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Health

States That Refuse To Implement Reform Are Inviting A ‘Government Takeover’

By Igor Volsky on Feb 1, 2011 at 8:55 pm

Greg Sargent is reporting that at least one of the 26 states that successfully challenged the government over the individual mandate is now using Judge Roger Vinson’s decision as an excuse to stop implementing reform:

“Judge Vinson declared the health care law void and stated in his decision that a declaratory judgment is the functional equivalent of an injunction. This means that, for Wisconsin, the federal health care law is dead — unless and until it is revived by an appellate court. Effectively, Wisconsin was relieved of any obligations or duties that were created under terms of the federal health care law. What that means in a practical sense is a discussion I’ll have in confidence with Governor Walker, as the State’s counsel.”

As Sargent points out, it’s unclear what this practically means. After all, the 26 states have already received money from the law and, despite what their respective politicians say on the T.V., they’re busy implementing the measure. Politico’s Sarah Kliff notes:

In Texas, a conservative state legislator is pursuing legislation that would authorize the state to build infrastructure for a health insurance exchange. In Kansas, the Republican insurance commissioner is waiting to see whether her state will win a competitive grant from the federal Department of Health & Human Services, despite newly-elected Gov. Sam Brownback’s strong opposition to the health overhaul. And in Iowa, where Gov. Terry Branstad is party to the Florida lawsuit, the Iowa State Legislature is finalizing recommendations for how to best implement the law in their state. [...]

All told, each of the 26 states that are party to the federal lawsuit in Florida against health reform have received some level of funding to implement provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Observers on both sides of the aisle expect implementation to move forward largely despite Monday’s ruling.

I suspect that state lawmakers who refuse to implement the law will face the same conundrum as conservatives who firmly avoided establishing state-based high risk insurance pools or are now refusing to consider building the exchanges: they will cede the implementation of all of these elements to the federal government. That is, by refusing to implement the measure themselves, Republicans are inviting the federal government to step in, thus bringing about the very kind of federal intrusion that seek to avoid.

Climate Progress

High food prices are contributing to MidEast unrest

By Joe Romm on Feb 1, 2011 at 8:13 pm

And, yes, extreme weather and high oil prices are major contributors to those price hikes

Leading experts, reported in the media, have made the case that high food prices are one of the triggers of MidEast unrest.  Bizarrely, people who were once full-time professional journalists now dismiss the serious reporting of their fellow journalists — and are apparently completely unable to distinguish between underlying causes and triggering events.

I quoted all that in my Sunday piece, as well as Robin Niblett, director of the Chatham House, who was interviewed at Davos (click here) and said the Egyptian riots “were driven partly of course by the rise of food prices.” Similarly, NPR notes:

Rising prices are “leading to riots, demonstrations and political instability,” New York University economics professor Nouriel Roubini said during a panel discussion. “It’s really something that can topple regimes, as we have seen in the Middle East.”

That high food prices are historically a major driver of political unrest is pretty much an uncontroversial historical fact.  Indeed, there is actually recent research on this very subject:

Economists at the University of Adelaide, for instance, recently examined the impact that food prices have on civil conflict in 120 countries in the past 40 years. “Our main finding is that in low-income countries increases in the international food prices lead to a significant deterioration of democratic institutions and a significant increase in the incidence of anti-government demonstrations, riots, and civil conflict,” the researchers note. The same finding does not hold true in high-income countries, where citizens can better afford food.

That’s from a long analysis in Slate on how higher food prices are helping to fuel unrest in Egypt, “Protesting on an Empty Stomach,” which explains:

Read more

Climate Progress

Masters: Extremely dangerous Tropical Cyclone Yasi bears down on flooded Queensland, Australia

By Joe Romm on Feb 1, 2011 at 8:09 pm

http://www.bom.gov.au/fwo/IDQ65001.gif?1296597472688

In a globally warmed world, the saying will be rewritten:  When it rains, it deluges.   The warmest sea surface temperatures in Australian records have been fueling floods called ‘biblical’ “” floods covering an area “the size of France and Germany combined.” ABC News has explained “Raging Waters In Australia and Brazil Product of Global Warming.”

