If you're the chairman of the RNC and the uber-deficit-hawk conservative-wingnut Judd Gregg calls you foolish then things aren't looking too good for ya. Michael Steele is the latest GOP party leader to try and be another leader of the angry teabagger movement. On a conference call with the odious Dick Armey, he said this:

In the latest example of RNC Chair Michael Steele attempting to tie his party to the Tea Party movement, Steele rhetorically out-tea-partied a movement leader, Dick Armey, on a conference call the two shared this morning.

"I'm tired of this congress thumbing their nose and flipping the bird at the people of this country," Steele said during one of his many rants that sounded like it could have come from the podium at at tea party rally. He wielded the angry vehemence and promises to get revenge commonplace among tea partiers during the health care debate to set the stage for the GOP next year. "I intend to have my foot on the throat of the Democrats on this issue [health care reform]," Steele said.

What good teabaggin' fun. Nora O'Donnell, guest-hosting on the Andrea Mitchell, asked Sen. Gregg if he agreed with Steele's language.

Nora: Would you agree with this?

Gregg: That's foolish language of which unfortunately people are getting a little frayed..

.
Gregg put his foot down on the RNC leader and called his remarks "foolish." That's not a very good endorsement for Mr. Steele, but he does have a habit of embarrassing himself.

Talking about feet, Steele continually puts his foot in his own mouth when it comes to his party, and is easily the most inept leader of a political party I've ever seen. When he backs a party favorite who's not a teabagging fool in 2010, the Tea Party movement will turn on him in a New York minute. Good luck with that, Michael.

From The Daily Show:

George Voinovich compares health care reform to the emperor's new clothes, and Judd Gregg employs a deliberate tactic of obstruction.

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Dr. Nancy Snyderman talked to Sen. Judd Gregg about his stalling tactics in the Senate to hold up the debate on the health care bill, and after a great deal of filibustering and feigned indignation from Gregg Snyderman followed up by asking Gregg this:

Snyderman: But Senator let me just ask you a question. We just listened to the President talk about jobs. We know people continue to lose their jobs, which means they’re losing their health care. So what do you say to the average American who’s played by all the rules who can’t have the same health care that you have and you’re one of our elected officials?

Gregg: Well, you know if he works for the government he’ll get the same I have. I mean I have the same health care as a person who works for The Secret Service, works for the FBI or works down at the local Federal Building. I mean I don’t have anything different than what an average federal employee has.

I actually proposed a bill which I wish had been incorporated into this which said that people would be able to have the option of the FEHB program which is the Federal Health and Benefit Program and I’m cosponsor of a bill which does the same thing. That’s not really the issue here. The issue here is how you do it affordably. How do you do a health reform process which is step-by-step takes on issues that can improve health care, expand its coverage rather than proposing this massive bill which as I said grows the government in the largest way we’ve ever grown. It’s $2.5 trillion and at the same time in my opinion will put the government basically in charge of health care because that’s the ultimate goal here—move the government into health care, give us a single payer system.

Think Progress posted the first part of Gregg's reply here--Gregg’s Health Care Solution: ‘If You Work For The Government, You’ll Have The Same Health Care I Have’ and had this response to the interview:

It’s puzzling that Gregg — who regularly slams “spending beyond our means for big government programs” — would say that anyone who wants health care coverage like his should simply work for the federal government. Certainly, Gregg wouldn’t advocate that we grow the size of government by employing the tens of millions of Americans who are uninsured in order to provide them health care. Or would he?

They did not include the latter part of Gregg's response where he touts a bill he co-sponsored as a means for everyone to receive the same health care benefits as federal employees. There's just one problem with that. From Ezra Klein:

The plan has a lot more fake support than it has real support. If every Republicans who has co-sponsored W-B would commit to voting for it, the plan might pass. But they haven't.

So Gregg cites a bill he co-sponsored but never committed to voting for instead of admitting what the Republican Party’s actual solution is for health care reform—do nothing and sabotage anything the Democrats try to do for political gain. It sure can't be because the Democrats haven't shown the insurance industry enough love in the bill they're trying to get through the Senate.

