Bart Stupak is claiming that he has 12 Democrats who are willing to vote no on health care reform unless his more restrictive abortion funding language is included. Mr. Stupak, a resident of the notorious C Street house, is willing to scuttle the entire health care reform bill unless it "strengthens" language in the Senate bill to further restrict federal funding for abortions despite the fact that the Hyde Amendment already does so.
The Senate health care reform bill is far from perfect and one of its imperfections is the further unnecessary restrictions on abortion. However, the Senate abortion language is slightly less offensive than the House abortion language and it is important for Democrats and the counrty that we pass a health care reform bill so we can start to get the escalating costs under control, stop insurance company abuses and insure more people. The President and Democratic leaders in both the House and the Senate have also publicly stated that they will try to improve the current Senate bill through reconciliation once it has passed the House.
We need to pass this bill! If we don't, how long will it be before we get another chance?
When the first vote came around on this in the House, three of our Democratic Congresspeople voted for the Stupak amendment. They were Joe Donnelly, Brad Ellsworth and Baron Hill. Please contact all three of them now and tell them to pass the health care reform bill and refuse to join Bart Stupak in his attempt to hold the bill hostage. Contact information for each of the three Congresspeople is below the fold:
I'm a little late to this particular party, but for those of you who missed the big development of the weekend, here's the skinny:
"My focus has been, and will remain, on fulfilling my job as the congressman from Southern Indiana and continuing to address the most pressing issues our nation and great state face, like deficit reduction, health care reform, energy independence and entitlement spending," Hill said in a statement.
Republicans, meanwhile, promised to give Hill a stiff challenge in the congressional race.
Hill's decision and endorsement likely clears the path for Ellsworth to get the Senate nomination, which will be decided after the primary by the Indiana Democratic Party's 32-member central committee.
Congressman Hill is in a strong position as he pursues reelection, and his two potential challengers have yet to do, well, much of anything to articulate why they'd like to replace him.
For what it's worth, Mike Sodrel appears to be more interested in selling books than anything else, and Todd Young doesn't even have the political chops necessary to see that folding on his debate challenge with Sodrel is just the latest in a long line of bad decisions.
Remember when Ninth District Republican candidates Mike "Fifth Time's A Charm" Sodrel and Todd "I Swear Carmel Is Southern Indiana" Young pledged to debate one another every week until the primary election?
"I can assure you, when I am in D.C., I will not forget I represent people like you," Young said as the room exploded with cheers.
Young ended the night by challenging Sodrel to weekly debates until the primary elections. Sodrel quickly accepted. Details are still being worked out.
Sodrel said he was not sure about Young's experience, but he pointed out that he was loyal to President Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment.
"Thou shall not speak ill of any fellow Republican."
That was nearly a month ago.
Since then, details have been few and far between on these supposed debates. Anyone hearing anything out there? Who is afraid of whom?
As the second major snowstorm of recent weeks wallops Washington, at least one Congressman has made it clear he's not surrendering to Mother Nature quite that easily.
On the House side there was even less activity. Many offices had three days worth of newspapers stacked at the front door. A lone light in a long hallway, Representative Baron Hill's (D-IN) office had the door open. Inside the office Hill and his Chief of Staff John Zody were wrapping up some business. Zody said that most staffers were working from home and that phone calls to the DC office were being forwarded to Hill's district offices in Indiana.
Asked if the weather was hurting their ability to do the job, Zody said the Congressman was tapping in to the values of his home district, "We're in the southern part of the state so we don't get as much snow, but we're of pioneer heritage so we can handle it."
Carmel-based Republican Todd Young hasn't exactly been having the best time as of late. His lackluster fundraising and anemic support resurrected a repeatedly beaten dead horse in Mike Sodrel, and since then it's been one thing after another for the guy.
But as they say, the only thing worse than non-legal troubles is, well, legal troubles. And troubles he seems to have.
That call, apparently received somewhere in Southern Indiana, isn't just poorly executed -- it's possibly illegal.
You see, litigation has been ongoing for four years now as to whether political calls fall under the statewide ban on robo-calls passed in 1988. Rather than wait for a final judgment on this point, all three political parties in Indiana agreed to not use the questionable tactics in the upcoming cycle.
As you can hear above, Young apparently get the memo.
Making the whole situation even more sticky is the fact that the Attorney General of this fine state -- who would be heading up any enforcement of the law against Todd -- is a big-time Young for Congress campaign supporter. As my good friend Scott Fluhr notes:
It will be interesting to see what comes of this, as Zoeller is not only one of the statewide elected officials to endorse Todd Young, but someone that has done more fundraisers for him and done more to help his campaign than virtually anyone else that isn't related to his wife (and thus Dan Quayle).
