TPMDC John Yarmuth
Health Care
Kentucky Dem Broadsides Mitch McConnell For 'Dishonesty' On Obamacare
An outspoken Kentucky Democrat is directing an unusually pointed attack at a member of his own delegation. And not just any member -- the single biggest target.
Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) laid in to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in a letter delivered last week for misleading their mutual constituents about the facts and benefits of President Obama's health care law.
And in a follow-up interview, Yarmuth again attacked McConnell, his former ally, for putting partisan politics before representing the people of his state.
"I've known Mitch for 40 years," said Yarmuth. "We were political allies at one point. I was a Republican 'til 1985. In recent years, as I've said publicly before, he has a considerable knack for being scrupulously accurate and rarely honest."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, Health Care, John Yarmuth, Obamacare
Paul Ryan
Dem Decries GOP's 'Harry Potter Budget Plan'
Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY)
Despite widespread criticism, the House passed the GOP budget plan on largely partisan lines before leaving for a two-week recess Friday, prompting an angry outcry from Democrats on the Budget Committee who are starting to get more creative in their taunts.
After the budget vote, Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) labeled it the "Harry Potter Budget Plan."
"Don't worry about actual economic measurements," he said. "Just wave a magic wand and it all adds up."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Budget, Budget Committee, House Democrats, House Republicans, John Yarmuth, Medicare, Paul Ryan, Senate Democrats
Health Care
Now Is Our Health Care Moment, House Democrats Say
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
In the basement of the Capitol Wednesday, House Democrats gathered to do something that would have been almost unheard of in, say, October of 2010: openly discuss the health care law they passed last March. But he House vote to repeal the law, which came courtesy of the newly-crowned Republican majority Wednesday, has turned the minority Democratic caucus into a lean, mean, health care bill-defending machine.
It was quite a change from the party of election 2010, which seemed more interested in discussing just about anything else than the landmark law that was at the center of President Obama's domestic policy agenda and dominated political discussion for more than a year.
Reporters in the room Wednesday afternoon -- part of a "bloggers row" set up by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to set the stage for the Republican-led repeal vote -- noticed the change in tone on the health care law, and we asked the Democrats to explain what happened.
The simple answer, from multiple Democrats today: The law that was just a vague plan to improve the nation's health care delivery system for much of 2010 is now beginning to go into effect, meaning that Democrats now have something tangible to defend. And thanks to the voters in November, most of the Democrats who were really wary of reform (and voted against it when it came up) are now gone.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Bruce Braley, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Democrats, Health Care, Jim McDermott, John Yarmuth, Nancy Pelosi, Rosa DeLauro
Health Care
Democrats Welcome Health Care Spending Fight With Republicans
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)
As much as conservatives would like Wednesday's House vote on repealing health care to be binding, it's really just symbolic. The Republicans' real legislative leverage over the bill will come during spending fights later this year, when the GOP appropriators in the House can demand funding cuts to stymie the implementation of the law.
Democrats in the Senate will object, and if the two chambers don't break the gridlock, it could even lead to a government shutdown. To push the GOP back from the brink, Democrats will cast the skirmish with Republicans not as an abstract fight over spending, but as a disagreement between the parties over providing benefits to people.
At a health care event in the basement of the Capitol on Wednesday, top Democrats laid this strategy out. "I think we have to discreetly respond, 'This is what withholding funding for this aspect of [the law] -- this is what it means to you,'" said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Appropriations, Government Shutdown, Health Care, John Yarmuth, Medicaid, Nancy Pelosi, Republicans, Spending
Nancy Pelosi
Pelosi To Run For Minority Leader
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
Speaker Nancy Pelosi just announced that she's running for House Minority Leader.
Pelosi broke the news on Twitter, "Driven by the urgency of creating jobs & protecting #hcr, #wsr, Social Security & Medicare, I am running for Dem Leader."
(#hcr stands for health care reform, #wsr stands for Wall Street reform.)
You can read her letter to colleagues announcing her intention here.
For the last three days, gaming out whether Pelosi would make this call has become a favorite parlor game in Washington.
Starting yesterday, sources close to her floated the possibility of a run as a trial balloon, and she herself acknowledged that she was weighing the possibility. Just this morning, numerous Democratic aides gamed out what would factor into her decision.
Topics: 2010 elections, Dan Boren, House Minority Leader, Jason Altmire, John Yarmuth, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer
KY-03
KY GOPer On Gender Discrimination: I'll Believe In It When I See It (VIDEO)
Todd Lally
In Kentucky, one Republican is standing firm against the concept of gender discrimination. Todd Lally, insurgent GOP nominee for Congress in the state's 3rd Congressional District, says he's never personally seen women be discriminated against -- and therefore, he says, gender discrimination may not exist at all.
Even in this so-called Year Of The Woman in politics, the vast majority of women casting ballots this year will find themselves choosing between two men to represent them in elected office. And in Kentucky, the choice includes one man who seems to base his entire knowledge of women's professional lives on the experience of his very successful wife and his own workplace observations.
The Democrat in the race, incumbent Rep. John Yarmuth, is making hay out of Tally's position, recently calling him out at a televised debate with facts and figures about women in Kentucky workplaces. Lally's response at the debate was essentially to shrug his shoulders and again say he doesn't know from gender discrimination.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: 2010 elections, House '10, John Yarmuth, KY-03, Todd Lally
Rand Paul
KY Rep: Rand Paul Has 'Embarrassed Kentuckians In The Eyes Of The World'
Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY)
Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) has some strong words for fellow Bluegrass State politician Rand Paul (R). Just a day after Paul handily won the Republican Senate nomination, Yarmuth said the tea party favorite has tarnished Kentucky's image with his highly publicized comments about the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
"Rand Paul has already embarrassed Kentuckians in the eyes of the world," Yarmouth said in a statement. "The Commonwealth deserves better because we are better - and I call on Mitch McConnell and my other colleagues in the Kentucky Congressional Delegation to join me in condemning his despicable views."
Yarmouth called Paul's libertarian take on the landmark 1964 law -- Paul takes issue with portions of the legislation banning discrimination in private businesses -- "simply appalling."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Civil Rights Act, John Yarmuth, Rand Paul
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