Ideas, Opinions, Genealogy, and Book Reviews
House Speaker Mike Johnson tied aid to Ukraine to immigration reform. On his visit to the border, he repeated his demand Now a bipartisan agreement has been reached in the Senate on Immigration reform has been reached and President Biden is agreeable. All depends on Mike Johnson and his majority in the House.
Continue reading “Speaker Mike Johnson and the failure to govern”
House Republicans continue to fail. They failed to pass a budget to allow the government to continue to operate this fiscal year. So they passed a continuing resolution to allow it to stay open to November 17. Now that we are rapidly approaching that date and they have again failed to govern or pass a budget or agree to another continuing resolution. They did the only thing they could agree on – adjourn for a long weekend.
It has now been 3 weeks, Congress cannot work. Yes. the Senate can pass important bills. But without the other half of Congress that would be meaningless. The House of Representatives is needed for Congress to work.
Yet the Republican majority fails to appoint a Speaker who would be able to either introduce new bills or allow a vote on Senate bills. This has gone of for 2 weeks and may not get better any time soon. The latest failure is today
Perhaps one day we will actually have a fully functional government but does that require voting most Republicans out?
The House Republicans have been trying to elect a Speaker for the past few days. After 13 failures to elect Kevin McCarthy the House Republicans voted to adjourn until 10 p.m. By the time you figure in nominating speeches and a roll call vote it may be midnight or so until we know the outcome. Maybe even later if there are issues or multiple ballots.
So who will be the midnight Speaker if we have one?
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy deserves our thanks for his important role in the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. Let me explain but first say “Thank you, Kevin“.
I thank you and so should the approximately two-thirds of Americans who support an investigation (1,2). Unfortunately there is a large political divide on that and Republicans have prevented the National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex and tried to block the House Select Committee on the January 6 attack but failed.
Continue reading “Thank you , Kevin”
Insurrection is defined as “the act or an instance of revolting esp. violently against civil or political authority or against an established government”. Seems to describe well the events of January 6 in our Capitol. And was based on Donald Trump’s lie and his direction to his followers.
An Insurrection based on a lie.
The NY Times put together a video of the attack on our Capitol and it is well worth watching.
Although Republicans have blocked a bipartisan Congressional inquiry into the insurrection, the House has been able to form a select committee to learn what went wrong and how we can fix it.
We need to understand why and how the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol occurred. There is something very wrong and we need to understand it. We also need to know how on how we can prevent future attacks.
Continue reading “January 6 House select committee”
Let me start by saying that as a scientist I am against the idea of secret science. Science should be an open process and certainly not secret.
But sometimes, it isn’t. And there is nothing sinister about that. And certainly no need to be reformed. However, that is not what this bill is about. If science needed to be reformed and it doesn’t, Congress is the last place I would think of. Continue reading “Secret Science”
I previously discussed that President Obama and the House have proposed 2 different plans to allow you to keep your existing health plan.
In my opinion, neither is a very good idea. Both plans say they allow holders of existing plans that do not meet ACA requirements to keep there existing plans. One problem is that they allow this cannot actually do this since Continue reading “Obama care and Keep your health plan”
I read today that the House of Representatives is going to try to repeal ObamaCare for the 37th time.
I’m kind of on the edge of my seat here. Will it pass this time? Did it pass all 36 times before?
How long will it take House Republicans to realize that the Affordable Care Act or ObamaCare has been law for a few years and there is no chance of repeal unless the Republicans take over in the Senate and maybe the White House. Wouldn’t their time be better spend in trying to fix parts of the law they find especially objectionable? Or trying to be constructive?
What if repealing ObamaCare actually will increase the deficit as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted. Will the Republicans agree to raise taxes to make their plan deficit neutral? Or will they cut elsewhere?
Barack Obama promised that bills would be available on the White House website for public comment (for 5 days) before he signed them as president. It didn’t always work out that way. This is a promise broken according to PolitiFact.com which does a fine job of following up on political promises.
And it probably would have been better to see proposed bills before vote. Well that is exactly what Speaker of the House John Boehner promises. The House rule is now that a bill should be available online for three days before a vote. The public will have time to read a bill and respond to their Representative before a vote. This sounds great but we’ll have to see how it works out. Politifact will be watching.