But now, water-logged Queensland is bracing for Category 4 Yasi, which itself is crossing over the warmest waters on record for the region.  Meteorologist and former hurricane hunter Dr. Jeff Masters has the details:

Read more

LGBT

As Iowa Passes Anti-Marriage Bill, Supporters Have Hard Time Justifying Stripping Rights From Gays

By Igor Volsky on Feb 1, 2011 at 7:25 pm

This afternoon, in a vote of 62 to 37, the Iowa House passed House Joint Resolution 6, effectively overturning the state’s 2009 unanimous Supreme Court decision to allow same-sex marriages. The bill also eliminates civil unions or any form of relationship recognition for same-sex couples in the state. It now heads to the Senate, where Majority Leader Mike Gronstal (D) has vowed to “fight attempts to pass the amendment.”

Throughout today’s emotionally-charged debate, the bill’s Republican supporters attempted to portray the resolution — which would strip civil rights from gay and lesbian people — as a Democratic initiative that would give a voice to the people of Iowa. But when opponents prodded Republicans to explain if denying gay people the right to marry undermined the Iowa Constitution, they demurred. In one exchange, Rep. Nate Willems (D) pressed Rep. Erik Helland (R) on the specifics of the court’s decision. Helland was unable to explain if the resolution complimented the equal protection clause and admitted that he has not read the Court’s decision:

WILLEMS: Have you read the Varnum decision?

HELLAND: You know, I have not read it word for word, I’m familiar with the gist of it [...]

WILLEMS: Does it sound familiar that the Iowa Supreme Court found that the current law violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution?

HELLAND: Again Rep. Willems, you have the opinion in front of you, I do not…

WILLEMS: Well, Rep. Helland, let me read for you word for word Article 1 Section 6 of the Iowa Constitution, which is Iowa’s equal protection clause. It says, “all laws of a general nature should have a uniform operation. The General Assembly should not grant any citizen or a class of citizens privileges or immunities which upon the same terms should not equally belong to all citizens.” So, representatives do you agree with that piece of the Constitution? [...]

HELLAND: Do I agree with that section of the Constitution? [...] Yes I do. [...] I agree with that theme, theory, idea, constitution, that basic premise of democracy.

WILLEMS: Rep. Helland, I guess my question is how do we reconcile the equal protection clause with House Resolution 6?

HELLAND: I think that rises to a question that is frankly difficult for this question to address because the question then becomes, what is a protected class, how do we define that protected class…[...]

WILLEMS: Is it fair to say that House Resolution 6 carves out an exception to the equal protection clause?

HELLAND: The bottom line is, I don’t agree with you. I don’t think this is an exception we are carving out…

Listen:

During another portion of the debate, Rep. Mary Mascher (D) had Reps. Kraig Paulsen (R) and Dwayne Alons (R) agree that the Constitution protected minority rights, and then pressed them to explain why they only approved of some rights, like freedom of religion, but denied others. “I asked you, which provisions in our Iowa Constitution, do you protect for the minority in our state? Freedom of speech, freedom of religion? Are you picking and choosing? I want to know!,” she insisted, before saying, “You’re picking and choosing certain rights for minorities”:

MARSCHER: It’s interesting that we are picking winners and losers here. So you have the right if you’re a minority to practice your religion…but you don’t if you wan to get married. [...] So there is a precedent in terms of protecting the rights of the minority. Because Rep. Alons, I would be the first to defend your right to practice your decision. If somebody came at you and said, ‘I think we should put Rep. Alons’ religion on the ballot. Let’s put a constitutional amendment to deny him his right to practice that religion.’ I would be the first to vote against that. Because that’s not right….we believe in equal protection, even if I don’t agree with your religion, I will defend your right to practice it.

Listen to the full exchange HERE.

ThinkProgress interns Paul Breer and Kevin Donohoe contributed research to this post.

Security

Leading Neoconservative Frank Gaffney Argues Muslim Brotherhood Has ‘Infiltrated’ The Federal Government

By Scott Keyes on Feb 1, 2011 at 7:00 pm

Amidst the political upheaval in Egypt, conservatives are scare-mongering about the possible Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt. But leading neoconservative Frank Gaffney is taking Muslim Brotherhood fearmongering to new heights. This past weekend, Gaffney was a featured speaker at the Educational Policy Conference in St. Louis, an annual gathering of social conservatives. Gaffney used the opportunity to discuss how the Muslim Brotherhood is not only poised to implement a new theocracy in Egypt, but is also operating in the United States under “front groups” like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil liberties group dedicated to “protecting the rights of all Americans, regardless of faith.”

