Attempting to defend his vote against children's health care, Senator Mitch McConnell's office last week released a "fact" sheet claiming that Democrats are using SCHIP as a stalking horse for "nationalized health care coverage." The release attributed an inaccurate quote to Senator Max Baucus:

SENATE FINANCE CHAIRMAN MAX BAUCUS (D-MT): “I think the Children's Health Insurance Program is another step to move toward universal coverage. Everyone realizes that the goal of this legislation moves us a giant step further down the road to nationalizing health care.” (Editorial, “Garden Statism”, The Wall Street Journal, 09/24/07)

Republican Senator Judd Gregg said the second sentence, not Senator Baucus. The Wall Street Journal issued a correction on Wednesday:

DEMOCRATIC FINANCE CHAIRMAN Max Baucus said, "I think the Children's Health Insurance Program is another step to move toward universal coverage." Republican Senator Judd Gregg said, "Everyone realizes that the goal of this legislation moves us a giant step further down the road to nationalizing health care." The latter statement was misattributed to Mr. Baucus in the September 24 editorial "Garden Statism."

The release featured the false quote in its title. McConnell's office has not followed the WSJ in issuing a correction, either on the Leadership Blog or on Senator McConnell's campaign blog.

Anyone who has followed the SCHIP debate, or who is familiar with Senator Max Baucus, should have known that the quote attributed to him was inaccurate. Senator McConnell may want to use more reliable sources of information in the future.

In his report that Senate and House negotiators have "had agreed on a framework for a compromise bill that would provide health insurance to four million uninsured children," Robert Pear fails to mention the extraordinary nature of the negotiations, caused by Senator Mitch McConnell's obstruction of reconciliation.

On August 1st, the House passed a bill increasing resources for the State Children's Health Insurance Program by $60 million over five years, with a vote of 225-204; the Senate passed its bill the next day, increasing resources by $35 million, 68-31. On September 4th, Senator Reid moved to appoint conferees to reconcile differences between the two bills, but McConnell objected, claiming that the "the request is a little premature," despite the expiration of SCHIP funding at the end of the month.

McConnell's objection forced the Democratic leadership to pursue informal negotiations outside of the reconciliation process. If they reach compromise, leadership in both the House and Senate will introduce identical legislation under special rules, allowing them to send the legislation straight to the President upon passage. President Bush has promised to veto the bill.

Democrats were forced to pursue a similar strategy to finalize the Ethics and Lobbying Reform bill recently signed by President Bush. McConnell and Senator DeMint both objected to reconciliation. Democrats ultimately passed the bills through both houses with overwhelming bipartisan support. This didn't stop Republicans from complaining about the process, with McConnell himself crying that weaknesses in the bill "would have been improved with Republican input, but we were unable to do so because there was no conference."

President Bush appears ready to nominate Ted Olson for Attorney General, replacing one unprincipled partisan with another.

Here is how the NYT reported White House thinking:

Aides to Mr. Bush are calculating that Democrats, who spent months clamoring for Mr. Gonzales’s ouster, will pay a political price if they try to block confirmation of a new attorney general. The thinking inside the White House is that Democrats cannot call for new leadership at the Justice Department, then block it.

And of course, like clockwork, Senator McConnell gets on message:

“The Senate will soon be asked to confirm a new Attorney General. For the past several months, our Democratic colleagues have pleaded for this very thing. They have spoken at length about the importance of the Justice Department, and the urgent need to install new leadership there as soon as possible.

“They don’t want to make the pick. All they want is someone with ‘integrity’ and ‘experience’ who ‘respects the rule of law,’ and who can ‘hit the ground running.’ These are their words. The Senior Senator from New York has assured us that he and his colleagues will not ‘obstruct or impede’ such a nominee. Again, their own words. This was their plea and their promise.

“It now appears, however, that despite these promises, some of our Democratic colleagues may indeed obstruct and impede.

I missed this one last Friday, on Sen. McConnell's attempt to de-partisanize the various scandals of late:

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader who is having to contend with these issues, sought this week to downplay the partisan aspects of any political missteps.

“I think the overwhelming majority of members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat, are honorable people,” he said. “ Once in a while, there are examples to the contrary. And as you know, there’s at least one prominent Democratic example in the House of Representatives. Another Democrat, I think, under investigation. I don’t think either party is necessarily more troubled by this than the other one.”

Unfortunately for Mr. McConnell, the scales are heavily tilted against Republicans at the moment. Republicans can point to the indictment of Louisiana Democrat William Jefferson, but Democrats can counter with the names of Senators Craig, Vitter and Stevens not to mention those of former Representatives Tom DeLay, Bob Ney, Duke Cunningham and Don Sherwood.

You've got to admire his effort.

Washington Post:

Forty-four senators, including six Republicans, called on President Bush yesterday to rescind new administrative restrictions that will make it harder for states to expand their popular State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Rest assured, neither Bunning nor McConnell signed onto the letter, despite Governor Fletcher's support for expanding SCHIP.

