United States Congress

[GreyhoundFan]

3 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Oh, I'm quite sure that when the whole Russian connection thing blows up, he'll be taken down with the rest of them. Remember, he was also present at that meeting where they were plotting to kidnap Fetullah Gulen (Erdogan's enemey) to Turkey. To me that's a sign that he's in the thick of the colluding, corrupt, treasonous and traitorous conspirators currently in the administration and GOP top.

Intellectually, I believe what you write; however, I have learned not to underestimate the right wing crackpots, especially in heavily gerrymandered districts.

[GreyhoundFan]

Oh, for pity sake: "Paul Ryan: House Republicans will continue their push for health-care reform this year"

Quote

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan told Republican donors Monday that he intends to continue pushing for an overhaul of the nation’s health-care system by working “on two tracks” as he also pursues other elements of President Trump’s agenda.

“We are going to keep getting at this thing,” Ryan said three days after intra-party opposition forced him to pull the American Health Care Act after it became clear it did not have enough Republican votes to pass.

On an afternoon call with donors to his Team Ryan political organization, he continued: “We’re not going to just all of a sudden abandon health care and move on to the rest. We are going to move on with rest of our agenda, keep that on track, while we work the health care problem. . . . It’s just that valuable, that important.”

Ryan (R-Wis.) did not disclose details of what the next iteration of health-care reform might look like, but he suggested that a plan was being developed in time to brief the donors at a retreat scheduled for Thursday and Friday in Florida. His remarks indicated that Republicans may be trying to regroup more quickly than Ryan suggested they would on Friday, when he declared Obamacare “the law of the land” for the foreseeable future.

“When we’re in Florida, I will lay out the path forward on health care and all the rest of the agenda,” Ryan said in the call Monday, according to a recording obtained by The Washington Post. “I will explain how it all still works, and how we’re still moving forward on health care with other ideas and plans. So please make sure that if you can come, you come — it will be good to look at what can feasibly get done and where things currently stand. But know this: We are not giving up.”

...

 

 

This is an interesting opinion piece by a former Congressman from Virginia. He is a moderate Republican. In fact, I used to live in the district he represented, and I voted for him, because he was a reasonable person who tried to do what was right for our area. "Get your act together, GOP, or risk your majority"

Quote

Two months does not make a presidency or define a Congress. But unless the current trajectory is reversed, the Trump administration faces a difficult midterm that could undo its agenda and put House gavels and subpoena power in Democratic hands.

It is no exaggeration to say that the 2018 midterm campaign has already begun, with disruptive town hall meetings, party advertising and aggressive fundraising all underway. Democratic candidate-recruiting efforts are in high gear, and two upcoming special House elections in districts President Trump won, in Georgia and Montana, will see millions of dollars spent by both sides in efforts to create the narrative and momentum for next year’s contests.

The collapse of House Republicans’ push to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act not only exposes the long-standing fissures in the House GOP caucus, it also emboldens Democrats to avoid any participation in legislative deliberations. It recalls the old adage: “If your opponents are committing suicide, don’t stand in their way.”

Midterm elections are relatively low turnout affairs, and history shows that angry voters tend to dominate that turnout model. That is what happened in 2006 for Democrats and 2010 for Republicans. Right now, Democratic voters feel angry and aggrieved while Republicans are divided and dispirited. Republicans have proved they can be a potent opposition party but have, so far, failed in graduating to a governance party. Moreover, legislative stalemate will give the Democrats the ability to present themselves as the party of change, with a wider appeal to independent voters.

The collapse of the Republican health-care bill was a massive case of legislative malpractice. But playing the blame game and pointing fingers does little to advance the ball. The Republican conference has no Plan B. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) is the only member with the legislative gravitas and fundraising base to lead such a diverse group. The caucus should use this failure as a teachable moment. The American Health Care Act faced united opposition from such disparate groups as the American Medical Association, AARP, the American Hospital Association and the insurance industry, as well as the Koch brothers and the Club for Growth. Republican leaders badly lost the messaging war on a bill few had read and the public didn’t understand. The predictable Congressional Budget Office score didn’t help matters.

