When Raul Grijalva and Lynn Woolsey told the co-chairs of the Cat Food Commission that they would 100% oppose Social Security cuts, it was pitched as the opening salvo in an aggressive pushback against any changes to benefits. There would be plenty of “CPC-wide follow up” in September, particularly when Congress returned to session, I [...]

This August has become the season of Congressional letters, whether to the President on Elizabeth Warren, or to the Speaker on the use of food stamp cuts as offsets to future bills. Today, we have another installment. Raul Grijalva and Lynn Woolsey, the co-chairs of the Progressive Caucus, have sent a letter directly to Erskine [...]

House progressives, angered by the continued chipping away of the federal food stamp program as a pay-for in various bills, are taking a stand with the child nutrition bill, which the Senate passed before leaving for their August recess. That bill paid for increases to the federal school lunch program with food stamp cuts, essentially [...]

I haven’t written much about Ryan Grim and Arthur Delaney’s excellent piece on the power struggle inside the Democratic Party. It highlighted an important issue that virtually no other media outlet bothers to cover in full. There’s a cottage industry these days, and really has been since the emergence of Barry Goldwater in the early [...]

Democrats have made a clear indication to pass a comprehensive health care bill within the next two months, rejecting calls from Republicans to start over or move in an incremental fashion. Rob Andrews, who attended yesterday’s bipartisan health care summit, laid out the path forward by saying he expected minor changes to the President’s proposal, [...]

When I first reported Henry Waxman’s comments that the House and Senate would conference informally on the health care bill and then pass amendments back and forth between chambers rather than have a formal conference, I really didn’t consider it a big deal. It wasn’t even the main part of my story. But many other [...]

The Senate is in the middle of the second of seven procedural votes on health care reform. In the first, lawmakers voted down a point of order on the Constitutionality of the individual mandate proposed by John Ensign and Orrin Hatch. The party-line vote failed, 39-60. Other votes include a series of additional points of [...]

You may have heard that Nancy Pelosi used her press conference today to hedge quite a bit on the insistence of including a public option in any health care bill. In deference to the Senate, Pelosi basically said she could live without a public option, and by extension her House Democrats could, as long as [...]

Yesterday, a report surfaced that Diane Watson’s office was telling constituents they were wasting their time calling her about the public option: I spoke with someone, or I should say he spoke to me, for half an hour, explaining that so many calls are wasted saying the same things to the congresswoman over and over, [...]

Congress Daily reports on yet another potential public option compromise being worked on by Tom Carper, who’s fast becoming the go-to Senator for these things. In states where private insurers fail to offer affordable coverage, Carper said the alternative would permit them to set up a non-profit board, likely appointed by the president, to offer [...]

Diana DeGette, chair of the Pro-Choice Caucus in the House, is vowing to block the bill she voted for on Saturday if it includes the Stupak amendment: Although House liberals voted for the bill with the amendment to keep the process moving forward, Rep. Diana DeGette (Colo.) said she has collected more than 40 signatures [...]