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Obamacare
How Grover Norquist Anti-Tax Pledge Could Foil GOP's Latest Obamacare Repeal Push
Grover Norquist
Here's one example of how Grover Norquist's Taxpayer Protection Pledge boxes in Republican members, even on issues near and dear to the GOP base.
The details here were first reported by Inside Health Policy but it illustrates a point Republicans on the deficit Super Committee are all too familiar with. Starting in 2014, the health care law will automatically start providing tax credits for individual market health care policies -- the subsidies that will help uninsured people buy coverage.
Republicans want to stop the money from going out before it starts, so they've introduced legislation to repeal the subsidies. Except, since these are tax credits and not direct spending, repealing them could count as a tax increase as far as the taxpayer protection pledge is concerned.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Denny Rehberg, Grover Norquist, Health Care, Obamacare, Super Committee, Tax Cuts, Taxes, tcot
Tom Coburn
Back From The Dead? Obama Hugs Gang Of Six, Aides Caution Not To Conflate With Debt Limit Fight
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK)
President Obama likes it. A wide array of Senators, including influential conservative Tom Coburn (R-OK), have given it their blessings. Out of nowhere, the Gang of Six's bipartisan plan for addressing the country's fiscal imbalance has returned from legislative hinterlands -- and has become the only viable, publicly available framework by which Congress can make good on its supposed desire for a grand bargain on deficit reduction.
But according to an aide briefed on the Gang of Six's negotiations, the fledgling framework is still too new and incomplete to be included in a package to raise the debt limit before August 2nd -- and it's more likely to become the basis for a bigger-deal in the weeks and months ahead.
"It will play into getting us through August 2nd in absolutely no way," the aide said. Senators on Tuesday, according to the aide were given "a briefing on a framework of what could become a plan," but the imperative now is to get the debt limit raised one way or another.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Debt, Debt Ceiling, Default, Deficit, Gang of Six, Medicaid, Medicare, Medicare Buy-In, Social Security, Taxes, Tom Coburn, tcot
Debt Ceiling
'It Didn't Add Up!' -- Durbin Paints Gloomy Picture Of Fight Over Debt Limit
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL)
The second-highest ranking Democrat in the Senate, and one of eight members of Congress working with President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to craft a high-stakes deal to raise the national borrowing limit, painted a gloomy picture of the current state of negotiations.
In a brief interview in the Senate press gallery shortly after he returned from a tense and unproductive White House meeting with Republicans on Monday, a visibly frustrated Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) explained why a deal to raise the debt ceiling remains so far off.
"It was frank and candid -- that's what they say when people are on edge," Durbin said. "So we have a long way to go."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, Debt, Debt Ceiling, Default, Deficit, Dick Durbin, Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Medicare, Spending, Taxes, tcot
Health Care
Anti-Health Care Reform Tea Partiers Feeding Info To Lou Dobbs And "Friends at FOX News"
If you had any doubt about where conservative cable news hosts were getting their information on health care, and the health care opposition movement, listen to this fulsome shout outs they get from their buddies in the tea party movement.
It's a strategy and organizing call set up by the Recess Rally campaign, to get activists on the same page for a nationwide, August 22 rally. And at about minute 37, call organizer Michael Patrick Leahy (of #tcot fame) pulls the cat out of the bag and holds it up for everybody to see. "Lou Dobbs is very much in the health care protest corner. In the tea party corner," Leahy says.
Look to Lou Dobbs. Also our friends at Fox News will cover this. So follow up with the Glenn Becks and the Neal Cavutos and the Sean Hannitys and Greta van Sustern. Just keep giving them information.
Coincidentally on those hosts' programs, you can hear all about the grass roots anger about Democrats' health care plans.
These calls occur biweekly and enjoy the participation of hundreds of organizers. As you'd expect, the hosts warn of the "craziness of the socialism in the health care bill"--a message which gets filtered down to the people who protest health care reform in the field.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)Topics: Health Care, Tea Party, tcot
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