Ed Schultz goes after "Psycho Talker" Orrin Hatch for this statement he made on the Fox Business Channel with a little mashup of what we can thank Republicans for when they ruled the roost under George Bush. From Think Progress--Sen. Hatch’s Solution For The Economy: Put The Country ‘Back Into Conservative Republican Hands’:

Towards the end of the interview, Glick asked him what his “solutions” are to the problems the country faces, prompting Hatch to respond that he’d start by putting the country “back into conservative Republican hands” and keeping the Bush tax cuts:

FOXBIZ: What are your solutions to jobs, the unemployment situation, rising health care costs, energy costs that are rising, inflation that is still a concern, how do we solve these issues right now? Are we trying to do too much too quickly?

HATCH: Number one you get the arrogance of power by throwing the Democrats and get the control back into conservative Republican hands. Number two we should not do away with the Bush tax cuts, those marginal tax cuts are a major help to try and keep the economy going. Number three we should use fifty state labratories to do health care.

Susie smacked Hatch around for saying something similar on the Senate floor last week--Sen. Orrin Hatch: If Only The GOP Had 60 Votes, We Could Fix The Country.

December 07, 2009 FOX News

This morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took to the Senate floor to make a plea for passing health care reform, comparing it to the fight for civil rights, women's suffrage and an end to slavery. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) took offense on FOX News. "That's not only offensive! That's language that should never be used!"

From The Salt Lake Tribune--Hatch files abortion amendment to Senate health reform bill:

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and a Democratic colleague filed a highly anticipated health-reform amendment on Monday that would bar any federally subsidized insurance plan from covering elective abortions.

The issue of abortion coverage within health insurance exchanges has turned into one of the largest roadblocks for reform, inflaming an already intense partisan debate.

The Senate is expected to vote on the measure Tuesday and even Hatch expects it to fail. But the amendment, which is also sponsored by Nebraska Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson, isn't expected to be the final word on the topic.

The Democrats need Nelson's support to pass the overall health reform bill and he has threatened to buck his party if they don't include tougher abortion restrictions.

The Nelson-Hatch amendment would bring the Senate bill in line with the House health reform proposal, which would not allow any government-run plan to offer elective abortion coverage. The amendment would also bar anyone getting a federal subsidy from selecting a plan sold in the exchange that would pay for abortion services.

Those who use their own funds could buy such a plan, or what is known as an insurance rider specifically for abortion coverage. This amendment would not impact people who get their insurance through their employer.

Hatch has pushed for the tougher abortion language in the committee debates earlier this year to no avail. The amendment would need the support of 60 votes and it is unlikely that 20 Democrats would join the 40 Republicans to pass such a proposal.

Democrats argue that their bill already bars federal money to pay for abortions because it requires insurers to separate federal subsidies from the premiums paid by customers. Under their bill, only premiums could be used to cover elective abortions.

Continue reading...

Via ThinkProgress. The question of the day is, is Orrin Hatch a liar - or simply demented? And if he's demented, should he stay in the Senate? (Obviously, if he's a mere partisan liar, he fits right in.)

Last night, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) delivered an hour-long speech on the Senate floor condemning the Democratic health care reform bill and accusing Democrats of displaying “the arrogance of power” in trying to pass health reform before the holiday recess. Hatch predicted that if Republicans had 60 votes and control of all three branches of government, they would “get this country under control”:

This will become one more example of the arrogance of power being exerted since the Democrats secured a 60-vote majority in the United States Senate and took over the House and the White House. I dream some day of having the Republicans have 60 votes. I’ll tell you one thing, I think we would finally have the total responsibility to get this country under control and I believe we would. But we never come close to that. There are essentially no checks and balances found in Washington today just an arrogance of power with one party ramming through unpopular and devastating proposals on after the other.

Senator Hatch, are you smoking crack? The Republican Party not only had control of the country, y'all got it in exactly the sad state it's in today. Remember the tax cuts for the wealthy that ballooned the deficit? Remember Medicare Part B, which did the same for Medicare?