Feel the bipartisanship:

[Barry] Jackson is seen as cool, analytical and fiercely partisan -- "none of this 'let's get along' kind of stuff," in the words of one GOP acquaintance from Capitol Hill, who described Jackson "as the man behind The Man."

He grew up near Cincinnati.

Sorry about the lack of posts. I've been busy working on Iraq issues and going to random meetings. While I was gone, you missed:

McConnell votes against access to higher education, one of only 12 Republicans to do so. Feel the bipartisanship! If you recall, the last time this came up, Sen. McConnell tried to scuttle it with a couple of poison pill amendments, earning an angry denunciation from Ted Kennedy.

McConnell told reporters "that he'd like to see 'a long-term deployment somewhere in the Middle East, in the future, for two reasons: al-Qaida and Iran.'" If McConnell genuinely believed this, he'd support any of the various proposals for an over-the-horizon redeployment from Iraq. Of course, he's not telling the truth.

Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson had some harsh words for the Senator. “It kind of makes you wonder what party you want to be a member of.” Indeed.

In 2006, Republicans passed only two spending bills for Fiscal Year 2007. The federal fiscal year starts October 1st, leaving three months after the start of the fiscal year for the legislature to pass the bills "late," but at least in the current Congress. Appropriations bills are often passed a few days or weeks late -- in only five out of the last 54 years has the Senate managed to pass all appropriations bills on time. But the GOP didn't pass nine spending bills at all -- leaving them to be passed by the Democratic Congress.

Yet Senator McConnell has been attacking Democrats for being too slow to pass the FY 2008 bills. Of course, Democrats have a narrower majority than did the Republicans; have to deal with McConnell's unprecedented obstructionism; and face President Bush's zealous partisan veto threats.

Nonetheless, the Senate passed its second appropriations bill today, dealing with Military Construction and Veterans Affairs:

The bill, passed by a 92-1 vote, would provide $109.3 billion for military construction and the Department of Veterans Affairs in fiscal 2008 — $4.1 billion more than the president requested. But the White House has indicated Bush will sign the politically popular bill in its current form.

Though CQ reports that Bush intends to sign the bill, his official Statement of Administration Policy is much more equivocal:

If Congress increases VA funding above the President’s request and does not offset this increase with spending reductions in other bills, the President will veto any of the other bills that exceed his request until Congress demonstrates a path to reach the President’s topline of $933 billion.

You can read more on the appropriations process in this post.

Here's how House Republicans characterized the performance of their Senate counterparts in 2006:

- Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA): “The Senate, quite honestly, has not done its work. This is not an anomaly. It has become the norm in Congress, and I’m appalled by that.”

- Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO): “There’s so much to do and we’re punting. It’s irresponsible. There’s no excuse for it.”

- Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA): “I think it’s shameful. … The Senate got into a trap of inactivity.”

Good for them. Democrats can't let Senator McConnell risk health care from children just because he wants to shore up conservative support.

Leading House Democrats said Thursday they will negotiate compromise children’s health insurance legislation informally with their Senate counterparts if Senate Republicans continue to block a formal conference committee on the bill.

Democrats were forced to use similar tactics to get around Republican obstruction of the broadly bipartisan ethics bill. The Washington Post reported:

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), another critic, had single-handedly blocked the calling of a formal House-Senate conference to negotiate the final deal, forcing Democrats to hammer out the compromise on their own. The House passed it under fast-track procedures that prohibit amendments but require a two-thirds majority for approval -- a threshold that was easily met.

Now, Reid must get the bill through the Senate without any amendment, using a parliamentary tactic that has been roundly criticized by Republicans in the past as strong-arming. But in this case, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has given his tacit assent, laying the blame squarely on his own conservative hard-liners.

"In a sense, we made it difficult on ourselves," McConnell said.

TPM has a transcript of today's presser.

As you've probably noticed, I'm really not interested in the Larry Craig deal, and don't want to comment on it or Senator McConnell's role in it, beyond to say that Kentucky Republicans have really handled themselves dishonorably. What business is it of Ron Lewis or Geoff Davis how the Senate handles Larry Craig?

Luckily, I guess, McConnell's press conference had other garbage, so I'm not left with nothing to write.

He continues to demagogue the Guantanamo Bay issue, praising the House for "opposing moving terrorists onto U.S. soil," and confidently predicting that "Congress would disapprove of any effort to mainstream these terrorists into the U.S. -- onto U.S. soil and into the U.S. justice system."

As far as I know, the only "plans" that would entail moving Guantanamo detainees to US soil would incarcerate them in a detention center on a military base. No one has ever suggested tossing them into county jails or letting them roam around on furlough.

McConnell just doesn't want to close Guantanamo Bay, despite the fact that Secretary Gates, Colin Powell, and Condi Rice think the facility hurts our national prestige too much to be allowed to remain open. Even President Bush says that he wants to close the facility. But McConnell apparently doesn't, and he thinks demagoguing the relocation issue is an effective strategy for delaying the reckoning.