Former Republican congressman Mike Sodrel was supposed to hit the road and wind his way through 20 southern Indiana counties on Thursday, initiating his fifth Congressional campaign with the target being U.S. Rep. Baron Hill.
That's right, Millionaire Mike is back, and he's not taking the resounding electoral "no" he was handed in 2008 for an answer.
While pundits salivate over the spectacle of a fifth match-up against Congressman Baron Hill -- the good congressional representative has only registered one loss during the tough 2004 cycle -- it's worth noting that due to Hill's popularity and tireless work ethic, the real fun in this district may take place in the Republican primary.
In one corner we have the self-funding, mother-trucking behemoth that is Mike Sodrel, a man who has drifted more and more out of the mainstream as his desperate attempts have progressed from year to year. In th other, Carmelite Todd Young, a guy who despite racking up some early endorsements should view Sodrel's entry as a resounding dismissal of his candidacy by the GOP establishment.
For those of you who don't read the Indy Star, they ran an AP Story that touts Congressman Baron Hill as a potential Democratic candidate for governor in 2012.
Hill would be an instant heavy in the Democratic primary; a veteran politician who's never had an easy election in a Republican-leaning district. He'll have a large fundraising base and the ability to transfer his congressional account to a state account at the drop of a hat. This assumes, of course, he wins reelection in 2010.
Small-tent Democrats won't be excited about Hill, a moderate who openly touts his political centrism. His press release reads, in part,
The article accompanying the party unity charts, "2008 Votes Studies: Party Unity - Parties Dig In Deep on a Fractured Hill," notes that the average House Democrat voted with the majority of the caucus 92 percent of the time. The author attributes this high percentage to "the increasing propensity of individual lawmakers to vote with their fellow partisans." In contrast, Hill's score came in at 72 percent, the lowest among the Hoosier Members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Last year, the National Journal ranked Hill as the third most-centrist Democrat in the House.
Big-tent Democrats like myself welcome Hill's presence in the party, and look forward to his candidacy for governor. Democrats have done well with Democrats from rural districts in central and southern Indiana at the top of the ticket. See Evan Bayh and Frank O'Bannon as examples.
The best thing for Democrats in 2012, with President Obama at the top of the ticket, would be for Baron Hill and his neighboring-district colleague Brad Ellsworth running for governor and senate respectively. Two popular southern moderates would help down-ballot Democratic candidates in that region.
While Hill's statement of interest is far from a declaration of candidacy, Indiana Democrats should welcome this interest and encourage his entry.
The News and Tribune published a puff-piece a few days ago that took a look at the fledgling candidacy of Todd "I know Dan Quayle" Young, the political neophyte from Carmel Bloomington, Indiana who has pledged to run in the Ninth District next year.
The interesting thing about the interview isn't what Young says, as much as it is what he doesn't say. Namely, anything at all. Here's a sampling:
"There's no silver bullet to turn things around," he said. "But there are some common sense steps we can take."
Sounds great! Like what, Todd? The national debt, you say?
"Essentially our standards of living will go down," Young said. "We have to pay it off or it just gets passed on."
Continuing to add to the national debt will result in higher taxes which Young is opposed to. Debt is not just a financial dilemma - it's a moral issue to Young.
"We are better people than to borrow from our kids," he said.
Hm. Good point. So what are you planning to do about it?
National security is a top concern, though he wants to hear testimony before Congress from military leadership before stating his opinion on what America should do about Afghanistan.
At some point, Young believes definitive action will have to be taken to keep Iran from possessing nuclear weapons, but he said the situation hasn't escalated to that point yet.
Wait, what happened to the debt issue? Your plan to bring down the debt is military action in Iran? That doesn't seem to make much sen...
Americans should be free to shop for insurance across state lines, all businesses should be treated to the same tax breaks and medical liability reform needs to be pushed, Young said.
A combination of the three would bring more people under the health coverage umbrella, he said. But Young added the working poor could still not afford health coverage even with the plan he suggests, so Americans should accept the government will have to subsidize benefits for some, he said.
Wait, what about Iran and those nuclear weapons? And you're for subsidizing benefits? Now let me get this straight...
Young believes by touting fresh ideas and declaring his candidacy early, he'll be a formidable opponent for Hill next November.
...and, fin.