What is ironic about this situation is that the bill was never going to become law. It was merely the first step in a legislative process that may well have yielded a more popular measure. But as a branding exercise for Republicans, it was a disaster. Note that midterm elections now operate more in the parliamentary model, where voters opt for or against the party in power and where individual legislative votes matter less. Case in point: Half of the Democrats who ran in competitive districts in 2010 and had voted against the Affordable Care Act lost their reelections anyway, as their candidacies were viewed by voters as a chance to send a message for or against President Barack Obama.

With Trump’s approval numbers in the dangerously low 40 percent range and a restless Republican base, the GOP faces a treacherous path. Leaders must choose their next steps carefully. Tax reform, or even tax cuts, could be even more difficult to accomplish than health care in terms of pitting deficit hawks and special interests against any reform.

...

 

[RoseWilder]

This is interesting: 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

30 minutes ago, RoseWilder said:

This is interesting: 

 

I'm not sure about that. It's my understanding that the nuclear option only requires a simple majority. If they can strong-arm every Republican, they will have just enough. I think they can lose one or two Repubs. And that's assuming no Democrats vote for him. I'm thinking some like Joe Manchin, might. Sadly, though I'm not thrilled about Gorsuch, he is replacing Scalia, so it would pretty much be a wash. I'm terrified if another SCOTUS justice dies or steps down before we get a Democratic president in place.

 

Edited to add: Politico seems to think he'll be able to get the 60 votes to avoid a filibuster by Democrats.

[GreyhoundFan]

The WaPo had this about the Gorsuch nomination

Quote

Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, may fall short of the votes needed for smooth passage in the Senate next week, potentially dashing Republican hopes for an easy victory after the stinging defeat of the American Health Care Act last week.

Gorsuch needs 60 votes to clear a procedural hurdle required of high-court confirmations in the Senate, but Republicans, who hold just 52 seats, may not have the votes in a chamber that is divided deeply along partisan lines.

Republicans do, however, have the votes to choose the “nuclear” option — to change the rules and allow Gorsuch’s confirmation (and others after it) to proceed on a simple majority vote. That would upend a longstanding Senate tradition that forces the governing party to seek bipartisan support.

“I think this is tragic,”said Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he doubts that Gorsuch will be able to get the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster threatened by some Democrats — but who also believes Republicans will most certainly choose to end the practice.

With relations between Democrats and Republicans already strained, the brewing fight over Gorsuch’s confirmation and how it could change the way the Senate does business is likely to make the partisan rancor even more intense in the coming days. While republicans need at least eight Democrats to join with them to block a filibuster, no Democratic senator has announced plans to back Gorsuch.

...

A final vote on Gorsuch is still more than a week away. On Monday, the Judiciary Committee delayed a vote on Gorsuch for one week at the request of Democrats. Republican leaders are hoping to confirm him by April 7, when a two-week congressional recess is scheduled to begin, so that Gorsuch can join the court by late April for the final cases of its term that ends in June.

Democrats called that timetable unprecedented and rushed, noting that since the 1980s it has taken 29 days on average between the start of a Supreme Court confirmation hearing and a final confirmation vote.

Coons’s prediction came after recent consultations with senators in both parties about brokering an agreement that would lead to Gorsuch’s confirmation without upending current Senate traditions, according to multiple senators and aides familiar with his negotiations.

The hope was to find a bipartisan group of rank-and-file senators who could negotiate a deal that would again steer the Senate away from partisan brinkmanship on federal court vacancies. A group of 14 senators from both parties warded off a similar impasse in 2005 — but just three members of that “Gang of 14” remain in office. And Coons signaled Monday that he’s found little appetite for a new agreement.

