October 22, 2010
Washington,
Oct 22, 2010 -
Despite New Tea Party Energy, Candidates Financed by Small Group of Old Hands: The donations are part of a broader pattern of giving this year dominated by longtime party fundraisers, Wall Street financiers and energy tycoons. Despite the burst of new political energy surrounding the tea party movement, only a thin slice of the population is donating, with the number of Americans giving $200 or more dropping dramatically. Records suggest that much of the money fueling a wave of negative attack advertising comes from a stable of old political hands with roots going back as far as the Nixon era. [Washington Post, October 22, 2010]
Wind industry warns Republicans against 'false statements' in ads: The wind industry is pressing Republicans to stop airing ads that allege renewable energy programs in the big 2009 stimulus law are creating jobs in China instead of the U.S. The American Wind Energy Association, in a letter Friday to both major parties’ political committees, urges them to “refuse to support false statements about renewable energy policies in political advertisements.” “[W]e urge you to use your influence to praise one the most successful programs to defend American jobs and prevent the surrender of jobs to other countries like China, and not encourage any candidates to criticize this program in misleading campaign ads,” states the letter. [The Hill, October 22, 2010]
GOP Says Compromise Not On the Agenda if They Retake the House: Republicans aren't interested in compromising with President Obama on major issues if they retake the House or Senate, a senior GOP lawmaker said…Pence said his party wouldn't compromise on issues like spending or healthcare reform, two of the weightiest items on Congress's agenda next year, when the Republicans could control one or both chambers. [The Hill, October 22, 2010]
White House Wins Key Health Care Vote: State regulators unanimously approved a crucial health care reform recommendation Thursday morning, outlining what costs insurers can count as medical spending and bringing to a close six months of contentious debate. Under the new health reform law, insurers must spend 80 or 85 cents of every premium dollar on medical costs depending on the size of the insurance plan. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has spent six months hashing out what counts as medical spending and what would be categorized as administrative costs. [Politico, October 21, 2010]
Enemies of ‘Big-Government Health Care’ Rush to Defend Government-Funded Medicare: Edwin Park, Center for Budget and Policy Priorities co-director of health policy, took issue with the claim that health care reform cut Medicare, calling the notion a "short-term political strategy." "It scaled back overpayments, tried to institute efficiencies, tried to use Medicare as a leader in how health care is delivered, but didn't make cuts to benefits, per se," said Park. "And so there's a lot of that being characterized as cuts. But at the same time, Republicans and conservatives over the years have been pretty clear -- most recently in the Paul Ryan plan -- that they want to voucherize Medicare, that they want to change it to a voucher program, where you get a voucher to purchase health coverage on your own in the private insurance market rather than going through the traditional Medicare program." [Huffington Post, October 21, 2010
U.S. Proposes Benchmark for Limiting Trade Imbalances: The Obama administration on Friday urged the world’s biggest economies to set a numerical limit on their trade imbalances, in a major new effort to broker an international consensus on how to handle festering exchange-rate tensions. Officials from Britain, Canada and Australia quickly expressed support for the idea, but Germany expressed resistance and Japan seemed ambivalent. China, whose currency battle with the United States has threatened to derail the process of global economic cooperation, had not formally weighed in. [The New York Times, October 22, 2010]
More Democrats Casting Early Ballots: “If people thought the Democrats were just going to roll over and play dead in this election, that’s not what we’re seeing,’’ said Michael McDonald, a George Mason University professor who tracks early voting nationally. “They have got to be feeling a little bit better with the numbers that they’re seeing.’’ While it’s impossible to tell for whom people are voting, so far more Democrats than Republicans are casting ballots in Iowa, Maryland, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Nevada’s heavily Democratic Clark County, which supplied two-thirds of the state’s voters in 2008. [Boston Globe, October 22, 2010]
Rove In 2004: Influence of “Billionaires Who Write the Checks Give Me Some Concern”: “I am a firm believer in strong (political) parties, and things that weaken the parties and place the outcome of elections in the hands of billionaires who can write checks and political consultants who can get themselves hired by billionaires who write the checks, give me some concern,” Rove said. [Think Progress, October 22, 2010]
Chamber Pumps Millions Into Races: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is pouring almost $10 million into House campaigns and millions more into Senate contests in the closing month of the midterm elections. In the past week alone, the Chamber has spent more than $5.2 million—more than $1.7 million for House races and about $3.4 million on Senate contests, recent FEC filings show. [Politico, October 21, 2010]
Running for Congress On Opposition to ‘Failed’ Stimulus, Tim Walberg Acknowledges His Son Got a Stimulus Job: Former Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), who is running for Congress against incumbent Rep. Mark Schauer (D-MI), has campaigned by attacking the stimulus as a failure. Walberg has claimed the stimulus only killed jobs, and claimed that funds were spent on “socially conscious puppet shows” instead of infrastructure. As Political Correction noted, the puppet show claim is absolutely false. But Walberg has debunked his own claim that the stimulus failed to create jobs in a public forum he attended early in September. Speaking with community members, Walberg acknowledged that his son is employed by a contractor doing projects funded by the stimulus. Walberg’s son is among the 3 million people who gained jobs through the stimulus. [Think Progress, October 22, 2010]
America’s Tea Party Fraud: Today’s tea-infused conservatives are a fearless new bred. OK, so which spending programs do they want to cut? They almost never say. As even Ross Douthat recently acknowledged, the GOP’s much-touted “Pledge to America” turns to mush on the subject of spending cuts. On the campaign trail, when pressed for examples of government overspending, Republican candidates generally cite the Wall Street bailouts and Obama’s health-care plan. The only problem is that the government seems set to make a profit on the former and the latter, according to the Congressional Budget Office, saves money over the next 10 years. Repealing it, as David Herszenhorn noted in The New York Times, would increase the deficit by $100 billion between now and 2020. [The Daily Beast, October 22, 2010]
Clinton: GOP “Banking On You Not Thinking”: Case in point, Clinton says: "The Republican argument goes something like this," he said. 'Hey, they got the White House and the Congress, and we gave them 21 months to get out of that hole that we left them. And we're not out so throw them out and put us back in. We may not be out of the hole yet but it was a real deep hole. At least we stopped digging." The former two-term president said Democrats were asking for "four years to get out of a hole the American people gave them eight years to dig." It's only fair, he added. [MSNBC, October 22, 2010]
Congressman Chris Van Hollen
