Today, returned from the six-week August recess to vote on the state aid bill, House Democrats put forward legislation to create a fifth tier of unemployment benefits. Last week, Senate Democrats put forward similar legislation. Reps. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) and Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) cosponsored the legislation creating a fifth tier of benefits, extending the maximum number of weeks of federal and state benefits to 119 in states with unemployment rates over 10 percent. Currently, sixteen states and the District of Columbia would qualify . McDermott released a statement on the legislation: Right now, there are more long-term jobless Americans than we’ve ever had on record, and we can’t just let them all fall off a cliff. I don’t believe how we can cut and run from helping unemployed workers when there are five of them competing for every available job. You only have to hear from a few unemployed workers to know how hard they are looking for work and to feel their sheer sense of desperation. Are we really prepared to just stand by and watch them sink into abject poverty? The Bush administration and Congressional Republicans presided over the implosion of the housing market and world economic collapse, and handed us the worst economy in 70 years. Ending assistance to the long-term unemployed will reduce consumer demand right at the point when the economy is struggling to get back on its feet.  It will surely increase the number of homes going into foreclosure. And it will drive some individuals permanently out of the labor force. All of these outcomes will increase our nation’s budget deficit. But even worse, they will bring about a crippling deficit of hope for the future. Any Tier V bill will face steep odds — particularly in the Senate. Some Senate Democrats, such as Max Baucus (Mont.), have indicated they do not support adding new weeks of unemployment benefits. “You can’t go on forever,” he told Bloomberg News in April. “I think 99 weeks is sufficient.” And Republicans have indicated they will block any bill increasing the deficit. McDermott’s office did not immediately release any information on the cost of his proposal. But presumably it will run into the billions, meaning House Democrats will need to look for offsets for the bill to have any chance in the Senate. Previously, aides have told me that while numerous Democrats support the fifth tier, they have hesitated to bring forward a bill they felt would never pass. But many feel that Congress needs to do something for the millions left adrift after their unemployment benefits end. There are approximately 1.6 million Americans who have exhausted the maximum number of state and federal benefits during the recession. And in some states, there are as many as 10 jobseekers competing for every available position.

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House Democrats Put Forward Tier V Legislation, Extending Unemployment Benefits for 99ers

Yesterday, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) introduced a bill to provide extra weeks of federally paid-for unemployment insurance benefits for the 99ers — the pool of 1.4 million Americans workers who have exhausted their maximum weeks of federal and state benefits. The Americans Want to Work Act brings the maximum number of weeks to 119 in states with unemployment rates above 7.5 percent, meaning 34 states and the District of Columbia would currently qualify. (As of now, the states with unemployment rates over 8 percent qualify for the federal extension.) It also bolsters a tax credit for companies that hire workers who have been unemployed for more than two months. Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Bob Casey (Pa.), Chris Dodd (Conn.), Dick Durbin (Ill.), Carl Levin (Mich.), Jack Reed (R.I.), Harry Reid (Nev.), Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) are cosponsors. “Across our state, more than 35,000 people who have lost their jobs have also exhausted their unemployment insurance benefits. I know that these men and women want to work and have been trying their best to find jobs in this difficult economy,” Stabenow said in a statement. “My legislation cuts taxes for businesses that hire new workers who have been looking for work the longest. My bill also provides 20 more weeks of unemployment insurance to people in states like ours with the highest number of people out of work.” The Tier V bill will prove popular among many, particularly the 99ers and the unemployed. But it will face a real uphill battle in the Senate. First, it needs the approval of the Senate Finance Committee, headed by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.). He has previously voiced opposition to Tier V. “You can’t go on forever,” he told Bloomberg News in April. “I think 99 weeks is sufficient.” If the bill makes it out of committee, a process that can take weeks, it will need to get through a Senate allergic to deficit spending and increasingly recalcitrant on expanding programs for the jobless. Virtually all Republicans as well as Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) have indicated they will not vote for any expansion that increases the deficit. The full text of Stabenow’s bill has not yet been released, nor has the Congressional Budget Office scored it. But Stabenow’s release did not indicate the bill is offset, and cuts are increasingly hard to find. (This week, the Senate trimmed a food stamp extension to pay for a state-aid bill to keep up Medicaid funding and to save teachers’ jobs.) Previously, Senate aides have told me that while numerous Senate Democrats support the fifth tier and other programs for the long-term unemployed, they hesitated to bring forward a bill they felt would never pass. The House, rather than expanding weeks of benefits, is looking at measures like expanding the TANF Emergency Contingency Fund. “That was put in place after the recession hit to help states, basically to aid them in subsidizing jobs,” Ed Shelleby, spokesperson for Rep. Jim McDermott, told me . “It has hugely bipartisan support.” Nevertheless, many labor economists feel the government needs to be doing more to help the jobless — and many legislators and Americans agree. Unemployment is worse now than it has been since the Great Depression. And the problem is not the height of the unemployment rate, but the duration of joblessness. Never before have unemployed workers been out of a job for so many weeks — a sign of fierce competition in the labor market, and the slowdown in the recovery. The unemployed, already organized online, have recently joined with labor unions and other groups to lobby the Senate for increased benefits.

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Unemployment Extension Bill for 99ers Would Add Fifth Tier of Benefits

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After failing to pass an extension of unemployment benefits earlier this week, the House tried again — and succeeded, 270 to 153. The Senate will take up its version of the bill when Congress returns from a week-long break, on July 12. House Ways and Means Committee Chair Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) had introduced the bill, H.R. 5618, to extend UI through Nov. 30 and retroactively grant benefits to those who started losing them at the beginning of June. By the time the Senate acts, approximately 2.5 million people will have stopped getting unemployment checks. Levin released this statement on passage: Earlier today, a Republican Member of this House spoke on the plight of millions of unemployed who are losing their unemployment insurance, saying, he came to the floor with a heavy heart. I think the unemployed in America welcome heavy hearts, but if there isn’t a helping hand, a heavy heart doesn’t work.  Those who are still unemployed should not suffer due to the indifference of Republicans in Congress. I want to list very briefly the basic facts for everyone to consider and for all of our country to hear: 1.7 million unemployed workers, unemployed through no fault of their own, looking for work, will have lost their benefits by the end of this week.  By the end of next week, without further action, 2.1 million will have lost their benefits.  By the middle of July, when the Senate can address this issue again, 2.5 million will be without this basic assistance. The average unemployment insurance in this country is about $300 a week, roughly half of the previous wage on average. For a family of four that average check is only 74 percent of the poverty level. These basic facts should refute the notion that those who are unemployed, who would have no benefits, are not looking for work.  Indeed, the reality is very clear.  For every job available there are five unemployed workers. This issue is fundamentally an emergency for our country and our economy. Unemployment benefits have been considered, and passed as emergency spending under both Democratic and Republican Congresses and Administrations. I cannot understand how anyone could come to this floor and say for 1.7 million people and their families this is not an emergency. There is no excuse for voting no.  It has been noted that the Senate is out of session.  We must pass this so it is the first item of business when they return. The only reason this extension has not passed the Senate in recent days is because there could not be found more than two Republicans to vote for this extension. That is a shame and it is shameful. This House needs to lift that shame off of the shoulders of everyone in this institution and pass this bill so that millions of American workers get the benefits they earned and deserve.