I'll give Todd some props, especially as the lowly law student I am -- he sure can spot some issues! The problem, of course, is when it comes to providing anything close to an answer to the problems facing the Ninth District, our humble Hoosier State, or the nation as a whole.
And lest you think the article left out Todd's slam-bang plans, a quick jaunt over to his faux-Obama website reveals an issue page that highlights little, and provides leadership on even less. This, for example, is the entirety of Todd's "plan" to solve not only the ballooning national debt, but any and all problems associated with the U.S. Constitution:
Make Congress deliberate before it acts. Congress will have to slow down. This means that Congress will give more careful consideration to how it spends your hard-earned tax dollars.
Empower citizens to participate. Bills will shrink, be less complicated, and contain fewer subjects, so that We the People can actually read them, too.
Stop the corrupt tit-for-tat Washington politics. Fewer bad proposals will be passed due to "log-rolling."
Restore transparency and integrity to spending. No more secret clauses or pork-barrel earmarks will be inserted into bills at the last moment.
The Courier & Press includes this blurb on the looming 2012 race in their weekly political column, noting the eyebrows beign raised by Congressman Baron Hill's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner schedule:
U.S. Rep. Baron Hill, a Seymour Democrat who represents much of Southern Indiana, long has been rumored as a potential gubernatorial candidate in 2012.
He's doing little to tamp down those rumors.
Hill reportedly has accepted an invitation to speak Nov. 7 at the Montgomery County Democratic Party's annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner.
Northwest of Indianapolis, the rural county is well outside Hill's district. But the Jefferson-Jackson dinner circuit is critical for Democrats interested in seeking statewide office.
The piece also notes that Evansville Mayor Johnathan Weinzapfel and Lake County Sheriff Roy Dominguez have been making the rounds over the last year or so.
[Update: The Herald Times UStream feed was archived - I've embedded the video after the jump.]
A few notes from Baron Hill's health care forum/town hall in Bloomington this evening:
Baron Hill and Bloomington Mayor Mark Kruzan entered to a remarkably loud round of applause. Kruzan gave Baron a pretty good intro, and tried to emphasize the need for civility.
Both times a single-payer/Medicare-for-all system was mentioned, loud rounds of applause broke out. (Nothing like that for a public option.)
Dr. Rob Stone, head of single-payer advocates Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan, received a big round of applause when Baron called on him for a question.
In response to Dr. Stone's question, Baron said that the public option has "about a 50/50 chance" of surviving.
A small business owner, frustrated with the increasing costs of healthcare, offered to cut an extra $1000 check for taxes on the spot, if Baron could guarantee a public health plan. He was rewarded with a standing ovation.
A woman shared a heartbreaking story about her parents divorcing when she was young so that her mom could qualify for Medicaid and her family could avoid inevitable bankruptcy. She was booed.
There was a moderate amount of shouting and booing throughout, but not the kind of really wholesale disruptiveness that the TV stations seem to love.
Baron started by trying to dispel some myths, quoting from T.R. Reid's piece in the Washington Post - "5 Myths About Health Care Around the World". This didn't stop people from talking and asking about these debunked insurance-issued talking points.
A majority of the questions and comments revolved around cost. I thought Baron did a pretty decent job talking about the projected savings from cutting waste and inefficiency, and the need to supplement that with taxes on the extremely wealthy. Despite his repeated answers, the same questions just kept popping up.
Baron revealed that he's not on the Congressional health plan, but on his wife's plan. However, when his wife retires soon, they have to make some tough decisions. He wants to make a choice on the proposed Exchange.
Baron repeatedly sought out questions from those who oppose reform, and made fun of the conspiracy theorists at Hoosier Access when he called on someone wearing a green shirt.
So, while there was nothing quite as entertaining as the chants of "Where's Evan Bayh?" from Monday's OFA rally at IUPUI, it was a pretty worthwhile evening of politics. I'll link to videos if anyone captured the stream from UStream (no video was allowed inside.)
A few days back, I noted on my twitter account that just about every incumbent GOP politician had endorsed Todd Young for the 9th District Congressional seat. This includes, according to Young:
I'm reminded (for better or worse) of Jon Costas and the AG race last year. All of the statewides were lined up in relatively short order for the chosen one; they endorsed, everyone else was supposed to follow.
Indianapolis picks, you see. That there are other declared candidates (and potential additional entries--such as Kerry Stemler of One Southern Indiana and ROCK fame--remain the subject of much buzz and rumor), but the statewides will pick for us and that will be that. We're not allowed to be left alone to hash it out in our own primary process. It's supposed to be a done deal long before that time ever comes.
