This just in at Talking Points Memo:
In a letter to President Obama, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) noted their original opposition to Obamacare, reiterated their intent to repeal it entirely, and declared that they would not make any appointments to the Independent Payment Advisory Board.
The IPAB is a 15-member panel whose members must be confirmed by the Senate. The President selects three members himself and is required by law to seek three recommendations each from the top Democrat and Republican in each chamber. With Thursday’s letter, Boehner and McConnell refused to make any recommendations.
As I remember, IPAB is a panel set up to recommend ways to reduce Medicare costs. The panel may not recommend cuts to benefits or increase premiums. It meets only when Medicare costs are increasing faster than economic growth. Congress may review and vote to override the recommendations, but otherwise they automatically go into effect.
“Because the law will give IPAB’s 15 unelected, unaccountable individuals the ability to deny seniors access to innovative care, we respectfully decline to recommend appointments,†Boehner and McConnell wrote in the letter.
But there is a catch: if IPAB fails to do its work for any reason, the Health and Human Services secretary must order the cuts herself. So in a way, Boehner and McConnell are surrendering some of their power in order to appear as though they’re thwarting Obamacare — when in reality they’re merely turning over more control to the executive branch.
So what Boehner and McConnell are doing is just obstruction for the sake of obstruction.
Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee boycotted a meeting of the panel on Thursday, blocking a vote on President Obama’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
The eight Republicans, led by the ranking member Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, said they took the action to protest what they called an inadequate response by the nominee, Gina McCarthy, to more than 1,000 written questions about E.P.A. policies and internal practices.
Since when have nominees been required to answer more than 1,000 written questions? Sounds like harassment to me.
Senator Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who is chairman of the panel, said that Ms. McCarthy was one of the most qualified nominees ever named to lead the E.P.A. Ms. McCarthy currently heads the agency’s office of air and radiation, a post to which she won easy Senate confirmation in 2009. She previously served as a top environmental regulator in Connecticut and Massachusetts, working for Democratic and Republican governors.
“Gina McCarthy deserves a vote,†said Ms. Boxer, visibly angry. “I have delayed a vote for three weeks. I was assured by Senator Vitter that once he received answers to 1,000 questions — a record-breaking number — they would allow us to move forward with the vote.â€
Ms. Boxer and other committee Democrats noted that Republican members had submitted 1,079 questions to Ms. McCarthy, compared with 157 for Mr. Obama’s first E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, and 305 for Michael O. Leavitt, who served in the post under President George W. Bush.
See also Another Obama nominee obstructed, another threat from Harry Reid
The fact that she’s ONE of the MOST QUALIFIED candidates, it, exactly the problem!
How DARE a Democratic President nominate someone who’s NOT a shill against the agency he/she’s trying to head?
Why, that’s at the very heart of Consevatism – regulate something so badly, so catastostrophically ineptly, that voters wonder why that agency exists at all?
I submit to the court, “Heckuba job, Brownie!”
”Nuff said.
Way OT. Terrible Ted Nugent is coming to my neck of the woods for a concert. I send him an email wondering if I could open carry my 9mm and AR-15 into the show. Just wondering!!!!
Hey Ted,
You draft dodger chicken hawk patriot? I have front row seats to your “show” 5-16-13 at the holiday Star (wow really selling out the big rooms). I was wondering you being the kind of pussy that always needs a weapon, can I open carry my 9mm and AR-15 into the show? Got me some front row seats yeah .Shouldn’t be a problem right? Let me know.
I am at the point of deciding not to be politely disconnected when Republicans talk from now on. I am deleting things from my Facebook, usually without saying much if anything about what a pantload the posts amount to. Amazing the hatefulness of so many Xtians. I now need a new piss-em-off name for the ReTeatardicans. Fewer syllables and more fire, I think. It should include implications of lying and whoredom without insulting honest sex workers, too.
Bill — there was some analysis of social media recently that said liberals are quicker to “unfriend” people with opposing views than conservatives, which conservatives took to mean they are more open-minded. But on Facebook I mostly want to see pictures of pets and babies. I appreciate links to interesting news/politics articles, but I get enough arguing elsewhere, thank you very much.
