Barack Obama

GOP Takes Aim At Companies On Obama's Jobs Council

Susan Crabtree | October 20, 2011, 12:14PM

House Republicans are no longer content to use the investigative powers of Congress to go after President Obama's healthcare overhaul by compelling Obama administration to cough up information and testify before their committees.

In recent weeks, the GOP has launched a dragnet for internal information from companies with ties to the White House about the healthcare law and its impact on business.

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Abortion

Democratic Reps. Unimpressed With New House Abortion Bill

Evan McMorris-Santoro | February 3, 2011, 2:30PM

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)

Pro-choice activists and politicians may have scored a victory with the news that the House abortion bill won't contain a redefinition of rape, but that hasn't made several prominent House Democrats any happier about the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.

"Look, my reaction is this is not really changing things that much," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) told TPM in an interview today. "This exposed them for what their true intentions are. Now that they're exposed they're trying to put the genie back in the bottle, and it's not going to work."

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) wasn't interested in giving the sponsors of H.R.3 much credit for altering their bill under pressure from pro-choice groups.

"It's still a totally flawed bill," Maloney told TPM. "I would call it the deepest attack on a woman's right to choose in my lifetime."

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Health Care

Dems: Leadership Is Telling Members They Have The Votes--But Abortion Still Threatens The Bill

Brian Beutler | March 21, 2010, 3:09PM

President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

Democrats have been told by party leaders in the House that they have the votes to pass health care reform, according to multiple sources.

"I understand that they may have the votes now," Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA), who added that he was informed of this by a reliable member of leadership. "It won't be long before we're able to take a vote."

His account is confirmed by a Democratic aide, who tells TPM that, as of this morning, leadership had apprised members that they had at least 217 votes--the minimum number of "yes" votes they want to pass the bill by.

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Health Care

Déjà Vu? Abortion Contretempts Still Threaten Health Bill

Brian Beutler | March 19, 2010, 7:46PM

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO)

Several members of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus emerged--very unhappy--from a meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi late Friday evening. The meeting lasted about half an hour, and most attendees were extremely tight-lipped when they left. But the gist is this: Pelosi is still trying to figure out how to assuage pro-life Democrats, who want the health care bill to contain tighter restrictions on funding abortions, and pro-choice members do not like the options before them.

Pelosi is weighing her option with respect to the remaining pro-life holdouts--led by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI)--who are threatening to oppose the health care bill over its abortion language. One of the options floated a few weeks ago would've given Stupak et al a vote on a stand-alone piece of abortion legislation.

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Health Care

House Democrats Press Leadership On Health Care Bill

Brian Beutler | January 7, 2010, 4:40PM

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

During a nearly two hour caucus conference call this afternoon, rank and file Democrats sought answers from their leadership about the state of ongoing House, White House health care negotiations. But they may not get concrete responses until the caucus meets again next week, or, failing that, until President Obama huddles with members at the Democrats' issue conference next week at Fort McNair.

"The questions were about national exchanges, about the public option, about the Cadillac plans, about consumer protection, about insurance reform," said Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, and one of the chief authors of the House health care bill. "We told them what things the staff had started to discuss or haven't discussed yet."

According to a House leadership aide, members chief concerns on the call regarded a familiar array of issues. "Many members raised concerns about excise tax (in opposition to it)," the aide said. State exchanges came up -- many Members want a national exchange. Several spoke up also in favor of anti-trust exemption (repealing it) and keeping in place strong insurance reforms."

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Abortion

Abortion Compromise Unconstitutional? Key House Members Raise Objection

Brian Beutler | December 19, 2009, 7:25PM

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO)

A number of key pro-choice Democrats--including Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Patty Murray (D-WA)--have said they can get behind the new abortion compromise in Senate health care legislation.

Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA), author of an early abortion compromise that would have required insurance companies to segregate federal and private dollars, and to finance abortions through the latter pool, is disappointed, but ultimately supportive.

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Abortion

Senate Abortion Provision Wins Support Of Key Pro-Choice Democrats

Brian Beutler | November 19, 2009, 1:54PM

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO)

We now have much more clarity on how the abortion provision in the Senate health care bill will work, and it's won the support of both senior administration officials, pro-choice Senators, and the co-chair of the House pro-choice caucus.

"I am pleased that the U.S. Senate has maintained current law when addressing the abortion issue," says Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) in a statement to reporters. "By adopting a common-sense abortion provision, the U.S. Senate ensures that no federal funds will be spent on abortion coverage while not further restricting a woman's right to choose. The health care bill is about providing access to quality health care to over 36 million Americans. I encourage the U.S. Senate to work towards producing a bill that works for everyone."

DeGette included a breakdown of the Senate's abortion provision, which I've included below the fold. One of the key sections reads, "Issuers of health insurance plans that offer coverage for abortion beyond those permitted by the Hyde amendment must segregate from any premium and cost-sharing credits an amount of each enrollee's private premium dollars that is determined by the Secretary to be sufficient to cover the provision of those services."

Which is a fancy way of saying insurers will have to set up an accounting system to keep private money separate from federal money, and only draw upon the private money when paying providers for abortion. Compare that to the Stupak amendment to the House bill, which both requires separation of funds, but also prevents women who receive federal premium assistance from purchasing policies that cover abortion, and it's no wonder Harry Reid's compromise is being met with praise by pro-choice members.

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Abortion

DeGette: Study Confirms Radical Implications Of Stupak Amendment

Brian Beutler | November 18, 2009, 2:26PM

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO)

I just spoke with Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, who insisted that the findings of a new George Washington University study confirm many of her suspicions about the Stupak abortion amendment.

"Certainly if it doesn't confirm my suspicions about the intent, it concerns my suspicions about the effect the Stupak amendment would have," DeGette said. "What the findings show are that women who want to purchase policies with their own money--with their own premiums--will not be able to buy insurance policies.... That's frankly the intention of the anti-choice movement now."

DeGette says she's spoken in private to many of the pro-life Democrats who voted for the Stupak amendment, some of whom have acknowledged that they didn't realize what they were voting for.

"I will say that I have spoken privately with several pro-life members about the Stupak amendment, and they acknowledged that the Stupak amendment goes far beyond where they thought it did," she told me.

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Abortion

DeGette: Stupak Agenda Is Much Wider Restrictions On Abortion

Brian Beutler | November 13, 2009, 5:24PM

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO)

As co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) is leading the fight in the House to strip the Stupak amendment, which would forbid millions of women from buying comprehensive insurance policies that cover abortion, from the final health care bill. And she takes issue with Stupak's interpretation of the events leading up to the vote that completely changed the stakes of reform debate.

"Basically Congressman Stupak moved the goalposts, and I think it really took [House] Speaker [Nancy Pelosi] and other people by surprise," DeGette told me in an exclusive interview.

She says, after his abortion amendments went down in the House Energy and Commerce Committee (a panel on which she also sits), he demanded he get another crack at it when the Rules Committee set the contours of the floor debate.

"After we defeated him in committee," she said, "he said that he wanted to have an amendment in order on the floor... and that if he didn't have his amendment made in order then he had 40 people to vote against the rule."

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