“We’ve got a lot of senators concerned about where we’re headed,” he told MSNBC. “There’s Republicans still very mad at us over the 2013 change to the filibuster rule. We’re mad at them for shutting down the government, they’re mad at us for Gorsuch, and we’re not headed in a good direction.”

Democrats used the nuclear option in 2013 to change how the Senate confirms executive-branch nominees and lower-level federal judges, against the strong objections of Republicans.

Four years later, Democrats are finding there’s little upside to cooperating with Trump and Republicans.

...

.

[RoseWilder]

Rep. Jerry Nadler continues to push for a Resolution of inquiry into the Trump-Russia scandal: 

ETA: I put this in the wrong thread. Sorry. I keep forgetting that there's a separate Russia thread now. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Devin Nunes just isn’t very good at this"

Quote

Sometimes you're in a hole, and sometimes you're in a hole and can't stop digging.

The latter is the case with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the embattled chairman of the House intelligence committee who has drawn a growing chorus of calls to recuse himself from his investigation of Russia's alleged influence in the 2016 election. The reason: He looks too friendly with the Trump administration.

For this, Nunes has himself to blame. And it's not just the White House visits last week. At numerous points over the past two months — and as recently as Monday — Nunes has made strange comments about his investigation. He's gone out of his way to downplay questions about alleged wrongdoing by the Trump administration in ways even members who aren't tasked with running impartial investigations have.

There was the time he called Michael Flynn “the best intelligence officer of his generation” and said the controversy was “a lot of nothing,” mere hours before Flynn was forced to resign. There was the time he suggested President Trump could not have instructed Flynn to talk to Russia about sanctions because Trump was too busy (?). And the time he suggested Trump's tweets about Obama wiretapping him could be forgiven because Trump didn't have 27 lawyers reviewing them.

And then there was Monday. Nunes was already facing increasing recusal pressure due to his decision to brief the White House before his own committee on his findings — namely that Trump and his associates might have been swept up in legal surveillance. It was then revealed that Nunes was given those details by someone he met at the White House. Against that backdrop, Nunes made media appearances and even more questionable comments about the whole thing.

On Monday afternoon, Nunes responded to questions about his White House visit by suggesting he could have been more surreptitious about it. “If I really wanted to, I could have snuck on to the grounds late at night and probably nobody would have seen me, but I wasn't trying to hide,” he told CNN.

Then came an appearance Monday night on Bill O'Reilly's show. Addressing those calling for him to step aside — a group that had just come to include the ranking Democrat on his own committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) — Nunes said: “I'm sure that the Democrats do want me to quit, because they know that I'm quite effective at getting to the bottom of things.”

This quote was truncated somewhat Monday night on social media — leaving off the “at getting to the bottom of things” part at the end. That made it sound like perhaps Nunes was giving away the game and admitting that he was being effective at protecting Trump.

...

Even the most charitable interpretation of Nunes's comment to O'Reilly is that he believes this investigation will lead somewhere Democrats won't like — suggesting he's prejudged the outcome. That's not a good look for the chairman of an investigation.

And it feeds into the narrative that, as The Post's Greg Miller and Karoun Demirjian wrote Sunday, he's having a difficult time taking off his partisan hat as a former member of Trump's transition team. The Fix's Amber Phillips argued Monday that Nunes is making it very difficult for fellow Republicans to defend his impartiality. And a few — Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) — aren't.

But it was hardly just his wayward visits to the White House last week. It's also the unforced errors in comments to the media.

Nunes added in the O'Reilly interview Monday, while addressing his critics: “I say nice things about people. I know sometimes I say things that I probably shouldn't.”

It's become a pattern. And it's really not helping Nunes's case.

What a shitweasel.

[GreyhoundFan]

I love this one: "Paul Ryan, Brought Down to Size"

Quote

“Look, I’m a policy guy.”

That was Paul Ryan’s line before last Friday, when the health care bill he designed in secret went down without a vote, his own party showing what they thought of his policy.

