New Government Shutdown?

02 November 2011 |permalink | email article

Another donnybrook threat looms and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer and a vast majority of Democrats have signed a letter to Speaker John Boehner pushing him to strip partisan policy riders out of must-pass legislation to fund the government after the money runs out late this month.

That said, House Republicans are advancing appropriation bills loaded with controversial measures that would defund the new health care law, scrap environmental protections and much more. If Boehner passes these bills with Republican votes alone, he sets up a major standoff with Senate Democrats, who will reject the spending bills, setting up another government shutdown standoff. It’s a repeat of last spring’s fight, but this time, as Brian Beutler at Talking Points Memo reports, Democrats won’t be rolled by the GOP. 

California Notebook

Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez wrote a biting column on Monday about senior citizen demonstrators on canes and walkers in front of the state building. Their concern: the adult day health care centers that have become a lifeline for them may shut down in a month because Gov. Jerry Brown has whacked Medi-Cal funding, and these elders can’t afford private facilities. The seniors came to the rally with nurses and relatives to raise concerns in support of the roughly 300 centers in California, which have about 35,000 clients. The estimate is as many as 85-90% of the facilities will have to close. Brown, a former Jesuit, may ape former Gov. Ronald Reagan’s cut, squeeze and trim philosophy but he’s hurting the elderly when they’re suffering. It’s not a pension issue but indefensible.

Quotable

“I’ve been in Washington 35 years…and I’ve never seen a time when people have put their own personal feelings over how we can get the economy moving.” –Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a longtime Illinois Republican congressman, citing House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as bucking the infrastructure bill because of their personal feelings against the president, and not wanting to hand him a victory.

“I’m a doer, not a talker. In Texas, we created 40 percent of the new jobs in the entire country since June 2009. And we cut a record $15 billion from our state budget.” – Rick Perry on job growth, although critics have noted that the unemployment rate in Texas was 7.7 percent in June 2009, yet stands now at 8.8 percent, the highest level since the late 1980s.

“There are people now who hesitate to tell a joke to a woman in the workplace, any kind of joke, because it could be interpreted incorrectly.” – Rand Paul to the National Review on the Cain scandal.

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