Why Democrats Should Not Be Sad

Boehner Dismisses CBOs Health Repeal Cost
Yahoo! Buzz House Speaker John Boehner is dismissing an estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that repealing President Barack Obama ’s health bill would increase the Deficit by $230 billion over 10 years. “The CBO is entitled to their opinion,” the Ohio Republican told reporters in his first Press Conference as speaker. “CBO can only provide a score based on the assumptions that are given to them,” he added. “If you go back and look at the health c...

At last, (some of) the Constitution is read
The Historic Incantation of the Constitution was delayed for about a half-hour, as various Democrats attempted to get the Republicans to actually read the whole Constitution, which, in the original text, has some iffy stuff about the enslavement and subjugation of various peoples. Republicans said they'd read the whole text "as amended," which means they're leaving out the stuff that amendments later changed. If we're whitewashing the shameful bits out of our founding document, we're not getting...

Is Congress Listening to the American People?
Elected representatives are clearly talking more and more these days about listening to the American People. This is particularly true for the new Speaker of the House, John Boehner. As Politico put it in their Wednesday morning edition: “John Boehner will take the Speaker’s gavel with a commitment to restoring the House as an institution focused on listening to the American People.” The Washington Post reported that Boehner told reporters outside his apartment on Wednesday ...

Promises, Shomises
The paint is still drying in new-members’ offices, but Republicans have already broken promises they made on the Campaign Trail, getting themselves in hot water with the American People and their own supporters. Here’s a look at what the media is saying about the Republicans’ not-so-promising first 24 hours in office: AP “PROMISES, PROMISES: GOP drops some out of the gate”: Republicans have already violated some of the vows they made in taking stewardship of the Hou...

Nineteen Democrats Scorn Pelosi in Speaker Vote, WaPo Buries Story on Page A8
The first vote cast by the 110th Congress on January 4, 2007 was for election of Speaker of the House. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) won all 233 Democratic votes (including her own). All 202 Republicans voted for Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio. Two years later Pelosi secured 255 (including her own), and there was only one Democrat, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (N.Y.) who did not vote. Minority Leader Boehner received every Republican vote, save for his own and three other Republicans who didn't vote. By co...

Democrats Should Stop Talking and Start Listening
As I was watching the festivities on Capitol Hill yesterday, I was thinking about Nancy Pelosi’s request to filmmaker Steven Spielberg for help in rebranding the Democratic party. If Mr. Spielberg reads this post, please ask E.T. to phone House Democrats. God knows we need the help. The best message that Democrats could come up with in 2010 was “vote for us because it’s better than not voting at all.” The transition ceremony yesterday suggests this was not a compelling ...

Americans Blame Wall Street Bankers, Obama Picks Banker as Top Advisor
According to the exit polling from the 2010 election a plurality of voters — 35 percent —  felt Wall Street Bankers were most to blame for our current economic problems. Only 29 percent thought George W. Bush was most to blame and only 24 percent thought that of Barack Obama Blaming the Wall Street Bankers was clearly the “Centrist” position. Not surprisingly voters who blamed either president broke along partisan lines. Those who thought Wall Street was to blame leane...

Holtz-Eakin sets the record straight on the debt ceiling
The Obama Administration and Democrats are presenting Republicans with their first challenge on reducing the size and scope of government with a vote expected to occur in the first half of the year to raise the Debt ceiling to almost $14.3 Trillion. Democrats and some Republicans are warning of dire economic consequences if the increase isn’t passed. Over at the Daily Caller, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former head of the Congressional Budget Office, takes issue with the view presented by the O...

What Do You Know? Nancy Pelosi Was A Historic Speaker!
This seems like the perfect punctuation mark to close out the reign of the hands-wodn worst Speaker of the House in our nation’s history. With 19 Democrats withholding support from Nancy Pelosi for House Speaker on Wednesday, it represented the largest defection from a party’s speaker nominee in nearly a century. The resistance in the Democratic Party to back now-former Speaker Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the ceremonial first vote of the 112th Congress registered higher than at any poi...

Filibuster Fears
Reining in the Filibuster would make it easier for Congressional majorities to enact their proposals—and to enact them in sufficiently coherent form that they have a chance of working as planned and being judged accordingly. As I say in the Comment: if it weren’t for the filibuster, the 111th Congress would have yielded a much better health-care program, including a strong Public Option; a larger and more intelligently structured stimulus; a return to Clinton-era Tax Rates for the ri...

CBO: Healthcare repeal price tag $230B
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- Repealing the healthcare law -- sought by U.S. House Republicans -- would increase the federal Deficit by $230 billion, the Congressional Budget Office said. The non-partisan CBO's preliminary analysis of the Republicans' Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act boosted Democrats' claims that overturning President Obama's signature domestic bill would devastate the deficit, Politico reported. The CBO score on the Affordable Care Act indicated it would decrease th...

Tonko joins Democrats in fighting health care repeal
Republican leaders’ plan to push Legislation repealing last year’s landmark Health Care overhaul is meeting stiff resistance from Rep. Paul Tonko and other congressional Democrats. Tonko, D-N.Y., is planning to ask members of the House Rules Committee to allow him to offer two amendments during floor debate on the Repeal Legislation that aim to protect the Health Care law. One of Tonko’s proposals would make Repeal contingent on a determination that scrapping the health care...