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House Passes Unemployment Benefits Extension

Cops stumble upon SRA ' scam ' in Nehru Nagar Hindustan Times The officer added that Khatri has told the police that he had purchased the house as an “ investment ”. “We have found many such locked houses and have learnt … Hunt for killer leads to SRA scam Mumbai Mirror all 2 news articles

My former colleague Mike Lillis, now at The Hill, reports that Senate Democrats are attempting to win over Maine Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins on the tax extenders bill — also known as the jobs bill or H.R. 4213 — by cutting federal Medicaid funding for the states. As currently written, the bill gives states an additional $24.2 billion to provide health care coverage to low-income Americans as claims expand in the tough economy. The House version of the bill cut the extra Medicaid funding to appease deficit hawks. Many states already have the additional funding written into their budgets. Mike has the details on the cut: Under an $87 billion provision of the 2009 economic stimulus bill, states received at least a 6.2 percent increase in the federal share of Medicaid funding, but that extra help expires at the end of 2010. Senate Democrats have pushed to extend that assistance through June of 2011 in order to help states shore up their budgets during a lean economy. But budget hawks opposed the proposal, which was estimated to cost nearly $24 billion. Instead, Democrats are now proposing to provide a 5.3 percent increase in federal Medicaid funds in the first quarter of 2011, and a 3.2 percent increase in the second quarter of 2011. And here is CQ on the politics : One key swing voter, [Collins], noted that she has long advocated for a phase-down approach to the Medicaid assistance that would avoid a cliff for state budgets. “I proposed it over a year ago, because I thought it was good policy,” she said. [Snowe] said she has been meeting with Democrats about the bill and that they are looking at an approach that would shrink the cost of the Medicaid provision to $20 billion and use $4 billion in unspent stimulus money to cover some of that cost. Then, Snowe said, she has been urging Democrats to look at various spending items in the bill to see if they could be reduced. However, Snowe also wants to remove several of the revenue-raising provisions, which could increase the amount that is not paid for. The delayed passage of the extenders legislation has led to cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates to doctors (though they should be retroactively reimbursed) and left hundreds of thousands of Americans without extended unemployment insurance benefits.

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Senate Dems Eye Medicaid Cuts to Win Passage of Extenders Bill

Pulling the Medicare provision out of the stalled jobs bill and voting on it separately, the Senate unanimously agreed this afternoon to delay a 21 percent cut to doctors’ Medicare reimbursement rates until December. Due to the weeks it has taken the Senate to get to voting on the jobs bill — also known as the extenders’ package or H.R. 4213 — a fix would have lapsed and the cut to doctors’ payments would have gone into effect for procedures from June 1 forward. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have stalled on processing the payments, to give Congress time to get its act together. The House now needs to vote to approve the “ doc-fix ” provision. It is expected to do so first thing next week.

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Senate Delays Medicare Reimbursement Cut Until December

This morning, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is testifying before the House Committee on the Budget about the current economic situation and the federal budget. These are contentious times when it comes to the relative importance of debts and deficit-spending. Hawks — and the American public — are deeply worried about the $13 trillion in the red the government finds itself in and the specter of inflation. Doves — and the American public — are concerned that the sky-high unemployment rate and slow recovery means the government might need to raise deficits more to boost growth and create jobs. Bernanke’s remarks could have been controversial — particularly given that several members of the Fed have started to call for rate hikes that would cool off the economy but prevent inflation from taking hold. But his prepared testimony and the hearing thus far offer a dose of cool realism: Things are bad but getting better slowly, and the debt situation is “unsustainable.” First, Bernanke noted the headline statistics: “Real gross domestic product will grow in the neighborhood of 3.5 percent over the course of 2010 … probably [meaning] only a slow reduction in the unemployment rate over time. In this environment, inflation is likely to remain subdued.” Still, he did not advocate for more deficit spending or stimulus: “Although the support to economic growth from fiscal policy is likely to diminish in the coming year, the incoming data suggest that gains in private final demand will sustain the recovery in economic activity.” He again noted the drag the housing market has had on the economy: “In the housing market, sales and construction have been temporarily boosted lately by the homebuyer tax credit. But looking through these temporary movements, underlying housing activity appears to have firmed only a little since mid-2009, with activity being weighed down, in part, by a large inventory of distressed or vacant existing houses and by the difficulties of many builders in obtaining credit.” He did not elaborate on the possibility of a continued decline in home prices, and the ripple effect that might have on the economy. He spoke about Europe and Greece, and warned that the United States should learn something from across the pond, without scaremongering: “Ongoing developments in Europe point to the importance of maintaining sound government finances. In many ways, the United States enjoys a uniquely favored position. Our economy is large, diversified, and flexible; our financial markets are deep and liquid; and, as I have mentioned, in the midst of financial turmoil, global investors have viewed Treasury securities as a safe haven.” And he saved his strongest words to state that deficits should only be widened in emergencies, calling the current path “unsustainable” ( emphasis added) : “ The exceptional increase in the deficit has in large part reflected the effects of the weak economy on tax revenues and spending, along with the necessary policy actions taken to ease the recession and steady financial markets. As the economy and financial markets continue to recover, and as the actions taken to provide economic stimulus and promote financial stability are phased out, the budget deficit should narrow over the next few years. Even after economic and financial conditions have returned to normal, however, in the absence of further policy actions, the federal budget appears to be on an unsustainable path. ” Watch Bernanke respond to questions from House committee members here .