Time and again when he was asked about President Trump’s attacks on immigrants or the courts, his ties to Russia or his claims of massive election fraud, the speaker of the House would say he was too busy working on his agenda, “A Better Way,” to think about all that nasty stuff.

That Mr. Ryan failed on the policy promise that Republicans have been running on for eight years makes it clear that if he is the policy wonk of the Republican Party, then the Republican Party has no policy. And with a health care plan that would have stripped 24 million Americans of basic care and drastically hiked premiums for people over 60, it seems that they don’t much care what Americans need or want.

The discrepancy between promise and reality should be no surprise to anyone who has looked at Mr. Ryan’s proposals over the years. Mr. Ryan has been rolling out grand pronouncements in bound volumes with fancy covers and snappy names, but the main message never changed: America‘s “path to prosperity” (remember that one? 2011) lies in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, and slashing social programs and regulations.

...

After Mitt Romney, with Mr. Ryan as his running mate, lost the presidential election in 2012, Republicans commissioned an “autopsy” that called for a realignment of the party.

“We have become expert in how to provide ideological reinforcement to like-minded people,” the report’s authors warned.

Mr. Ryan responded by repackaging the same agenda for the 2016 election, even though working-class Americans were demonstrating fury at his establishment orthodoxy. They didn’t want Social Security cut and they wanted the “health care for everybody” that Mr. Trump promised.

Mr. Ryan swallowed Mr. Trump’s insults and offenses, in the name of passing his agenda. After seven years and 60 failed Republican efforts to “repeal and replace” Obamacare, Mr. Ryan finally got his moment, and blew it.

After pulling the bill, Mr. Ryan showed he hadn’t given up on trying to make people think he was someone they could believe in. With no detectable irony, he described his humiliating defeat as “an incredible opportunity,” adding “There remains so much that we can do to help improve people’s lives, and we will.”

But he’s fooling no one any longer. Put to the test, Mr. Ryan revealed that all along, he doesn’t have anything more creative in his cranium than stale conservative dogma.

He had helped fulfill a cynical prophecy delivered last month by John Boehner, who was ousted by the same Freedom Caucus radicals who took Mr. Ryan and his White House boss down a peg on Friday, and may yet give the speaker the boot.

“In the 25 years that I served in the United States Congress,” Mr. Boehner said, “Republicans never, ever, one time agreed on what a health care proposal should look like. Not once. And all this happy talk that went on in November and December and January about repeal, repeal, repeal — yeah, we’ll do replace, replace — I started laughing.”

We might thank Mr. Ryan for one thing. His dreadful legislation drove voters of both parties to flood town halls and the Capitol, demanding that Congress reject the bill.

So at a time when many were beginning to question the vitality of American democracy, Mr. Ryan’s failure showed Americans that our system works.

 

The picture with the article is a hoot.

[47of74]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I love this one: "Paul Ryan, Brought Down to Size"

The picture with the article is a hoot.

The only thing the Irish Undertaker has in his cranium is a dried up lump of fecal material that masquerading as a brain. 

[RoseWilder]

I'm not really sure where to put this, but since it's about someone in Congress, I thought I'd put it here. 

Bill O'Reilly continues to behave like an asshole: 

 

[RoseWilder]

Good. No one under investigation for colluding with a foreign enemy should get to pick a Scotus pick. I hope they keep this up: 

 

[sawasdee]

The Democratic Party MUST get a seriously good PR person. So much of what they are doing is protecting tRump's own voters - the marginalised, the poor, the needy - but they can't seem to get their message across, The repugs  are winning the PR battle - helped by a MSM that seems determined on 'balance' - WHEN THERE IS NO BALANCE! There is no Democrat equivalent of Breitbart, Infowars - or even Faux News - that consistently lies and misrepresents.

