Senate // Current

The Senate's Senator

An homage to Senator Robert C. Byrd from YPNation contributor Ewan Watt... more

NankinYP
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19 hours ago
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How the Senate Health Care Bill stacks up with the House Health Care Bill

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) unveiled his comprehensive health reform... more

Future_America
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1 day ago
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Senate unveils health care bill

US Senate Democrats unveiled a historic plan to extend health coverage to more than 30... more

bansheewail
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1 day ago
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13 comments

GOP senators block effort to freeze credit card interest rates

Republican senators on Wednesday blocked an effort to debate a bill that would prevent... more

bansheewail
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1 day ago
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3 comments

Meet the republicans who Don't think rape is a serious issue

What the hell is wrong with these people? are they pro rape? or like usual did some... more

CarolineS
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1 day ago
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Senate to Put Off Climate Bill Until Spring

Senate Democratic leaders said Tuesday they would put off debate on a big... more

Future_America
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2 days ago
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Holder: I Expect OPR Torture Report Out By End of November

Holder: I Expect OPR Torture Report Out By Month's End. "Attorney General Holder is... more

Jenime
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3 days ago
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Shiny Suds

This woman who uses chemical cleaners has no idea that the chemicals are still... more

shinysuds
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3 days ago
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Robert Byrd Becomes Longest-Serving Member Of Congress

WASHINGTON — The Senate is marking a new milestone Wednesday when West Virginia Sen.... more

elsonwvu
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3 days ago
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America's Christmas present: Jobs

Now that the House has passed its version of the healthcare bill, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is shifting her focus to jobs. With unemployment in the double digits and not showing any signs of getting any better, Democrats want to show some sort of progress on getting Americans back into the workplace. The hope is to have either a big bill or a package of smaller bills passed in December. How will they create new jobs? Well the House is looking at getting a big highway construction bill moving - but no one seems to know how they would pay for it - which would mean adding to the deficit.

President Obama has called for a summit in December between lawmakers, administration officials, small businesses, chief executives and union representatives to talk about how to get a handle on unemployment. The AFL-CIO has already given a preview of its ideas it'll bring to the summit. For example: Using TARP money to give commercial loans to small businesses and providing healthcare and food assistance for the unemployed.

How successful has the government been at job creation thus far? Recovery .gov, the Administration's site to let citizens track the effects of the stimulus money, has a big number labeled "Jobs Created/Saved as Reported by Recipients": 640,329 (as of 10/30). That's great and all, but by the same home page of the same site about $215B have been spent so far out of the recovery money. Which comes out roughly to $335,000 per job. (That's just me and a calculator and a few rounded-off numbers - I'm sure better estimates exist out there.)

Another side of the math is that if we replicated those 640K jobs that were created over the course of this year there would still be about 10 million Americans unemployed.

Expensive and difficult!

All right, how do you think we could drive unemployment down? Give us your best ideas.

FROM THE BLOG: http://blogs.current.com/news/2009/11/17/americas-christmas-present-jobs/

SOURCES: http://thehill.com/homenews/house/68045-pelosi-switches-to-jobs
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125803687743645333.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN1651501820091117
http://recovery.govNow that the House has passed its version of the healthcare bill, Speaker Nancy Pelosi... more

afitzgerald
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4 days ago
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New woes for Harry Reid in the Senate: Voters back home fighting mad

Congressional Democrats and mainstream media have heaped high praise on Speaker Pelosi... more

Kelly_Anderson
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5 days ago
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Healthcare Mash Up, Michael Jackson's "They Don't Care About Us"

Think piece on healthcare, reform, and The Senate & Congress' additude toward The... more

HeadCounter
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6 days ago
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Democrat-Led healthcare reform could make things WORSE

WHOO! The Democrats in Congress passed a bill! Healthcare for all! Awesome! Right?... more

asherp
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6 days ago
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4 comments

Sign Petition: Limit How Big a Bank Can Get (So it doens't fall where we have to pick up the pieces)

http://sanders.senate.gov/petition/?uid=c53f1aca-5881-403e-928b-a25980cb4e0c This... more

resolute
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7 days ago
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Restore Majority Rule To The Senate

By now most people have heard the story of the frog that's put in a pot of cold water on a hot stove and doesn't notice as it is gradually boiled to death. The story may not be true: Most frogs apparently will jump out of the pot at some point. But it remains a useful metaphor for how dysfunctional things can become -- in a market, or a marriage, or a political system -- and how far people can go in rationalizing crazy behavior and unsatisfactory outcomes.
I've been thinking about that as I've watched Congress tackle health-care reform.Last weekend, after months of committee deliberations, backroom dealmaking and leadership arm-twisting, the House narrowly approved a complex, 2,000-page plan after a mere four hours of political and ideological posturing that allowed for only two amendments, one having to do with abortion.