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Bernanke: Debt Is ‘Unsustainable’

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NewswireToday (newswire) – 05/20/2010 St Albans, Herts United Kingdom – With partnering and collaboration being key themes in British politics these days, the House of Lords proved an excellent venue to mark the 20th anniversary of Partnership Sourcing Ltd (PSL)

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Celebrations and Challenges for PSL’s 20th Anniversary

SF Man Who Scammed Church Sent to Big House Hedge Fund Net A California man whose $8.3 million hedge fund scam targeted his own church is going to federal prison. … and more

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Scam hits Valley homeowners and renters ABC15.com (KNXV-TV) If you're renting or buying, make sure to check property records to see who owns the house and try to meet that person before sending any money.

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Scam hits Valley homeowners and renters – ABC15.com (KNXV-TV)

InstaPrize proves to be 'instascam' Cameron Herald The Publishing Clearing House “InstaPrize” is a scam . Have you received notice you won $1 million? Have you gotten a check supposedly issued …

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InstaPrize proves to be ‘instascam’ – Cameron Herald

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Publishers Clearing House scam – KNDO/KNDU

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This email came to reporters’ inboxes from the office of the director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, objecting to this Politico story about Blair’s testimony to the House intelligence committee today. From spokesman Arthur House: The article published by Politico today regarding testimony of the Director of National Intelligence before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is inaccurate and irresponsible. The DNI did not criticize the Administration in any way – the assertion that he did is simply wrong. The DNI stated that the combination of reality and politics regarding the December 25 attempted terrorist attack is surprising and that the Intelligence Community is trying to bring intelligence and law enforcement to bear on those who threaten our country. To suggest that his statement is a “blast” at the White House distorts words clearly spoken and seeks to create a conflict where none exits. The current version of Politico’s piece appears to have excised the relevant description. An addendum reads: “Blair’s office objected to an earlier version of this story which said that he had criticized the White House for leaks about the case.”

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Dennis Blair vs. Politico

In the face of widespread suspicion that health care reform is stalled indefinitely, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters this afternoon that Democrats will succeed in passing the party’s top domestic priority, adding that “we are very close to doing that in a comprehensive way.” How? Well, it won’t happen by the House simply taking up the Senate bill. “Our members will not support the Senate bill,” Pelosi said. “Take that as a fact.” Instead, she wants both the House and Senate to pass an amending bill through the budget reconciliation process, which requires only 51 votes in the Senate. “Don’t even ask us to consider passing the Senate bill,” she warned, until after that amending proposal clears both chambers. In the meantime, Pelosi said, the House will strip out several provisions of the larger reform proposal — provisions that aren’t permitted to move via reconciliation — in hopes of passing them as stand-alone bills. Next week, for example, House leaders will consider a proposal to repeal the anti-trust exemption enjoyed by health insurers for over 60 years. “Just because we reach a bump in the road doesn’t meant that we turn back,” Pelosi said. “We will get the job done.”

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Pelosi: ‘We Are Very Close’ to Passing Health Care Reform

Republican candidate Allen West , an Iraq war veteran who has caught the attention of multiple conservative and Tea Party groups, for the last quarter outraised the House incumbent he hopes to unseat in November: fundraising powerhouse Ron Klein (D-Fla.). West reported $677,586 raised from Oct. through Dec., and Klein reported $330,140 raised in the same period, according to year-end Federal Election Commission filings. When Klein first ran for Congress in 2006, his successful campaign against Republican Rep. Clay Shaw was one of the most expensive congressional races of the year. In the 2008 cycle, Klein raised nearly $4 million for reelection in his Boca Raton-area district. West was the GOP nominee in 2008, but he was defeated by Klein 55 to 45 percent. Klein still boasts more money raised overall and more cash on hand than West. West raised $1,221,394 total and was left with $707,150 after expenses. Klein raised $1,402,192 total and reported $2,370,674 on hand as of Dec. 31.

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Tea Party Candidate Allen West Outraised Florida Incumbent

