Nancy Pelosi Cartoons

Report: Dems target eight Trump nominees in bid to delay process, get picks to disclose more info

Senate Democrats reportedly plan to attack eight of Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks and stretch their confirmation process from days to perhaps months, despite having essentially no chance of blocking their nominations.
The Democratic senators are vowing to make good on their vow unless the nominees start disclosing personal financial information, according to The Washington Post.
Trump has made eight of 17 Cabinet picks, with four remaining.
The primary targets include Rex Tillerson for secretary of state; Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general; South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney for the Office of Management and Budget; Betsy DeVos as the new education secretary and Steve Mnuchin, the former Goldman Sachs executive nominated to be treasury secretary.
“President-elect Trump is attempting to fill his rigged Cabinet with nominees that … have made billions off the industries they’d been tasked with regulating,” incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday. “If Republicans think they can quickly jam through a whole slate of nominees without a fair hearing process, they’re sorely mistaken.”
Republicans who control the Senate and House plan to begin the confirmation hearings on Trump’s Jan. 20 Inauguration Day.
Republicans have a 52-to-48 majority over Democrats in the Senate.
The nominees will get enough votes in the GOP-run Senate committees but would run into delays when both parties cast final votes on the chamber floor, despite needing only 51 “yeahs.”
Democrats could use procedural moves to extend the debate on each of the nominees. But they don’t have the power to use the filibuster to block the nominations, because in the last Congress they changed the threshold on such filibusters from 60 to 51 votes.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and fellow Republicans don’t like the Democrats’ plan and argue they didn’t oppose outgoing Democratic President Obama’s nominations when he took office in 2008.
“Republicans and Democrats worked together and expeditiously to carefully consider his nominees,” McConnell spokesman David Popp told Fox News on Monday.
Popp points out that the Senate held hearings on multiple nominees before Obama was even sworn in, confirmed seven of them on Day One and that nearly all of them were confirmed within two weeks.
“Sen. Schumer and others approved wholeheartedly of this approach at the time,” Popp continued. “So surely they won’t object to treating the incoming president’s nominees with the same courtesy and seriousness.”
The others on the purported list of eight are Georgia GOP Rep. Tom Price, Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services; Andrew Puzder for labor secretary; and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to run the EPA.
Those not on the purported list are Marine Gen. James N. Mattis for defense secretary; South Carolina GOP Gov. Nikki Haley as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; and former Marine Gen. John Kelly run the Department of Homeland Security.

Hill Democrats outline counterattack for ObamaCare repeal, prep for president's visit

Pelosi in denial? Leader says Dems don't need new direction

Top House Democrats gave more clues Monday about how they’ll fight GOP efforts to repeal ObamaCare, sharing enrollment figures and stories about Americans saved by the health care law, ahead of President Obama’s visit Wednesday.
Obama makes the trip to Capitol Hill in his final weeks of office and as the Republican-controlled Congress plans to start repealing ObamaCare the day GOP President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
“Whatever the circumstance, health wise you are financially better off” with ObamaCare, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Monday on a conference call with reporters.
She was joined on the call by House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer and other top Democrats on key committees to tout ObamaCare’s successes in reducing Americans’ health costs and increasing their access to better care -- while sending warning shots about the perils of dismantling the 2010 law.
Pelosi and Hoyer argued that at least 20 million Americans would lose their health insurance, in part subsidized by the federal government, and chided Republicans for having no immediate plan to replace the law, more formally known as the Affordable Care Act.  
“Understand, repeal and delay is an act of cowardice,” said Pelosi, D-Calif.
Said Hoyer: “Republicans’ repeal and delay plan is code for repeal without an alternative. … The truth is they have no alternative to replace it. … Their plan is to turn back the clock, make Americans unhealthy again, perhaps.”
In a sign of things to come, the lawmakers talked about Americans who were financially saved by ObamaCare, include a man who developed heart problems upon starting his own business and a woman who needed the insurance while helping put her husband through college.
Obama will hold a closed-door meeting with congressional Democrats about his signature plan, created to lower health care costs for all Americans by trying to cut down on emergency care and other uninsured medical expenses.
However, insurance premiums continue to increase for many on ObamaCare, in large part the result of fewer-than-expected healthy people enrolling and insurance companies dropping out.
Pelosi spoke by phone last week with fellow House Democrats about plans to defend ObamaCare and raised concerns about Republicans’ plans to change entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
She encouraged members to hold events to talk with voters about the kind of statistics and anecdotes discussed Monday.
Also on Wednesday, Vice President-elect Mike Pence will rally with House Republicans about their plans to dismantle ObamaCare, a GOP leadership aide told Fox News on Monday.
With Trump coming in as president, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to begin the repeal effort this week through a process known as budget reconciliation.
Democrats now have little chance of stopping the process with Obama heading out of office. But Republicans, after years of putting repeal legislation on Obama’s desk, must now come up with a better, substitute plan.
They acknowledge needing two to perhaps four years to complete the process.
Trump and fellow Republicans say they want to keep the good parts of ObamaCare, like allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ plan.
But Democrats are already warning about potential chaos in the health care system if the law is repealed and not immediately replaced.