Almost nobody -- including the House members themselves-- found it odd that this process offered no chance to vote on what kind of "public option" they wanted, or whether they wanted to add some form of malpractice reform, or whether there should be some limit on the value of tax-free health benefits or any of the other two dozen key issues in the health reform debate. In the world's oldest continuous democracy, these apparently are questions considered too important to be decided individually by a majority of the elected representatives.

The health bill now heads to a much less certain fate in the Senate, where instead of a dictatorship of the majority there is a dictatorship of the minority.

Because of the quaint traditions of the upper chamber, there are today scores of top positions in government that routinely remain unfilled for months because one senator or another has decided to put a "hold" on a nomination. And on any controversial issue, and even some that are not, 60 votes are now required to overcome the threat of endless "debate" and actually pass a piece of legislation, along with 60 votes on as many amendments as senators can dream up.

It's gotten to the point now where all it takes to kill something in the Senate is the mere threat of a filibuster, without anyone actually having to mount one. And if you somehow managed to get, say, health reform legislation to the floor, it would take 60 votes to pass a bill that included the public option and 60 votes to pass one without it.

Catch-22!

Despite what you hear from legislative leaders, there is nothing preordained about this wholesale disregard for majority rule. In fact, it violates the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution, which expressly delineates a limited number of instances in which anything other than a majority vote is required. And it makes a mockery of Senate rules and precedent, which for nearly two centuries were grounded in a tradition of comity and mutual respect between majority and minority.

All of this, course, has developed so gradually that Washington insiders are inured to the undemocratic nature of the House and the Senate. Most days they are so caught up in the gamesmanship it has spawned that they barely notice how utterly ridiculous and ineffective the legislative process has become.

In other words, they are frogs in a pot.

So at the risk of sounding naive, I'd like to offer a novel idea for changing the legislative dynamic, restoring majority rule to the legislative process and keeping health reform alive: Debate it on the Senate floor.

That's right, forget about spending another six weeks searching for those elusive 60 votes to break a filibuster, going back and forth with weak-kneed centrists like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu who can't seem to decide what they really want, or self-righteous egotists like Joe Lieberman.

Steven Pearlstein -The Washington PostBy now most people have heard the story of the frog that's put in a pot of cold water... more

wayseeker
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9 days ago
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3 comments

Is a Soda Tax Fair? - The Checkup -

Just Let it Bubble to the Surface!!

GoodGodGuy
added this
10 days ago
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47 comments

Healthcare Hunger Strike: 2 of Lieberman 9 Still in Jail

Kai Newkirk, 29, is an uninsured American who believes that health care is a right. He... more

JonRaymond
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10 days ago
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1 comment

Raw: Sanders vs Lieberman on the Senate Healthcare Bill

Budget reconciliation is a legislation rule that allows the passage of a bill with a simple 50 vote majority and it forgoes the possibility of a filibuster, which would require 60 votes to overcome, and which Senator Lieberman has threatened, saying he "will not allow" the healthcare bill to pass. Senator Sanders is not worried, having the budget reconciliation rules available if needed. http://rawstory.com/2009/11/sen-sanders-use-reconciliation/

"The American people overwhelmingly want a public option, for a variety of reasons," Sen. Sanders said. "Correctly, they want a choice between a private insurance company and a Medicare-type plan, and they should have that choice. And, maybe even more importantly, if we're serious about cost containment -- if we're serious about the United States now spending almost twice as much per person on health care as any other country -- you're going to need somebody, some entity, competing with the private insurance companies so they don't continue to raise their rates and raise their rates. And that's what a public option does."

See budget reconciliation rules: http://www.rules.house.gov/archives/bud_rec_proc.htm

Meanwhile, Obama, being the congeial bipartisan kind of guy he is, hopes the Senate will pass the bill with 60 votes to override the filibuster. However, according to Robert Gibbs, the budget reconciliation rules won't be used unless they see they are not making progress (implying they will be used if they are not making progress, i.e. a Lieberman filibuster). http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/67011-white-house-wont-rule-out-reconciliation-rules-on-healthcare.

Earlier today Capitol Police arrested 6 people at Lieberman's D.C. office. Mobilization for Health Care, the organization behind the protest actions stated today that this action was in support of the 2 people still in jail from last week's sit-in in D.C. see http://current.com/items/91424582_2-of-lieberman-9-still-in-jail.htm and http://mobilizeforhealthcare-la.ning.com/video/kai-newkirk-and-three-othersBudget reconciliation is a legislation rule that allows the passage of a bill with a... more