Steve Benen with the story about the Republican plan to obstruct health-care reform:

We learned yesterday that Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) has distributed a three-page memo to his Republican colleagues, reminding them of various procedural tactics they can utilize to obstruct, delay, and undermine the debate on health care. Sam Stein called it "the equivalent of an obstruction manual -- a how-to for holding up health care reform."

This morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) seized on the document: "The good news is that Senate Republicans finally, at long last, have put a detailed plan down on paper. The bad news is that it's not, as we'd hoped, a plan to make health care insurance more affordable; it's not one to make health insurance companies more accountable; and it's certainly not a plan to reverse rapidly rising health care costs and draw down our deficit.

"The Republican plan we've waited weeks and months to see ... [is] not even about health care at all. The first and only plan Senate Republicans could be bothered to write up is an instructional manual on how to bring the Senate to a screeching halt. We knew that was happening anyway, but they had the audacity to put it in writing."

The Democrats are finally starting to take a look at changing procedural rules.

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Right on cue again, we have Born Again Deficit Virgin Judd Gregg with dire warnings about our debt but no acknowledgement of his own party contributing to the mess as our own Jon Perr rightfully pointed out. This is from C-SPAN's Newsmakers Nov. 15, 2009. Despite Gregg's warnings for the United States if we don't get our debt under control, the last thing he thinks we should be doing is to repeal any of those Bush tax cuts for the rich to fix it.

I would like to know just how repealing those tax cuts would "reduce the productivity of the nation". The only thing I've seen reduce our productivity has been our crappy trade laws which have resulted a race to the bottom with industry running to the country with the lowest wages for labor and the least constraints on those who pollute or have the least protections for their workers in place, which has driven jobs out of the United States with our unwillingness to put some protectionist measures in place to secure our workforce. Maybe someone else can explain this man's twisted logic to me, but I sure as hell don't get it.

I hope the Obama administration is enjoying their kick in the teeth from someone that they once considered for a Cabinet position. I think Gregg and his ilk will be happy to see this country continue to spiral into economic ruin as long as they think it will win them elections and they can shift any of the blame for what's happened away from themselves.

Frates: Senator I wanted to ask you. Do you see the cost issue as a political landmine, and if so, how?

Gregg: Well, I think the cost issue is at the essence of what is the biggest problem our nation has confronting us after the threat of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and that is the impending fiscal meltdown of our nation. We’re going to take our, we’re taking ourselves down on a road to third class status as a nation. You cannot grow the government from 20% to 26% of our G.D.P. and pass all the debt that’s going to generate—because no matter how much you raise taxes you can’t catch your tail when you get that bit—onto our children, because they can’t pay for those debts.

You know, you get…let me try to put this in context. When the public debt goes from 38% of G.D.P. to 80% of G.D.P., that essentially means that the debt, well the financing of that debt, that is going to exceed the cost of anything else in the government, including military expenditures, national defense. And in fact if we tried to get into the European Union—which we’re not trying to do—but if that’s the proof of industrialized states that set certain standards for what a government does—we could not get into the European Union beginning about 2013 because our public debt would be too high. We’d be over their 60% threshold.

And we’re seeing already international statements from China, from other places that they’re worried about our debt. And they’re the ones who buy the debt. And if they start to worry about our debt what does that mean? Well we’re going to have to raise the price, in other words, we’re going to have to raise the interest that we’re going to pay on that debt in order to get those folks to buy our debt. We’re also seeing the international ratings agencies like Moody’s say “well gee, we don’t know if you stay on this path which is unsustainable, we may have to downgrade your debt”.

All of this leads to an instability in our nation because there are only two things you can do when debt gets so high that you can’t afford to pay it. You basically have to inflate the economy, which means you devalue the dollar and you put in place one of the cruelest takes which is inflation, or you raise tax levels so high that you reduce the productivity of the nation and it becomes a downward spiral where basically as productivity drops you drop your, your revenues drop again. So we’re on an unsustainable path. It’s that simple. And you shouldn’t aggravate that unsustainable path by adding another 3 trillion dollar program on top of it.

