If your goal was to come up with a plan for financial ruin, you couldn’t come up with a better idea than cutting a program by $500 billion and simultaneously expanding the number of people it is required to cover.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell • Making another one of his snippy comments about the health care bill. It’s too bad he’s saying it about a potential breakthrough for the bill in the Senate. The latest idea being bandied about: Allow lower-income people as young as 55 to bask in the glory that is Medicare. Now, McConnell does have a point about this – they’re cutting Medicare AND adding people to it – but then again, it’s not like this jerk has actually come up with a solution besides “complain more and stonewall any reasonable progress.” Do more than that and we’ll give you credit. source
He was within grasp in 2001, but reinforcements weren’t sent. First off, let’s state the obvious: We’d still have terrorism troubles if Bin Laden were captured – though they might be less focused. However, a Senate report says that the U.S. was close to catching him in Afghanistan, only to drop the ball by leaning on air strikes instead of putting people on the ground. Donald Rumsfeld is specifically blamed for his lack of action. source
It’s official, kids. The Democrats have taken weeks of attempting to get this shiznit on the Senate floor and actually gotten it on the freaking Senate floor. And they did it without a single Republican. Who knows if they’ll get any further with it, but it’s a great first step. source
Good news for Dems It appears that the party has close to the 60 votes needed to push the health care bill to a discussion in the chamber. Who knows if that’ll actually happen, but man, it’s fun to watch democracy in action.
The lone holdouts Among Democrats, the main people holding back the bill are Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. Ben Nelson, the other wildcard, is favoring a discussion if not a vote. Source
We’re talking about one-sixth of the economy. This should be a very deliberative process. And it should take more than a month and a half.
Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah • Discussing Republicans’ desire to stretch out the process of voting on the health care beyond the end-of-year deadline Obama wants. Hatch also says it’s unlikey any Republican senator will support it, which means that Harry Reid needs to get his boys on point if he wants 60 votes. • source