One party is trying to strip worker protection, remove health care, disfund education for the family of the average Joe, allow pollution of water in the name of profits, turn the air to poison for the same reason  - and use this to finance even more tax cuts for the 0.1%.

The  other is trying to preserve healthcare for the most vulnerable, wants to invest in education and cut crippling tuition debt, protect the environment for future generations, and stimulate the economy by tax cuts to those who actually SPEND MONEY - and thus buy goods - rather than to those who speculate.

That the Democrats can't get this message across is mindblowing. We need a Democratic version of Breitbart....

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, RoseWilder said:

Good. No one under investigation for colluding with a foreign enemy should get to pick a Scotus pick. I hope they keep this up: 

 

Oh, @RoseWilder, they are keeping it up! I'm about to post something in the Department thread about Jeff Sessions. You'll (all) love it!

[GreyhoundFan]

"You expect us to buy that, Mr. Speaker?"

Quote

We find it increasingly hard to take Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) seriously these days. At his weekly leadership press appearance he proclaimed:

We are united around a common set of principles. We are united around our agenda. And we all want to advance the cause of freedom and limited government. We all want to make it easier for families to pay the bills and take care of their loved ones. We all want a system in health care where everybody can have access to affordable coverage, where we have more choice and competition. We don’t want a government-run health care system. We all agree on these things.

Practically none of that is true.

The common set of principles? President Trump does not agree with himself (populist or plutocratic?) nor do members of Congress agree on core principles. The Freedom Caucus remains in the libertarian mode of slashing government, yet its members and many other colleagues disagree with Trump’s slash and burn budget. Ryan wanted to maintain a significant role for the federal government in health care for the non-elderly and non-poor; many others want to go back to the pre-Obama health-care “system.” Ryan wants a huge tax cut for the rich, paid for in part by the border adjustment tax, which is opposed by scores of Republicans.

A common agenda? Some members agree with Trump that they have to move on from health care. Ryan has just promised donors they are not giving up. At the end of his prepared remarks Ryan declared, “Obamacare is a collapsing law. Obamacare is doing too much damage to families. And so we’re going to get this right. And in the meantime, we’re going to do all of our other work that we came here to do.” So are they moving on or not? You got me. More fundamentally, Republicans are unsure if they want to combine tax reform with infrastructure spending; some want to “pay” for tax cuts and others don’t.

Limited government? Ryan’s health-care plan in the eyes of Freedom Caucus members was “big government.” There is no appetite to take on the biggest part of government, runaway entitlement spending.

Ryan apparently has not learned the lesson of health care: Excessive cheerleading, inflated expectations and deliberate blindness to fundamental differences create the conditions for failure. Nevertheless, there he goes again: ““We are also committed to securing our border, rebuilding our military, and fixing our infrastructure.” Meanwhile, back in the real world, it is far from clear that the House is going to pay for the wall, will defy fiscal reality to fund a useless wall, can agree on a meaningful increase in defense spending (Trump’s proposed 3 percent increase has been widely criticized as insufficient by defense hawks) or can address infrastructure while making certain this is “the last tax season Americans have to put up with this broken tax code.”

...

I nominate the Irish undertaker to become speaker of the house of the uncharted desert isle we discuss frequently. He can lie to the Branch Trumpvidians who have been exiled there and we will be free of him.

[RoseWilder]

2 hours ago, sawasdee said:

 

That the Democrats can't get this message across is mindblowing. We need a Democratic version of Breitbart....

I don't want to see a Democratic version of Breitbart. Breitbart is a completely dishonest cesspool. 

I do agree that Democrats need to get better at getting their message across. But I think they've just taken the first step in that battle: 

 

[RoseWilder]

I'm just going to file this under: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

I don't think the GOP has thought this one through all the way: 

 

[RoseWilder]

I have a nauseating update on the Rep. Maxine Waters - Bill O'Reilly situation: 

 

Maxine Waters was asked if she wanted to respond to Bill O'Reilly's remarks, and here's what she said: 

I love her so much!