Democratic Chairman Dan Parker has invited potential 2012 gubernatorial candidates to a meeting Saturday at the home of Bren Simon to discuss how to avoid a repeat of the 2008. Among those invited are 9th District Congressman Baron Hill and Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel, considered to be the two likely front-runners.
There is no shortage of potential candidates for the 2012 gubernatorial race, including Bart Peterson, Roy Dominguez, Tom McDermott - and even Schellinger and Thompson haven't ruled out running again. Sautter goes on to argue that the Indiana Democratic Party's early selection of Schellinger as the preferred candidate for governor in 2008 is an example of the pre-existing internal divisions that lead to divisive primaries. Then he notes:
The manner in which party leaders and the losing candidates have conducted themselves since Creigh Deeds' upset victory in Virginia provides an instructive contrast to their Hoosier counterparts. At Deeds' victory press conference on the day after the primary, both McAuliffe and Moran enthusiastically pledged their support to Deeds, offering money and staff. Not only did Schellinger and Parker skip Long Thompson's victory press conference, Schellinger never did endorse her and instead met secretly with Daniels. Meanwhile, Parker quietly did everything possible to sabotage his own nominee's campaign against Daniels.
I know Thomas and others here may argue with that last bit. But it remains to be seen how divided Hoosier Dems are heading into 2010 and 2012. On one hand, the state gave its electoral votes to a Democratic President, and reps like Hill and Ellsworth cruised to easy victories. On the other hand, there is still some acrimony in the wake of the debacle that was the gubernatorial campaign, and with Pete Visclosky under investigation, there's plenty of opportunity for division.
I don't think a strong primary is a bad thing - Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller at OpenLeft have pretty much exhaustively documented how House and Senate challengers selected through a tough primary process are often better-positioned in the general election. But as Indiana showed in 2008, a primary isn't enough by itself. With Republicans holding all statewide offices, the Democrats can't afford to be divided. Whether you were a Schellinger or Thompson partisan - or whatever your side in the Myers/Orentlicher/Carson contest - the Virginia example is the one to follow.
On May 20, Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan (HCHP) (and Citizens Action Coalition, another fine organization) organized a statewide rally for universal healthcare at Monument Circle in downtown Indy. The Economist was among many media outlets that covered the event. (The Star's coverage, however, was limited to the last graf in an article about the Wellpoint shareholders meeting[1], and an opinion piece[2] dated today.) That rally serves as the opening for The Economist's nuanced story on the likelihood of healthcare reform in the US.
The Economist piece also includes a few few insights into how Hoosier politicians are playing into the healthcare fight. Rep. Baron Hill (IN-09) appears to be stalling on setting up a meeting between HCHP's Dr. Rob Stone and the Blue Dog Coalition:
Mr Stone has run up small victories in the past year. In January the city council of New Albany, in the conservative southern part of the state, passed a resolution supporting a single-payer health plan. But Mr Stone has been unable to persuade many of the state's senior Democratic politicians to endorse the idea. Baron Hill, a Democratic congressman who represents the southern part of the state, has sounded sympathetic, and has even invited Mr Stone to address the Blue Dogs caucus of fiscally conservative Democratic congressmen. But, to Mr Stone's frustration, he has yet to set a date. Government-run health care is still anathema to many Americans. Mr Stone received a reminder of that the day before the rally; a vitriolic letter decrying "so many socialist if not communist [sic] working against the best social economic and progressive system in the world, capitalism."
As co-chair for policy for the Blue Dogs, Baron Hill should be bringing this information to the group.
Luke Kenley, an influential state senator from Indiana, sees a philosophical divide along generational lines. People over 50, such as himself, "have a great comfort level with the American free-enterprise system", and recognise the current turmoil as the marketplace correcting its own previous excesses.
But his own grown-up children do not share that faith. His son John, a lawyer aged 38, suggests that "Reagan had a time and a place, but those messages don't resonate." The disaster in the housing and mortgage markets shows that free markets don't always get incentives right or generate the information people need to make wise decisions. There may be times, he adds, when government is better suited to giving people the information they need.
The Economist also includes one of the most dubious (and unlikely) statements of all time, saying that Bush's Man Mitch has a "has a more nuanced view" than Kenley. The quotation that follows is far from evidence of this, though, as Daniels basically restates what Kenley and Pew Research argued earlier in the piece.
After receiving a shout-out from President Obama in last week's radio address, and with news that the aforementioned leader of the free world will be in town at his request and on his behalf next month, it appears the Ninth District's Baron Hill is flying high at the moment on the heels of his dominant electoral victory last year. With the wind at his back, Hill seems to be parlaying his close relationship with Obama into a vocal leadership position within the new Congress.