Why Republicans really want to repeal health reform
Republicans have labeled the health reform law a job killer, even though impartial analysts says it won't kill any jobs. Why? Because it dares to tax somebody - anybody....

HOH's One-Minute Recess: Overheard on the Hill
House colleagues greet Rep. John Boehner on his way to accept the Speaker’s gavel from Nancy Pelosi on Jan. 5. Featuring more than 80 pages of analysis, this essential issue provides Election Results and detailed profiles of the new Members — giving you the insight you need on the new Congress before any other source....

HOH's One-Minute Recess: First Day Leftovers
House colleagues greet Rep. John Boehner on his way to accept the Speaker’s gavel from Nancy Pelosi on Jan. 5. Featuring more than 80 pages of analysis, this essential issue provides Election Results and detailed profiles of the new Members — giving you the insight you need on the new Congress before any other source....

When Health Repeal Fails, What Should the GOP Do?
The Republican plan to Repeal the Democrats Health Care bill won’t succeed.  But as my latest column for The Week points out there is still much the GOP can do to repair the bill’s flaws. Next week, Republicans in the House of Representatives will vote to Repeal Democratic health reform. Promise kept! Then the “Repeal-the-Job-Killing-Health-Care-Act of 2011″ will proceed to the Senate. Where nothing will happen. What then? What should happen then is a Republican focus ...

Arkansas Republicans Just Proved They Dont Care About EthicsAgain
The House has voted to seat Representative-elect Fred Smith, the man from Mississippi who apparently stole money from a Public School.  There’s plenty of shame to be heaped on everyone for this vote, including the Democratic majority, but check out the margin: The Arkansas House voted to seat Rep. Elect Fred Smith (D-Mississippi) by a 89 to 1 vote.  Today’s vote basically said they either don’t care that he lives in Mississippi or were not convinced it was proven...

GOP lawmakers miss oath, still vote
Two Republicans, including a member of the GOP leadership, voted on the House floor several times despite not having been sworn in, throwing the House into parliamentary turmoil Thursday — the same day the Constitution was read aloud on the floor. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, and Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) missed the mass swearing-in ceremony on the House floor Wednesday but proceeded to cast a series of votes. Sessions, app...

Video of Ed Schultz: Republicans Are "Bastards" Who Want to Control Minorities and Destroy the American Dream
Look at the voting record in Detroit and tell me who controls Minorities: 2008 General Election results-DEM: 96.93% GOP: 2.65% 2006 General Election results-DEM: 95.05% GOP: 4.33% 2004 General Election results-DEM: 93.61% GOP: 5.93%Democrats put welfare in place specifically to control minorities by breaking up black families, and they have succeeded at that. In yet another case of massive projection, Ed Schultz insists that it is the GOP that wants to control Minorities: Liberals heads have be...

Tea Party Betrayed On Spending Cuts
The Tea Party membership is being set up for yet another huge betrayal by the DC Republican establishment. The members had very clear expectations that specific Spending Cuts would fix the government's Budget problems. The Republican leadership is betraying them by cutting things Tea Party members do not want cut, and are not cutting the things they were led to believe would fix the Budget problems. Tea Party members expected the new Congress to fix the Budget by cutting "government waste," st...

John Boehner Releases Statement On Debt Ceiling
G.I. Wood Shop Inc. Mrs. Peel Oh…My Valve! V The K’s Caption This! An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later. “I’ve been notified that the Obama Administration intends to formally request an increase in the Debt Limit.  The American People will not stand for such an increase unless it is accompanied by meaningful action by the President and Congress to cut spending and end the job-killing spending binge in Washington.  While America canno...

Congress Recites the US Constitution
(NewsCore) - The 112th Congress kicked off its new session Thursday by reading the US Constitution aloud for the first time in history. Newly-minted Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) was first behind the podium, followed by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). In all, the reading done by a Bipartisan group of 53 members lasted about 90 minutes. Some antiquated parts of the founding document were omitted from the reading, including the provision about counting slaves and Native Ameri...

Health subcommittee includes budget chairman
Republican members of a House health subcommittee tasked with proposing alternatives to the Healthcare Reform law were named Thursday afternoon. The nine Republican members of the Ways and Means Committee's Health subcommittee include Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (Wis.) and Rep. Wally Herger (Calif.), who was the subcommittee's ranking member last Congress. Other subcommittee members include Jim Gerlach (Pa.), Dean Heller (Nev.), Sam Johnson (Texas), Devin Nunes (Calif.), Tom Price (G...

Democrats Turned Away From Pelosi in Record Numbers in Ceremonial Vote
The abandonment of Rep. Nancy Pelosi by 19 Democrats in the pro-forma vote for speaker of the House marked a breakdown in party loyalty of historic measure, according to the Washington Post. Not since 1913, when 23 Republicans bolted from the GOP's speaker nominee, has a Party Leader suffered so many defections, Congressional Research Service records show. Of the 19 Democrats who didn't support Pelosi, one voted "present" and the other 18 cast Protest ballots for some other Democratic House memb...

Constitution reading provokes political tussling
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers took turns reading the Constitution on the House floor Thursday, a nod to tea partiers who put Republicans in power. Even the nation's founding text got caught in political tussling: Democrats questioned omitting amended sections that reflect how the document has changed over time, such as one that classified slaves as three-fifths of a person. Republicans, celebrating their second day as the majority power, saw the event as an affirmation of their campaign promise...