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The Senate's inevitable approval of Neil Gorsuch to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court suggests that rather than failing to successfully filibuster President Trump's nomination, Democrats might have done better to show him the respect Republicans denied to Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama's choice for the post. At least, that might have won Democrats points with the public for graciousness.

But in the end, it was Gorsuch's "originalist" views of the Constitution - said by some legal scholars to be more extreme than those of Scalia or his acolyte, Justice Clarence Thomas - that led the minority party to dare Senate Republicans to execute the "nuclear option."

AP file photo

The Republicans obliged by ditching a Senate rule requiring at least 60 votes to end debate on a Supreme Court nomination. Ironically, Democrats set the precedent for being bombed when they lorded over the Senate and changed the rules in 2013 to allow a simple majority to end debate for all cabinet and judicial nominations except for the Supreme Court.

Invoking the nuclear option now makes it easier for Republicans to ignore Democrats when the next vacancy occurs. That could be soon, given the justices' ages: Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 84; Anthony Kennedy, 80; Stephen Breyer, 78; Clarence Thomas, 68; Samuel Alito, 67; John Roberts, 62; Sonia Sotomayor, 62; Elena Kagan, 56; and Gorsuch, 49.

Youth is usually associated with liberal views, but Gorsuch's age disturbs progressives who say it makes him more dangerous. Ian Milhiser, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, says Gorsuch, as did Scalia, believes in "originalism," meaning the only way to properly interpret the Constitution is by examining what its words meant when it was ratified. But while Scalia also stressed the need for judicial restraint, Gorsuch seems to lack such qualms.

Scalia's originalism, Milhiser said, "was rooted in an understanding that conservatives may not always control the Supreme Court, so judicial conservatives would do well to articulate lines that no judge, liberal or conservative, must ever cross." In contrast, Gorsuch, "who has spent his entire professional career watching the court grow more and more conservative," doesn't have Scalia's instinct for restraint. In that respect, Gorsuch may more closely resemble Thomas.

The possibility of another Thomas on the court was a better reason than mistreatment of Garland for Democrats to fight Gorsuch's appointment to the bitter end. After all, in the coming years the court may make crucial rulings on voting rights, gerrymandering, campaign finance, gender identification, affirmative action, and abortion. But the fight was lost months ago. Even if Garland had a hearing, the Senate's Republican majority wasn't about to confirm him.

For all the trouble they took to deny Gorsuch his seat, all the Democrats got is a chance to put the shoe on the other foot if they can retake the Senate. That's not good. This country is desperate for an end to the partisan warfare that has crippled Congress. But the fight over the Gorsuch nomination has taken the Senate farther down the wrong path to where the House is already muddled. Remember when filibuster was a bad word; it actually served a useful purpose.

Published: April 16, 2017 3:01 AM EDT The Philadelphia Inquirer

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Democrats have little to show for fight to keep Gorsuch off court - Philly.com

As he traveled the state last week, Gov. Bruce Rauner said the purpose of his two-day, campaign-funded tour was "about getting the message out to the people of Illinois."

Behind that message was the reminder that he's up for re-election next year, he's attempting to account for why his agenda is stalled and he thinks the goals he was first elected on in 2014 remain important to achieve.

Also on display was a trait that's frustrated Democrats and Republicans alike: Rauner portrays himself as flexible on his demands for striking a broad budget deal, but the specifics of what he'll settle for to end the historic impasse remain a moving target. At the Capitol, the details are what matter in getting a compromise done.

The idea behind the 10-city trip was to fill the political vacuum created when the General Assembly embarked on a two-week break. It allowed the Republican governor largely unfettered ability to speak without readily available Democratic critics in Springfield. The tour also unfolded during a massive statewide TV ad buy from an affiliate of the Republican Governors Association aimed at pushing Rauner's agenda out to voters.

Throughout, Rauner steadfastly maintained that his trip was not a re-election announcement. At times, he vacillated between whether the tour was political or not, although his talks consistently revisited themes he previously has discussed on the taxpayer dime.

"It was primarily a political trip. It was not paid for by taxpayers. We were specifically inviting Republican grass-roots activists and other leaders," Rauner said in summing up the tour Friday on WBEZ 91.5-FM. "This one was particularly political, although it's really fundamentally about getting the message out to the people of Illinois."

In state government circles, however, the trip was viewed as a soft rollout of the re-election campaign. Echoing the theme of the TV ad, in which he accuses career politicians of supporting "duct tape" solutions, Rauner aimed at affixing blame on Madigan and Democrats for blocking his budget prerequisites. During a stop in the small southwestern Illinois community of Bethalto, the governor harked back to the days when he wore a Carhartt hunting jacket in the 2014 campaign.

"You guys know it's a brutal battle," Rauner said, according to the Alton Telegraph. "The majority Democrats don't want to change anything. They're just hunkered in like ticks on a dog. You can't get them out. You can't get them off. But by the people coming together this isn't about Democrats versus Republicans it is about people coming together and standing up to a corrupt machine that's running the government for their own benefit."

