From an article posted today at Media Consortium, a few examples of tax dollars being used to defend state and local immigration laws:

Hazleton, Pennsylvania, the leader of the court fights for local immigration enforcement, is in the tank for at least $2.8 million with some estimates totaling $5 million as it defends its ordinance all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Riverside, New Jersey suffered a local economic downturn before the city rescinded its anti-immigrant ordinance and welcomed the return of immigrants.

Farmers Branch, Texas, has spent nearly $4 million in legal fees and is expected to spend at least $5 million to defend its anti-immigration statute with no end in sight.

Prince William County, Virginia dramatically scaled back a tough immigration statute after realizing the original version would cost millions to enforce and defend in court.

Fremont, Nebraska, increased the city’s property tax to help pay the legal fees for its anti-immigration ordinance which it intends to defend.

That information and more can be found in a recently released study by The Center for American Progress.

Likely economic fallout hasn’t stopped Colorado legislators from introducing a bill that mimics Arizona’s 1070, nor from introducing one targeting immigrants who need bonds, nor from introducing one requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. Colorado legislators have not yet introduced a bill to sidestep the 14th Amendment.

More from the Media Consortium article:

Arizona lawmakers are expected to introduce an “anchor baby” bill today that would deny birthright citizenship to the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. Modeled after birthright citizenship legislation unveiled by the nativist coalition State Legislators for Legal Immigration (SLLI) earlier this month, the measure is, unabashedly, part of a larger effort on the part of SLLI to challenge existing citizenship law in the United States.

Lawmakers from Georgia, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and South Carolina have likewise committed to introducing citizenship bills at the state level, while legislators from Nebraska, Indiana, Colorado, Texas and others are determined to implement similarly controversial Arizona-style enforcement measures in their states.

In recent years, communities that implemented harsh anti-immigrant laws have experienced a number of economic and social repercussions which lawmakers continue to overlook in their determination to tighten enforcement. But as nativist policies bleed public coffers and anti-immigrant political speech incites new strains of ethnic violence, the stark consequences of such extremism are becoming harder and harder to ignore.

If the 14th Amendment was appealed, stripping automatic citizenship from babies born in the U.S, women checking in to hospitals presumably would need to carry proof of citizenship, making that final last minute packing for the hospital just a little more problematic for citizens and non-citizens alike.

McCaskill, a first-term Democrat, appears to have persuaded enough of her colleagues to back her effort to take the “secret” out of the Senate’s long-time practice of secret holds.

If her bill gets to the floor, which appears more likely since every Democrat supports it — plus enough Republicans to grease passage — no senator would be able to place a hold on a nomination or a piece of legislation without leaving fingerprints.

McCaskill, who has been pushing the issue for weeks, was pleased Thursday but cautioned that it was still too early to start tossing confetti.

On the main, McCaskill’s legislation would take the “secret” out of secret holds, forcing senators to identify themselves and their reasons if they want to delay Senate action on nominees or legislation. This should be welcome news to those eager for Senate reform. Beginning with the fight over the stimulus package, liberals have been pushing for some kind of reform to the Senate, whose rules have frustrated every aspect of liberal’s agenda. With the filibuster in particular, Republicans and conservative Democrats have forced liberals to sacrifice billions from the stimulus package, a public option from health care reform and, in all likelihood, cap-and-trade from a climate bill.

The secret hold hasn’t been as high profile as the filibuster, but to liberals, it has had an equally pernicious effect on governance. Widespread hold abuse has left the Obama administration pitifully understaffed, as Republicans refuse to let nominees move to Senate confirmation. And that’s to say nothing of seats on the federal bench kept fallow by Republican obstructionism.

I have no idea if McCaskill’s hold legislation will make it through the Senate; senators are very reluctant to give up their power, and this would diminish the ways in which individual senators can impose their preferences on the entire chamber. And of the possible avenues for reforming the hold, this isn’t my first choice. Like Jonathan Bernstein (of the fantastic Plain Blog About Politics), I’m not convinced that secrecy is the problem with the hold. After all, senators are also responsible for advancing parochial interests, and in doing so, the secret hold can be a useful tool. Rather, the problem is that there are too many holds. Obstructionist senators are abusing Senate norms, and it’s not clear that McCaskill’s bill will address that core dilemma. The solution — as Bernstein details — is for the Democrats to play hardball and “be willing to force cloture votes on a motion to proceed despite partisan holds.” Here’s Bernstein with a more detailed explanation:

Rather than make Senators explain themselves and have the Majority Leader judge which holds are legitimate and which are not, the Democrats should play hardball: they should let the Republicans know that unless the total number of holds on nominations shrinks dramatically, the Dems will start calling nominations up anyway, hold or not, and force the GOP to find 41 votes against considering them.