Swain: Senator we just learned from AP, our wire story that the White House has now told domestic agencies that their budgets will be frozen or even cut by 5% as it signals a big push to take on the deficit next year. Do you have a reaction to that?

Gregg: If it’s true it’s great. I mean, that’s one step that should absolutely occur. We should freeze discretionary spending, but as Willy Sutton said, and that would be good, but as Willy Sutton said, why, when he asked why do we rob a bank? Because that’s where the money is; the money is in entitlements. The money and the problem is in the fact that we’re facing a 60 trillion dollar unfunded liability already without this new major health care entitlement being put on the books being proposed by the House and the Senate Democratic leadership. Without that even on the books we already are short 60 trillion dollars as we go forward. So those are the challenges we have to face up to and address, but yes, if the administration comes forward with a discretionary freeze of a 5% cut in discretionary spending I will strongly support that effort.

As Wanda Sykes might say, "I am so damned sick of these @#!*# Democratic snakes on this @#!*# plane!" Yes, once again, ConservaDems are holding a gun to the head of progress. This time, they want to blackmail Congress into overriding the Constitutionally-mandated power of the House over the nation's purse strings - and hand it over to them:

Seven members of the Senate Budget Committee threatened during a Tuesday hearing to withhold their support for critical legislation to raise the debt ceiling if the bill calling for the creation of a bipartisan fiscal reform commission were not attached. Six others had previously made such threats, bringing the total to 13 senators drawing a hard line on the committee legislation.

“You rarely do have the leverage to make a fundamental change,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who said he hasn’t ruled out offering the independent commission legislation as an amendment to the healthcare reform bill.

What is it about Kent Conrad that makes me want to slap him? Is it that perpetually robotic grin? Is it the fact that he's so reliably a corporate tool? Or maybe it's that somehow, I just know that Celine Dion is on his iPod.

The panel, which has been championed by Conrad and ranking member Judd Gregg (R-N.H), would be tasked with stemming the unsustainable rise in debt.

Among its chief responsibilities would be closing the gap between tax revenue coming in and the larger cost of paying for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. The Government Accountability Office recently reported the gap is on pace to reach an “unsustainable” $63 trillion in 2083.

The panel would also have the power to craft legislation that would change the tax code and set limits on government spending.

The legislation would then be subject to an up-or-down vote; it could not be amended.

Chris Bowers calls it a "national suicide pact":

Let's review the threat that these five Democrats are making:

* They will allow the United States to default on its debt, which will vastly increase the overall amount we have to pay on our debt

UNLESS

* Speaker Nancy Pelosi turns over Congressional power on Social Security and Medicare to an unelected commission that will almost certainly propose deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare entitlements. Keep in mind that if deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare pass under a Democratic trifecta, the party would be doomed at the ballot box for years to come.

This is completely insane, and there is no choice but to call this bluff.

Let's see these five Democratic Senators explain to the entire nation why they allowed the country to default on its debt. No matter how safe their seats appear to be, no Senator is going to win reelection after making the entire country default on its debt. Their rationale does not matter. Being blamed for making the country default on its debt - especially after all five of these Democrats voted in favor of the Wall Street bailout and are demanding that Social Security and Medicare be cut - will be the effective end of their political careers.

Go for it, guys. Form your national suicide pact. Tell the country that you are demanding deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare, or else you will personally cause the United States debt to double. Let's see how well that message plays on the air.

Everything you need to know about the descent of the conservative movement into a hypocritical caricature is illustrated by two of its proudest constituencies: Republican deficit hawks and so-called "born again virgins." Having already violated the moral strictures they claim to hold dearest, each now asks the American people to join them in pretending their sin never happened. But unlike a generation of Republican leaders who built a mountain of national debt for the United States, the secondary virgins only screwed themselves.

The Republicans' shameless cynicism was perfectly captured by Vice President Dick Cheney, who in 2002 proclaimed, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter."