[GreyhoundFan]

"This is what you get, Mr. Speaker"

Quote

This, Mr. Speaker, is what you get for embracing Donald Trump.

When Paul D. Ryan , after a long Hamlet routine, decided to get behind Trump last year, he took a calculated risk that the erratic presidential candidate could become a vessel for the conservative policies the House speaker long aspired to implement. Instead, Ryan has become an enabler of Trump’s chaotic and ethically challenged governance.

Trump gave Ryan little help in the House GOP’s effort to replace Obamacare, and when that project collapsed Friday in the biggest legislative failure in more than a decade, Trump included Ryan in those he blamed. Trump tweeted a plug for a Fox News show hours before the host made an on-air call for Ryan to resign.

Ryan, meanwhile, finds himself shielding Trump from an investigation into Trump’s and his top advisers’ ties to Russia. Ryan stands by the House Intelligence Committee chairman, Devin Nunes, who canceled a public hearing that could have embarrassed Trump after the White House stated its objection; went on a secret trip to the White House to gather what he considered exculpatory material and then released it publicly while keeping fellow committee members in the dark; and quarreled with the FBI for investigating Trump’s Russia ties.

Ryan now finds himself tethered to a president with a 36 percent approval rating, while the House’s legislative and investigative functions have collapsed. And Trump is now talking about bypassing House conservatives and working with Democrats.

...

Ryan approached the microphones with exaggerated good cheer, voicing a hearty “Hey, guys!” and attempting to josh with photographers about the days of Polaroid cameras. Ryan assured everybody the GOP meeting was “very, very good,” and his deputies dutifully echoed him.

...

But this, er, microcosm of confidence could not withstand scrutiny.

NBC’s Kasie Hunt asked if Nunes should recuse himself and whether Ryan knows the source Nunes met at the White House.

“No, and no,” Ryan replied, without elaborating.

PBS’s Lisa Desjardins asked when Ryan expected to return to health-care legislation.

“I’m not going to put a timeline on it,” he answered.

And that was about all the exposure Ryan’s aides were willing for him to risk. “Last question!” one of them shouted from the back of the room.

You can see why Ryan would be inclined to go to ground. A self-styled policy wonk and anti-poverty conservative in the model of Jack Kemp, Ryan put his name behind a bill that would have denied 24 million people health insurance and given tax cuts to the rich. Even conservative Avik Roy of Forbes said it would “make health insurance unaffordable for millions of Americans, and trap millions more in poverty.”

GOP lawmakers emerging from the caucus meeting didn’t quite share their leaders’ buoyancy. “This was more of a listening session, shall we say, than a progress session,” reported Greg Walden (Ore.), one of the authors of the failed bill.

Trent Franks (Ariz.) said the caucus faced a “tremendous conundrum,” stuck between what his colleagues want and what can get through the Senate.

And Brian Mast (Fla.) put things in perspective with a funereal reference: “Another day over the dirt — that’s how you do it.”

Suddenly, there was a commotion in the Capitol basement. “Here comes Nunes!” And there he was: the Trump ally and member of Trump’s transition leadership who is using his chairmanship of the intelligence panel, which had enjoyed a reputation for bipartisanship, to shield the president. He has even tried to justify Trump’s groundless claim that President Barack Obama put a wiretap on Trump Tower.

Journalists pursued him through the Capitol’s bowels and then through the tunnel underneath Independence Avenue, pressing him on the canceled hearing and clandestine White House meeting. Nunes kept complaining:

“You guys always interview me.”

“How many questions are you going to ask?”

“There’s like 20 questions every day.”

“Are you just going to keep asking the same question?”

(Answer: Yes, until they get answers.)

And, while questions are being asked, here’s one the speaker might pose to himself: If he knew back then what his embrace of Trump would get him — a legislative shipwreck, a caucus in disarray and congressional oversight reduced to farce — would he have made the same choice?