The goal of reform should be to maintain the usefulness of the rule or norm in question, while preventing abuse. By simply ignoring holds unless they are pared down significantly, Democrats could maintain the rule while reinforcing Senate norms and pushing against Republican abuse. It’s not the most satisfying solution, but it might be the most effective one.

But unlike most of their private sector counterparts, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — and the half of the U.S. housing stock that they either own or back — are still owned by the federal government, and despite the administration’s promises, Zachary Goldfarb of The Washington Post says they’re going to stay that way. Why?

1. The administration is “too busy” with other reform efforts.
2. The administration has little desire to wade into another political screaming match this close to an election.
3. Wall Street thinks it could destabilize the housing market even further.
4. The administration plans on using Fannie and Freddie as part of its ongoing efforts to prop up the housing market.
5. Fannie and Freddie have been behind the majority of mortgages made since the housing crisis began.

Of course, critics of Fannie and Freddie and the moral hazard they embodied have been calling for reform for years, to little avail. If, in the midst of government ownership and $125 billion (and counting) in bailout money, the administration can’t reform them now, it never will — and that’s likely just what Fannie and Freddie are counting on.

Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing Citizens United to air its documentary films and advertisements is a tremendous victory, not only for Citizens United but for every American who desires to participate in the political process.

As our case amply demonstrates, campaign finance legislation over the last two decades has imposed, as Justice Kennedy put it, a “censorship . . . vast in its reach.” By overruling Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and striking down McCain-Feingold’s ban on so-called electioneering communications, the Supreme Court has made possible the participation in our political process that is the right of every American citizen – a right that had been severely curtailed under McCain-Feingold.

This is a victory for Citizens United, but even more so for the First Amendment rights of all Americans. The fault line on this issue does not split liberals and conservatives or Republicans and Democrats. Instead, it pits entrenched establishment politicians against the very people whom they are elected to serve.

And Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.):

I am disappointed by the decision of the Supreme Court and the lifting of the limits on corporate and union contributions.  However, it appears that key aspects of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), including the ban on soft money contributions, remain intact.

That’s the entire McCain statement.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) at a rally for health reform in October (Jay Mallin/ZUMA Press)

It was meant to be a populist legislative victory that would usher Democrats straight through the 2010 midterm elections: a sweeping health care reform bill offering affordable coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans, while preventing insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions.

Then came Massachusetts.

[Congress1] In the wake of Republican Scott Brown’s stunning Senate victory in the Bay State Tuesday, Republicans are already spinning the outcome as a damning referendum on the Democrats’ partisan health reform proposal. The validity of the claim is debatable, as many political experts say the voters’ anger is more likely a response to the nation’s still-struggling economy. Still, with polls indicating that health reform has become more liability than asset, Democrats are scrambling for ways to put health care in the rearview mirror and make room for more tangible election-year items: taking on Wall Street and tackling the unemployment crisis.

Democrats can’t abandon their health reform bill, many experts say, but nor can they rely on it alone for success in November.

“There’s no question that this has got to make the Democrats queasy about health care reform,” Henry E. Brady, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, said of the Massachusetts contest. “But the reason they’re getting clobbered on the health care bill is the economy. That’s what they’re going to live and die on.”

“There’s a much larger discontent that’s demoralized the average Democratic voter in Massachusetts, and that’s the state of the economy,” agreed Michael L. Mezey, a political science professor at DePaul University. “They want to get health care behind them, and the administration is going to pivot to more populist themes.”

David Epstein, an expert on congressional politics at Columbia University, compared the health reform bill to another consequential, but controversial, Democratic initiative: the sweeping deficit-reduction legislation passed by the Clinton administration in 1993. That law eventually helped the country achieve billions of dollars in budget surpluses, but because it took a few years to realize the gains, the accomplishment offered Democrats few immediate political advantages. Indeed, the Republicans swept to power just a year later.

