"What does it say about the richest country on earth that its citizens must depend upon raffles and spaghetti dinners to pay the medical bills-- a situation that exists in no other civilized country?
The CRomnibus was pretty horrible because of all the garbage transactional conservatives-- Republicans and a few legislators from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- attached to it. All the House Members we respect voted against it, including, of course, Alan Grayson. I don't think it was easy for Grayson to vote NO.
Members of Congress have no executive authority-- not in DC and not in their own districts or states. But that has never stopped Alan Grayson. Right after he was elected to the House he went on a crusade against the foreclosure-industrial complex cheating Central Florida homeowners out of their homes.
There's been some dispute about what S. 2685, the U.S.A. Freedom Act of 2014 would have done and not done to protect American citizens from the excesses of an unaccountable national security state. Since it won't become law-- the Republicans successfully filibustered it Nov. 18-- I guess we don't have to dig too deeply into the fine points. Actually not all the Republicans filibustered it.
Last summer we looked at legislation Alan Grayson proposed to end the over-militarization of local police departments, long before "Ferguson" became synonymous with overly militarized local police departments. Grayson's amendment failed-- by a lot-- 62-355, only 19 Republicans and 43 Democrats having the foresight and wisdom to back it.
Boehner, McConnell and, with them, the Republican-dominated Congress, slinked out of town Friday for another epic paid vacation... instead of dealing with raising the minimum wage, crumbling U.S. infrastructure, student-loan reform and other matters the American public-- overwhelmingly-- wants dealt with (or even what Fox and Hate Talk Radio consumers want them to deal with).
On Monday we took a look at the dangers posed to ordinary working by the rush to bipartisan corporate globalization. You should give it a read as background to what's unfolding now that Congress is back in Washington for a few days, desperate to find something they can pass and get signed into law.
Last week we talked about how Republicans were unleashing a barrage of attack ads against weak conservative Democrats, like John Barrow, for voting with Republicans. Democrats who crossed the aisle to vote with Republicans to cut Social Security benefits for retired people are now being bombarded with ads-- that are true, regardless of the disingenuous source-- pointing out that they are the enemies of working people.
Beltway pundits are always smitten with aloof intellectual phonies. Paul Ryan has been the most obvious example in recent years but Arkansas pedant Tom Cotton— another Harvard-educated reactionary is always such a curiosity… like a circus freak show— is catching up.
Proving that she can’t read through an amendment that consists of one single sentence, Congressional Black Caucus chair, Marcia Fudge, declared at the annual CBC Legislative Conference last week that she and her lamer members had voted with the House leadership and the money-grubbing shills of the Military Industrial Complex against Grayson’s amendment to curtail the militarization of the local police “because it was a dumb amendment.” No wonder