House GOP votes to gut independent ethics office

WASHINGTON –  House Republicans on Monday voted to eviscerate the Office of Congressional Ethics, the independent body created in 2008 to investigate allegations of misconduct by lawmakers after several bribery and corruption scandals sent members to prison.
The ethics change, which prompted an outcry from Democrats and government watchdog groups, is part of a rules package that the full House will vote on Tuesday. The package also includes a means for Republican leaders to punish lawmakers if there is a repeat of the Democratic sit-in last summer over gun control.
Under the ethics change pushed by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., the non-partisan Office of Congressional Ethics would fall under the control of the House Ethics Committee, which is run by lawmakers. It would be known as the Office of Congressional Complaint Review, and the rule change would require that "any matter that may involve a violation of criminal law must be referred to the Committee on Ethics for potential referral to law enforcement agencies after an affirmative vote by the members," according to Goodlatte's office.
Lawmakers would have the final say under the change. House Republicans voted 119-74 for the Goodlatte measure despite arguments from Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., against the change. They failed to sway rank-and-file Republicans, some of whom have felt unfairly targeted by the OCE.
"The amendment builds upon and strengthens the existing Office of Congressional Ethics by maintaining its primary area of focus of accepting and reviewing complaints from the public and referring them, if appropriate, to the Committee on Ethics," Goodlatte said in a statement.
Democrats, led by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, reacted angrily.
"Republicans claim they want to 'drain the swamp,' but the night before the new Congress gets sworn in, the House GOP has eliminated the only independent ethics oversight of their actions," the California lawmaker said in a statement. "Evidently, ethics are the first casualty of the new Republican Congress."
Chris Carson, president of the League of Women Voters, said Ryan should be ashamed of himself and his leadership team.
"We all know the so-called House Ethics Committee is worthless for anything other than a whitewash — sweeping corruption under the rug. That's why the independent Office of Congressional Ethics has been so important. The OCE works to stop corruption and that's why Speaker Ryan is cutting its authority. Speaker Ryan is giving a green light to congressional corruption."
The OCE was created in March 2008 after the cases of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., who served more than seven years in prison on bribery and other charges; as well as cases of former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, who was charged in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and pleaded guilty to corruption charges and former Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., convicted on corruption in a separate case.

Republican Congress promises to move quickly toward goals

The nation’s new, all-Republican leadership begins to take power Tuesday with an ambitious agenda of tax cuts, regulation rollbacks and repeal of President Barack Obama’s health law, but they face a complicated legislative path pocked with unresolved policy details.
After new senators are sworn in Tuesday by Vice President Joe Biden, a symbol of the departing Democratic administration, and House members by GOP Speaker Paul Ryan, the Republicans among them plan to move quickly to turn back an era defined by Mr. Obama’s ambitions to make the government a more powerful force in the economy.
Republicans will hold the White House and both chambers of Congress for the first time since early 2007 once President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in Jan. 20, creating high expectations within the party that it can enact long-held policy goals. When Mr. Trump met recently with Sen. David Perdue (R., Ga.), “all we talked about for the better part of an hour was how to get results in the first part of the year,” Mr. Perdue recalled.
One of the first goals for Republican leaders is to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. The Senate’s opening move, coming as soon as Tuesday, will be to initiate a controversial process to repeal parts of the law, which has brought health insurance to more than 19 million people but has taken a hit as the number of insurers offering coverage on the ACA’s exchanges has shrunk and premiums have jumped.
As with many of the Republican goals, the effort is creating a maze of challenges. The most pressing is how to develop a replacement for the 2010 health law without triggering the sort of disruptions that accompanied the law’s rollout, which in turn contributed to the Democrats’ loss of their Senate majority in 2014.
Many health insurers have stopped writing policies on the exchanges, leaving individual insurance markets struggling in some states, including GOP-leaning Arizona, Alaska and Tennessee. Some Republican lawmakers, whose votes will be crucial to any repeal plan, are worried a repeal would yank the rug out from under people’s coverage before a replacement is in effect.
Republicans also know that a confirmation hearing for Rep. Tom Price (R., Ga.), nominated to serve as Health and Human Services secretary, will become an early focal point for debate over any repeal plan, given the congressman’s years of working to replace the health law’s mandates with tax credits for the purchase of insurance.

