The Senate passed a bill Thursday that would both repeal significant portions of ObamaCare and defund Planned Parenthood.

The New American

Monday, 07 December 2015

Senate Votes to Repeal Much of ObamaCare, Defund Planned Parenthood

Written by  Michael Tennant

 

The Senate passed a bill Thursday that would both repeal significant portions of ObamaCare and defund Planned Parenthood. This marks the first time that chamber of Congress has approved any type of ObamaCare repeal, in contrast to the dozens of such bills passed by the House of Representatives.

“Middle-class Americans continue to call on Washington to build a bridge away from ObamaCare. They want better care. They want real health reform,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “For too long, Democrats did everything to prevent Congress from passing the type of legislation necessary to help these Americans who are hurting. Today, that ends.”

Democrats, of course, controlled the Senate from 2010, when the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed, through 2014 and blocked all attempts at ObamaCare repeal during that period. Even after Republicans took charge, the minority was still able to stall repeal by threatening a filibuster. But the GOP outflanked them this time by using a parliamentary maneuver known as budget reconciliation to bring the bill, already passed by the House, to the floor for a vote. Ironically, this is the same tactic the Democrats, despite possessing a filibuster-proof majority at the time, utilized to ram the ACA through the Senate in late 2009.

The bill passed 52-47, with all Democrats plus two Republicans opposed. Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) voted against the bill because of the amendment defunding Planned Parenthood, which they tried unsuccessfully to get removed. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) missed the vote because he was out campaigning for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

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Congress has never seen anything quite like the House Freedom Caucus. At least since the Civil War, there hasn’t been a faction fighting both parties at the same time.

POLITICO

History Dept.

The Freedom Caucus’ Unprecedented Insurgency

At least since the Civil War, there hasn’t been a faction fighting both parties at the same time.

By Alan Greenblatt

October 18, 2015

AP Photo

Congress has never seen anything quite like the House Freedom Caucus. There’s always someone unhappy on Capitol Hill and it’s not unusual for malcontents to band together. A rebellion made up of members who refuse to work with either party, however, is something that hasn’t happened in living memory.

“This is an unusual and indeed unprecedented development in the history of the party,” says Geoffrey Kabaservice, a research consultant to the Main Street Partnership, a centrist GOP group.

 

 

Parties—particularly those with large majorities—almost inevitably split into factions. And congressional history is replete with examples of groups that balked at party leadership. But the insurgents we remember—the ones who weren’t quickly and completely marginalized—managed by and large to find common cause with members of the other party. Southern Democrats, for instance, forged a “conservative coalition” with Republicans that dominated Congress for much of the 20th century.

There hasn’t been a bloc like the Freedom Caucus for at least a century, one that refuses to work with its own party leadership while being steadfastly unwilling to reach across the aisle. “There have been groups that often broke from the party, but in doing so, they didn’t stand as a third force,” says former GOP Rep. Mickey Edwards. “This group is very different.”

The Freedom Caucus, rather than breaking from Republican ranks, has forced Republican leaders to break from them. It’s a perverse sort of political jujitsu. One of outgoing Speaker John Boehner’s supposed crimes was that he went begging Democrats for help passing legislation when he couldn’t find the votes within his own caucus. Some rank-and-file Republicans, meanwhile, have made a separate peace with Democrats on reviving the Export-Import Bank. Normally the opposite would happen and it would be the insurgents reaching across the aisle. But that presupposes an interest in governing.

“I can think of a number of major examples throughout history where a party has had divisions of consequence,” says Laura Blessing, a senior fellow at the Georgetown Government Affairs Institute. “It’s rare that those divisions would represent a position on the fringe of the political system, where they’re not working with either party.”

Both the tactics and the playing field have changed for today’s dissenters. In the past, some members would squawk at autocratic leadership or the stated policies of their own party and look for ways to disrupt proceedings, but they had some kind of endgame in mind. Once they deposed a leader or got their way on a key vote, they took some quiet satisfaction.

What is distinctive about the current crop of congressional rebels is their willingness to use any lever they can find to cause trouble—debt-ceiling fights, funding fights, leadership succession struggles. “The thing that (today’s) conservatives are very good at—because they don’t care about precedent or the party’s history—is trying out different things,” says Kabaservice, author of Rule and Ruin, a history of the decline of moderate Republicans.

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Elizabeth Warren, kickin butts and taking names on Capitol Hill and Wall Street.....

