Qtec
01-07-2011, 04:09 AM
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Pete Sessions Breaks Rules, Briefly Shuts Down Rules Committee
Call it a stumble out of the gate. Or a failure to find the gate entirely. Veteran Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) and freshman Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA) <span style='font-size: 20pt'>failed to make the official swearing in ceremony yesterday, a violation of the Constitution </span>that has sent Republicans scrambling and briefly brought an end to the new majority's push to repeal the health care reform law.
While the rest of the House was being made official in the chamber, Sessions and Fitzpatrick were outside the room at an event for Fitzpatrick supporters. The pair reportedly took their oath to a televised image from inside the chamber. Huffington Post's Ryan Grimm reports the event was part of fundraiser for Fitzpatrick.
Freshly-minted House Rules Committee chair David Dreier (R-CA) had to recess hearings on repealing the health care law after he learned that Sessions, a member of the committee, was not in fact a Constitutionally-valid member of the 112th Congress. Sessions had been casting votes all day like the duly-sworn members on the committee.
Dreier spokesperson Jo Maney told TPM that she "didn't know it happened" that Sessions wasn't sworn in, but after Dreier found out about it, he recessed the hearing to sort out the mess.
Sessions has now been officially sworn in as required by the Constitution, Maney said. The same goes for Fitzpatrick, she said, though that's of less concern to the health care repeal as he's not a member of the Rules Committee like Sessions is. <u>But the failure to be sworn in could mean the rules package the House passed on Wednesday doesn't count, according to Roll Call.</u> <span style='font-size: 14pt'>The action is now behind the scenes, as Speaker John Boehner tries to persuade House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to agree to a unanimous consent decree that would make all the work Sessions and Fitzpatrick did over the past day count retroactively.
</span>
Pelosi's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how that process is going. </div></div>
LOL
link (http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/01/pete-sessions-breaks-rules-shuts-down-rules-committee-1.php?ref=fpa)
What else?
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">House Reading Amended Slavery-Free Constitution This Morning
Instead of reading the Constitution in its entirety, House members will read an "amended version" that only includes the sections and amendments that were not changed at a later date. The decision in part will allow members to avoid reading less pleasant sections, like the clause in Article 1, Section 2, which counted black slaves as three-fifths of a person.
The reading of the Constitution on the House floor has never been done before, and it's only happening today thanks to the tea party. Throughout the campaign last year, "returning to the Constitution" (in a vague and largely undefined way) was sacred to the tea party, and supporters of reading the document aloud today seem to hope that hearing the words in the House chamber will cause members to adhere to the document more closely.
Democrats and Republicans are expected to participate in the reading, but not all members of Congress think it's a worthy use of their time. </div></div>
A total waste of time and money.
What else?
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">CBO: <span style='font-size: 17pt'>GOP Health Care Repeal Adds $230 Billion to Deficit</span>
Today is shaping up as a very bad day for the quixotic GOP effort to repeal the 2010 health care reform law. <span style="color: #990000">Even as the number two House Republican Eric Cantor was telling the CBS Early Show that the Affordable Care Act is full of "budget gimmickry" that "costs over $1 trillion," <u>the Congressional Budget Office was making a liar out of him.</u></span> As the new CBO analysis revealed, the GOP's repeal effort <span style='font-size: 20pt'>wouldn't merely deny health care coverage to 32 million Americans, over the next decade Republicans would add a staggering $230 billion to the national debt.</span>
As ThinkProgress summed up the findings from the CBO, the GOP's H.R. 2, the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act would not only lead to higher out of pocket costs, reduced benefits and saddle employers with higher premiums. Over the next 10 years and beyond, budget-busting Republicans if successful would unleash a flood of red ink:
"Consequently, over the 2012-2021 period, the effect of H.R. 2 on federal deficits as a result of changes in direct spending and revenues is likely to be an increase in the vicinity of $230 billion, plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes to CBO's and JCT's projections for that period..."
"Correspondingly, CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 2 would increase federal deficits in the decade after 2019 by an amount that is in a broad range around one-half percent of GDP, plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes that CBO and JCT will include in the forthcoming estimate. For the decade beginning after 2021, the effect of H.R. 2 on federal deficits as a share of the economy would probably be somewhat larger."
For his part, Rep. Cantor remains unencumbered - and undeterred - by the truth.
On Wednesday, Cantor tried to brush off the CBO's inconvenient truth. "About the budget implications, I think most people understand that the CBO did the job it was asked to do by the then-Democrat majority, and it was really comparing apples to oranges," Cantor said. "It talked about 10 years' worth of tax hikes and six years' worth of benefits. Everyone knows beyond the 10-year window, this bill has the potential to bankrupt this federal government as well as the states." Today, as CBS reported, he doubled down:
Cantor also disputed the claim, put forth by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, that the health care reform bill passed by Congress last year will actually reduce the deficit by $143 billion, calling the figure "budget gimmickry."
"I think what we do know is the health care bill costs over $1 trillion," Cantor told Hill. "And we know it was full of budget gimmickry. And it spends money we don't have in this country."
Even before the CBO published its latest report pulling the rug out from under the Republicans' bogus budget claims, Ezra Klein of the Washington Post responded, "Repealing health-care reform would cost hundreds of billions of dollars -- and Eric Cantor knows it." </div></div>
There is a lot more but all this incompetence, lies and broken promises <span style='font-size: 14pt'>on the first day!</span>
They do like to set records.