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (WDCpix) To hear Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner tell the tale, the federal officials negotiating the taxpayer bailout of American Insurance Group had no choice but to provide full payment to the company’s trading partners, including Goldman Sachs. “There was no way, financial, legal, or otherwise, we could have imposed haircuts, selectively default on any of those institutions, without the risk of downgrade and default,” Geithner told lawmakers on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week. Image by: Matt Mahurin Share Don’t tell that to Rep. Dennis Kucinich. The Ohio Democrat — who heads the committee’s domestic policy subpanel — says that federal officials had plenty of leverage to push Goldman for a lesser payout, but simply chose not to use it. Indeed, an investigation by his office, Kucinich says, found that Goldman was already preparing to take less than 100 cents on the dollar for the complex, AIG-backed securities it held at the time. He’s charging that Geithner — who headed the New York Federal Reserve when it funneled billions of dollars through AIG to other firms — simply put Goldman’s interests above those of taxpayers. “There was only one way for Goldman Sachs to get all of the billions they claimed from AIG, and that was if the New York Fed voluntarily agreed to give it to them,” Kucinich, the populist former mayor of Cleveland, said in a little-noticed exchange with Geithner last week. “If the Fed had fought for taxpayers, Goldman would have had to take some losses and the cost to the people could have been minimized.” Some legal experts agreed. “This ‘legally obligated’ stuff is a lot of nonsense,” said an expert on the Wall Street bailout who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record. “They [Fed officials] are only as legally obligated as they want to be.” That Goldman is such a powerful player in Washington politics (then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson once headed of the firm) could only have contributed to the decision to pay on par, the expert noted. “The idea of imposing a haircut [on Goldman] just kind of wasn’t in the bloodstream of the people involved.” The controversy stems from the $27 billion the Fed paid in late 2008 to settle roughly $62 billion in insurance contracts that AIG held with a number of large firms. As the mortgage market tanked, AIG had paid out billions to those companies — collateral based on the falling value of the securities. But the banks were all scrambling to cash out on the balance because they were allowed to make more collateral calls as AIG’s credit rating was being downgraded — and because the value of those mortgage bundles was still sinking fast. Effectively, the Fed scrapped the insurance contracts and bought the securities outright. “We paid the fair market value at that time for the assets,” Geithner said last week. Critics of that arrangement have long wondered why the Fed agreed to pay the full amount, rather than negotiate a better deal for the taxpayers footing the bill. More recently, the scandal has surrounded news that the Fed, at the time, tried to hide those full payments from the public. The gist of Kucinich’s beef, which focuses just on Goldman’s contract, is more nuanced: Because of a months-long disagreement with AIG over the value of the underlying securities, Goldman took out supplemental insurance policies on $2.5 billion it feared it would lose if AIG failed — much like seniors take out supplemental health policies to cover services that Medicare doesn’t. Goldman executives have said repeatedly that, aided by those policies, the firm was fully protected in the event that AIG went under. “If AIG had defaulted on its obligations, our shareholders would have been protected against loss because we were fully hedged,” Goldman spokesman Michael DuVally said in an email Friday. “But, because AIG could meet its obligations, it avoided default.” Left unmentioned, Kucinich says, is that Goldman’s supplementary policies were invalid in the case of a government takeover of AIG — which was the only way the insurance giant was ultimately able to meet its obligations. Translation: After the government stepped in to rescue AIG, Goldman was in a position to lose $2.5 billion, leaving the Fed with a good deal of leverage to negotiate lower payments on behalf of taxpayers. “The New York Fed had a lot of leverage — a lot of leverage — to negotiate a reduction which would have saved taxpayers billions,” Kucinich told Geithner. He wasn’t the only lawmaker making a stink about the deal. Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) blasted Geithner over the Goldman payments, arguing that Fed officials had “every opportunity” to negotiate a better arrangement for taxpayers. “The commitment to Goldman Sachs trumped the responsibility that our officials had to the American people,” Lynch said. Geithner, for his part, fought back against all the critics. The Treasury secretary argued that — because current law doesn’t allow regulators to unwind troubled investment houses the way they can unwind failing commercial banks — officials were left will little choice but to prop up AIG and make good on all of its financial obligations. “We faced a very simple choice: Let AIG default or prevent it,” Geithner said. Allowing the former, he maintained, would have led to an economic collapse much worse than the one that occurred. “Thousands of more factories would have closed their doors,” he testified. “Millions more Americans would have lost their jobs. The value of Americans’ houses and savings would have fallen even further than they did at that time. People would have rushed to take their money out of banks. It would have brought about utter collapse.” A March 2009 report from the special inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program indicates that AIG’s trading parties were well justified to fight for full payment on behalf of their shareholders. “[F]rom the counterparties perspective, offering a concession would mean giving away value and voluntarily taking a loss, in contravention of their fiduciary duty to their shareholders,” the report states. “They were contractually entitled to the par value of the [securities].” But some critics of the Goldman payments have argued that, shareholders or none, the giants of Wall Street should have shown more willingness to absorb the consequences of a financial meltdown caused largely by them. “Workers around the country are being asked to take pay cuts and accept shorter work weeks so that colleagues won’t be laid off,” former New York governor Eliot Spitzer wrote last year. “Why can’t Wall Street royalty shoulder some of the burden?” Instead, champagne-sipping Goldman employees are celebrating their bonuses this month. Kucinich, representing a part of the country decimated by foreclosures in recent years, preferred to focus his criticisms not on the firms, but on the federal officials charged with protecting the public. “The government gave Goldman Sachs more than Goldman Sachs had any right to expect while at the same time giving no financial relief whatever to millions of Americans facing a foreclosure crisis,” he told Geithner. “If that doesn’t illustrate what the New York Fed thought it was working for — or who it was working for — I don’t know what does.”

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Questions Linger About Full Payments to Goldman Sachs