After his speech, ThinkProgress caught up with Gaffney to probe his conspiracy further. Echoing the McCarthyist anti-communist rhetoric of the 1950s, Gaffney told us that there were already people in the federal government doing the bidding of “stealth jihadists.” When we asked Gaffney to name names, he pointed to President Obama’s chief counterterrorism advisor John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano:

TP: Do you think [Sharia law] has already infiltrated the federal government?

GAFFNEY: There are questionable people who are sympathetic to the program of the stealth jihadists who have influence with the United States government. Some I think are actually working for it, but for sure people who are persuaded that the folks that they need to work with to reach out to the Muslim-American community, for example, who incessantly turn to Muslim Brotherhood organizations for that purpose, are a very real problem.

TP: Can you name a few names, for instance in the federal government?

GAFFNEY: John Brennan. John Brennan is the Homeland Security Advisor for the President of the United States

TP: He’s complicit in this creep of Sharia law?

GAFFNEY: He’s absolutely daft on what the nature of the threat and is insistent upon using Brotherhood-front organizations as sources of information and as vehicles for reaching out to the Muslim-American community. Jim Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, has said that these sorts of groups are “sources of wisdom,” as he puts it, to the United States government. Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, is incessantly meeting with Muslim Brotherhood front organizations and I think has in the past, if not today, employed people who are associated with them.

Watch it:

Unfortunately, Gaffney’s fearmongering over the Muslim Brotherhood is hardly new. Earlier this month, Gaffney declared that the American Conservative Union, which hosts the influential CPAC gathering, had been “infiltrated” by “Islamism” and accused one of its board members, Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, of doing the Muslim Brotherhood’s bidding. Similar statements in the past led Norquist, who is extremely well-regarded in conservative circles, to reprimand Gaffney in an open letter for his “racial prejudice, religious bigotry [and] ethnic hatred.”

Gaffney’s paranoia also led him to call for the U.S. military to “take out” the Arab news network Al Jazeera during the Iraq War. Al-Jazeera has been widely praised this month for providing some of the best coverage of the democratic movement in Egypt.

Economy

Sens. Corker And McCaskill Release Lazy, Unrealistic Plan To Reduce Government Spending

By Pat Garofalo on Feb 1, 2011 at 6:35 pm

Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Bob Corker (R-TN)

Today, Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Bob Corker (R-TN) released what they have breathtakingly billed as a plan “to force Congress to dramatically cut spending over 10 years.” “Cutting trillions of dollars from the federal budget in the coming years won’t be easy or painless; it will require backbone and discipline,” Corker said in a press release. “This is a bold step,” added McCaskill.

The plan, however, proves that McCaskill and Corker are nothing more than deficit peacocks: willing to score political points by assuring everyone how very serious they are about addressing the deficit, but not actually doing any of the work that serious budgeting requires.

All the Corker-McCaskill plan entails is a cap on overall government spending at 20.6 percent of GDP. But how will we get from the current 24 percent of GDP down below the cap? McCaskill and Corker don’t lay out any ideas! Perhaps that’s because actually adhering to the cap would require massive cuts in Social Security and Medicare or else draconian gutting of the rest of the budget, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted.

In fact, McCaskill and Corker’s cap would actually hold federal spending below the level at which it was under President Reagan, even though there are now tens of millions more seniors reliant on Social Security and Medicare than there were in the 1980′s. As CAP Senior Fellow Matt Miller wrote, “as a matter of math, if you run the government at a smaller level than did Ronald Reagan while accommodating this massive increase in the number of seniors on our health and pension programs, you have to decimate the rest of the budget.”

Even if Corker and McCaskill had some sort of plan in place for getting spending down to 20.6 percent, basing future budget needs on past historical averages is simply a lazy and silly way to budget, as CAP’s Michael Linden explained:

It’s simply wrong to try and budget for the future by looking backwards and trying to shoehorn future needs into whatever the past levels have been. Instead, we should be trying to determine broadly how much public investment will be required as we move deeper into the 21st century, and then how do we pay for those investments in the most efficient way possible…Certainly everyone agrees that times and circumstances have changed, and that the federal government should, presumably, change with them.

