MORNING MESSAGE
Booker and the Big Pharma Dems Have No Excuse. This Vote Proves It.
It’s
devastating, and potentially lethal, when Americans can’t afford life-saving
drugs because their elected representatives are in thrall to Big Pharma. It’s
disappointing when Democrats offer implausible excuses for their votes, as Sen.
Cory Booker and twelve other senators did last week ... If Booker and the others
hadn’t broken with their party and ignored the needs of the American people, a
budget amendment from Sens. Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar would have paved
the way for the importation of prescription drugs from Canada...
ETHICS CLOUD HANGS OVER CABINET NOMS
Education
Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos hearing today, The Hill: “[DeVos will be]
face-to-face with liberal stalwarts Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.). DeVos’s vocal support of school choice and charter schools is
expected to get tough questioning at a hearing that promises to be contentious …
she could also potentially face some heat from more conservative lawmakers over
her past support for Common Core education standards … End Citizens United
(ECU), a campaign finance reform PAC, and Every Voice have been ramping up
pressure for senators on the HELP Committee who have received campaign
contributions from DeVos to recuse themselves from her confirmation
hearing.”
DeVos
is “the worst of the ‘school choice’ movement” says TNR’s Graham Vyse:
“Detroit Free Press editorial page editor Stephen Henderson wrote that his
newspaper supports successful charter schools, but DeVos’s efforts in Michigan
have yielded the opposite.”
Politico
explores how the DeVos family bought Michigan’s government: “…the DeVos
family, with Dick and Betsy at the helm, has emerged as a political force
without comparison in Michigan … Thanks to the DeVoses, Michigan’s charter
schools enjoy a virtually unregulated existence. Thanks to them, too, the center
of the American automotive industry and birthplace of the modern labor movement
is now a right-to-work state.They’ve funded campaigns to elect state
legislators, established advocacy organizations to lobby them, buttressed their
allies and primaried those they disagree with, spending at least $100 million on
political campaigns and causes over the past 20 years…”
Ethics
paperwork still missing on DeVos and other nominees. CNN: “Of the current
list of 21 nominees, 14 must still sit for Senate hearings, and only five of
those 14 have finalized their required paperwork … the paperwork for two of
President-elect Donald Trump’s billionaire nominees with hearings scheduled for
this week — namely, Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos (up Tuesday) and
Commerce Secretary-designate Wilbur Ross (up Wednesday) — were notably missing
from the ethics office’s website as of Monday afternoon.”
HHS
nominee “invested in company, then introduced a bill to help it” scoops CNN:
“Rep. Tom Price last year purchased shares in a medical device manufacturer days
before introducing legislation that would have directly benefited the company …
Price bought between $1,001 to $15,000 worth of shares last March in Zimmer
Biomet … Less than a week after the transaction, the Georgia Republican
congressman introduced the HIP Act, legislation that would have delayed until
2018 a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regulation that industry
analysts warned would significantly hurt Zimmer Biomet financially once fully
implemented.”
Commerce
nominee offshored thousands of jobs. Reuters: “Supporters say Ross saved
thousands of U.S. jobs by rescuing firms from failure. Data attained by Reuters
through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that rescue effort came at a
price: textile, finance and auto-parts companies controlled by the
private-equity titan eliminated about 2,700 U.S. positions since 2004 because
they shipped production to other countries…”
TRUMP, CONGRESS NOT ON SAME PAGE
Trump
dings House GOP tax plan. The Hill: “Trump told The Wall Street Journal in
an interview published Monday that he is not a fan of the ‘border adjustment’
proposal, which would tax imports and exempt exports. ‘Anytime I hear border
adjustment, I don’t love it,’ he said. ‘Because usually it means we’re going to
get adjusted into a bad deal … if somebody is making a motorcycle or a plane in
our country, they’re getting a credit for the plane they make before they send
it over to wherever it’s going,’ he said. ‘And you don’t need that plus lower
taxes and everything else. And it’s too complicated. They get credit on some
parts and not other parts. Where was the part made? I don’t want that. I just
want it nice and simple.'”
Trump,
Price diverge on Obamacare. Politico: “GOP lawmakers, including Price,
stress they are less concerned about matching Obamacare’s coverage gains, which
drove the nation’s uninsured rate to a historic low of 9 percent. They would
rather people have access to affordable insurance only if they want it, hoping
to avoid Obamacare’s individual mandate. But Trump indicated that he wants his
plan to match Obamacare, if not exceed it, when it comes to expanding health
care coverage…”
“Trump
may have just destroyed the Republican effort to repeal Obamacare” says W.
Post’s Paul Waldman: “Accomplishing repeal without causing the GOP a
political calamity is an extremely delicate enterprise, and the last thing they
want is to have him popping off at the mouth and promising things they can’t
deliver. Which is what he just did…”
Thousands
rally over weekend to save Obamacare, with more to come. NYT:
“President-elect Donald J. Trump and congressional Republicans appear to have
accomplished a feat that President Obama, with all the power at his disposal,
could not in the past seven years: They have galvanized outspoken support for
the Affordable Care Act … progressive groups are planning a two-month
cross-country bus tour to fight the repeal effort, starting Tuesday.
Worst
poll numbers for a new president. Ever. Politico: “Trump’s approval rating
in the CNN poll released Tuesday sat at just 40 percent, 44 points below the 84
percent that President Barack Obama took office with in 2009. Just 40 percent of
those surveyed by The Washington Post and ABC News said they held a favorable
opinion of Trump, by far the lowest of any incoming president dating back at
least to President Jimmy Carter’s 1977 inauguration.”
DNC CHAIR RACE HEATS UP
Dems
try to avoid further division in DNC chair race. Politico: “The Clinton vs.
Sanders narrative is already coloring the DNC chair race, despite the strenuous
efforts of each of the declared candidates to downplay it: the candidates are
clear in their stump speeches about their wish to avoid a redux of their primary
fight, and some campaigns have drawn up internal memos and circulated talking
points describing how their candidate bridges the divide. The Sanders wing’s
preferred candidate, Rep. Keith Ellison, has repeatedly gone out of his way to
frame himself as the ‘unity’ candidate … the divide isn’t simply a Democratic
primary rehash. It’s also about ideology, as ascendant progressives aligned with
Sanders look to place Clinton’s establishment-oriented liberalism in the
rear-view mirror.”
W.
Post reports on DNC candidate forum in Phoenix: “No one [is in the lead],
though many DNC members agree that Ellison and [Labor Secretary Tom] Perez are
the front-runners unless they do something to disqualify themselves. At this
writing, Ellison has 15 public endorsements from actual voting DNC members, [New
Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray] Buckley has 10, [South Carolina
Democratic Party Chairman Jaime] Harrison has two … Our Revolution has been
working the states … The problem for Ellison is that the DNC vote will come
before this is reflected in the states’ DNC membership.”
Progressive
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