Not, that is, if a Republican is in the White House. But when Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office and the $1.2 trillion deficit George W. Bush left for him there, the GOP quickly changed its tune. While the national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan and doubled again under President Bush, House Minority Leader John Boehner in February decried the $787 billion emergency economic recovery spending as "one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment." By June, Boehner warned of the "crushing debt Washington Democrats are running up." And Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), Obama's aborted choice for Commerce Secretary, slapped the President last month, "we're basically on the path to a banana-republic-type of financial situation in this country." And, Gregg added:

"You can't keep throwing debt on top of debt."

Of course, throwing debt on top of debt is precisely what Gregg and his GOP allies have done for over a generation.

Continue reading »

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The man who was almost part of Obama's cabinet is now a big opponent in the health care reform debate. I wish I knew what President Obama was thinking when he selected this man, but like all good conservatives he too doesn't let facts influence his position.

There was a new poll done by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation which asked doctors how they feel about the public option. A whopping 63 percent of physicians support a health reform proposal that includes both a public option and traditional private insurance. Andrea Mitchell asked Gregg about this new poll and here's what he had to say.

Andrea:...at the same time there's a new poll, let me share with you from the new England Journal of Medicine today and 63% of American doctors polled say the public option should be at least available. That's 63% to 27% supporting the public option. Don't doctors know best?

Gregg: Yeah, well I think if the follow up question was asked, do you as a doctor want to work for the government. Do you as a doctor want to have yourself and your basic delivery of medicine be controlled by a federal bureaucrat? The answer would probably be 80% no. The fact is a public option is a stalking horse for a national health insurance...

The idiot known as Judd Gregg assumes that doctors haven't considered what it would be like to deal with the government and pulls information out of his ass to try and dismiss this vital poll and attack the public option. Andrea didn't push him on it after his non-answer, but she put it out there to him and he does what conservatives do.

This poll is surprisingly honest because the AMA stands against the public option, but doctors know what it's like to deal with the health insurance industry. Gregg knows this so he makes up his own poll questions and then answers it and gives us the percentage. he should start his own polling company.

My doctor already will not accept any form of private insurance because they block him from performing his craft. Since the Villagers are using polling as a weapon against health care reform, this poll should be high on their radar and the American people should be told. I wonder how many times it will make it on FOX News....

President Obama has new and powerful information known to insist that a public option be included in health care reform. As Andrea said: "Don't doctors know best?"

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Rachel Maddow calls out Judd Gregg for his 180 on the filibuster rule and his threat to stall healthcare bill in the Senate. As Rachel noted, the one point of consistency... I.O.K.W.A.R.D.I.

Sen. Judd Gregg has hundreds of procedural objections ready for a healthcare plan Democrats want to speed through the Senate.

Gregg (N.H.), the senior Republican on the Budget Committee, told The Hill in a recent interview that Republicans will wage a vicious fight if Democrats try to circumvent Senate rules and use a budget maneuver to pass a trillion-dollar healthcare plan with a simple majority.

The death of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) leaves Democrats with 59 Senate seats — one shy of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster. That, combined with the pushback from Republican negotiators, has prompted Democratic leaders to look more closely at using budget reconciliation to push a healthcare overhaul through.

The maneuver was originally intended to help reduce the federal deficit by allowing spending cuts and tax increases to pass by majority vote, but it has since been used to fast-track wider-scope legislation, such as former President George W. Bush’s 2001 tax cuts.

Republicans, however, warn that if Democrats attempt the maneuver, their healthcare bill will end up looking like Swiss cheese.

Gregg said that Republicans could file “hundreds” of points-of-order objections to the bill, each one requiring 60 votes to waive.

“We are very much engaged in taking a hard look at our rights under reconciliation,” Gregg said. “It would be very contentious.”

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Rachel Maddow on the Republicans attempt at revisionist history that Ted Kennedy would have been all about compromising to the point of making it a lousy bill just to get something passed on health care reform.