Members of the Tea Party Nation e-mail list received an astonishing e-mail this afternoon, naming, rebutting, and attacking their critics. Sherry Phillips’s email is posted after the jump. Judson and I have stayed silent in the face of intense media scrutiny and attacks by former members.  As a wife and a mother, I have stood by my husband and family and stayed strong in the face of many baseless accusations and criticism.  We have refrained from responding to many of the attacks that have been thrown at us from other “Tea Party” groups, in the belief we did not want to spread the divisions that are already hurting this movement even though that does not seem to be the consideration of some others involved in this movement.  Because of the many TPN members’ requests and encouragement, I have decided to provide comment about Tea Party Nation and the National Tea Party Convention. We will stay silent no longer. I hope my comments and the issues I deal with in this note will provide some clarity. American Liberty Alliance – Eric Odom’s American Liberty Alliance is a for profit company that takes donations.  We agreed to a sponsorship exchange where ALA would be a gold sponsor of the convention and we would be a gold sponsor of the Tax Day Tea Party.  Shortly after agreeing to this exchange,  Eric emailed Judson and me privately saying he was supportive of us and this convention and did not want to pull out, because he thinks this convention is going to be a huge success; however, some his “influential supporters”  were not happy about ALA’s participation in the convention and asked Eric to withdraw. American Majority – After stating in the beginning they wanted to co-sponsor the convention, they never answered repeated emails sent asking them for confirmation of their attendance. They did not promote the convention and did not put the convention on their calendar.  In fact Ned Ryun spent 5 minutes in an interview on Fox News talking about the Tea Party movement and did not mention the convention at all.  Meanwhile, another training organization contacted us asking if they could become a sponsor and if they could do a breakout session.  We gladly accepted and gave them American Majority’s spots.  On January 6, Ned’s assistant sent an email stating she was making travel arrangements for them to come and participate in the convention and asked when did we have their breakouts scheduled.  I told her because of their non-response, we gave American Majority’s slots to this other organization. They then requested that their logo be removed from the Convention website.  We complied with their request. Tea Party Express – This group has been very supportive of us.  They intended to do a small tour, culminating in an event Saturday afternoon prior to the banquet.  Because of their efforts in the Scott Brown race and their intent to go after Harry Reid in Nevada, they simply cannot make the trip.  We received a very nice email from them explaining their actions and restating their invitation to join them when they kick off their next tour in March.  We will be there.  We fully support their endeavors as they open their next tour in Nevada this spring. Campaign for Liberty – We actively sought out Campaign for Liberty as a sponsor of this convention.  We were contacted several weeks ago by the TN Director for CFL who wanted to co-sponsor the convention and I put him in touch with our Sponsorship Chair.  We have not heard anything from them since. Former Tea Party Nation Members – Several former members were unanimously banned from our site for reasons running the gamut from antagonism to passing on confidential information.  These members have been blogging, as well as discussing their association with liberal media outlets and conspiring with each other to, “Take TPN and this convention down”. In one of their more egregious statements a former member wrote that Judson stated, “I want to make a million dollars from this movement.”  Judson has never made this statement.  He has stated on numerous occasions that he would like TPN to have a million members all fighting for the cause of conservatism! Bill Hemrick – Mr. Hemrick made a business loan to Tea Party Nation at a commercial interest rate.  This loan has been paid back in full.  That is the full extent of any relationship we have had with Mr. Hemrick. Congressmen Bachmann and Blackburn – Both Congresswomen have large targets on their backs and are rightfully concerned about backlash they will receive from the left-leaning Democrat controlled House Ethics Committee.  Because of the complexity of the Ethics Code regarding House Representatives, we have no doubt the Democrats would have found something in that code to cause them problems once the convention was over.  We were also informed by Rep. Bachmann that both were being told two different things by the House Ethics Committee in regard to their participation.  This of course sent up red flags to everyone involved.  We do not blame either Congressman for their decision to withdraw from the convention and maintain a strong relationship with them both. Tea Party Nation – Last February after Judson held one of the first tea parties in the country in downtown Nashville, he came up with the idea for a social networking site for conservatives. Judson and I created Tea Party Nation.  We formed the corporation. We financed the corporation. We bought the domain name teapartynation.com , we purchased the servers and we pay for the monthly expenses.  We are a C-Corp and do not accept donations.  Tea Party Nation charges nothing to be a member and is run entirely by volunteers.  Recently, we have been able to start charging for advertising on the site to help defray the costs of running the site. As TPN has stated since its formation, we are not a non-profit.  We prefer to offer free membership to conservative patriots so they may participate in the political process of restoring this nation to its founding principles without financial burdens, hardships or roadblocks to prevent their participation.  Members are then able to choose their own way to spend their money without any involvement from TPN. PayPal Account – We are using a business PayPal account for the convention.  An email address is required to notify a contact when payment is received and we are using my TPN email account at sherry@teapartynation.com as that notification email address.  All money in that account is transferred directly into the TPN business bank account. We fully expect to break even during this event.  We may even make a few thousand dollars to cover local operating costs of TPN. We have made the best of a tight budget and scaled back the price of attending this convention as much as we could without putting TPN into bankruptcy.  The convention is sold out and we have a waiting list of over five hundred people.  We never did this to make us rich or famous. Quite the contrary, we are patriots who love our country, our members and the people who are coming to Nashville to attend this great event. For all of you who will be attending, we look forward to meeting you this upcoming week and we thank everyone for the support and patriotism in this fight against liberalism.  God bless you all and I thank you for your prayers and words of encouragement.

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National Tea Party Convention Organizers Push Back

This nugget from Jake Sherman and Patrick O’Connor’s preview of the House GOP retreat deserves more attention. [House Minority Leader John] Boehner has told his rank and file to embrace the so-called tea party movement “because it will be critical as we proceed,” according to excerpts from his remarks. I’ve been reporting for months on how, despite the non-partisan origins of the movement, the Tea Party will inevitably do the GOP more good than the Democrats. And the the GOP is aware of this.

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Boehner to GOP: Embrace the Tea Parties

First, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) got green activists all excited by backing cap-and-trade legislation , even in the face of sharp criticism from fellow conservatives. Then he let them down when he said Tuesday that the House and Senate climate bills “are going nowhere” and a “massive cap-and-trade system that regulates carbon in a fashion that drives up energy costs” is “dead.” Now, he’s got them jazzed up again with yet another clarification : Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) insisted today that he still supports placing a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and would work to win over reluctant Republicans as part of a broader bill that also opens the door to more domestic energy production. “To jump-start nuclear power, wind and solar and the green economy, you’ve got to price carbon,” Graham told reporters today. “How you do it is subject to discussion and open debate. But the idea of not pricing carbon, in my view, means you’re not serious about energy independence. The odd thing is you’ll never have energy independence until you clean up the air, and you’ll never clean up the air until you price carbon.” Supporters of climate legislation will have to hope they catch Graham on a good day when the bill actually comes to a vote.

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Graham Keeps Environmental Activists on Their Toes

Joining Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who announced that she could no longer attend the National Tea Party Convention being held in her own state, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has pulled the plug . “We’re out,” said Bachmann spokesman Dave Dziok. “It comes down to conflicting advice as to how these profits are going to be used after the fact. We’d rather err on the side of caution than do it and find out it’s improper… with somebody saying ‘they’re using the money from an event you were at to support this and this,’ which comes as a direct conflict with what you’re doing as a member of Congress.” … Both Blackburn and Bachmann sought legal guidance in recent days from lawyers in the House Ethics Committee. According to Dziok, they got “conflicting advice.” That leaves Sarah Palin as the only politician appearing at the conference.

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Bachmann, Blackburn Bail On Tea Party Convention

At a mid-day press conference on Capitol Hill, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) launched a “Declaration of Health Care Independence” — a statement of principles that they hoped Democrats and voters would sign onto, but not one that would be backed by legislation or one that could be posted at their websites. “On the 18th of April, 1775, there was a shot fired in Massachusetts that was heard around the world,” said Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.). “Last week, Massachusetts fired another shot heard around the world.” After speaking, Akin, like the other members, knelt down and signed a blown-up version of the declaration. Bachmann said that the plan had been set in motion before Scott Brown’s upset election in Massachusetts, but all of the members at the conference agreed that Brown’s election had restarted — not killed — the health care debate. I asked whether any had spoken to Brown about his health care ideas, as Brown had backed a health care bill in Massachusetts that’s anathema to conservatives, and that includes a mandate that defies this declaration. “The principles I heard him talk about during the campaign,” said King, “as distinct from the specific bill that you mentioned, I think are consistent with the language here.” “One of the things you have to love about Scott Brown is — while I’m not familiar with that vote, since then, certainly, he has been in his pick-up truck, and he’s been talking to people,” said Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas). “It gave him access to what the people really think. What you heard him espouse are the same principles we’re talking about here.” “It seemed from his campaign that he wasn’t too favorable about what had been concocted [here],” said Akin. King said that every Republican in the House basically agreed with the declaration and that non-Republicans might sign on. “I think some Democrats will,” he said, “some conservative ones will.”

