Tag Archives: Capitol Hill

national news, political news

LBJ must be laughing loudly

Lyndon Baines Johnson, wherever he is, must be enjoying the spectacle that’s unfolding down here, in Washington, D.C.

One of his successors as president of the United States is now trying to do something that LBJ was expert at doing: persuade U.S. senators to vote for a bill the president wants to see become law.

Donald Trump is facing a grim political reality. He is backing a Senate Republican health care overhaul bill. He says it would replace the Affordable Care Act. There’s this problem: public opinion polling suggests that it is highly unpopular with Americans; meanwhile, senators — who must answer to those Americans — are getting queasy about the bill.

Senate Republicans knew it and decided this week to postpone a vote on the bill until after the Fourth of July recess. The GOP has a slim Senate majority. Republicans can afford only two defections; any more than that then the health care overhaul effort is toast. Eight GOP senators have said they oppose the draft bill.

How does Trump persuade them to vote for the bill? This is something that Trump does not understand. Lyndon Johnson understood it better than arguably any president of the past century.

Before he became vice president in 1961 and later president in 1963, Johnson was the Senate majority leader. The Texan had vast experience as a legislator. He had many friends in the Senate; Republicans as well as Democrats were his pals. He could count on them when the going got tough. Sen. Johnson had an amazing capacity to persuade senators to vote his way. He took that skill with him to the Oval Office.

LBJ was unafraid to use the power of the presidency to, um, bully senators and House members. Somehow, though, it worked.

The current president has zero experience at governing anything. He had never sought a public office until June 2015, when he announced his presidential candidacy. Trump had no direct knowledge of Congress, or any understanding of how it works. He never developed any relationships with those who run the legislative branch of government, which is something that even relatively inexperienced presidents before him had acquired.

President Reagan was chided for being a film actor. He also served two terms as California governor. President Carter took D.C. by storm, but he, too, had governmental executive experience as a single-term governor of Georgia.

Donald Trump has none of that kind of experience. None!

President Johnson set the gold standard, though, for presidents knowing how to legislate, how to persuade lawmakers, how to push legislation through both chambers of Congress.

I suspect the former president is laughing out loud.

medical news, political news

Who’s telling the truth, GOP or Democratic Senate leader?

I am certain today that I heard two diametrically opposed statements come from the mouths of the U.S. Senate’s top partisan leaders.

The Senate was going to vote this week on a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act; then Senate Republicans said “no.” There won’t be a vote just yet. They balked because they don’t have the votes to approve it. They might not get the votes, either.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, said categorically that Democrats “aren’t interested” in working with Republicans to craft a new health care insurance bill.

There. We have that statement.

Less than an hour later, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat, told reporters that Democrats “want to work” with Republicans.

OK. Who’s telling the truth? McConnell said Democrats aren’t interested. Schumer said the exact opposite.

I guess it depends on the partisan bias of those who heard the statements. McConnell said it in front of fellow Republicans; Schumer made his declaration in front of fellow Democrats.

I tend to believe Schumer. I would be my hope that Democrats would be willing to huddle with their GOP “friends” in the hope of finding some common ground with regard to what McConnell called a “complicated” piece of legislation.

The Senate will take up this matter after the Fourth of July recess.

As Lyndon Johnson would say, “Let us reason together.”

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Housing allowance? Don’t think so, Rep. Chaffetz

Jason Chaffetz is about to walk away from his public service job as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Before he goes, he is leaving with a parting gift in the form of an idea that fellow House members ought to reject out of hand. Chaffetz thinks Congress should enact a $2,500 monthly housing allowance for its members. It would give members of the House and Senate a little bit of financial cushion to enable them to live like normal human beings.

I don’t think so, young man.

Chaffetz earns $175,000 annually to serve his Utah congressional district constituents. It’s a handsome salary to be sure. However, during his time in office, Chaffetz decided to perform a bit of a publicity stunt by sleeping on a couch in his office, rather than renting an apartment/condo/flat somewhere like many other members of Congress.

As The Hill reports: “A $2,500 monthly allowance would cost taxpayers about $30,000 a year per lawmaker, or roughly $16 million a year for all 535 members.”

That’s a lot of money

I’ll stipulate that $16 million doesn’t measure up when compared to the size of the federal government budget. It’s not even significant compared to the size of the annual budget deficit, let alone the national debt. It’s still 16 million bucks. Boil that down to terms as they relate to me — and perhaps most of you who are reading this post — then we’re talking about some real money.

Again, according to The Hill: (His idea) “would allow the non-millionaires to participate and you would be able to have your spouse join you here,” said Chaffetz, 50, who’s spent 1,500 nights away from his wife and children during his eight-plus years in Congress. “If I wasn’t buying as many airline tickets, it would ultimately be less expensive.”

I wish the Utah Republican well as he embarks on a new career and life, reportedly as a “contributor” to the Fox News Channel. He represents a political party, though, that prides itself on personal responsibility and fiscal prudence.