I know I'm a hateful bitch, but I am actually  giggling a little that Ryan and Nunes are struggling. If it wasn't that our country (and world) was being so badly damaged, I'd say to let them burn out in spectacular fashion.

[RoseWilder]

I guess the Republicans aren't worried that it might reflect really poorly on them in the next few election cycles to have provided cover for a president who committed treason against our country: 

 

The Indivisible Guide twitter page tweeted the names and pictures of all the Republicans who voted against making Trump release his tax returns. If you click on this tweet, it will show you all the people (I would post all the tweets here, but there are 24 tweets): 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a good, if lengthy,  analysis: "Is Paul Ryan a policy guy, or does he just play one on TV?"

Quote

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has long had a reputation as a “serious” policymaker in Washington, a grown-up dedicated to the arcane details of how the federal government works and capable of crafting real solutions to the nation's problems. Conservatives raved about his commitment to putting their principles into legislation, and even liberals who loathed Ryan's goals would concede his intellectual chops.

President Barack Obama, visiting a Republican retreat in 2010 to call for interparty cooperation, praised Ryan's work on the budget as “serious” and “entirely legitimate.”

But following the failure of a Ryan-championed bill to repeal Obama's Affordable Care Act that was panned by experts on the left and right, Ryan's reputation as a policy expert is under renewed assault.

“It’s hard to make a case that his efforts have been all that serious,” said Jared Bernstein, who was chief economist to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “His numbers never add up.”

The New York Times editorial board this week wrote an even harsher assessment of the House speaker: “If he is the policy wonk of the Republican Party, then the Republican Party has no policy.”

To critics, Ryan's health-care failure is proof of what they've said all along: Ryan always presented himself as a serious thinker, but his ideas are half-baked at best. To his defenders, Ryan's failure on health care has more to do with a fractious Republican caucus that wasn't ready to unite behind any measure, let alone a bill that President Trump wanted to move through Congress in a matter of weeks.

A look at Ryan's record reveals that although he demonstrated far more expertise than the typical lawmaker, he has yet to confront fully the difficult compromises involved in making federal policy with a comprehensive plan that can achieve conservative goals on a major issue.

...

Back in 2010, when Obama praised Ryan's work on the budget, it had no chance of becoming law. Obama was in the White House, and Democrats controlled the Senate.

Praising Ryan was a nice way for Democrats to insist they weren't closed to Republican ideas, and Ryan was a useful contrast for Democrats looking to marginalize Obama's most strident critics. Those included the ascendant tea-party caucus and a  reality-television star telling anyone who would listen that Obama was a secret Kenyan with a faked U.S. birth certificate.

It was very different two years later, however, when Ryan became Romney's pick for his vice presidential running mate.

Democrats tried to tie Romney to the “Ryan budget” and sink him with it, highlighting its cuts to the social safety net and massive tax breaks for the wealthy. Already by 2011, the president's admiration for Ryan's work vanished.

“There's nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending $1 trillion on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, and I don't think there's anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don't have any clout on Capitol Hill,” Obama said at George Washington University. “That's not a vision of the America I know.”

 

[onekidanddone]

21 hours ago, RoseWilder said:

I have a nauseating update on the Rep. Maxine Waters - Bill O'Reilly situation: 

 

Maxine Waters was asked if she wanted to respond to Bill O'Reilly's remarks, and here's what she said: 

I love her so much!

Why should she appear on his show?  She is a respected (well by people who matter) legislator.  A brilliant mind and thoughtful speaker. Why would she want to lower herself to be "interviewed" by that moldy buffoon? 

[RoseWilder]

I would do cartwheels in the front yard if Ted Cruz lost is seat: 

 

[RoseWilder]

This is horrifying: 

 

[RoseWilder]

 

[RoseWilder]

If I had to make a list of my top 10 favorite people in Congress, Ted Lieu would definitely make the list: