Jane Mayer’s investigative piece on Koch Industries, the large conglomerate led by two powerful right-wing billionaire brothers who fund an important chunk of the conservative movement, does an important public service by debunking the notion of a spontaneous grassroots uprising in reaction to the new Democratic Administration. Koch funds Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, two [...]

The Senate election in Kentucky offers a pretty stark choice – hardcore glibertarian Rand Paul, or mainstream Democrat Jack Conway. Conway, the state’s Attorney General, sat down with FDL News while at Netroots Nation, and I was impressed with his ability to describe common-sense issues in populist terms, and his insight on people’s anger with [...]

We saw during the health care debate a moment where Congressional Dems needed a revenue-raiser at the very end of the process, and then – perhaps only then – they turned to the progressive student loan reform that saved the government lots of money. A similar dynamic may save the jobs bill, or at least [...]

I’m about three years behind on my book-reading, and so I’m just getting around to finishing Paul Krugman’s The Conscience of a Liberal. In the book, written in mid-2007, there is a long chapter on universal health care as a foundational issue for any return to power for Democrats. I thought it would be useful [...]

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer has always been right at the forefront of the drug re-importation debate. In previous runs for Governor he highlighted the issue by actually busing senior citizens into Canada to purchase cheaper pills. A few weeks ago, Schweitzer sent a letter to the HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, calling for a waiver to [...]

Arkansas News columnist John Brummett has unkind words for Blanche Lincoln’s latest slash-and-burn campaign against her primary opponent Bill Halter. In a series of mailers, Lincoln has attacked Halter for his service on the corporate board of Threshold Pharmaceuticals, which was sued by shareholders for providing misleading information on their products. Lincoln took this information [...]

Not that there was any doubt, but two of the likeliest members of the Democratic caucus to peel off and oppose the reconciliation bill, including one member who cautioned against the sweeping student loan reforms in the bill, have announced their support for the measure. Bill Nelson, who was targeted by bank lobbyists for opposition, [...]

On the left, one of the most offensive pieces of the health care bill is the deal made between the drug industry trade group PhRMA and the White House, which blocked things like reimportation or negotiating drug prices with Medicare in exchange for a set $80 billion in givebacks from the industry and a promise [...]

The House Energy and Commerce Committee will mark up a bill tomorrow that would require the President and the Secretary of Health and Human Services to deliver all documentation to Congress about the deal made between the White House and various stakeholders on health care reform. The bill, H. Res. 983, was introduced by Republican [...]

As I noted earlier, the President used his closed-door meeting with the House Democratic caucus yesterday to announce his support for dropping the exclusivity period for biologic drugs by at least two years. A source familiar with the meeting, whose professional position does not allow public communication with the press, told me that Anna Eshoo, [...]

The President is clearly taking control of health care reform. We know about the pep talk Obama gave publicly in his meeting with House Democrats, but it was the private session that revealed much more. Clearly, Obama was leaning on the House caucus to pass through health care. But there were a couple specifics that [...]