Tossing potentially another $16 million a year at Congress to create what amounts to a public housing fund for well-compensated lawmakers, though, strays a bit too far from the GOP’s long-standing tradition.

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Now the economists weigh in: GOP health care overhaul stinks

I suppose politicians are predisposed to think more highly of their own opinions and agendas than anyone else’s.

How else does one explain Senate Republicans’ stubborn insistence that their version of an overhaul of the nation’s health care insurance system is good while actual experts say it’s bad?

The Congressional Budget Office, the famously non-partisan agency charged with “scoring” legislation, has said the GOP plan would cost 22 million Americans their health insurance over the next decade.

Now we hear from some Nobel Prize laureates, economists with a proven track record of expertise and knowledge about such matters, saying the GOP bill is bad news for Americans.

Not to be derailed or dissuaded, the Senate Republican leadership is going to trudge ahead with a vote — possibly as early as Thursday — on this so-called alternative to the Affordable Care Act.

I’ll call it Trumpcare, named after the president of the United States. I have refused to refer to the ACA by its more colloquial term named after former President Barack Obama; that’s just me, though, and my bias speaking out loud.

Trumpcare is a turkey, according to the Nobel laureates.

Here’s how The Hill reports on it.

According to The Hill: “We call on Congress to work on legislation to improve the health delivery system, in general, and The Affordable Care Act, in particular,” the economists wrote. “The goal should be to hold down health costs and increase access to affordable, quality health coverage for all.”

The plan under consideration doesn’t do any of that. It also makes dramatic cuts in Medicaid insurance, upon which millions of Americans depend because they cannot afford to pay the full freight for health insurance.

The Senate plan has made conservatives angry because it doesn’t go far enough in repealing the ACA. It makes GOP moderates angry because it is every bit as “mean” — to borrow a term used by the president — as the plan that House members approved by a narrow 217-213 vote.

Nobel laureate economists dislike it, too, as do apparently millions of just plain average Americans who are worried about what it will do to their insurance plans.

The only folks who like it are the 13 Republican U.S. senators who cobbled this legislation together.

Are these men the only people in America who have it right, that everyone else is wrong? I think not.

political news

So much for the Democratic ‘tide’ forming in Georgia

Jon Ossoff got thumped. Karen Handel is the new congresswoman from Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District.

It was supposed to be a potential sign of a Democratic Party “wave” that could sweep the minority party back into control of the House of Representatives.

One little thing happened, though. Democrats fielded a candidate with an eligibility problem. He doesn’t live in the district. 

Ossoff lives about six miles outside the district; he’s sharing a residence with his fiancée. Ossoff said he grew up in the district, he knows it well and the fact that he didn’t abide by the electoral rules didn’t matter. Well, actually, young man — it does matter. A lot.

As for Handel, she tied Ossoff at the hip to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, whose name has become a four-letter word among Republican political operatives.

Did I want Ossoff to win? Sure. I’ve said that already. I did express some concern earlier about this residency issue and how it might nip him in the backside. It did.

The Sixth District is a reliably Republican one. It’s former representative, Dr. Tom Price, now serves as health and human services secretary. Donald J. Trump carried the district by a percentage point in 2016, while Price was being re-elected by double digits.

If Democrats have any hope of peeling off GOP districts in the future, my suggestion is to find better-quality candidates to carry the message forward.

They can start by ensuring their candidates actually live in the district they seek to represent.

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Wake up, Congress, to greater civility

Ted Cruz believes this past week’s shooting at a baseball practice that wounded several of his fellow Republicans should be a “wake up call” for members of Congress.

The Texas U.S. senator is right, of course. He almost seems to state the obvious, that the tenor and tone of current political discussion has been filled with too much poison.

Five people were hurt in Alexandria, Va., while practicing for Congress’ annual charity baseball game. The shooter was angry at Donald J. Trump and, apparently, at GOP U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, who was wounded by a rifle shot from the gunman. Scalise’s condition is improving and for that we all are grateful.

The gunman died in a shootout with police.

“We may disagree on whether the federal government should have a simple flat tax or a massively confiscatory federal income tax, but those differences should not lead to demonization, vilification and personal attacks,” Cruz said in remarks to supporters.

But that’s what we’ve been hearing. It goes back many years. It’s been a bipartisan mantra. Democrats and Republicans point at each other across the aisle on Capitol Hill and question each other’s motives for whatever it is they seek to accomplish.

Politics used to be a noble calling. That’s not the case these days. It has become a contact sport. Some suggest politics has turned into a blood sport.

The dips*** shooter in Alexandria exemplified the danger of letting our emotions get the better of us.

medical news

Americans are numb to congressional hypocrisy

It’s no surprise to anyone that hypocrisy exists in the halls of federal government power.

What I think is a surprise is how we are now so numb to it, that it doesn’t bother us.

