Head Village elections pundit Charlie Cook decided, the day after Alan Grayson’s righteous truth-telling on the House floor, that the seat was now a toss-up, because Grayson committed the sin of saying something mean while being a Democrat, an unpardonable sin among the DC establishment. Despite the fact that Grayson had no real opponent at [...]

I know many on the left have taken to calling Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, President Snowe. This has been in response to the Democratic party leadership willingness to do almost anything to gain/keep Snowe’s support for health care reform. Frankly, this does not fully encompass just how much power has been handed over to Snowe. [...]

I’m sure Chairman Baucus, Senate Majority Leader Reid, and President Obama are all pleased that Republican senator Olympia Snowe voted for the Baucus bill in committee. Their goals have long been to pass anything they could slap the label “health care reform” on and declare victory. Sadly, Snowe’s support could signal a bad day for [...]

There are 51 Senators who will vote for a public option, something 77% of the country wants. It would win a majority in a floor vote. We were told that we needed 60 votes in the Caucus so we’d have a filibuster-proof majority — so that the GOP would never block a bill from getting [...]

The Senate Finance Committee’s passage of a health reform bill marks the end of the committee process, but only the beginning of the longer journey to passage. Starting tomorrow, Harry Reid, Max Baucus, Chris Dodd and one or two representatives from the White House will meet in Reid’s office to hammer out the details of [...]

If Nichols is going to argue that Obama should go out of his way to boost Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line, he needs to make a better argument for it than this.

In a brief statement before her Finance Committee colleagues, Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) announced that she would vote in favor of this committee’s version of health care reform, often called the Baucus Bill or The Max Tax. Snowe made it clear, however, that this vote was for the committee mark only. “My vote today is [...]

When the President authorized 21,000 new troops for Afghanistan upon taking office, he apparently slipped in some additional forces on the side: President Obama announced in March that he would be sending 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. But in an unannounced move, the White House has also authorized — and the Pentagon is deploying — [...]

PricewaterhouseCoopers issued a puzzling statement today about the report they were commissioned to write by AHIP, the health insurance lobby, which showed through some questionable assumptions that insurance premiums would rise faster in the event of health care reform than from doing nothing. The statement could be essentially boiled down to, “don’t look at us!” [...]

Finally, the long awaited Baucus Bill will be voted on in committee. Months of delay and setbacks have pushed back this vote. The hearing was set to start at 10:00 am. The actually vote is expected around 2:00 pm. 10:13 – Baucus calls the meeting to order. He explains the long process by which he [...]