stopped working for the campaign at the end of January.

“The campaign was going in a different direction,” said Doughtie.

Meanwhile, a poll released Monday pointed to Crist’s dire position six months before the Republican primary: Rubio was leading Crist by 18 percentage points — 54 percent to 36 percent — among likely Republican primary voters, according to a Feb. 18 Rasmussen Reports poll with a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.  Read more...

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PREVIOUS POST: Where’s My Damn T-Shirt?: The U.S. Delegation To Copenhagen – More Than 165 People At Over One MILLION Dollars!

(CNSNews.com) – Between 2000 and 2008, 416 brand-name drug products — representing 321 drug brands — had “extraordinary price increases,” ranging from 100 percent to 499 percent – and in a few cases, 1,000 percent or more, the General Accountability Office says in a newly released study.

The study notes that extraordinary price increases for brand-name drugs can lead to higher drug spending for public and private insurance plans, hospitals, and other providers that cover prescription drugs. Patients may also face higher out-of-pocket costs and reduced access to medically necessary and sometimes life-saving drugs.

More than half of the brand-name drug products that had extraordinary price increases were repackaged, which means they were purchased from drug manufacturers or wholesalers and resold in smaller packages to health care providers such as hospitals or physicians.  Read more...

Washington (CNSNews.com) – Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a pro-life advocate in the Senate, said he doesn’t “think we ought to take tax money from Americans to cover any health care” whether it involves abortion or not, and that the problem with the health care system is that the government is already too involved.

As currently written, the Senate health-care bill mandates that at least one health insurance plan available through the government exchange where people getting tax subsidies to buy health insurance will be required to buy insurance must provide abortion coverage.

CNSNews.com asked Coburn, who is also a physician: “Do you think it is morally right to take tax money from pro-life Americans and give it to health plans that cover abortion?”  Read more...

FOX:

Congressional Push to Drop Charges Against Three Navy SEALs

By Bret Baier

Seal of Approval

A second letter of support from members of Congress has been sent on behalf of three Navy SEALs charged with mistreating an Iraqi detainee. The latest letter written by Indiana’s Dan Burton and signed by 40 of his Republican colleagues asks a Special Operations commander to drop all charges against the men.

Burton says in a separate statement: “This sends a backwards message to our men and women in the military who are charged with carrying out dangerous missions and must often use aggressive force in dealing with Al Qaeda and the Taliban.”  Read more...

And yes saying a meeting of geniuses is sarcasm. these people probably couldn’t find their way out of a cornfield maze yet they are trying to overhaul ie; completely transform the best healthcare system on planet earth. in the words of Rush Limbaugh, i hope they fail

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will meet with Senate Democrats at the White House Tuesday to press for action at a make-or-break moment for his health care overhaul.

All 60 members of the Democratic caucus have been invited, according to three Democratic officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement was not yet public.  Read more...

Man i like this guy!

Hey Tea Party participants. Listen up. Senator Jim DeMint says it’s time for, “some new republicans” to be elected to serve in the Senate.

DeMint spoke to The Brody File about what he wants to see happen in 2010. The junior Senator from South Carolina is a MAJOR player in the Tea Party movement due to the fact that he has been aggressively backing conservative type candidates against Republican establishment figures. For example, he’s backing Marco Rubio in Florida against Charlie Crist and Chuck DeVote in California instead of Carly Fiorina.  Read more...

PRINCETON, NJ — For the first time in Gallup’s annual Honesty and Ethics of Professions poll, a majority of Americans — 55% — say the honesty and ethical standards of “members of Congress” are low or very low — slightly worse than “senators,” whose ethics are rated low by 49%. By contrast, 83% of Americans say nurses have either very high or high ethical standards, positioning them at the top of Gallup’s 2009 ranking of various professions.

The percentage of Americans now believing that members of Congress have low ethics is up from 46% in 2008 and 45% in 2007, and has more than doubled since the start of the decade — rising from 21% in November 2000 to 55% today.  Read more...

WASHINGTON – Congressional negotiators sealed agreement Tuesday night on sweeping spending legislation that boosts housing and heating subsidies but curbs President Barack Obama’s requests for aid to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The move comes as lawmakers wrapped the budgets of nine Cabinet agencies into a $1.1 trillion spending bill they hope to complete before a stopgap measure expires Dec. 18.

The measure would combine six of the dozen routine annual appropriations bills for the budget year that began Oct. 1. It combines a huge increase in foreign aid with an 18 percent cut to a program that helps states with the cost of incarcerating criminal illegal immigrants.  Read more...

Man, That is demeaning!

The Hill

President Barack Obama recently called Rep. John Conyers Jr. to express his frustrations with the Judiciary Committee chairman’s criticism.

In an interview with The Hill, Conyers said his opinions of Obama’s policies on healthcare reform and the war in Afghanistan have not sat well with the president.

According to the lawmaker, the president picked up the phone several weeks ago to find out why Conyers was “demeaning” him.
Obama’s decision to challenge Conyers highlights a sensitivity to criticism the president has taken on the left. Conyers’s critical remarks, many of which have been reported on the liberal-leaning Huffington Post, appear to have irritated the president, known for his calm demeanor.  Read more...

The Hill

Former Hewlitt-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina (R) on Monday said that she is the best candidate to defeat Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) because she is a woman.

Asked why she is a better candidate than her Republican primary opponent Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Calif.), Fiorina said that a woman stands a better chance of defeating Boxer.

“With all due respect and deep affection for white men, I am married to one,” Fiorina said at a breakfast at Americans for Tax Reform. “But [Barbara Boxer] knows how to beat them in California, she has done it over and over and over again.”

Of DeVore, the former economic adviser to Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) presidential campaign said “he’s the opponent Barbara Boxer hopes she faces.”  Read more...

NYT

In an odd coincidence, the House debate on Saturday to overhaul health care took place on the third anniversary of the 2006 election that gave Democrats majority control after 12 years of Republican dominance. It fell to President Obama and to Congressional leaders to persuade those Democrats still sweating the final vote that it would not prove the party’s undoing in next November’s midterm elections.

Both Mr. Obama and the House leaders showcased Democrats’ newest colleague, Representative Bill Owens, who last Tuesday won a special election in an upstate New York district that Republicans had held since 1872. In the campaign, Mr. Owens gave unabashed support to the pending House health care bill, despite the opposition of national conservative groups, including the new Tea Party Patriots, who backed Mr. Owens’ conservative rival.  Read more...