Posts by Mike Lillis

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), a breast-cancer survivor, has been busy on the news shows this week, attacking the new guideline that women seek routine mammograms later in life. Last night, she was at it again, telling MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that it’s “totally inappropriate” for a panel without any sitting cancer specialists to make such [...]

Republicans on Capitol Hill were sure quick to go after the new federal guidelines recommending that women should seek routine mammograms beginning at age 50 instead of 40. “This is how rationing begins,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “This is when you start getting a bureaucrat between you and your physician. [...]

In a letter released today, the Senate Ethics Committee admonished Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) for “actions and statements reflecting unfavorably upon the Senate” in connection to the senator’s actions during his appointment to the upper chamber last year.
The Committee found that you should have known that you were providing incorrect, inconsistent, misleading or incomplete information [...]

For Tim Geithner, it’s been a difficult week.
“Conservatives agree that as point person, you failed,” Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) told the Treasury secretary yesterday during a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee. “Liberals are growing in that consensus as well. Poll after poll shows that the American public has lost confidence in this president’s ability [...]

Aiming to prevent a 21-percent reduction in Medicare doctor payments next year, the House today passed legislation scrapping the flawed formula that has dictated similar cuts for most of the decade.
The count was 243 to 183, with 11 Democrats voting against the measure, and just one Republican — Rep. Michael Burgess, a Texas physician — [...]

Nothing shocking here. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took to the chamber floor this morning to decry the Democrats’ $848 billion health reform bill, unveiled about 15 hours earlier.
After six weeks of drafting a bill behind closed doors, the Majority has produced a bill that increases premiums, raises taxes, and slashes Medicare by half [...]

Now that the veil has been lifted, here are a few of the important numbers surrounding the Senate’s health reform bill, courtesy of the Congressional Budget Office.

$848 billion: Ten-year cost of the proposal, all of it offset by revenue increases and budget cuts elsewhere.
$130 billion: Amount the bill would reduce budget deficits over 10 years.
[...]

More than 1 million unemployed workers are poised to lose their jobless benefits in January if Congress doesn’t step in to extend the filing deadlines for the emergency insurance program, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group.
Although Congress just enacted an extension of jobless benefits — up [...]

After weeks of number crunching, the Congressional Budget Office announced this afternoon that the Senate’s health reform bill will cost $849 billion over 10 years, cover 94 percent of the country’s population, and reduce the deficit by $127 billion, Fox News reports:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid released the bill and its price tag to his colleagues [...]

Moments ago, Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic proposal to freeze credit card rates on existing balances through the holiday season. The bill, sponsored by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), would prevent credit card companies from hiking rates and fees on existing balances until the industry reforms passed by Congress earlier this year take [...]