Daily Democratic Wire 2-22-2010

George Wenschhof

Today, at 10:00 AM ET, President Obama will release his plan for health care reform - you can read his plan here. This is in advance of the bipartisan health care summit planned for Thursday. One of the areas the President will be urging oversight on is the rate of increases by insurance companies. Anthem Blue Cross in California is raising rates by 39%, even though financial reports of the company show billions in profit. The NY Times has more here. Obama is also eliminating the many special deals made to get various democratic senators support such as the ridiculous Nebraska (no Medicaid payments) deal with Senator Ben Nelson.

Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (Calf.) is scheduled to meet with President Obama today. He is one of the honest Republican Governors who has come out and expressed his thanks for the Stimulus bill and talking about how it created hundreds of thousands of jobs in his state.

The rest of the Republican Party of "No" have publicly stated their opposition to the Stimulus bill while at the same time showing up at ribbon cuttings in their states for projects creating jobs in their state funded by the Stimulus bill - what hypocrites! Bloomberg.com has more here.

---

Jobs bill scheduled for vote today - will Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) get the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster to allow the 15 Billion Jobs bill to come to a vote? Republicans have been angry ever since Reid pulled the bloated 85 billion jobs bill co-sponsored by Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.). The Washington Post has more here.

One of the bizarre parts of this bill is that it allows companies to not pay social security for employees hired for one year if they had been unemployed at least 60 days. Not sure I buy this one when the social security fund is broke.

I also believe we still need to fund public service employment jobs which would put unemployed to work immediately in areas that are needed around the country. I am amazed this has been left out of any legislation passed since Obama took office.

---

White House Chief Technology Officer Andrew McLaughlin challenges Tea Party activists to push GOP toward more transparency in government - the Obama administration has moved toward more transparency including open-government directive aimed at agencies and by launching data.gov. Republicans have been reluctant to follow suit. TheHill.com has more here.

---

To receive "Daily Email Updates" from Air-it-Out with George Wenschhof, click on "Subscribe to this feed" below.