Veteran Democratic Rep. Lou Lang countered that the "southern twang (Rauner) uses doesn't travel very far anymore. I think people are seeing through that."

Lang, a top deputy to Rauner nemesis House Speaker Michael Madigan, suggested Rauner felt pressure because the 2018 race for governor already has started. On Friday, for example, billionaire Chicago businessman J.B. Pritzker put $7 million of his own money into his Democratic bid.

"I think it's fair to say this is the beginning of the governor's campaign, that he sees Democratic candidates for governor traveling the state and wants to make sure that they don't get ahead of him in the public eye," said Lang, of Skokie. "And so (Rauner has) the opportunity to spend a little time doing a little traveling. He wants to insist this is a tour about how to improve Illinois, not about his re-election, but I think we all know better," Lang said.

Christopher Mooney, director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois, said Rauner's message last week was to frame the re-election.

"They're trying to as they will establish their message that, as he says, 'Everything I can do by myself I'm getting it done, but the legislature's in the way,'" Mooney said. "So in some sense, he's setting up an excuse to countervail a 'do-nothing' governor attack from the others."

Rauner got positive coverage outside the glare of Chicago and Springfield, where reporters' questions about his actions and motives usually are more pointed and intense.

Even so, newspapers in Peoria and Quincy used terms such as "reiterated" and "repeated" to describe a Rauner message that largely has been unchanged for more than a year as he describes his conditions for resolving the impasse. The Rockford Register Star did not cover his visit there, saying the paper did not consider it "newsworthy."

The thrust of Rauner's tour was to push what he used to call his turnaround agenda, which he now refers to as "structural reforms." The governor is seeking term limits and a property tax freeze as well as changes in government pension benefits, workers' compensation and redistricting as a precondition to support a tax hike to help balance the state's out-of-whack budget.

Which of those items are on or off the table often varies, however. At various stops on the tour, Rauner declared that term limits and a property tax freeze didn't necessarily need to be part of a deal. It's a way for him to come across as flexible, but also makes it hard for him to be pinned down.

"There is no one or two structural changes that we need to have as a requirement. I've never said any one thing has to be there," Rauner said Friday during the radio interview. "But we need a package of changes, structural changes that materially move the needle."

Yet to move the needle to satisfy Rauner, the governor said "term limits definitely helps big with that."

"So far the Senate Democrats have proposed a term limit on Senate leaders through a rule change, just for the Senate leader would be term limited. Well what we need is term limits on everybody, on me, on everybody in the General Assembly. That's not on the table as of now," he said.

Such elusiveness has frustrated some lawmakers at the Capitol who are looking for clarity on what it will take to reach agreement. Democrats like Lang suggested Rauner isn't being up front when he's preaching flexibility.

"As you've seen the last few days, he's commented, 'Well, I don't really need this. I don't really need that. I just need everyone to come together.' But the truth is that's not what he wants," Lang said.

Mooney, the political scientist, questioned the continued effectiveness of Rauner's blame-Madigan excuses as the campaign for governor fully begins to take shape.

"Generally speaking, the governor is held responsible, the chief executive of a unit is held responsible, by the public. That's what we know about public opinion. It's a pretty simplistic view of the world. And as time goes on, he's got to take responsibility for that. Maybe he can effectively blame somebody else like Madigan or whoever, but that's not normally what works," Mooney said.

Pointing to Rauner's previous background as a private equity investor and deal cutter, Mooney said of the governor: "If he's a salesman, this is going to be the hardest sales job he's ever had to make."

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On state tour, Rauner reiterates his agenda as Democrats line up to ... - Chicago Tribune

Senate Democrats are asking the Government Accountability Office to examine state programs that offer tax credits in exchangefor donations for private-school scholarships, arguing that its important to identify potential risks of financial misconduct at a time when the Trump administration might pushfor a new tax credit at the federal level.

With the strong possibility of federal legislative activity on tax-credit vouchers at the federal level in the near future, we are interested in how states have designed these programs, whether they have strong internal controls, and whether they pose a risk of waste, fraud, abuse, misconduct, or mismanagement, three senators wrote in a letter to Gene L. Dodaro, head of the GAO.

A multi-state analysis of this issue by GAO would help inform the advisability of any future federal programs and help ensure proper fiscal accountability and transparency for federal funds, they wrote. The letter, dated April 13, was signed by the ranking Democrats onthe Senate education and finance committees, Sens. Patty Murray (Wash.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.), and by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

[In Floridas tax-credit program, private schools can continue receiving tax-credit dollars no matter how poorly they perform]

Tax-credit scholarship programs function much like traditional private-school vouchers, but they were designed to work differently to get around state bans on using public funds to benefit religious institutions. Companies can receive a full or partial state tax credit if they donate fundsto help children pay for private school, which meansinstead of sending tax dollars to the state treasury, they send the money to a scholarship-granting organization. That organization is then responsible for giving out the moneyto families.