House Democrats Back Away From GOP Attack On Elizabeth Warren's Agency

Wall Street watchdogs are worried about several Dem defections.

Zach Carter Senior Political Economy Reporter, The Huffington Post

Posted: 09/30/2015 04:04 PM EDT | Edited: 09/30/2015 05:52 PM EDT

Jennifer Graylock via Getty Images

 

UPDATE: After pressure from Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, Democrats on Wednesday overwhelmingly voted against a bill to hamstring the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Reps. David Scott (D-Ga.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) were the only Democrats voting in favor, joined by every Republican present at the markup. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), who had previously spoken in support of the bill, said he was casting "a reluctant no" vote during the roll call.
Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.) had been attempting to hash out an amendment that would bring additional Democrats on board, but did not ultimately introduce any language.

EARLIER:

WASHINGTON -- Several House Democrats are preparing to join a GOP assault on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- the agency designed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren to defend households from predatory lending. 

Republicans hope to hamstring the CFPB by replacing its director with a bipartisan five-member commission. Bank lobbyists have advocated the change for years, hoping to tie up rulemaking and enforcement actions with red tape and disputes between commissioners. Under CFPB Director Richard Cordray, the agency has forced companies to return billions of dollars in ill-gotten gains to consumers.

 

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New York Times

Senator Elizabeth Warren to Join Call to Alter Sales of Distressed Loans

By MATTHEW GOLDSTEINSEPT. 30, 2015

Photo

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts. Credit Susan Walsh/Associated Press 

 

Housing advocates have attracted a prominent ally in their push to change the federal government’s policy of selling distressed mortgages at a discount to private equity firms and hedge funds.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, joined other lawmakers, advocates and community activists on Wednesday in a Washington rally to oppose the loan sale program.

The senator called on the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Housing Fianance Agency, the overseer of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, to make it easier for nonprofit organizations to bid for the bundles of distressed mortgages put up for auction.

The sale of distressed mortgages by HUD and the government-sponsored mortgage finance firms has been drawing growing criticism from housing advocates and lawyers in recent months. The critics are concerned that private buyers of distressed mortgages are moving too quickly to put borrowers into foreclosure instead of modifying the loan terms as housing officials had hoped.

The investors are buying loans at a discount, often as much as 30 percent.

In a statement, Ms. Warren accused HUD and the F.H.F.A of “lining up with the Wall Street speculators.”

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The Daily 202: Elizabeth Warren wins another battle in war on Wall Street

By James Hohmann and Elise Viebeck September 30 at 7:57 AM    

 

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren walk to the Senate floor after a weekly Democratic caucus lunch this spring. (Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)

THE BIG IDEA: 

— Robert Litan has joined a growing fraternity of powerful Democrats who lost jobs because of Elizabeth Warren. 

Just a few hours after The Daily 202 broke the news that the Massachusetts senator was taking on the Brookings Institution over industry-financed research produced by Litan, the think tank sought and received his resignation. The veteran of the Clinton administration, who directed Brookings’ Economic Studies Program before becoming a non-resident senior fellow, is listed on the think tank’s web site this morning as a “Former Expert.”

Earlier this year, Warren blocked investment banker Antonio Weiss from becoming the third-ranking official at the Treasury Department. In 2013, Warren’s opposition helped torpedo Larry Summers’ lifelong dream of becoming Federal Reserve chairman—despite the fact he was reportedly promised the job by the White House.

Wall Street types call Warren a lot of nasty things, but demagogue is the most printable.

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 the Intercept:

Warren Increases the Pain Factor for Choosing Corporate-Friendly Democrats

Unofficial _Sources

David Dayen

Sep. 8 2015, 4:11 p.m.

A little-noticed report on candidates for an open spot on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reaffirms that the reformist wing of the Democratic Party is winning the tactical battle over financial regulatory personnel.

Luis Aguilar, one of three Democratic SEC commissioners on the five-member panel, announced he would step down in May. Initially, the White House floated as a replacement Keir Gumbs, who has passed through the revolving door, from SEC staff to the white-collar corporate law firm Covington & Burling.

Covington & Burling counts most major U.S. banks among its clients, and is the home of former Attorney General Eric Holder and several of his top deputies. While at Covington, Gumbs allegedly gave CEOs tutorials on how to avoid disclosing their corporate political spending. He also represented the American Petroleum Institute before the SEC.

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