Matt Yglesias

House Delays Vote to Clear Time for John Boehner “Beach Party” Fundraiser

Fun with congressional procedure as House Republicans find a way to bring legislative action to a halt in order to clear room in the schedule for Representative John Boehner (R-OH) to make it to a “beach party” fundraiser at Cantina Marina down by the Southwest Waterfront:

C-SPAN viewers who tuned in to watch the late-running House votes at around 6:30 p.m. were treated to an odd sight. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) insisted that the clerk read an unusually long 55-page motion to recommit aloud — a process that took an excruciating 40 minutes, halting House business.

Squirmy Democrats began wondering what was going on. Soon an aide pulled up a blog post reporting that Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) had scheduled a 6 p.m. “Beach Party” fundraiser — at $250-$5,000 a head — at DC’s waterfront Cantina Marina.

Boehner’s spokesman denies that the scheduling of a massive procedural delay at the exact same time as the fundraiser had anything to do with the fundraiser. Rather, “We forced the reading of the MTR to protest the un-democratic rules the Democratic Leadership is insisting on for the appropriations process, which do not allow Republicans the opportunity to step in the way of their out-of-control spending spree.” But protest or no, the fact remains that they could have organized this stunt at all kinds of different times, but instead they scheduled the protest to coincide with the fundraiser.

The Sunlight Foundation’s Political Party Time website is a pretty neat resource. You can read about how the fact that the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s “Blue Dog” Democrats insisted on slowing down the markup process didn’t just make it more likely that tens of millions of Americans will lack adequate health insurance for years to come, it also prevented Blue Dog members from needing to work nights this week thus freeing up valuable opportunities to rake in special interest cash at fundraising parties.

CBO Scores Complete HELP Bill and the News is Good

When the Congressional Budget Office did its preliminary analysis of a sketchy outline of the Senate HELP committee’s vision of health care reform, the outlook was not-so-good. The bill was estimated to cost $1 trillion over 10 years, while reducing the number of uninsured by “only” one-third. At the time, voices of reason tried to point out that this was a preliminary estimate of a bill that was missing many crucial elements so we ought to reserve judgment. But Faiz Shakir reminds us that key conservative legislators were not so kind:

John McCain: “[The CBO estimate] should be a wake up call for all of us to scrap the current bill and start over in a true bipartisan fashion.”

John Boehner: “[T]he public option would cost over $1 trillion, and would cause 23 million Americans to lose their private health care coverage.”

Lindsey Graham: “The CBO estimates were a death blow to a government run health care plan.”

It’s a sign of the ignorance or dishonesty of Boehner and Graham that they made those remarks even though the absence of analysis of the impact of a public health insurance option was precisely one of the shortcomings of the initial analysis. At any rate, now a more fleshed-out version of the bill is available and as the AP reports things now look much better:

The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. [...]

The [employer mandate] provision is also estimated to greatly reduce the number of workers whose employers would drop coverage, thus addressing a major concern noted by CBO when it reviewed the earlier proposals.

John Cohn explains that this $900 billion figure is actually somewhat misleading, and fully covering this 97 percent should cost more like $1 trillion to $1.3 trillion. That’s a lot of money, but the gains in coverage are major. Given that the right was so impressed by the CBO score of the preliminary draft, will they also be so impressed by this new, more accurate score of the more completed draft? If they’re honest and principled they ought to be and they ought to recognize that this is a pretty good bill.

Cheney is Unpopular, Not “Polarizing”

An interesting Politico piece about how folks charged with Republican Party politics in the real world aren’t so thrilled with the Newt/Cheney Comeback Tour is far too kind about public’s view of Dick Cheney:

After a one-two punch from Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney, House Minority Leader John Boehner and other Republican lawmakers worry that their party has overplayed its hand on Nancy Pelosi.

The Republicans’ fear: Gingrich’s call for Pelosi’s ouster has set an unattainable goal, and Cheney’s jabs at her during a speech Thursday will allow Democrats to portray the controversy as a partisan attack by one of the GOP’s most polarizing figures.

“If the story becomes about us and not her, it’s a problem for us,” said a senior Republican lawmaker.

When I think of a “polarizing” figure, I think of someone about whom the public has strong, but closely divided feelings. Like if you were at 45 percent “strongly favorable” and 45 percent “strongly unfavorable” with only a few people in the middle. Cheney is just unpopular:

That’s different, I think, from being polarizing. And note that the poll from which I’ve taken that lower-than-Cuba favorablerating for Cheney gave him an unusually high rating. It’s possible that strident public advocacy of torture and law breaking has, in fact, raised his popularity to within spitting distance of an impoverished Communist dictatorship. But it’s also possible that that poll was an outlier and that Cheney’s true favorable rating is considerably lower.