This week on Meet the Press, both White House chief of staff Jack Lew and Rick Santorum discussed the Obama administration’s contraception mandate, and Lew offered a deceptive excuse for the Democrat Senate’s budget bumbling.
David Gregory asked Lew why Democrats in the Senate hadn’t passed a budget in 1,019 days. Lew offered an entirely incorrect explanation, arguing that the Senate requires 60 votes to pass a budget, and Democrats had been held back by the 41 Republicans’ intransigence. He explained, “there has been Republican opposition to anything that Senate Democrats have tried to do. So it, it is a challenge in the United States Senate to pass legislation when there’s not that willingness to work together.” Unfortunately, Lew is wrong — a Senate budget only requires 51 votes to pass.
When confronted with the various objections to the Obama administration’s compromise, Lew cited the support of the Catholic Health Association, Catholic Charities, and Planned Parenthood as evidence that the administration had come up with a fair-minded solution. Further, he dismissed the objections of opponents like Santorum by explaining that “there are a lot of conservatives that don’t think that we should guarantee that Americans have access to health insurance. . . . We believe women have a right to all forms of preventive health.”
Later, Gregory expressed some skepticism about Rick Santorum’s assertion that President Obama’s contraception mandate indicates what would be to come in a second term. Santorum rejected the idea that it’s a “secret plan,” arguing, it’s not secret at all. I mean, the president went out and promoted, at the time he was promoting Obamacare, a program of cap and trade where he wants to control and literally control people’s availability to use energy in this country. . . . The president’s agenda is very, very clear. He believes, as someone who’s smarter than everybody else, that they should make decisions for you.”
Gregory also grilled Santorum on some of his statements about social issues, including the role of women in society. Citing a passage about “radical feminists” from the president’s book, he asked Santorum whether he respects the choice of working mothers to emphasize their professional ambitions. Santorum, after citing his own mother as an example of an ambitious working mother, defended himself by saying. “there are a lot working moms out there who did step away from the workforce who feel that their choices are not as respected as those who continue in the workplace. What I said in that book and what I’ve continued to say is we should affirm both choices. They are both very, very important things, and women should have the right to make those choices and should be affirmed completely [whatever] the choice they make.”
Only a simple majority is needed, but to prevent a filibuster you need 60. Therefore, in the current climate you need 60 for everything. The 60 threshold allows the senate to invoke cloture - which limits the amount of time you can blockade a bill.
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Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusethe Sentate rules require 51 votes to pass the budget, so Lew was deceptive at best and, of course, relying on a liberal dope like David Gregory to not follow up.
And the "budget" that Obama proposes is the same piece of garbage that even Democrats wouldn't vote for last year. Obama couldn't get 51 votes on this thing with his own party running the show in the Senate. So, again, Lew is full of it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse...and it doesn't even take 51 votes to pass a budget - just a simple majority. Democrats simply don't want to get their fingerprints on this financial monstrosity that Obama calls a "budget." So, that's their problem, not Republican's.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOnly a simple majority is needed, but to prevent a filibuster you need 60. Therefore, in the current climate you need 60 for everything. The 60 threshold allows the senate to invoke cloture - which limits the amount of time you can blockade a bill.
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Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusepresident's book?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLew's partisan attack is only slightly more falsifiable than the other partisan attacks regularly spewed by the Obamunist faithful: it's all the fault of the opposition.
What scares me is the philosophy behind that rancor: if you get yourself elected to a seat at Obama's table, your only acceptable role is to rubber stamp what his administration proposes. We heard it plainly in the SOTU.
You can hear in Obama's voice impatience that his control is not total. Those isolated pockets of people making their own decisions are frequently cited as the source of all the people's trouble. Even a duly elected Senator's opposition is so illegitimate that the Obamunists see no need to work with him. And see no problem in lying about it, as Lew did.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLew stutters more than obama.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"....We believe women have a right to all forms of preventive health.”
Lew is a joke, just like his boss. Since when do women not have access to contraceptives or abortion services? The issue here is religious institutions that object to those practices can't be forced by the government to fund them. It's a fundamental matter of religious liberty - clearly Obama, Lew and Sebelius have difficulty understanding that concept.
And, since when do women have a "right" not to have to shell out a co-pay for their contraceptives? Laughable.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"He believes, as someone who’s smarter than everybody else, that they should make decisions for you."
Says the person who knows exactly what a woman should do when she is pregnant, regardless of the situation, and in fact wants the government to compel her to do it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBiology dictates.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHmmm, didn't Jack Lew have a small part in "The Lord of the Rings"?
Oh yeah, he was "The Mouth of Sauron".
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseConservatives and Liberals agree that you can't implement a large national health program and make everybody happy. The most recent Catholic flap will not be the last. The Administration, through Lew this weekend, admitted that they are OK to upset and in this case, infuriate, certain portions of the public in order to serve the greater good.
Republicans have to point out to the independants that even if you don't give a rip about catholics or contraception or abortion, this concept that the govt expects that a portion of people will always be upset is what we're fighting against. Imagine what's coming next. What happens when the government decides to discontune care to your father because the tables indicate he has only X months to live anyway? What if your daughter needs a transplant and the government decides that her chances of surviving don't warrant the expense?
The analogy is cliche but Lew's attitude is the DMV attitude taken to healthcare. Shut up and take a number. There will always be grumbling and dissatisfied customers but we're doing the best we can.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIs it not true that in practice bills in the Senate, including a budget, can be kept from consideration by a threat of a filibuster, thus making 60 votes what is needed in practice. Betty Friedan, pioneer in feminism, later said that later leaders in feminism had made the mistake of downgrading marriage and motherhood and women not working outside the home. Recall a few years ago how there was a trend in some Ivy League and other colleges for women to plan not to work outside the home. That trend among liberal young women was not attacked by journalists at the time who reported it. Of course, now the recession has changed all that, so that many of these young women are working outside the home by necessity.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBudget resolutions follow procedural rules different from other legislation moving though the Senate. Lew knows this; an up-or-down vote is available for anyone with the courage to call one.
What Lew was really saying (through his party's actions) is: "Some lawmakers disagree with our plans. We not only refuse to deal with those elected officials, we also refuse to take votes that will put the specifics of those disagreements into the public record."
Nice way to run a republic, eh?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is what bugs me: Is Lew purposely lying? Is one of NBC's top Washington journalists so ignorant of the Senate budget process that he allows Lew to get away with this?
If you're a knowledgeable, responsible journalist, you challenge Lew when he says that budgets require 60 votes.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf recent history teaches us anything, it's that whenever a Progressive makes a public remark the objective will necessarily be to advance a narrative in support of some Progressive plan -- it will never be to tell you candidly how things work.
It's true for politicians, academics and television hosts.
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