Charlie Sheen Cartoons

Russian diplomats expelled in connection with cyber hacks depart US

The 35 Russian diplomats expelled by President Obama in connection with cyber-attacks during the 2016 White House race departed Sunday from a Washington, D.C.-area airport.
The State Department confirmed shortly after noon that the diplomats and their families had departed from Dulles International Airport, about 30 miles west of the nation’s capital.
Earlier in the day, Russian news agencies reported the departure, based on information from the Russian embassy.
The diplomats were suspected spies, and their removal was part of the sanctions announced Thursday by Obama that also included the shuttering of Russian compounds in Maryland and New York.
The cyberattacks were emails made public after being stolen from the Democratic National Committee and from the campaign of the party’s presidential nominee, Hilary Clinton.
Russian President Vladimir Putin says he will not take immediate retaliatory action, instead waiting for President-elect Donald Trump, who defeated Clinton and will replace Obama, to takes office on Jan. 20.

In control of Washington, GOP-run Congress sees mandate -- starting with end to ObamaCare

The 115th Congress begins Tuesday with a full slate of business, though nothing will be more politically important or pressing for Republicans than repealing ObamaCare.
With Donald Trump set to officially become president on Jan. 20, Republican leaders in the House and Senate will begin repeal efforts shortly after Congress’ 59 new members -- seven senators and 52 House members -- are sworn in and the formalities are concluded.
The GOP, which now controls both Capitol Hill and the White House, has made dismantling the 2010 health care law a priority almost since it was signed by President Obama.
Lawmakers will also look at a tax overhaul, reversing Obama-era environmental regulations and other conservative priorities.
However, such efforts will have to share center stage with the Senate confirmation hearings for Trump’s Cabinet picks in the days and months that follow the president-elect’s swearing-in.
It should be easier for Republicans to move nominations after Democrats changed the Senate's filibuster rules in 2013. Still, Democrats have pledged to fight many of the nominations, highlighting what they call the hypocrisy of Trump’s populist message and his wealthy, corporate-favoring nominees for several posts.
Perhaps the biggest wild card in the new Congress’s early weeks will be what to do about Russia’s involvement in several cyberattacks during this year’s presidential race -- in which Trump defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Trump has been skeptical about Russia’s involvement, while top GOP Sens. including Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Arizona’s John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have called for hearings on the issue and proposed sanctions beyond what President Obama imposed last week.
McCain told Fox News on Wednesday that he also wants to permanently station U.S. soldiers in the Baltic Sea countries bordering Russia and increase aid to neighboring Ukraine against Russian aggression -- to ensure Russian President Vladimir Putin knows “this kind of interference will be responded to."
How GOP leaders and Trump negotiate the issue will likely depend on the outcome of the president-elect’s meeting this week with U.S. intelligence officials.
Republicans will face other obstacles from Democrats, beyond the Cabinet conformations.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have already made efforts to stop proposed changes to entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid and to ObamaCare. Those efforts include a planned national “Day of Action” on January 15.
“Bring it on,” Schumer said in November, after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed to make repealing ObamaCare a first order of business.
And Obama is scheduled to visit congressional Democrats on Wednesday to discuss ways to save his signature legislation.
Republicans likely won’t be able to replace ObamaCare in its entirety for several years, considering they would need an alternative program for the roughly 22 million Americans who would lose their current health insurance.
In addition, Trump and both parties have expressed interest in a large transportation bill to create jobs and to fix the country’s aging infrastructure. But a clear plan has yet to emerge, with the estimated, billion-dollar price tag a likely sticking point among fiscal conservatives on the Hill.
The new Senate will have 52 Republicans, 46 Democrats and two Independents who caucus with the Democrats. The House will have 241 Republicans and 194 Democrats.
The Senate plans to begin repealing ObamaCare on Tuesday with consideration of a procedural measure that will shield them from Democratic filibuster legislation annulling much of that statute.
Lawmakers will then spend the next few months working on legislation canceling broad swaths of the law. Provisions that are most likely to go are the law's mandate that people buy health insurance or face IRS fines, as well as its expansion of Medicaid coverage to more lower-earning Americans.
Republicans will then begin the more complicated task of building a new system. The GOP will have to craft new programs for the nation's $3 trillion health care system and make sure insurance markets don't collapse while the transition is under way.
McConnell, Ky., and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., also want a massive tax overhaul, with the goal of simplifying a complicated tax code that rewards wealthy people with smart accountants as well as corporations that can easily shift profits and jobs overseas.
It would be the first major tax overhaul in 30 years. Trump has also advocated a tax overhaul, but with fewer details. He promises a tax cut for every income level, with more low-income families paying no income tax at all.
Waiting in the wings will be confirmation hearings to replace Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died 11 months ago.
McConnell blocked consideration of Obama's nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, saying the next president should make the pick. The strategy paid off, and the Republican Senate will consider whomever Trump nominates.