Seventeen states now offer such tax credits, and they each have different rules regarding which students are eligible for the money, how much money each student gets, and whether and how much information private schools must publicly report about how they use the dollars and how their students perform academically. Rules also differ regarding which organizations qualify to receive and then dole out tax-credit donations, and how much of that money they can use for overhead expenses.

These inconsistencies make it challenging for policymakers to assess the consequences of instituting these types of tax credit schemes on fiscal accountability, the senators wrote. They asked GAO to answer four questions in its review:

How have states structured tax credit voucher or incentive programs?

What financial accountability requirements including any requirements intended to guard against fraud, waste and abuse have states established for organizations that administer and manage the programs?

How have selected organizations administered tax credit voucher or incentive programs (including any steps taken to ensure transparency, efficiency, and accountability)?

How have selected states monitored these programs? What are best practices and the challenges the programs have encountered?

Read the full letter:

2017-04-13 Letter to GAO School Choice Tax Incentives Request

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Democrats ask GAO to examine tax-credit programs as Trump pushes public dollars for private schools - Washington Post

New York Times

Trump Threatens Health Subsidies to Force Democrats to Bargain New York Times Mr. Trump has failed to get enough support from his own party, but he hopes to get the Democrats' help by forcing them to the negotiating table with hints about the chaos he could cause. His bargaining chip is the government subsidies paid to insurance ... Democrats say upcoming spending bill must fund Obamacare paymentsCBS News Democrats Seek to Resolve Health Payments on Spending BillU.S. News & World Report Democrats Want Guarantee for Health Subsidies After Trump ThreatBloomberg Washington Post -Daily Kos -Politico -Wall Street Journal all 111 news articles »

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Trump Threatens Health Subsidies to Force Democrats to Bargain - New York Times

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. And more often than not, they are Democrats.

Greg Laden

The 2016 presidential primary was unique in having a powerful insurgent candidate who was not a Democrat. Accusations were made that the Hillary Clinton campaign was too politically inside. Some of that was probably a lack of understanding of how the process works by Bernie Sanders newly minted political activists, but there was almost certainly some truth to it. Uncommitted delegates, usually known by the term super delegates, flocked to the establishment candidate, and most of the usual endorsers endorsed her as well, and endorsed her early.

It is not known if these endorsements influenced the outcome of the primary, but it is undoubtedly true that they left a bad taste in the mouths of many. The endorsements themselves were not the problem. The problem was the rush. Candidate Sanders didnt have a chance. Some organizations produced their endorsements much earlier than they normally do. All those newly involved activists were compelled to engage in the political system, then they became frustrated by the inside baseball, and even to this day they are not fully on board because of this sort of behavior by established Democrats.

I personally avoided supporting either candidate until I was certain one would win the primary, then I waited a bit longer, and then fully supported Clinton. And I believe she would have made a great president. But my support for Hillary does not make me blind to the justifiable attitude of many millennials as well as long time party activists who saw their preferred candidate treated poorly.

And now, Im afraid, we are seeing inside baseball again. The ink on Rep. Tim Walzs declaration of candidacy for governor of Minnesota was still glossy wet when the endorsements started flying. From the outside, it looks a lot like the small group in charge picked Walz as the DFLs candidate, and all that remains is dotting of the is and crossing of the ts.

Ive been to a lot of activist and political meetings over the last few months, including DFL events and Indivisible events, and every single person Ive talked to about this race has either suggested Rebecca Otto as their choice, or put her in the top two. After the first strong rumors of Walzs declaration came around, that opinion shifted to this, paraphrasing: I really want Otto, or maybe Coleman. But now, did you hear, Walz is in the race? Its over.

When asked why it is over, the answer is usually, Well, theyve decided, havent they or words to that effect.

No, they have not decided. Many of us feel that a sitting DFL member of Congress should keep his or her butt right where it is, given that we need to attain a Democratic majority in the House in the next midterm. This is not a political preference but rather an existential requirement. Walzs seat is not going to stay Democratic if he leaves. He is making a terrible and regretful mistake.

Many people are annoyed that someone could just Walz into the governors race and be anointed without the process actually happening, and many are afraid truly viscerally afraid that a Democrat would Walz away from a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives at this crucial time.

One could argue that these early endorsements dont matter. In fact, Im pretty sure they wont affect the caucus or primary process too much. But they damage the party and the process in other ways. These early endorsements are a signal. The insiders have decided. More important, yes, there are insiders, and they decide things. Oh, did you want to have a role in the process? No problem. Show up at the caucuses, well let you know what weve decided.

Greg Laden is a science communicator, teacher, and political activist who blogs atScienceblogs.com.

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A plethora of early endorsements does not endear the new Democrats to the DFL - MinnPost