2009/2010: Arnold, Burr, Biden, Specter
Posted: Thursday, May 21, 2009 9:06 AM by Mark Murray
Filed Under:
2009, 2010
CALIFORNIA: George Will hails the voters in the state for rejecting those budget ballot measures and wonders if Obama ends up bailing out the state. "California's voters are complicit in their state's collapse. They elect and reelect the legislators off whom public employees unions batten. Also, voters have promiscuously used their state's plebiscitary devices to control and fatten the budget. In November, as the dark fiscal clouds lowered, they authorized $9.95 billion more in debt as a down payment on a perhaps $75 billion high-speed-rail project linking San Francisco and Los Angeles -- a delight California cannot afford.”
“In a surreal attempt to terrify voters into supporting the propositions, Schwarzenegger (job approval: 33 percent) threatened to do something sensible: sell such state assets as San Quentin prison, which sits on prime ocean-view real estate. But Californians should now pay a real price, in realism about ways and means, for Schwarzenegger's wasted years. His governance-by-attention-deficit-disorder has involved flitting from one trendy irrelevance (e.g., stem-cell research) to another (e.g., cooling the planet) while the state has sagged. Fittingly, he was in Washington as his shambolic legacy was being defined by Tuesday's defeat. "
NORTH CAROLINA: GOP Sen. Richard Burr, who, if he wins re-election in 2010, could end up becoming a rising national star, is taking the lead for the Senate GOP on the issue of health care. "The Republican plan would tax health- care benefits that workers receive. But it would then give tax credits to families to buy their own health insurance on the free market. The effect could be to reduce the employer-based health insurance system commonly in use now. Burr says families ought to have more choice in their health coverage.”
“Meanwhile, Obama and congressional Democrats are pushing to cover 50 million uninsured Americans through both government and private health insurance programs The GOP proposal, written with Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and two House members, draws from the proposal that Republican John McCain used last year in his failed presidential bid. McCain in turn borrowed health-care ideas that Burr and Coburn first introduced in 2007.
PENNSYLVANIA: Vice President Biden has penned a letter for new Democrat Arlen Specter, reports the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza. "Three weeks ago, my friend Senator Arlen Specter added one more feat to his long and impressive career -- he became a Democrat," Biden writes to the more than 500,000 Pennsylvanians on Obama’s email list. "Over the years, we've certainly had our disagreements. During that time, however, Arlen has been my friend, my confidant, and my partner in enacting many pieces of significant legislation." Biden adds, "I know that once you come to know him like I do, you'll be just as happy as I am to have him.”