McCaskill clearly thinks highly of this proposal, saying today that “if this bill is distorted and twisted, it could cost me my senate seat, but it’s a price I’m willing to pay. It’s a price I’m willing to pay for my country and, more importantly, it’s a price I’m willing to pay for my grandchildren.” But it isn’t nearly the solution that she claims it is.

Update

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ James Horney adds:

It is striking that when she unveiled the proposal, Senator McCaskill criticized as “ridiculous” the recent House Republican Study Committee plan to cut nondefense discretionary funding over ten years by about $2.5 trillion.

I fully agree that the RSC proposal — which would slash overall funding for the part of the budget that includes K-12 education, the FBI, cancer research, health care for wounded veterans, and many other programs by 42 percent below today’s level, adjusted just for inflation — makes no sense. But by the same standard, it is hard to conclude that the McCaskill-Corker proposal, which would mandate about $4.5 trillion in spending reductions over ten years in all programs — discretionary programs plus entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare — is any more responsible.

Yglesias

Selfishness and the Liberal Order

By Matthew Yglesias on Feb 1, 2011 at 6:11 pm

I’m with Mark Kleiman on this:

The essay by Edward Glaeser to which Matt Kahn points is, in my view, astoundingly wrong-headed. And, as Glaeser notes but doesn’t reflect on, the Adam Smith of The Theory of Moral Sentiments would have agreed with me, and not with Glaeser. The fact that selfishness constrained by law and the market can generate socially useful outcomes doesn’t make selfishness, or the freedom to pursue selfish ends, good things in themselves.

But I would go quite a bit stronger than this. If you think about a well-functioning liberal society with a (constrained) market economy and political liberty, you’re relying on an awful lot of non-selfish behavior by people to make it work. One key issue here is corruption and the efficacy of the public sector. A wise republic needs to think about the incentives facing public officials and design structures accordingly. But at the end of the day, well-functioning public institutions all involve a certain esprit de corps and sense of obligation. It’s not a coincidence that the most market-oriented societies (the Anglophone and Nordic countries) are also the ones with the best-functioning public sectors. Another issue has to do with parenting and family more generally. For a liberal society to function over time parents need to adopt an attitude toward their children that I don’t think is well-captured by the idea of selfishness. But then again, you can’t have everything collapse into nepotism either.

The point is that a society actually governed by the dual pillars of self-interest and obedience to the law is very unlikely to come out as a liberal market economy. What you’d get is a cesspool of rent-seeking and shakedowns. And I think that to the extent that the USA has become a society willing to accept an ethic of “greed is good” this is the direction we’ve headed in.

Politics

Chamber Of Commerce Continues Decades-Long Assault Against Clean Economy

By Brad Johnson on Feb 1, 2011 at 5:46 pm

19th Century InstituteAt a Washington DC press conference, U.S. Chamber of Commerce officials blasted President Obama’s call for a clean energy future. Christopher Guith, vice president for policy at the Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, said a national clean-energy standard is “ridiculously premature,” even though 25 states have renewable and alternative energy standards, the first established in 1983. The Institute’s president, former Bush official Karen Harbert, said that the United States should instead allow “increased access to land for oil and gas drilling both onshore and offshore,” drilling a deeper hole with fossil fuel dependence.

This opposition to clean-energy job creation on behalf of big oil is nothing new for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Throughout the 2000s, the chamber led the opposition to action on climate change, promoting global warming denial. Its history of defending pollution at the expense of the health of the American public and American jobs, however, goes deeper:

1999: Chamber of Commerce opposes reinstating Superfund taxes on toxic polluters. In a letter earlier this month to the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, two large pro-business groups urged Congress not to reinstate the taxes. “Raising taxes on industry runs directly counter to congressional efforts to reduce taxes,” said the top officials at the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. [National Journal, 10/19/99]

1997: Chamber of Commerce fights stronger smog and soot standards. The Chamber questioned the scientific studies used by the EPA to justify the tougher health standards, arguing that more research should be done before businesses are burden with standards that will require new and expensive additional pollution controls. [AP, 5/28/97]