Remember the weapons of mass destruction, the reason we "had" to invade Iraq?

Under Republican control, we had deregulation, stagnant wages and massive increases in the number of Americans without health insurance.

Maybe it's time you walk over to that medical clinic they have in the Capitol building and ask them to evaluate your memory. Because seriously, either you're losing it ... or you're just another shameless Republican liar.

A gaffe, Michael Kinsley famously mused, is what results when a politician inadvertently tells the truth. And so it was Monday when Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch came clean about his party's scorched-earth opposition to health care reform being championed by President Obama and Congressional Democrats. Hatch acknowledged, as I've long argued, that the GOP is worried not that Obama's health care initiatives might fail, but that they might succeed.

As he did in his pivotal effort to block Bill Clinton's health care efforts starting in 1993, conservative strategist Bill Kristol warned his Republican allies then as now that that a victory for President Obama would earn his party the thanks of a grateful public and guarantee Democratic majorities for the foreseeable future. In an interview with CNS Monday, Senator Hatch revealed that was his darkest fear as well:

HATCH: That's their goal. Move people into government that way. Do it in increments. They've actually said it. They've said it out loud.

Q: This is a step-by-step approach --

HATCH: A step-by-step approach to socialized medicine. And if they get there, of course, you're going to have a very rough time having a two-party system in this country, because almost everybody's going to say, "All we ever were, all we ever are, all we ever hope to be depends on the Democratic Party."

Q: They'll have reduced the American people to dependency on the federal government.

HATCH: Yeah, you got that right. That's their goal. That's what keeps Democrats in power.

Continue reading »

In between Ben Nelson's hackery which John is going to tackle here, Sherrod Brown on State of the Union did a nice job of calling out Orrin Hatch for the Republicans hatred of Medicare and explaining why it is important, at minimum, to have a public option included in the health care bill.

KING: Senator Brown, let me come to you. A big state, health care's a huge issue. I'm wondering if you share the frustration that many progressives on the House side share when they're told, well, the White House is pushing this idea of a trigger, maybe, because they want to keep Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, the one Republican who has backed it in the Senate so far. There are many who have said, this is the United States of America, not the United States of Maine. Does the White House have the calculation wrong here?

BROWN: Well, I'll answer the question about the trigger first. The trigger says, let's give the insurance companies two more years after they've had five decades since World War II to do things right. They continue their practices of pre-existing condition. You know, reports recently that a woman that has a C-section, by some insurance companies, will be denied care because that's considered a pre- existing condition. A woman that's been a victim of domestic violence, that's considered a pre-existing condition because her husband or boyfriend or whomever is more likely to hit her again.

I mean, the insurance companies have had their chance to do this right. We need the public option now. We need it in large part because it will inject competition into places where they don't have it. In southwest Ohio in my state, two insurance companies have 85 percent of the market. They need more competition to discipline those companies, to make them more honest, to bring prices down.

Continue reading »

From the AFL-CIO NOW blog, news that now Orin Hatch has joined in preventing a vote on extending unemployment benefits. Shame on every member of the media that doesn't hammer them on preventing the unemployed from getting this much-needed help:

Because of the actions of two Republican senators, every day this month 7,000 jobless workers have lost their unemployment insurance (UI) coverage. Each day these two Republicans continue to stand in the way of Senate passage of a UI extension, 7,000 more workers will run out of benefits.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has tried twice to bring the UI measure to a vote on the Senate floor. First Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), then Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) blocked action.

Christine Owens, executive director for the National Employment Law Project (NELP), says workers are “devastated” by the Republican roadblock. Unemployed workers across the country are devastated and dismayed by the failure of the U.S. Senate to extend their lifeline. Every day, 7,000 additional workers are facing the total loss of benefits, in many cases after struggling to find work for more than a year and a half.

The official unemployment rate now is 9.8 percent, while the number of those who have given up looking for work or are underemployed stands at an appalling 26 million workers.

Click here to tell the Senate it’s time to pass an extension of UI benefits.