“It was a great piece of public policy, but it didn’t help them [Democrats] in the [1994] midterms,” Epstein said. In a similar vein, he added, “just health care is not doing it right now.”

Democrats seem to have gotten the message. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) indicated Tuesday that, after health care, the Democrats will turn their attention quickly to the economy — and keep it there through the year. “Creation of jobs and the policies which will return us to fiscal balance will be our focus,” Hoyer said.

Later, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, issued a statement summarizing the Democrats’ election-year message. It boasted of the “economic progress” under Democratic leadership, but there was no mention of health care reform.

Still, Democrats can’t entirely abandon their top domestic priority at this late stage in the debate. As tough as it might be for some Democrats to explain to constituents their support for the bill, detailing its failure would be even tougher.

“They’re going to look like the gang that can’t shoot straight,” said Mezey. “Not passing it would be a big problem.”

Gary C. Jacobson, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego, agreed. “Folding at this point,” he said, “might be more dangerous than just plowing on.”

Brown’s victory Tuesday was never supposed to be. Not only is Massachusetts among the most loyally Democratic states in the country, but the contest was staged to fill the seat vacated by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), a lifelong champion of health care reform and an author of one of the early versions of the Democrats’ proposal.

Republicans were quick to claim Brown’s win as an indictment of the Democrats’ health reform bill. “The voters in Massachusetts, like Americans everywhere, have made it abundantly clear where they stand on health care,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement. “They don’t want this bill and want Washington to listen to them.”

The episode has left Democratic leaders struggling to locate populist issues that voters will embrace. Epstein suggested that financial regulatory reform would be such an issue. “It’s good for them both as politics and policy,” Epstein said. “If you’re looking ahead, that’s the issue that will make or break the Democrats in the midterm elections.”

Not that the Democrats don’t already have some legislative trophies to carry with them on the campaign trail. In the last 12 months, President Obama has signed bills to prevent workplace pay discrimination, expand children’s health care coverage and protect consumers from the most abusive traps of credit card companies. And the Democrats’ $787 billion stimulus bill — which has taken its share of lumps from both sides of the aisle — is also widely credited with preventing the economy from sinking much lower.

Still, Democrats could have done much more to excite the populist base that swept them to victories in 2006 and 2008. Party leaders, for example, ignored calls from a host of prominent economists who warned that the $800 billion stimulus was much too small to tackle the Great Recession. More recently, the White House abandoned its earlier support for mortgage bankruptcy reform, paving the way for the bill’s failure in the Senate. And while consumer advocates have applauded the credit card reforms enacted last spring, they were also critical that Democrats, bowing to pressure from the finance industry, delayed the effective date of those changes until this year.

In the wake of Tuesday’s election in Massachusetts, MoveOn.org sent its members an email message indicative of many liberals’ discontent with the Democrats. “Pass real health care reform,” the email said. “Rein in Wall street. Take on the banks and special interests that stand in the way of change.”

Before they can move to the economy, though, Democratic leaders will have to decide how to pass their health reforms with just 59 seats in Senate. Under one scenario, the House could simply take up the Senate-passed bill. Many House Democrats, however, have blasted that proposal from both the right and the left, leaving the success of that option in question. Furthermore, many moderate House Democrats who supported health reform the first time through might get cold feet after witnessing Brown’s victory in Massachusetts. That election, Brady said, “makes it so much easier for people in the House not to vote for it.”

Some experts argue that the Democrats have spent so much time, energy and political capital on health care reform that they won’t be able to ignore it on the campaign trail.

“They’ll have to campaign on it,” said Jacobson. “They’re pretty well committed at this point. If they’re not going to defend what they’ve done then they’re hopeless.”

Furthermore, with unemployment still hovering in double digits, it’ll be difficult for lawmakers to campaign on what is perhaps their most significant accomplishment of the last year: the string of government interventions that prevented the recession from becoming a depression.

“It’s tough to make the case that, ‘Had we not done this, things would be worse,’” Mezey said. “People are going to say, ‘Well, things are still pretty bad now, what are you going to do about it?’”

