Late Night Strike...Stomach Punched

This one really really hurts. I'll need to recover for another 24 hours before I say more, but in case you haven't heard, Scott Brown has defeated Martha Coakley in the race to succeed Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts, and he will become the Republicans' all-important 41st Senator.

Late Night Strike...Approved!

The House Energy and Commerce committee just approved an amended version of health care legislation by a vote of 31-28. The bill, as you know, was changed two days ago to accommodate "concerns" from Blue Dog conservative Democrats, and was changed again to appease angry liberals. The result? A pretty darn good health care bill. It's not as strong as I would like. For example, the public option will not be paying Medicare rates to providers, which is a key component of having a robust public plan. But overall, it contains most of the components necessary for a solid bill. The final vote tally is as follows. 31 of 36 Democrats voted yes. All 23 Republicans voted no.

Yes (all Democrats):

Waxman (CA), Dingell (MI), Markey (MA), Pallone (NJ), Gordon (TN), Rush (IL), Eshoo (CA), Engel (NY), G. Green (TX), DeGette (CO), Capps (CA), Doyle (PA), Harman (CA), Schakowski (IL), Gonzalez (TX), Inslee (WA), Baldwin (WI), Weiner (NY), Butterfield (NC), Hill (IN), Matsui (CA), Christensen (Virgin Islands), Castor (FL), Sarbanes (MD), C. Murphy (CT), Space (OH), McNerney (CA), Sutton (OH), Braley (IA), and Welch (VT).

No:

Democrats: Boucher (VA), Stupak (MI), Matheson (UT), Melancon (LA) and Barrow (GA).
Republicans: Barton (TX), Hall (TX), Upton (MI), Stearns (FL), Deal (GA), Whitfield (KY), Shimkus (IL), Shaddegg (AZ), Blunt (MO), Buyer (IN), Radanovich (CA), Pitts (PA), Bono Mack (CA), Walden (OR), Terry (NE), Rogers (MI), Myrick (NC), Sullivan (OK), T. Murphy (PA), Burgess (TX), Blackburn (TN), Gingrey (GA) and Scalise (LA).

The bill has now passed all committees of jurisdiction. Once all versions are combined into a single bill, there will be a vote on the floor sometime in September.

The Late Night Strike-5/19/09-Better Late Than Never

Good evening. I had an extremely busy day in Strike-land, meaning I did not have time to write up an entry. Thanks to the Big Picture for filling in. I wanted to mention a couple of quick things.

1. The Senate today passed the amended Credit Card Bill of Rights by a vote of 90-5. The dissenters were Republicans Alexander (TN), Bennett (UT), Kyl (AZ) and Thune (SD) as well as Democrat Johnson (SD). (Again, no coincidence that South Dakota is home to a lot of Credit Card companies). The bill now goes back to the House, which will vote on the Senate version tomorrow, and presumably send it on to the President. This will mark a big victory for President Obama. It will be the first substantive bill he's signed dealing with financial regulation, for one. Also, it has some real teeth. The bill will prevent credit card companies from increasing interest rates if consumers are less than 60 days late in making a payment.

2. The House passed, by a vote of 367-54 (with Rep. Kaptur, D, of Ohio voting present), the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, which will now go back to the Senate for one final seal of approval before being sent to the President.

See you tomorrow!

Late Night Strike...Senate Passes Budget Resolution

The final vote was 55-43 with Senators Nelson (NE) and Bayh (IN) the only Democrats voting no. Zero Republicans, as predicted, voted for the resolution.

Thank God Obama didn't choose Bayh as his Vice Presidential running mate.

Late Night Strike...Wow, That's Close

I've been refreshing the real-time results from the AP for about two hours. After teetering back and forth, Democrat Scott Murphy has a 65 vote lead over Republican Jim Tedisco out of about 125000 votes cast with all precincts reporting. That's about .004 of a percent.

First, let's take advantage of this as a learning experience. NEVER skip an election because you think your vote doesn't matter! That goes for you, Skidmore students.

Now to the race itself. There are 5900 outstanding absentee ballots, so the extremely narrow Murphy lead is not final. Absentee ballots tend to go Republican, so I'm not getting my hopes up. But who knows what the absentee voting population was like in this election? It could be old, bitter, lazy O'Reilly Factor viewers who don't want to leave their house, or they could be working class men and women who couldn't get time off to go to the polls. Tedisco will need to win about 51.1% of the absentee ballots to overcome the small deficit.

The one thing we do know is that the side stories of this race will probably be pretty muted. Because we don't have a definitive winner tonight, no party can crow about "capturing momentum" or "repudiating the President's agenda." At the end of the day, the winner will either make the already large Democratic majority slightly bigger, or the diminutive Republican minority slightly less pathetic.

Late Night Strike...and an NHL Update!

A couple more things happened since I posted The Daily Strike, so I wanted to give you all a quick update.

