Burn Your Base: Democrats Diss Blacks, Back CRomnibus Alien Job Surge
If the Democratic Party is committed to any one principle these days, it seems to be burn your base. Of course, the same might be said of the Republicans. In the first episode of this...
By: PJ Media
Original post:
Burn Your Base: Democrats Diss Blacks, Back CRomnibus Alien Job Surge - Video
By Alexandra Jaffe, CNN
updated 9:39 AM EST, Tue December 16, 2014
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) -- Democrats are taunting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for effectively allowing them a victory on a controversial nominee for surgeon general.
Physician Vivek Murthy was confirmed Monday night on a 51-43 vote despite stiff opposition from the National Rifle Association, due in large part to Cruz's unsuccessful maneuver this weekend meant to register GOP opposition to Obama's executive action on deportations.
The Texas Republican kept his colleagues in the Capitol through Saturday, intending to get a vote on whether the President's move was constitutional. With the Senate in session, Democrats were able to clear procedural barriers in the nomination process, originally thought to be too time consuming to finish before the Christmas recess. Cruz's keeping the Senate open allowed Democrats to clear those steps on a number of presidential nominees, some of them controversial, making it easier for them to win final confirmation this week.
READ: Murthy confirmed as surgeon general
Murthy had long faced fierce opposition from Republicans, and particularly the gun lobby, for a letter he had signed calling for stricter gun control policies, and because he launched the pro-Obamacare group Doctors for America.
So when he was confirmed on Monday night, Democrats could barely contain their glee expressing it in part on Twitter.
The Senate Democrats' account blamed both Cruz and Utah Sen. Mike Lee, both of whom forced their colleagues to stay in session through the weekend.
Read the original here:
Why Democrats are taunting Cruz
By Ted Barrett, CNN
updated 6:44 PM EST, Tue December 16, 2014
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Washington (CNN) -- As they make a final push to approve presidential nominations before Republicans take control of the Senate, Democrats said Tuesday the confirmation of a record number of federal judges was evidence they were right to make controversial changes to filibuster rules, despite objections from Republicans.
"Yes," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid responded loudly when asked if still believes he was right to employ the so-called "nuclear option" a year ago in order to clear a backlog of nominees.
The No. 2 Senate Democrat explained that at the time there was a "breakdown in the relationship between the executive and legislative branch."
READ: Democrats taunt Cruz over surgeon general vote
"If you just look at where we were, with all of the nominations stacked on the calendar, most of which had been reported from committees with overwhelming bipartisan votes," Sen. Dick Durbin said. "Republicans were trying to keep as many nominations from final approval as possible. So we had no choice."
During the first year of the congressional session, before the nuclear option, the Senate confirmed a total of 36 federal district and circuit court judges appointed by the President. After the rules changes, which took place Nov. 21, 2013, the number of judges confirmed more than doubled to 84.
The rules change lowered the number of votes needed to overcome a filibuster from 60 to 51, making it much easier for Democrats, who currently have a 54 to 46 majority, to approve judges to those lifetime positions.
Read the rest here:
Democrats use nuclear option
In these waning days of the Democratic Senate, the majority is taking advantage of a muffed procedural maneuver by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to confirm a passel of otherwise stalled executive branch appointees.
Carolyn W. Colvin, who President Obamanominated last June to be Social Security commissioner, won't be among them. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid withdrew her confirmation vote from the calendar for unexplained reasons. What his action means is that as Social Security faces the sharpest increase in its workload and its most bitter political challenges since its creation in 1935, it will continue to chug along without an official commissioner. Colvin, 72, will stay on as acting commissioner, a post she has held since February 2013.
Do the Democrats care about Social Security? This latest failure to provide the program with a fully accredited boss inspires doubt. It's another example of the not-so-benign neglect that the party has shown toward its most important achievements, such as the Affordable Care Act, and it may be the real reason that the Democrats have lost credibility with the middle class.
Democratic politicians have failed utterly to communicate to the great mass of American voters how the Affordable Care Act is a boon to them, and they're not doing nearly enough to protect and promote Social Security, which is the most important program for the middle class ever devised by the U.S.
This is not to denigrate Colvin's performance as acting commissioner. Senate Republicans have said they held up her nomination because of questions regarding a nonfunctional $300-million computer project; Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has mumbled something about "criminal conduct."
This is typically fatuous GOP chatter. The computer project began under Colvin's predecessor, Michael Astrue, a George W. Bush appointee; Social Security expert Eric Laursen points outthat the investigation on which the Republicans are basing their complaints was ordered by Colvin.
In any event, there's no reason to doubt Colvin's commitment to Social Security, which she served as a high-level executive from 1994 to 2001, returning in 2010 as deputy commissioner. As Paul Van de Water of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities observes, Colvin has to work with the budget cards she's dealt: "She been doing a good job under very difficult circumstances, with a continually shrinking real budget," he said.
Indeed, the problem is Social Security's budget -- and the Democrats' failure to safeguard it. The crisis emerged in 2011, when Congress started to pare the president's budget requests for the Social Security Administration. From then through fiscal 2013, Social Security got $2.7 billion less than the president sought. Some of the shortfall was restored this year, but most of the increase was designated for anti-fraud programs, not pure administration.
A study by the Senate Committee on Aging released this spring examined the consequences. Staffing in Social Security field offices fell by 14%, to 25,420 from 29,481. Across the country, field office hours were slashed. By March 2013, about 12,000 visitors a week had to wait two hours or more to get served, "a figure that had almost tripled in the previous four months." For those who tried to obtain information via the program's 800 number, the rate of busy signals also tripled. The agency tried to pare down foot traffic to its offices by eliminating some face-to-face services, advising people to resort to the Internet instead.
Field offices themselves are disappearing. Since 2010, the report found, the agency has eliminated 64 offices, the largest such reduction in any five-year span in its history.
Here is the original post:
Are the Democrats allowing Social Security to twist in the wind?
House Democrats Urge Congress to Avoid Government Shutdown
Congressman Xavier Becerra (CA-34), Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, and Congressman Joe Crowley (NY-14), Vice Chair of the House Democratic Caucus, ...
By: HouseDems
Read the original here:
House Democrats Urge Congress to Avoid Government Shutdown - Video