The practice was credited in the 1990s with helping to reach a balanced budget, but the law mandating it expired in 2002. Efforts to use congressional rules to enforce the same fiscal discipline have often failed.
But leaders of the 51-member Blue Dog group won a written promise from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Obama that they would push for a law mandating PAYGO in exchange for support of the $3.4 trillion budget plan for the next fiscal year.
That plan, a nonbinding resolution, cleared the House on Wednesday.
"We trust the Majority Leader and the Speaker and the President to follow through on their promises to enact statutory PAYGO," said Hill, D-9th District.
"These policies were instrumental back in those days of making sure that Congress was fiscally responsible," he said.
For those of you who have already watched President Obama's weekly radio address, you know that Indiana's own Baron Hill was on the receiving end of a PAYGO love-fest courtesy of the leader of the free world. Here's where we're at:
In his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama called on Congress to pass a pay-as-you-go legislation, known as PAYGO, that would require new federal spending to be offset by budgetary cuts or tax hikes.
"We need to adhere to the basic principle that new tax or entitlement policies should be paid for," he said, asserting that PAYGO "helped transform large deficits into surpluses in the 1990s. Now we must restore that sense of fiscal discipline."
Fiscally conservative Democratic lawmakers, known as Blue Dogs, told Obama on Friday that they're working on a PAYGO plan and that they prefer to offset new spending with spending cuts elsewhere. Rep. Baron Hill of Indiana will introduce legislation next week, a Democratic aide told FOXNews.com
And they said the Blue Dogs and Obama couldn't get along...
A guy at a Jeffersonville town hall with Rep. Baron Hill quoted, (with obvious disgust) the cover of Newsweek that read "We are all socialist now". The cranky man's implication was that Rep. Hill and the other Democrats who voted for the stimulus package are a bunch of danged socialists. Problem is the cranky guy didn't read (or didn't fully read/understand) the article that went with that magazine cover.
Periodically, someone will tell me our Congressman in the 9th district,Baron Hill, is "SO LIBERAL". I just have to laugh and wonder what hate-filled blow hard they've been listening to on the radio! In this last election, one of our local "Democrats" tried to tell me this, so I had to go dig up the information about our good Blue Dog Democrat, Congressman Hill. This guy was convinced that Hill was listening to his liberal friends in Indy who had lots of money rather than listening to Hoosier sensibilities.
Gov. Mitch Daniels emerged relatively unscathed from his announcement that he will refuse roughly $200 million in federal dollars for Indiana's struggling Unemployment Insurance fund, but at least one member of our congressional delegation took issue with the decision.
U.S. Rep. Baron Hill said today that Indiana should accept all the federal stimulus money available for unemployment insurance - even if it means expanding the state's current program.
"I can tell you people are hurting and they need these benefits," Hill, D-9th District, said during a visit to the Indiana Statehouse. "The letters and phone calls coming into my office are from people who are desperate and they need help."
These remarks came during Congressman Hill's visit to the General Assembly -- his second this year -- and raised at least onemustache set of eyebrows at the Statehouse.
Congressman Baron Hill (D-9th district) addressed the Indiana House of Representatives this afternoon, an appearance that mirrored one during the Electoral College meeting in the same House chamber in December. It caused some in the hallway to wonder if this is the beginning of a 2012 run for governor.
If so, Hill knows that Indiana is a tough state for a Democrat to win and that might explain part of his message. He asked lawmakers to be as bi-partisan as possible. Ask yourselves, he said about members of the opposite party, "What can I do to get along, rather than what can I do to trip them up? You'll be a lot better off."
It's never too early to start pontificating on the next election cycle, especially if you make your money, uh, pontificating on the next election cycle. And thus, with little fanfare, the Cook Political Report released their initial race ratings for the 2010 cycle. Indiana is, at least at the moment, a real snoozer.
IN-1 -- Solid D IN-2 -- Likely D IN-3 -- Likely R IN-4 -- Solid R IN-5 -- Solid R IN-6 -- Solid R IN-7 -- Solid D IN-8 -- Solid D IN-9 -- Likely D
The only real things of note here are that Brad Ellsworth is now recognized as beyond mere mortals in an Eighth District that he has quickly made his own, and Baron Hill has effectively consolidated his political strength in the historically tight Ninth District. Oh, and Mark Souder is a really, really lazy campaigner, but somehow keeps winning.
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