Charlie Sheen's Trump death wish: How Twitter is turning political debate toxic

The politics of hate is getting out of control.
For all the positive aspects of social media, the amount of venom being spewed there threatens to desensitize us all.
Take Charlie Sheen. Okay, he’s a liberal Hollywood guy who hasn’t exactly led an exemplary life. He has a history of alcohol and drug problems. He was kicked off his CBS show and living with a couple of call girls. He belatedly admitted he had HIV as the National Enquirer was about to report it.
Oh, and he doesn’t like Donald Trump.
So after the sad deaths of Carrie Fisher and her mom, Debbie Reynolds, Sheen tweeted this:
“Dear God; Trump next, please! Trump next, please!” And on and on.
That’s right, this screwed-up actor wished death on the next president of the United States.
When I took to (where else) Twitter to denounce this, here are some of the responses I received:
Lanark: ‏ No. Should be listened to. By God.
rjlarios@hotmail.com:Trump is a menace to the USA and the entire world!! He could be the cause of millions of deaths so why shouldn't he go first!
Chris Bavelles: its not about political differences it's about something so much worse. I applaud Charlie for tweeting out. And so should you.
Shawn: It's Trump, he's human garbage, it's just like emptying the trash in your house.
Lovely. So some folks think it’s perfectly all right to urge the death of the president-elect, and joined Sheen in that wish.
And then there were some like this:
michael cuviello: I did not hear the outtrage over what the Trump campaign guy said from the right.
This is unfortunately typical of what passes for debate on social media. If you decry something ugly that someone tweeted, some people say: Yeah, but what about so-and-so saying such-and-such at the other end of the political spectrum? What about that, huh?As if that somehow justifies the offensive words by someone on your side.
In this case, the reference was to Trump’s former New York co-chairman Carl Paladino, a onetime gubernatorial candidate and member of the Buffalo school board, which called for his resignation.
Paladino had said he hoped President Obama would die of mad cow disease. As for Michelle Obama, “I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.”
This racist garbage was followed by a Paladino apology, and the Trump campaign denounced the remarks. I had been on vacation when this was reported.
To be clear, I have no problem with people using strong language and venting their political views. If Charlie Sheen wants to rail against Trump and his policies—his dad, Martin Sheen, joined in an anti-Trump election ad—that’s his right.
But when you start calling for people to die, or unload with racist or misogynist or anti-Semitic sentiments, decent folks have every right to declare that unacceptable.
Sheen’s remarks barely caused a ripple, perhaps because they were aimed at Trump, who has been the target of an unprecedented level of negative coverage. If a celeb as well known as Sheen had called for Obama’s death, there would have been a barrage of headlines.
Or perhaps it reflects the fact that Twitter has become such a toxic stew that even the most outrageous stuff rarely bubbles up to the top.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz. 

Spicer hints Obama's Russian sanctions 'politically motivated'

Sean Spicer, the incoming White House communications director, suggested Sunday that President Obama’s imposing Russian sanctions related to email hacking was politically motivated, considering China recently did far worse without punishment.
“Maybe it was; maybe it wasn't,” Spicer said on ABC’s “This Week.” “China took over a million records. And a White House statement wasn't even issued. … So there is a question about whether there's a political retribution here versus a diplomatic response.”
Obama, a Democrat leaving office next month after two terms, has insisted the hacking probe is non-political, saying, “There is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action."
But he also has made clear his belief that the Russian hacking "create(d) more problems for the Clinton campaign than it had for the Trump campaign."
Obama’s announcement Thursday of the sanctions follows the U.S. intelligence community making statements that connect Russia to the hacking and releasing of emails from the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, the campaign chairman for 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Clinton supporters argue that the emails contributed to Clinton's defeat by Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Spicer insisted several times Sunday that Trump will decide after meeting this week with U.S. intelligence officials about whether Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin were indeed involved.
Meanwhile, he suggested that Americans, including the mainstream media, immediately and overwhelming accepted the assumption about Russia’s involvement without all of the facts.
“Everyone in the media wants to jump forward and make a conclusion based off...anonymous sources that are coming out of the intelligence community,” Spicer said.
He also argued that the Obama administration’s report on the sanctions was supposed to prove Russia’s involvement but instead pointed out lapses in the DNC’s Internet security.
“What this says is that the DNC had a problem with their IT security and people tried to hack it and that (the DNC) needs to do a better job of protecting it,” Spicer said.
He also seemed to suggest that Obama’s punitive actions on Russia were politically motivated, considering their severity and because they’ll be put in Trump’s lap when he takes over the White House in three week.
“You haven't seen a response like that in modern history for any action,” Spicer said about Obama expelling 35 Russian diplomats and closing separate Russian compounds in Maryland and New York.
He argued that Obama took no known action two years ago when China took the million-plus records that included sensitive data on federal employees including him.
“They sent everyone who had worked in the government a letter saying that you’ll get free monitoring of your credit,” Spicer said. “That's all they did.”