Hoyer, for his part, had a response. “We’ve been trying to do something about it,” he said in the Capitol Tuesday. “I think we’re making success. … But until the numbers turn around, until the economy is creating jobs, until there is more stability, people are going to be angry. And that, I think, is manifested throughout the country — not just in Massachusetts.”

Well, according to a new CNN poll, not many people. His favorable rating has dropped 9 points from early December, to 31 percent, as his unfavorable number has climbed 6 points, to 34 percent. His biggest decline — a 14-point drop — has been among independent voters.

This can’t be terribly reassuring for Lieberman if he hopes to run for reelection as an independent in 2012.

(via Taegan Goddard)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), flanked by Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), discusses the passage of the Senate health bill. (Xinhua/ZUMApress.com)

Senate Democrats on Thursday approved the best health care reform bill they could manage: a sweeping $871 billion proposal designed to extend coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and slow the growth of runaway costs. It was at once a monumental achievement, representing the most expansive overhaul of the nation’s dysfunctional health care system in generations, and a disappointment to many liberals who’d hoped the reforms would go further to rein in the same medical-services industries most responsible for the skyrocketing expenses.

[Congress1] The tally was 60 to 39, with every member of the Democratic caucus (including two Independents) voting in favor of the measure and every Republican present voting against it.

“This is for my friend Ted Kennedy,” 92-year-old Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) said just before his vote, a reference to the late Massachusetts Democrat and health reform champion who passed away over the summer.

Senate leaders must now combine their bill with the one passed last month by the House, which, despite broad similarities, strays on several key issues, including its creation of a controversial public insurance option.

The rare Christmas Eve vote came after months of acrimonious debate over how Congress should approach health care reform. The saga first pitted Democrats against Republicans, but later — when it became clear that no Republicans would support the bill — saw liberal Democrats and their moderate colleagues doing battle over the most contentious provisions of the 2,074-page bill. The Republicans, who said the bill represented an expensive government takeover, were effective in slowing the pace of the legislation, but were helpless to prevent passage once the Democrats united behind it.

For the Democratic faithful, that unification came at a price. To secure 60 votes, party leaders had to bow to the demands of two caucus moderates — Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) — who were threatening to join a Republican filibuster otherwise. With no margin for desertions, Democratic leaders were forced to concede several of their legislative priorities in the process. To win Lieberman, they dropped their plans to create a government-run insurance option to compete with private companies — a program that many liberal policy experts consider vital for controlling rising premium costs — and to lower the age of Medicare eligibility to 55. For Nelson, they tacked on language restricting abortion coverage under subsidized plans operating on newly proposed insurance marketplaces, called exchanges. That provision has been roundly attacked by reproductive rights groups, who argue that it will restrict women’s access to comprehensive health services.

Both concessions set the stage for a fight with House Democrats when leaders of the chambers meet next month to marry the two bills. Already, some House liberals are claiming that Senate Democrats bent too far.

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Rules Committee and also a leader of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, blasted the Senate bill Wednesday as “not worthy of the historic vote that the House took a month ago.”

The Senate’s decision to eliminate the public option — combined with federal insurance subsidies and a mandate requiring most Americans to buy health insurance from private companies — is simply a gift to the insurance industry, Slaughter claimed, echoing the message coming from other liberal critics since the compromise with Lieberman was announced.

“I do not want to subsidize the private insurance market,” Slaughter wrote on CNN.com. “[T]he whole point of creating a government option is to bring prices down.”

It’s not the only wrinkle that will need ironing out. There are also significant discrepancies in how the chambers fund their separate bills; how they approach illegal immigrants; how broadly they would expand Medicaid; and what they propose to do with the Children’s Health Insurance Program, to name just a few.

Still, Democrats in the White House and the Senate cheered Thursday’s vote as a historic step toward covering the estimated 46 million Americans who currently lack health insurance. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the bill is imperfect, but added that it nonetheless represents a giant step toward jumpstarting the “process” that is health-care reform.

“How much longer can we afford to put this off, or ask the uninsured for their patience?” Reid asked just before the vote. “Until health care costs consume not just a sixth of our economy, but a third, or a half? Until premiums consume a more than half of a family’s income? We certainly don’t have the luxury of waiting until America becomes the only developed nation on earth where you can die for lack of health insurance — we already bear that blemish.”