Q
Q
Call it a stumble out of the gate. Or a failure to find the gate entirely. Veteran Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) and freshman Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA) <span style='font-size: 20pt'>failed to make the official swearing in ceremony yesterday, a violation of the Constitution </span>that has sent Republicans scrambling and briefly brought an end to the new majority's push to repeal the health care reform law.
While the rest of the House was being made official in the chamber, Sessions and Fitzpatrick were outside the room at an event for Fitzpatrick supporters. The pair reportedly took their oath to a televised image from inside the chamber. Huffington Post's Ryan Grimm reports the event was part of fundraiser for Fitzpatrick.
Freshly-minted House Rules Committee chair David Dreier (R-CA) had to recess hearings on repealing the health care law after he learned that Sessions, a member of the committee, was not in fact a Constitutionally-valid member of the 112th Congress. Sessions had been casting votes all day like the duly-sworn members on the committee.
Dreier spokesperson Jo Maney told TPM that she "didn't know it happened" that Sessions wasn't sworn in, but after Dreier found out about it, he recessed the hearing to sort out the mess.
Sessions has now been officially sworn in as required by the Constitution, Maney said. The same goes for Fitzpatrick, she said, though that's of less concern to the health care repeal as he's not a member of the Rules Committee like Sessions is. <u>But the failure to be sworn in could mean the rules package the House passed on Wednesday doesn't count, according to Roll Call.</u> <span style='font-size: 14pt'>The action is now behind the scenes, as Speaker John Boehner tries to persuade House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to agree to a unanimous consent decree that would make all the work Sessions and Fitzpatrick did over the past day count retroactively.
</span>
Pelosi's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how that process is going. </div></div>
LOL
link (http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/01/pete-sessions-breaks-rules-shuts-down-rules-committee-1.php?ref=fpa)
What else?
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">House Reading Amended Slavery-Free Constitution This Morning
Instead of reading the Constitution in its entirety, House members will read an "amended version" that only includes the sections and amendments that were not changed at a later date. The decision in part will allow members to avoid reading less pleasant sections, like the clause in Article 1, Section 2, which counted black slaves as three-fifths of a person.
The reading of the Constitution on the House floor has never been done before, and it's only happening today thanks to the tea party. Throughout the campaign last year, "returning to the Constitution" (in a vague and largely undefined way) was sacred to the tea party, and supporters of reading the document aloud today seem to hope that hearing the words in the House chamber will cause members to adhere to the document more closely.
Democrats and Republicans are expected to participate in the reading, but not all members of Congress think it's a worthy use of their time. </div></div>
A total waste of time and money.
What else?
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">CBO: <span style='font-size: 17pt'>GOP Health Care Repeal Adds $230 Billion to Deficit</span>
Today is shaping up as a very bad day for the quixotic GOP effort to repeal the 2010 health care reform law. <span style="color: #990000">Even as the number two House Republican Eric Cantor was telling the CBS Early Show that the Affordable Care Act is full of "budget gimmickry" that "costs over $1 trillion," <u>the Congressional Budget Office was making a liar out of him.</u></span> As the new CBO analysis revealed, the GOP's repeal effort <span style='font-size: 20pt'>wouldn't merely deny health care coverage to 32 million Americans, over the next decade Republicans would add a staggering $230 billion to the national debt.</span>
As ThinkProgress summed up the findings from the CBO, the GOP's H.R. 2, the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act would not only lead to higher out of pocket costs, reduced benefits and saddle employers with higher premiums. Over the next 10 years and beyond, budget-busting Republicans if successful would unleash a flood of red ink:
"Consequently, over the 2012-2021 period, the effect of H.R. 2 on federal deficits as a result of changes in direct spending and revenues is likely to be an increase in the vicinity of $230 billion, plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes to CBO's and JCT's projections for that period..."
"Correspondingly, CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 2 would increase federal deficits in the decade after 2019 by an amount that is in a broad range around one-half percent of GDP, plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes that CBO and JCT will include in the forthcoming estimate. For the decade beginning after 2021, the effect of H.R. 2 on federal deficits as a share of the economy would probably be somewhat larger."
For his part, Rep. Cantor remains unencumbered - and undeterred - by the truth.
On Wednesday, Cantor tried to brush off the CBO's inconvenient truth. "About the budget implications, I think most people understand that the CBO did the job it was asked to do by the then-Democrat majority, and it was really comparing apples to oranges," Cantor said. "It talked about 10 years' worth of tax hikes and six years' worth of benefits. Everyone knows beyond the 10-year window, this bill has the potential to bankrupt this federal government as well as the states." Today, as CBS reported, he doubled down:
Cantor also disputed the claim, put forth by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, that the health care reform bill passed by Congress last year will actually reduce the deficit by $143 billion, calling the figure "budget gimmickry."
"I think what we do know is the health care bill costs over $1 trillion," Cantor told Hill. "And we know it was full of budget gimmickry. And it spends money we don't have in this country."
Even before the CBO published its latest report pulling the rug out from under the Republicans' bogus budget claims, Ezra Klein of the Washington Post responded, "Repealing health-care reform would cost hundreds of billions of dollars -- and Eric Cantor knows it." </div></div>
There is a lot more but all this incompetence, lies and broken promises <span style='font-size: 14pt'>on the first day!</span>
They do like to set records.
Q
Q