Bill, Call them Flat Earthers . That name might not meet all your criteria in being descriptive enough to express your full sentiments, but it does do a wonderful job in expressing the quintessential nature of their mentality.
uncledad… You don’t really have an AR-15, do ya?
What do you expect from Vitter? He’s a slime bucket. What kind of a man would risk exposing his wife, supposedly the most cherished person in his life, to a sexually transmittable disease. I know that sounds a little crass, but the reality is when you’re picking up prostitutes or street walkers like Vitter was, the probability of contracting aids, herpes, gonorrhea, venereal warts, syphilis, or many other infectious diseases is very, very, real.
His betrayal of trust to a wife I would assume he’s pledged is honor and fidelity to, and the God I’d assume he’s made a sacred vow to before men in which he pledged to protect and to cherish her just shows how degenerate he is.
So his selling out his vote to the NRA comes as no surprise. He’s a base creature.
Reminder to Senate Reprobatelicans:
It’s ‘Advise and Consent,” not ‘Obstruct and Dissent.’
By not giving President Obama the Federal appointees, including Judges, he wants and needs to run the government, the Reprobatelicans get to keep whining that government doen’t work – ALL because of them.
This way they get their cake, and to shove it up we, the peoples, asses, too.
Today’s Republicans are Nihilists, and they are Traitors.
And the American public openly displays it’s stupidity and ignorance with every vote it casts for any member of the current Republican Party.
‘I want THEIR sane Republican Party back!’
I try not to hate, but I really think I’m losing this fight. I hate Boehner and McConnell. Barbara, so glad you like pet and baby pictures – sending more your way 🙂
Yeah, I’ll go by the shelter and take some more cute doggie pictures today, most likely. I sat with some dogs yesterday at a friend’s house and felt much saner.
It might be wishful thinking on my part or it could be astute political analysis, but I’ve got a feeling Mitch McConnell is in the last throes of his political career. He’s devoted to much effort into obstructionism and in trying to destroy Obama’s presidency.
The American people do appreciate a robust political exchange between parties. And it can be said that the political tensions that arise between parties does benefit democracy if exercised in good will and honesty, but Mitch seems not to have understood the principles of statesmanship and devotion to country.
He’s attacking Obama with a vengeance that supersedes the rational expectations of political discourse, and in doing so he’s exposed his racist core and indifference to the concerns of the people he’s supposed to serve.
Regarding McConnell it’s become apparent to me that his mantra is: America be damned, I’m going to do everything in my power or destroy anything in my path to bring that nigger down.
It’s time to give McConnell the boot.. He does not uplift the values of the American people. And he’s a big part of what ails America.
I have a face book friend who’s a fire breathing liberal, very angry.He is quick to unfriend people. My view is (from “an englishman in New york) “It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile, be yourself no matter what they say”.I just don’t get rattled that easily anymore.
That said, my beautiful wife of 39 years (as of today) has unfriended me on face book, says I clog up her page with crap.Oh well, the rest of the relationship is fine.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/heritage-foundation-analyst-questioned-hispanic-intelligence-wrote-nationalist-202820452.html
I see that the Heritage Foundation is hard at work in their eugenics department. As an Hispanic myself, I could have confirmed the fact that our IQ’s reach nowhere near the level of White Christians without going through all that expense.. I also could have confirmed the little known genetic fact that our skulls are twice as thick as a humans.
erinyes.. Congratulations on your anniversary. That’s quite an accomplishment. Dulcinea and I just went over 38 years…so I know it’s not easy.. it takes work.. Please give Beach Angel my congratulations for putting up with you for so long.
erinyes,
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
39 years.
WOW!
I haven’t even been able to live with myself peacefully, for all of my 55 years on this planet!
Thanks,Swami.She needs a trophy for sure.
Thanks Gulag.It would have been a beautiful evening, but I couldn’t get the image of Barney Frank and his wife out of my head; they have destroyed the sanctimony of our marriage (HA!).
Did Barney get one of those trophy wives? All those politicians seem to go for the trophy wives. Look at Newt with that vixen Callista.. Every time I see her I think, boy is she hot. Lucky Newt. ¡Callista es muy caliente!