Maddow: In other words if only Ted Kennedy were still here. If only he had a health care bill those Republicans say they would have voted for that. You know, ah, Ted Kennedy did have a health care bill. Senator Kennedy was chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee which approved a health care reform package in July. It's called the Kennedy bill. And Senator Kennedy, helped write that bill. Senators Hatch, and McCain and Gregg, all voted against it. But the revisionist history goes even deeper. They aren't just saying they would have voted for a Kennedy health care bill, even though they had the chance and they didn't.

They're saying they would have voted for a Kennedy health care bill because Ted Kennedy would have compromised with them, because Ted Kennedy was all about making concessions to Republicans.

[.....]

Apparently in the history of Ted Kennedy's life and work as imagined by the GOP today Senator Kennedy was the great compromiser. Ready to water down health care reform in order to bring Republicans on board.

As Rachel notes, Kennedy was anything but that. And to add to Rachel's point, here's a little mash up of some of the "news" coverage from today calling for "Kennedy-like" bipartisanship.

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Later in her show Rachel gave some kudos to friend of the site Bob Cesca for his column at the HuffPo titled, Healthcare Reform Named After Ted Kennedy Must Not Suck. If there's one point to get across with all this yapping about what Senator Kennedy would have or would not have done to reform our health care system, I agree with Rachel that Bob's very simple, yet honest statement hits the nail on the head. Bipartisanship be damned if it means passing a lousy piece of legislation, and do not put Senator Kennedy's name on it if that's what we're going to end up with.

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Head. Slams. Against. Keyboard.

What world do Republicans live in? Apparently one in which Welfare Queens drive Cadillacs and Latinos and illegal immigrants routinely ace God-fearing white Americans out of their rightful jobs. Where uppity women don't realize their place is supporting the men in their lives and flounce about, getting abortions willy-nilly? Where laws are really only intended for the unwashed masses and the oligarchy they reinforce are above such mundane concerns.

Indeed, if you listen to Sen. Judd Gregg, it is also a world where 20 million young people make over $75,000 a year and choose not to get health insurance, frittering it all away with their fancy cars and electronic cell phone/camera/potato peelers, I'm sure.

WALLACE: Well, you say that you would like to see the 40-plus million -- there are arguments about specifically how many there are, but the 40-plus million uninsured get coverage. Under your idea, how would they get it? How would the government help them get it? And how would you pay for it?

GREGG: Well, first, it’s not a monolithic group. About 20 million of those folks earn more than $75,000. They’re basically young people who opt to spend their money on something other than health care insurance.
The way we would cover those folks is we would require them to buy health care policies for catastrophic events. They would have to self-insure under that.

Say it with me now: WTF???? Good to know that this is the man Obama wanted to head the Commerce Department, isn't it?

Since he's used these numbers (or a variation of them) before, for a split second, I thought about searching for where Gregg got his "facts", but honestly, I just don't want to be that close to Gregg's nether regions, because that's the only place such a ludicrous claim could come from.

Here are some real facts that Gregg might want to chew on:
CDC: Percentage of Americans With Private Health Insurance Hits 50-Year Low

Some experts blamed the faltering economy and corporate decisions to raise health insurance premiums — or do away with employee coverage — as the main drivers of the recent data. They say coverage statistics for 2009 may look even worse.

However, public coverage of adults is rising in some states, due to programs like Medicaid expanding eligibility. So not all the adults without private coverage are uninsured, Thorpe said

.
Income Gaps Hit Record Levels In 2006, New Data Show
Rich-Poor Gap Tripled Between 1979 and 2006

The data reveal starkly uneven income growth over recent decades. Between 1979 and 2006, real after-tax incomes rose by 256 percent — or $863,000 — for the top 1 percent of households, compared to 21 percent — or $9,200 — for households in the middle fifth of households and 11 percent — or $1,600 — for households in the bottom fifth. [..] In 2006, the average household in the top 1 percent had an income of $1.2 million, up $63,000 just from the prior year; this $63,000 gain is nearly two times the total income of the average middle-income household. [1]

In addition, the share of national after-tax income going to the top 1 percent of households more than doubled between 1979 and 2006, rising from 7.5 percent to 16.3 percent. Taken together with prior research, the new data suggest greater income concentration at the top than at any time since 1929. [2]

But Gregg thinks the answer is to mandate insurance and tax benefits:

GREGG: Well, that’s going to cost money. That’s going to cost money, and the way we pay for it is by limiting the deductibility of high-end health insurance premium plans.