1993: Chamber of Commerce opposes trade sanctions in NAFTA for failure to enforce environmental laws. “Authority to impose sanctions against private interests in any of the three countries should remain with the individual governments, and not be ceded to some supranational body not accountable to voters,” said Willard Workman, vice president, international, of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. [Journal of Commerce, 4/13/93]

1992: Chamber of Commerce opposes binding global warming treaty. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned that it would block any attempts to include binding commitments to reduce gases related to global warming. [Greenwire, 9/16/92]

1990: Chamber of Commerce attacks Clean Air Act revision. The Chamber said that the proposed legislation would ”vastly increase the cost and complexity” of environmental regulations – perhaps costing U.S. industry $20 billion more a year. The Chamber of Commerce particularly objected to provisions of the Clean Air bill that would tighten pollution controls related to motor vehicles, smog, coal and toxic chemicals. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 8/23/90]

1988: Chamber of Commerce criticizes call for action on global warming as a “scare statement.” The Chamber’s Harvey Alter called the ”Blueprint for the Environment”’ prepared by 30 environmental groups full of ‘broad scare statements,” including: that ”…global warming threatens to devastate the world, but no timeframe is mentioned. Depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer will damage agriculture and marine life and cause an epidemic of skin cancer, but no mention of the remedial actions now in place is made.” [Inside Energy, 12/19/88]

1984: Chamber of Commerce opposes hazardous waste dumping ban. Harvey Alter, manager of the natural resources office at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, argued a ban on the dumping of wastes containing dioxin, polychlorinated biphenyls, heavy metals, halogenated organic compounds and cyanides would only “promote illegal dumping”. [Chemical Week, 8/8/84]

1982: Chamber of Commerce petitions to weaken Clean Air Act, claiming it kills jobs. “Obviously, the Clean Air Act needs to be changed,” said Dr. Harvey Alter, manager of the chamber’s resources and environmental quality department. “The construction ban has no place in this country. It is an inherently unfair punishment of communities and does not clean the air.” [Associated Press, 7/15/82]

1981: Chamber of Commerce compiles secret hit list of federal employees for Reagan. In 1981, the Chamber compiled a ”hit list” of 18 government employees it urged the Reagan White House to dump from their jobs, including 10 EPA officials; Anthony Roisman, former chief of the Justice Department’s hazardous waste section; a half dozen Labor Department employes, and Maxine Savitz, deputy assistant energy secretary. [UPI, 9/6/84]

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

Climate Progress

Chamber Of Commerce Continues Decades-Long Assault Against Clean Economy

By Brad Johnson on Feb 1, 2011 at 5:45 pm

19th Century InstituteAt a Washington DC press conference, U.S. Chamber of Commerce officials blasted President Obama’s call for a clean energy future. Christopher Guith, vice president for policy at the chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, said a national clean-energy standard is “ridiculously premature,” even though 25 states have renewable and alternative energy standards, the first established in 1983. The institute’s president, former Bush official Karen Harbert, said that the United States should instead allow “increased access to land for oil and gas drilling both onshore and offshore,” drilling a deeper hole with fossil fuel dependence.

This opposition to clean-energy job creation on behalf of big oil is nothing new for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Throughout the 2000s, the chamber led the opposition to action on climate change, promoting global warming denial. Its history of defending pollution at the expense of the health of the American public and American jobs, however, goes deeper:

1999: Chamber of Commerce opposes reinstating Superfund taxes on toxic polluters. In a letter earlier this month to the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, two large pro-business groups urged Congress not to reinstate the taxes. “Raising taxes on industry runs directly counter to congressional efforts to reduce taxes,” said the top officials at the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. [National Journal, October 19, 1999]

1997: Chamber of Commerce fights stronger smog and soot standards. The Chamber questioned the scientific studies used by the EPA to justify the tougher health standards, arguing that more research should be done before businesses are burden with standards that will require new and expensive additional pollution controls. [AP, May 28, 1997]

1993: Chamber of Commerce opposes trade sanctions in NAFTA for failure to enforce environmental laws. “Authority to impose sanctions against private interests in any of the three countries should remain with the individual governments, and not be ceded to some supranational body not accountable to voters,” said Willard Workman, vice president, international, of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. [Journal of Commerce, April 13, 1993]

1992: Chamber of Commerce opposes binding global warming treaty. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned that it would block any attempts to include binding commitments to reduce gases related to global warming. [Greenwire, September 16, 1992]