The House has appointed its conferees for the stimulus conference. The Democrats will be Charlie Rangel, chair of the Ways and Means Committee, David Obey, chair of Appropriations, and Henry Waxman, chair of Energy and Commerce. The Republicans are Dave Camp, ranking member on Ways and Means, and Jerry Lewis, ranking member on appropriations.

Thank God Obama took the lead in selling this plan, because we CERTAINLY don't want Rangel, Obey and Waxman to be the face of this bill. They are all emblems of the old guard, especially Obey and Rangel, who both gave excruciatingly dull endorsements of the package on the House floor today.

The House also voted to table (or kill) a resolution calling for Rangel to be removed as chair of the Ways and Means committee. The resolution was offered as a question of privilege (a motion dealing with the safety or integrity of the House that has precedence over all other budiness) by Rep. John Carter of Texas. The Republicans' futile attempt to embarrass Rangel was killed by a vote of 242-157 with 16 voting "Present" (basically abstaining). All votes to kill were Democratic, except for Republican Reps. Jones (NC), King (NY) (standing up for his fellow Noo Yawker?), good old Ron Paul (TX), Rohrabacher (CA) and Young (AK).

Finally, a shout out to the San Jose Sharks, the best hockey team in the Western Conference, for beating the Boston Bruins, the NHL's top team, on the road!! The Sharks are the Strike's pride and joy, and the bane of Lady Strike's existence.

Late Night Strike...Wednesday Edition

The Senate voted on a few more amendments tonight. It's hard to know exactly where the overall status of the stimulus is. Some sources say that since Senators Nelson and Collins haven't reached a deal to pare down the package, the overall bill is doomed. However, I have my doubts. We'll see what happens with the rest of the amendments, and whether Collins and Nelson really offer a strong, bipartisan amendment (why do the Democrats need to do this? We only need a couple of Republicans, it's clear that they are in no mood to compromise...do as little as you can to get 60 votes).

An update on amendments tonight:

The Senate rejected three more Republican amendments this evening. The first was a motion to waive the budget rules on the Cornyn amendment. The amendment would have replaced the "make work pay" tax credit which would give rebates to tax payers who don't necessarily pay imcome taxes, with a broader income tax cut. This is a classic debate that the Democrats should be very glad to have won. Obama wants to give individuals $500 and families $1000 to help relieve working families. The rebate would only be eligible to taxpayers who make under a certain amount of money (I think it's 125,000). The Cornyn amendment would have struck this and cut the marginal tax rates for all income brackets, including the top bracket, which would not provide relief to 50 million Americans who pay other taxes, but not income taxes. Thank God it failed, 60-37. All Democrats voted no, as did Republican Senators Collins, Snowe and Voinovich.

The next amendment rejected was offered by Senator Bunning of Kentucky which would have cut taxes on social security benefits to where they were before the Clinton deficit-reduction package of 1993. The amendment failed 57-39 (it was 21 votes short of the 60 needed to waive budget rules). All of the yes votes were Republicans, except for Bayh (IN) and Nelson (NE). The no votes were from Democrats, plus Republicans Collins and Snowe (they sure vote with the Democrats a lot, don't they).

The final amendment was offered by Senator McCain and would have struck a provision in the bill that calls for all materials used in stimulus infrastructure projects to be American bought. McCain had attacked this amendment as protectionist and the heir to the Smoot-Hawley tarrif act. The amendment lost badly 65-31, which signaled a sharp end to the long Congressional trend against protectionism. All Democrats voted no, except Lieberman (will he vote for EVERYTHING McCain wants him to?), and all Republicans voted yes except for Brownback (KS), Collins, Graham (woah, he went against his best buddy McCain), Grassley (IA), Hutchison (TX), Snowe, Specter (PA) and Vitter (LA).

There will be a myriad of amendments offered tomorrow. It remains to be seen how much progress will be made towards final passage, but we will keep you updated.

Late Night Strike...

One quick update on the Senate's consideration of the stimulus bill. The only amendment after the Daily Strike was an interesting bipartisan proposal from liberal California Senator Barbara Boxer and conservative Nevada Republican John Ensign. The proposal is called "repatriation." The amendment would lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 5.3% for those companies who bring financial holdings back to the US from overseas. The amendment mandates that these companies invest the money in selective ways, like job creation, capital formation and clean energy. I don't know enough about this amendment to make a firm judgment on it, but it seems to me that even with significant strings attached, we're still giving money directly to corporations, ones that have chosen to go overseas in the first place. The motion to waive the budget rules to pass the amendment failed to get the 60 required votes. It lost 42-55. Most Democrats voted against the Boxer/Ensign amendment, while most Republicans voted for it. Crossover lists:

Dems Voting Aye:

Akaka (HI)
Bayh (IN)
Boxer (CA)
Feinstein (CA)
Lieberman (CA)
Nelson (NE)
Pryor (AR)
Reid (NV)
Warner (VA)

Republicans Voting Nay:

Barrasso (WY)
Collins (ME)
Enzi (WY)
Grassley (IA)
Murkowski (AK)
Sessions (AL)
Snowe (ME)