So we do pay for it, and we do cover everyone, and we put in place a replacement of the reimbursement system so we reimburse doctors on the basis of quality and outcomes rather than on the basis of the number of procedures.

Uh huh. That'll work. Hey Judd, how 'bout you do some reading:

The Economist: The REAL cost of American health care

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From The Rachel Maddow Show April 27, 2009.

MADDOW: As the Republican Party searches for meaning in the political minority, Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire has taken the paranoid hyperbole baton and sprinting with it. Sen. Gregg is all hot that President Obama‘s healthcare reform might be brought up under Senate budget reconciliation rules.

What does that mean? It means that it could pass with a majority vote rather than allowing the Republicans to require a 60-vote supermajority. The man who was almost Obama‘s commerce secretary said about that decision, quote, “I can understand shaking Hugo Chavez‘s hand, but I can‘t understand embracing his politics.”

Of course, Sen. Gregg himself embraced majority rule, the same South American dictatorial politics of constitutionally-approved majority rules back in 2005, when it was President Bush wanting to use those rules to open up the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. At that point, he was all for it. You know, Judd Gregg was about half a hair from being Obama‘s commerce secretary. That is the definition of a near-miss.

March 25, 2009 C-SPAN

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Well, if it wasn't already obvious, it should be plain by now that the whole flirtation with Judd Gregg wouldn't have worked out at all for the Obama administration. Because he just can't suppress his inner Republican, especially when he gets on national teevee shows like CNN's State of the Union with John King on Sunday:

"The practical implications of this is bankruptcy for the United States,” Gregg said of the Obama’s administration’s recently released budget blueprint. “There’s no other way around it. If we maintain the proposals that are in this budget over the ten-year period that this budget covers, this country will go bankrupt. People will not buy our debt, our dollar will become devalued. It is a very severe situation.”

Gregg, known as one of the keenest fiscal minds on Capitol Hill, also told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King that he thought it was “almost unconscionable” for the White House to continue with its planned course on fiscal matters with unprecedented actual and projected budget deficits in the coming years.

“It is as if you were flying an airplane and the gas light came on and it said ‘you have 15 minutes of gas left’ and the pilot said ‘we’re not going to worry about that, we’re going to fly for another two hours.’ Well, the plane crashes and our country will crash and we’ll pass on to our kids a country that’s not affordable.”

A clever quote (he's used it previously), but cleverness doesn't make for good economics. Obama's recovery plan has always been clearly a gamble of a different sort -- he's essentially betting that the stimulus package will create enough economic activity to overcome the deficits. In a simple airplane analogy, he's betting that they can create enough fuel to get the plane over the rough stretch -- which in the world of aviation, of course, doesn't work. But economics isn't exactly avionics. And Gregg knows that -- but hey, why not trot out the Republican talking points anyway?

Earlier in the segment, Gregg complained that the Congress was going after the AIG bonuses irrationally, with torches and pitchforks. But then he turned around and offered up this bit of hysteria too, certain to turn up on Glenn Beck's show Monday as proof of Obama's "socialism" taking us straight to Helena Handbasket. Yeah, that was helpful.

(h/t The Political Base)
Gregg last week:

"We need a robust one," he added. "I think the one that's pending is in the range we need. I do believe it's a good idea to do it at two levels, which this bill basically does, which is immediate stimulus and long-term initiatives which actually improve our competitiveness and our productivity."

Gregg today:

Republican Sen. Judd Gregg is putting a final exclamation point on his withdrawal as Barack Obama's designee for Commerce Secretary with a promise to vote against the president's economic stimulus package.

Gregg's office confirmed the decision Friday.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say maybe Gregg's departure was not much of a loss to the Obama administration.