Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., made news Monday by appearing open to using budget reconciliation to pass president Obama's health care package. She told an Associated Press reporter she wanted to see what is included in the package before deciding. On Tuesday morning, she either had a change of heart or didn't really mean to that she would consider the parliamentary tactic, which would allow the Senate to pass the bill with 51 votes instead of the usual 60.
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Washington Post -- Obama launches attack on health insurance companies
A deadly consensus being reached about Obamacare is that it does not control costs but does seek to regulate prices.
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House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, talked to reporters after the extraordinary public Q and A between the GOP and President Obama in Baltimore this afternoon.
Boehner said he believes Obama will honor his pledge to have regular meetings with the GOP, but that any further effort at bipartisanship could be hampered by House Democrats.
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Obama answered a criticism from House Republicans, who he is meeting with in Baltimore, about not airing the health care reform talks on C-Span.Obama told the GOP that most of the health care negotiations were televised during committee hearings, but he appears to be admitting the late-stage talks that took place in the closed offices of Senate and House Democratic leadership may have been a mistake.
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The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday assailed President Obama for criticizing a Supreme Court ruling during his State of the Union speech.Obama told the audience, which included most of the nine justices, that the court had reversed a century of law and opened the floodgates to special interests and foreign countries to spend without limits on election.
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The White House released these excerpts of the President’s State of the Union Address:
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At the bottom of this post, I've pasted a State of the Union excerpt released by the White House, regarding lobbyists, special interests, and government ethics. Here, let me fact-check some of his claims, many of which could easily spur a Joe Wilson-type outburst from people more familiar with the facts:
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Mary Katharine Ham notes that President Obama tells ABC:
“Let's just clarify. I didn't make a bunch of deals [on health care]. ... There is a legislative process that is taking place in Congress and I am happy to own up to the fact that I have not changed Congress and how it operates the way I would have liked.”
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New York Times -- Obama Seeks Freeze on Many Domestic Programs
John Boehner’s spokesman, Michael Steel, said that the president’s proposed budget freeze was like going on a diet after winning a pie eating contest.
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You have to wonder why some supervisors want to wrest control over The City’s transit agency since it’s proving it can crash by itself. Showing just how far off-track they are from their fare-laden public, officials from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency broached the idea of increasing operating hours of parking meters, even though its own staff didn’t include that among the many recommendations to close its budget deficit.
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URL: http://www.sfexaminer.com/taxonomy/term/5301