1990: Chamber of Commerce attacks Clean Air Act revision. The Chamber said that the proposed legislation would ”vastly increase the cost and complexity” of environmental regulations – perhaps costing U.S. industry $20 billion more a year. The Chamber of Commerce particularly objected to provisions of the Clean Air bill that would tighten pollution controls related to motor vehicles, smog, coal and toxic chemicals. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 23, 1990]

1988: Chamber of Commerce criticizes call for action on global warming as a “scare statement.” The Chamber’s Harvey Alter called the ”Blueprint for the Environment”’ prepared by 30 environmental groups full of ‘broad scare statements,” including: that ”…global warming threatens to devastate the world, but no timeframe is mentioned. Depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer will damage agriculture and marine life and cause an epidemic of skin cancer, but no mention of the remedial actions now in place is made.” [Inside Energy, December 19, 1988]

1984: Chamber of Commerce opposes hazardous waste dumping ban. Harvey Alter, manager of the natural resources office at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, argued a ban on the dumping of wastes containing dioxin, polychlorinated biphenyls, heavy metals, halogenated organic compounds and cyanides would only “promote illegal dumping”. [Chemical Week, August 8, 1984]

1982: Chamber of Commerce petitions to weaken Clean Air Act, claiming it kills jobs. “Obviously, the Clean Air Act needs to be changed,” said Dr. Harvey Alter, manager of the chamber’s resources and environmental quality department. “The construction ban has no place in this country. It is an inherently unfair punishment of communities and does not clean the air.” [Associated Press, July 15, 1982]

1981: Chamber of Commerce compiles secret hit list of federal employees for Reagan. In 1981, the Chamber compiled a ”hit list” of 18 government employees it urged the Reagan White House to dump from their jobs, including 10 EPA officials; Anthony Roisman, former chief of the Justice Department’s hazardous waste section; a half dozen Labor Department employes, and Maxine Savitz, deputy assistant energy secretary. [UPI, September 6, 1984]

Health

After Accusing Democrats Of ‘Blind Rush’ To Pass Health Reform, McConnell Rushes To Repeal It

By Igor Volsky on Feb 1, 2011 at 4:55 pm

This afternoon, building off of the momentum of Judge Roger Vinson’s ruling against the health care law, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced that he would file an amendment to the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill that would force the body to vote to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act. The House of Representatives successfully passed a similar measure after just seven hours of debate and now McConnell is also hoping to undo the entire health law without holding hearings or discussing the consequences of the measure.

In fact, the strategy directly undermines the GOP’s criticism of the process Democrats took to pass the law in the first place. Recall that Republicans accused Harry Reid of ramming through the bill, despite numerous hours of committee mark-up and debate, and now they’re clamoring to do that which they so vociferously condemned:

- “Senate Republicans are going to insist that there be an actual bill, that there be a CBO score so we know what it costs, that it be available on the Internet for a minimum of 72 hours so the American people can react to it…Senate Republicans are going to insist that this be a real Senate debate, a multi-week debate that gives everyone on both sides an opportunity to freely amend this measure and the American people an opportunity to fully understand what’s in it.” [McConnell, 10/14/2009]

- “There is no justification for this blind rush — except a political one, and that’s not good enough for the American people. And there’s no justification for forcing the Senate to vote on a bill none of us has seen. ” [McConnell, 12/17/2009]

- “I think we ought to at least have as much time for the other 99 senators and all of the American people to take a look at this bill as Majority Leader Reid has had.” [ McConnell, 11/15/2009]

While all 47 Republicans support repeal, McConnell’s bill is expected to fail without attracting Democratic support. Some moderate Democrats who voted for the law in 2010 have expressed reservations about certain provisions (including the individual mandate and the 1099 requirement) but have not come out against reform as a whole. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) also told reporters that “a budget point of order lies against” the measure, since it “breaks the budget by a trillion dollars” without making up for the loss in revenue. Republicans will need 60 votes to overcome the point of order.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), who will likely face a tough re-election battle, will also offer an amendment to eliminate a provision that requires businesses to report purchases over $600 on a 1099 tax form.

Reid has previously pledged not to bring repeal for a vote, but allowed the GOP to vote on the measure “because they did not filibuster the motion to proceed for the FAA bill,” The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports.

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