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Bachmann, King, House Conservatives Launch ‘Declaration of Health Care Independence’

To what extent were Wall Street’s largest firms willing to sacrifice their own skin to fix the economy they helped topple? Well, not much of one. During today’s House hearing on AIG’s bailout, a central focus was on why AIG’s counterparties — including giants like Goldman Sachs — were paid in full rather than being asked to take a pay cut, considering the degree of the taxpayer-funded intervention (particularly since no less an authority than Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has said that those payments were insignificant to the goal of rescuing the larger economy). Today, Geithner said that officials at the New York Federal Reserve, which Geithner headed at the time, tried to negotiate with those counterparties in an attempt to have them accept less than 100 cents on the dollar. “Relatively quickly, and not unexpectedly, we discovered that most firms would not, on any condition, provide such a concession,” Geithner said. “One said that it was willing, but only if everybody else would agree to equal concessions on their prices.” Later in the hearing, Neil Barofsky, special inspector general of the Wall Street bailout, revealed that the one volunteer (of eight counterparties) was UBS, the Zurich-based financial giant. Asked by Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) why UBS might have been willing to make that sacrifice, Barofsky speculated that the firm probably simply recognized that the American taxpayers “had taken the global economy on its back.” The question is: Why didn’t the other seven firms recognize that as well?

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Swiss Bank Is Only AIG Counterparty to Volunteer Concessions

When the health care reform bill passed the House in November, I reported that anti-abortion rights groups thought they’d pulled a number on Democrats by backing Rep. Bart Stupak’s (D-Mich.) anti-abortion funding amendment instead of demanding that conservative members kill the bill outright. In a Friday interview with CNSNews, Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) looked back and agreed with the pro-life activists. I want to give great credit to the pro-life Republicans and Democrats who took a stand in the House of Representatives on the traditional language that was encompassed first in the Hyde Amendment and then in the Stupak-Pitts Amendment – so, I think it played a critical role. There was some anger from libertarian-minded activists that Republicans didn’t kill the bill back in November–pro-life groups argued that Democrats would have found the votes anyway, and that Supak-Pitts would cause trouble for the majority down the line. It looks like a smart strategy.

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Did the ‘Stupak Bomb’ Explode?

Club for Growth President Chris Chocola is beseeching Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), who has long been thought of as a contender for a Senate seat in his state, to run against Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.). Mike Pence is the kind of pro-growth hero that the Senate and the nation need right now. His leadership in the House over the years has been invaluable, and I certainly don’t want to lose that.  But Tuesday’s stunning upset in Massachusetts confirms that Indiana is a winnable race for a principled advocate of economic freedom and limited government. One thing to take away from this: the Club blasts Bayh for, among other things, “the $2 trillion federal health care takeover.” Bayh is one of the Democrats currently waffling and talking about spiking the bill. But he voted for the Senate legislation. So any hope that he can get political credit for waffling seems incredible distant — every attack ad about the bill works against him anyway.

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Club for Growth: Run, Pence, Run!

At a luncheon hosted by The American Spectator and Americans for Tax Reform, South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, a Republican, laid out the strategy and risks of his push – backed by 12 other attorneys general — for a constitutional challenge to the health care bill being debated by Congress. McMaster was alternately vague (no naming names on other AGs who might support him) and blunt about his chance of success. “I think that the courts will be deferential to the Congress on any of these questions, no matter what approach is taken,” said McMaster. “That makes it an uphill battle, but that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be fought, and it doesn’t mean that it can’t be won.” McMaster declined to talk much about the “travails” of Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), but he did must that “on the issues he’s promoted, he’s been dead-on”–a nice boost on the day that Sanford was officially censured by the South Carolina House of Representatives. And McMaster, who’s running to replace Sanford, brushed aside the suggestion that his campaign could help him in the four-way GOP primary. “It could be a campaign issue,” said McMaster, “but right now it is not.”

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GOP AG Suing to Stop Health Care Reform: We’ll Probably Lose

Rep. Edolphus Towns, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, will subpoena the New York Federal Reserve for documents related to the AIG bailout, the New York Democrat announced today. The New York Fed has been under close scrutiny since last week, when it was revealed that the agency had asked AIG not to disclose payments it was making to other Wall Street giants after AIG had accepted tens of billions of dollars in federal bailout cash. Fed officials have argued that the decision to hide the payments was entirely in the hands of AIG lawyers. Yet internal emails show that those same lawyers wanted to report the transactions. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was head of the Fed at the time. The new subpoenas, Towns said in a statement Tuesday, ”will provide the Committee with documents that will shed light on how and why taxpayer dollars were used for a backdoor bailout.” The hearing, for which Towns has asked Geithner to testify, is expected sometime next week.

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Towns Subpoenas New York Fed Over AIG ‘Backdoor Bailout’

We’ve been writing for months that a major hurdle facing Democratic leaders as they merge the House and Senate heath reform proposals is what to do with the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. The House has proposed to terminate CHIP at the end of 2013, citing the ease of enrollment if kids were covered in the same plan as their parents. The Senate, on the other hand,  funds CHIP through 2015. Supporters of the Senate provision warn that moving youngsters to exchange plans will increase costs to low-income families, many of which would respond by not buying coverage for their kids at all. Each side has been adamant in defense of its approach. Until now. CQ reported over the weekend that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the Energy & Commerce Committee and a supporter of the House CHIP repeal, “may not insist” on the House provision. In a separate interview, Waxman signaled that while he strongly favors his approach, he may not insist on it. “I’m not drawing lines in the sand on anything,” he said. Lawmakers in both chambers “want to make sure we protect children’s access to health care.” It’s worth mentioning that advocates of keeping CHIP around aren’t entirely pleased with the current program, which has a funding cap and therefore threatens to drop kids during budget squeezes. They merely worry that the switch to the exchanges would reduce the number of insured kids in the name of expanding coverage. Also worth noting, the CHIP program, while funded by the government, is run through private insurance companies. That means that Waxman and other supporters of terminating CHIP are up against, not only children’s welfare advocates, but the insurance lobby as well. “Many analysts expect that some version of the Senate language will prevail in the final bill,” CQ writes. “Lobbyists for America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry trade group, say that shifting people into different programs could be disruptive and confusing, which could lead to some children ending up uninsured.” And AHIP is a group that knows how to get what it wants from Congress.