President Obama, who’d made health care reform the top domestic priority of his inaugural year, echoed that message later in the morning, saying that the Senate vote “brings us toward the end of a nearly century-long struggle to reform America’s health care system.”

“Time and time again, such efforts have been blocked by special interest lobbyists who’ve perpetuated a status quo that works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people,” he said. ”We can’t doom another generation of Americans to soaring costs and eroding coverage and exploding deficits.”

Republicans, meanwhile, continued to attack the legislation as a bloated government intervention that will raise taxes and steal consumer choice. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday that the bill doesn’t cut costs, as Democrats claim. “It doesn’t do what it was supposed to do,” he said.

McConnell also warned supporting Democrats that they’ll get “an earful” from constituents when they go home for the holidays. “They know there is widespread opposition to this monstrosity,” McConnell said.

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), who opposes the bill, was the only member not present for Thursday’s vote.

Neither side of the debate claims that the nation’s health care system isn’t in need of an overhaul. Indeed, health policy experts on and off of Capitol Hill have warned for years that the rising costs of health care services, which far outpace both inflation and wages, are threatening to swamp the entire economy. And the numbers support their case. This year health care spending is projected to top $2.5 trillion, representing almost 18 percent of the gross domestic product. By 2017, the figure is expected to jump to 20 percent. The question all along has been how to slow that growth without compromising either patient care or the health-services research needed to uncover new medical technologies and procedures.

Democrats are hoping to merge the House and Senate bills quickly to allow President Obama to sign the legislation into law before giving his State of the Union address, which is expected to take place late next month. That timeline, however, is far from guaranteed, considering that Senate lawmakers aren’t scheduled to be back in Washington until Jan. 19.

Even then, the debate over health care will be far from over. One of the first bills that Congress will have to take up following Obama’s speech will be one addressing the 21-percent cut in Medicare physician payments. Although lawmakers provided a two-month fix to prevent those cuts from taking effect on Jan. 1, a permanent solution was too expensive to fit into their larger health reform bills.

That, however, is for another day. Today, the Democrats are reveling over their hard-fought legislative victory.

The New York Times reports:

The vote was 60 to 40 — a tally that is expected to be repeated four times as further procedural hurdles are cleared in the days ahead, and then once more in a dramatic, if predictable, finale tentatively scheduled for 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

Both parties hailed the vote as seismic.

Democrats said it showed them poised to reshape the health system after decades of failed attempts. [...]

Republicans said that the bill was fatally flawed and that voters would retaliate against Democrats at the polls in November.

From The Minnesota Independent:

According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, Hirschmann has said, “Obama, like Hitler, is ‘a charismatic leader who promises full pocketbooks.’ Obama’s pro-choice stands, she writes, resembles those of Hitler, who ‘brought abortion to a systematic level and declared the killing of unborn babies a national duty.’”

Hirschmann also told the Gazette, “He could pave the way for a future Antichrist. Obama scares me because he has no record and people flock to him. Hitler also had no record, people flocked to him and both wrote a book. Christians laid flat and Hitler came to power, just like with Obama.”

Tickets for the fundraiser are $75 in advance, $100 at the door.

Also of note, CCHC warns that “Genetic testing could be used for purposes found immoral in the Hippocratic medical tradition” on the front page of its Website.

Here’s video of Bachmann encouraging supporters to attend the CCHC dinner:

And here’s a promotional flyer:

“Senator Lieberman should be commended today for sticking with his principles and standing against efforts by Democrat leaders in Washington to ram through a controversial and massive government health care bill,” says NRSC spokesman Colin Reed in a statement aimed at Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.)–a liberal in a red state who has shown no sign of bucking the public option, but faces a (somewhat remote) re-election threat if Gov. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) runs next year. “The question many in Washington and in North Dakota are waiting to have answered, however, is where do Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad stand? Will they stand with Harry Reid and his partisan government-run health care bill or will they stand with North Dakota taxpayers who are already facing an unimaginable federal debt?  Both Senators have had more than enough time to study this issue and understand its consequences on North Dakota taxpayers – it’s time they made their position clear as Senator Lieberman did today.”

The NRSC is sending more or less the same statement to reporters in Louisiana, Nebraska, Florida, and Indiana. The latter two states were blue in 2008 but red in 2004.