U.S. Senate Republicans are in the process of doing precisely what they criticized their Democratic colleagues of doing just eight years ago. They are meeting in secret to cobble together a health care overhaul they say will replace the Affordable Care Act. In 2009, Republicans were frothing at the mouth because of what they said was occurring when Democrats crafted the ACA.

Video recordings of Republican Senate and House leaders bear out their anger then. Eight years later, well, here we go again.

The weirdness of it, though, shows itself in the apparent tolerance among average Americans at what’s going on.

A newly elected president, Barack H. Obama, sought Republican help in crafting the ACA. He didn’t get it. They stiffed him. The ACA process did include public hearings and testimony from those who favored and opposed it.

Another president new to his office, Donald Trump, hasn’t extended his hand to Democrats. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans are plowing ahead with an ACA replacement with no input from Democrats, no public hearings, no testimony.

Same song, different verse? Yes. The major difference appears to rest in the tacit acceptance that hypocrisy is now the norm in Washington, D.C.

I’ll go on record here to say that not all Americans accept this as business as usual. I believe it stinks to high heaven!

political news

Whoever wins had better deliver in the House of Reps

Jon Ossoff vs. Karen Handel has turned into a serious spectator sport.

Ossoff is a Democrat running against Handel, a Republican, for a little ol’ congressional seat representing a district in Georgia.

But here’s the deal: The contest is going to cost more than any congressional election in U.S. history. Why is that? Well, Democrats see it as a referendum on Donald J. Trump, the Republican who is president of the United States. Republicans want to keep the seat in GOP hands and hope Handel is the candidate who can do it.

The former member of Congress from this district, Tom Price, is now secretary of health and human services. Trump carried the district during the 2016 presidential election. It’s a solidly Republican district. It should remain Republican Red, yes?

Hold on! Ossoff won the primary a month ago over a large field of opponents. He didn’t run up a 50-percent victory to win outright, so now he and Handel — the second-place primary finisher — are competing in a runoff election set for Tuesday.

Political analysts are crowing about the size of the early-vote turnout. Let ’em crow. We’ll know soon whether it represents a gigantic total turnout.

With all this attention and money being heaped on this special election, my own view is that whoever wins had better be ready for prime time the money he or she takes the oath of office. The media being what they are, you can bet there will be loads of attention piled on to the winner.

My own hope — not surprisingly, I’m sure — is for Ossoff to win. It doesn’t matter. I don’t live there. I have no tangible voice, other than use this blog to say that Donald Trump needs to face the prospect of his party possibly losing control of Congress after next year’s mid-term election.

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Congressional shooting produces a glimmer of hope

It’s only a glimmer, a flicker, a slight flash of light.

It might not last past the first serious floor debate in either chamber of Congress. However, the two leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives are saying something about unity, about common good, about patriotism and love of country.

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi today pledged to get the House to work more closely together, to set partisanship aside whenever possible. Their pledge came in the wake of that frightening shooting in Alexandria, in which House GOP whip Steve Scalise was injured critically by a gunman who wounded four others before being shot to death by Capital police officers.

A ‘kumbaya’ moment?

Dear reader, we have entered a dangerous time in American political history. The shooter reportedly was highly critical of Donald J. Trump; he also reportedly had some sort of hard feelings against Rep. Scalise, who appeared to be his primary target at that baseball practice field where Republican lawmakers were preparing for their annual charity game against Democratic colleagues.

As near as I can tell, this about the only good thing to come from this terrible event. I am praying, along with the rest of the nation, for the victims’ full recovery. Yes, the police responded with valor and gallantry; the lawmakers who rushed to Rep. Scalise’s aid also performed heroically.

I will await the outcome of Ryan and Pelosi’s pledge to work together, to put the bitterness aside, to argue civilly but maintain respect for each other’s side, their point of view … and appreciate the other’s love of country.

What a shame, though, that it took an even such as this to possibly make them reach this point.

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Is all hell breaking loose in D.C.?

WASHINGTON — I had intended to post this blog as a comment about the political divisions that roil inside the building pictured here.

Those divisions seem to belie the calm and serenity we saw while strolling along Capitol Hill. We came up on the Capitol Building at sunset and just, oh, took it all in.

Then came the news this morning that five people were injured in a shooting at a park in Alexandria, Va. One of the victims is U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the Republican Party’s congressional whip, the No. 3-ranked member of the House of Representatives.

We have heard as well that Scalise’s injury is not life-threatening, which is good to hear.

In some manner or form, the picture here juxtaposed with the events this morning perhaps give even more credence to the notion that all hell appears to be breaking loose near the halls of power.

My goodness! This has to stop!

The shooting took place reportedly where Republican members of Congress were practicing for the annual baseball game that occurs between GOP members and their Democratic colleagues. It’s a good-time charity event. It is viewed as a bipartisan event that enables lawmakers to have some pure fun away from the rough and tumble of the political battles.

Now this event has been sullied by senseless violence.

I’m going to pray for the victims of this act. I believe I’ll also say a prayer or two for our great nation.