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Waxman Not Married to CHIP Repeal

Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, was one of the more successful negotiators during last summer’s climate change debate, winning enormous concessions for some of the nation’s largest polluters in the name of protecting Big Ag. To win Peterson’s vote, for example, House leaders were forced to exempt agriculture from a proposed emissions cap. In another concession, the bill sponsors had to scrap a provision that would have required regulators to consider foreign deforestation when calculating the environment impacts of domestic biofuel production. Peterson, at the time, seemed pleased. “We have reached an agreement that works for agriculture and contributes to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States,” he said in a statement announcing the deal. Just days later, Peterson voted in favor of the bill. But that was then, and this is now. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported over the weekend that Peterson would no longer vote for the climate change bill — even if the concessions remain. The Agriculture Committee chairman said he was “stuck voting” for the bill (which awaits Senate action) in June because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi granted his requests for broad agriculture concessions, but he won’t support it again if it remains unchanged…. “First of all, this isn’t going anyplace in the Senate,” Peterson said. “But if it did and we ended up with a bill that was similar to what came out of the House and that was going to become law, I would vote no.” In an election year, with unemployment still hovering in double digits, it’ll be hard enough for Democratic leaders to pass legislation addressing global warming. Peterson’s defection — should it be indicative of a trend among moderate Democrats — only adds to the party’s headaches.

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Peterson Flips, Would Now Vote Against Climate Bill

This is a starling quote from the omnipresent Larry Sabato, who tells the Boston Herald that Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley’s “light schedule of campaign events” is evidence of a lazy campaign that’s wasted a big lead in the Massachusetts special election. That’s not the money quote; this is. In a competitive state, Coakley would be well on her way to losing. If the Democrats lose, they deserve to have health care go down. That’s right–Coakley’s losing ground not because of health care, but because she’s running a lazy campaign. And if she loses, the Democrats “deserve” to have the health care bill fail. That’s some serious spin — it makes a wintry special election more important than the presidential election, 435 House races, and 34 Senate races that produced the current executive and legislative branches. And expect to hear more of that. The Herald piece also gets into spin I’m hearing from a lot of Republicans — that, in the words of John Feehery, interim Sen. Paul Kirk (D-Mass.) “should’ve just shut up” instead of telling a reporter he’d vote for the health care bill no matter who won the special election. That doesn’t quite wash — Kirk would have caused a firestorm among liberals if he suggested that he’d vote against Ted Kennedy’s life’s work depending on who turned out in a January special election. But it’s become a rallying point for conservatives who, in the face of a less lazy Coakley campaign, are trying to keep up a push against her “arrogance.”

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Tomorrow’s Conventional Wisdom, Today!

Police warn of Publishers Clearing House scam The Express Times – LehighValleyLive.com A second person followed up with her and told her that he would send the check to her with some tax forms that she needed to fill out — police believe the …

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Police warn of Publishers Clearing House scam – The Express Times – LehighValleyLive.com

Not many party strategists were talking last night, but come January 2011, that’s who many expect to be filling the Senate seats of, respectively, Byron Dorgan and Chris Dodd. Hoeven, the phenomenally popular governor of North Dakota since 2000, was already leagues ahead of Dorgan in polls that assumed the senator would run for re-election. Democrats, taken by surprise, don’t have a deep bench in the state. NRSC and RNC comments on the Dorgan retirement were joyful–it “ highlights just how vulnerable both Senate and House Democrats have become,” said Michael Steele. Blumenthal, the equally popular attorney general of Connecticut since 1990, has frustrated Democrats with his unwillingness to jump into tougher statewide races. But Dodd is vacating the first open Senate seat in the state since 1980. This is the sort of race, say Democrats, that the attorney general has been waiting for–Republican frontrunner Rob Simmons had been benefiting from Dodd’s scandals.

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Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)

Among the chief discrepancies between the House and Senate health reform proposals is a provision of the House bill that would allow states to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices on behalf of their lowest income seniors — those eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. House leaders, behind Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), have proposed to use the resulting savings to close the coverage gap in Medicare’s prescription drug benefit. Trouble is, Democrats in the Senate and the White House promised earlier in the year not to support such price haggling as part of an $80 billion deal cut with the drug lobby to secure its support for the underlying bill. Waxman, though, wasn’t a part of those negotiations and has said that he doesn’t feel obliged to honor a deal to which he never agreed. His latest comments, via FireDogLake , came yesterday: “The President and the Senate made very poor deals with PhRMA,” Waxman said, explaining the deal whereby the drug industry offered $80 billion dollars in givebacks in exchange for their support for the overall bill. “Rahm (Emanuel) said that’s OK,” Waxman said, but he noted that under the deal, the industry would get millions of new customers and Americans would still pay far more than the rest of the industrialized world for prescription drugs. “I have said that I am not bound by that agreement,” Waxman said, noting all the provisions in the House bill which go further than the PhRMA deal. … Waxman said that in the conference, where he expected the President to sit down personally, “I’m going to say, ‘Are we interested in protecting the profits of the drug companies or protecting seniors?’” Although the House does not reconvene until Jan. 12, and the Senate is out until the Jan. 19, leaders from both chambers have returned to Washington this week to begin ironing out the differences between the chambers’ health reform bills, of which Waxman’s drug provision is just one.

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Waxman: Still Not Feeling Bound to That $80 Billion PhRMA Deal

All day, we’re re-running our favorite blog posts of the last year. This post was originally published on March 30, 2009. Is this really the talking point Republicans want to use in their fight against climate change legislation? At a congressional hearing last week, Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) argued that we could afford to keep increasing the levels of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, since dinosaurs got by just fine in a carbon-rich environment. “Today we have about 388 parts per million [of carbon dioxide] in the atmosphere,” Shimkus said. “I think in the age of the dinosaurs, when we had most flora and fauna, we were probably at 4,000 parts per million. There is a theological debate that this is a carbon-starved planet, not too much carbon.” Never mind that I have trouble imagining a theological debate about the chemical makeup of the atmosphere. Why do Republicans keep using this line of reasoning? ( This isn’t the first time .) Do they really want our planet to return to an era of enormous lizards and 40-foot snakes ? Ah, but Shimkus does us the favor of explaining his logic. In a word, God: The earth will end only when God declares it’s time to be over. A man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood. I appreciate having panelists here who are men of faith and we can get into the theological discourse of that position, but I do believe that God’s word is infallible. Unchanging. Perfect. Great, let’s destroy our planet and our separation of church and state in one fell swoop. But back to the core issue: Has there been some sort of agreement among House Republicans that references to very bygone eras will somehow defeat cap-and-trade legislation? Remember that last week, another GOP congressman on Shimkus’ subcommittee, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), pointed to the Vikings as evidence that we can adapt just fine to global warming. And in case that argument somehow wasn’t working, Shimkus tried another tack, claiming that carbon dioxide is valuable “plant food” that we would be remiss to reduce. I suppose the arguments in favor of curbing global warming have been a bit human-centric … Watch Shimkus below:

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Best of 2009: GOP Still Arguing for a Return to Dinosaur Era

Aaron Blake catches State Sen. Laura Kelly, a top Democratic recruit against Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.), pulling out of the race. Kelly joins several other recent drop-outs, including businessman Jack McDonald, a well-funded challenger to Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) who announced last week that he wouldn’t run. The others are Ohio state Rep. Todd Book, who was running against Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio); former Tennessee state commerce and insurance commissioner Paula Flowers, who was running for Rep. Zach Wamp’s (R-Tenn.) seat; and Solana Beach City Councilman Dave Roberts, who was running against Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.). The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee bragged about these recruits when they got in their respective races, so there’s no spinning the bad news. However, while Democrats won the Jenkins seat in a 2006 upset (before losing it last year), none of these seats were good Democratic targets in 2010. The Cook Political Report rated Jenkins’s seat “R+9,” meaning Republicans had an out-of-the-gate 9-point advantage there. McCaul’s Texas seat is R+10. Schmidt’s seat is R+13, as is Wamp’s seat. Only the Bilbray seat, R+3, is the kind of district that flips in non-wave elections, and Democrats still have credible candidates in the field; Roberts dropped out, he claimed, because he successfully (and to his surprise) won custody of several foster children. Is the lack of fire from red-district Democratic challengers a bad omen for the party in 2010? Absolutely. Does it hurt their chances of holding the House? Not really.

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A Bad Time to Be a Democratic Challenger

I raised that question on Monday, talking with conservative health experts who think Republicans are fooling themselves if they think they’ll be able to roll back a successful health care bill. Politico asked more Republican candidates about the issue, and found more pessimism. “We have to repeal very substantial parts of it, and that’s not going to be easy,” said Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Pat Toomey. “I’m not sitting here predicting that a president who signs this into law in 2010 is likely to sign a repeal in 2011.” The repeal-or-bust strategy is designed to give GOP candidates a powerful talking point in the coming midterm elections by highlighting what some polls indicate is a deeply unpopular proposal among the GOP base and independent voters. Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn and several House members have promised to introduce legislation repealing the law if it resembles the health care bill that passed the Senate last week. “They can push for repeal — they’re just not going to get it,” said Tom Davis, former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “I think there are probably better targets for Republicans.” A slightly more viable outlet for opposition is the quest by 13 GOP attorneys general to convince Democrats that a constitutional challenge in on the horizon.

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Is the ‘Repeal Health Care Reform’ Movement Doomed?

Rep. Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, talked a good game about mortgage reform and financial regulatory overhaul, but some housing advocates ultimately perceived Frank as all talk and no action. Mortgage cramdown failed, loan modifications stalled and the big financial reform package was watered down early in the process. Next — 3. Timothy Geithner

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4. Barney Frank

Earlier this week, it was Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) being targeted by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which is hoping that some liberal lawmaker will stand up to insist that the public insurance option be included as part of the Democrats’ final health reform bill. Today, the group launched the next wave of its campaign, announcing plans to target Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) with online ads and thousands of daily robocalls to Vermont voters. “The congratulations that Democrats are giving themselves in Washington DC are not shared by voters across the country who overwhelmingly want a public option and oppose being required to buy insurance from companies that put profit ahead of people’s health,” said Adam Green, PCCC co-founder, in a written statement. “Bernie Sanders can be a hero at this historic moment by declaring that any final bill must have a public option to win his support.” Both Sanders and Feingold are adamant supporters of the public option, though both also voted last week in favor of the Senate bill, which doesn’t include such a plan. (The House bill does.) House and Senate leaders are hoping to merge the two bills and have the final product on the president’s desk sometime next month.

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More Pressure From the Left on the Public Option

Appearing on MSNBC this morning, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said that there simply isn’t enough money available in the federal budget to buy more of the full-body imaging machines that could detect the types of plastic explosives smuggled in a pair of underwear onto Northwest Flight 253 last week. It’s a matter of money. You know, security is an issue, but as we struggle with this economy, there’s only so much money we can dedicate to this particular issue. There are a lot of other issues we’re dealing with. And what we have to do is have a well-planned, well-coordinated approach to the problem. Thompson’s comments come just a few weeks after Congress passed a $1.1 trillion bill for defense and homeland security in 2010 alone. Which begs the question: How much more than that do lawmakers need to spend before they get this thing right?

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Thompson: Not Enough Funding to Secure the Borders

Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), the outspoken chairman of the Ways and Means health subcommittee, is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, the panel announced by quietly posting a statement on Christmas Eve. The panel hasn’t identified what potential infringement it’s looking at, but it notified Stark’s office in the middle of last month. What comes now? We might not know until Feb. 10, when the committee is scheduled to announce how it intends to approach whatever allegations it’s looking into.

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Stark Under Ethics Investigation

When Rep. Waxman (D-Calif.) took over the Energy and Commerce Committee in a coup that displaced 28-term Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), it placed one of the most powerful health policy committees in the hands of one of the most liberal members of the chamber. And Waxman was quick to use the post to his advantage. The health reform bill passed by E&C over the summer contained many of the progressive reforms Waxman pushed for years, including a provision allowing states to negotiate drug prices for their lowest-income seniors. Waxman is certain to be a part of the House-Senate conference negotiations that will shape the merged bill. If tenacity is a factor — and it will be — Waxman just might get more from the bargain than some expect. Next — 5. Billy Tauzin

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6. Henry Waxman