In September, the House overwhelmingly passed a UI extension that called for an additional 13 weeks of (UI) for jobless workers in high unemployment states (more than 8.5 percent) who have exhausted their benefits without finding new work.

Last week, the AFL-CIO urged the Senate to approve legislation that provides 14 weeks of benefits to all jobless workers who can’t find new work and an additional six weeks for those in high unemployment states.

Says AFL-CIO Government Affairs Director William Samuel: Failure to extend benefits would pull the safety net out from under laid-off workers who are struggling to find jobs that have become increasingly scarce…a record 5 million workers have been unemployed for six months or more and there are now six unemployed workers for every available job in the United States.

NELP estimates 400,000 workers exhausted their benefits in September and without any extension, another 1.3 million will run out of benefits by year’s end.

Says Owens: "It’s shameful and callous. Because the Senate has not acted, hundreds of thousands of workers are languishing without any means to support their families in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. It’s time for the Senate to do right by the families hardest hit by the recession—the Senate needs to do whatever it takes, working weekends included, to make this happen."

Seems WATB Orrin Hatch is not taking to kindly to having his office protested by MoveOn.org for being in the pocket of the health care industry. I've got to wonder, how would the Republicans react if a Democratic member of the Senate went on television and said they'd like to kick those Tea Bag protesters in the teeth?

Hatch: Now by the way MoveOn.org is a scurrilous organization. It's funded by George Soros. He's about as left wing as you can find in this country. And they're up to just one thing, and that is to smear good people. And frankly, they're not gonna smear me without getting kicked in the teeth by me.

Stay classy there Hatch. While MoveOn has received $1.46 million from George Soros as Wikipedia notes:

MoveOn's primary source of funding is its members. MoveOn.org raised nearly 60 million dollars in 2004 from its members alone, with an average donation of $50.

h/t TPM who noted:

So...Hatch says he gets donations from all sorts of people -- "including liberal people" -- but as for that supposed left-winger George Soros and that "scurrilous" liberal group MoveOn.org -- they've got a kick in the teeth coming.

Jon Stewart took CNN apart over their insipid fact-checking of a SNL skit about President Obama while never having the time to give us REAL FACTS about health-care reform when their guests come on and lie. CNN and most cable networks allow health-care obstructionists like Sen. Kyl and Orrin Hatch to throw out bogus facts all day long without ever questioning their validity, and it is frustrating.

Stewart nails CNN for always saying "We're out of time," and never getting to the truth. And then we have the FRC's Tony Perkins, who claims there are really only 5-10 million uninsured people in America.

Perkins: ...when you get down to a hard core number, it's about 5-10 million that can't afford health care. Out of a nation of 330 million that's a small percentage.

Stewart: Without an explanation he went from 30 million uninsured down to you know the hard core number. 5 or ten million. Well that's pretty close...it's only double.

And the ultimate slap in the face is when TDS clips together almost every anchor saying: "We'll leave it there."

Stewart: There are 24 hours in a day, how much more time do you need? CNN's new slogan: Nobody Leaves More Things There.

Are you sick and tired of the silly talking point Republicans use when they say all we have to do is allow people to cross state lines and buy insurance anywhere in America? They say that'll lower costs and save us all. Really? OK, here's what I have to say to that.

I want every member of Congress who is against health care refom with a public option to go out into the real world and try to purchase their own private insurance in any state they choose as a test. They can't say they are Senators or Congressmen, though. Make believe they are real citizens and then be like everybody else. Let's see how many of them actually would qualify for a plan at all and if they somehow can get insured, I want to see how much it would cost them and their families.

Hmmm, I wonder what would happen to Orrin Hatch?

That's what I want to see.

This is quite a change from the days where the Republicans were threatening to blow up the Senate filibuster rule isn't it?

MATTHEWS: Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. He is a member of the Senate Finance Committee.

Well, there is Senator Schumer putting the best face on a 13-10 loss. Three Democrats joined your party in opposing a public option. Five Democrats joined you on another vote. Where does it stand, the public option, right now?

HATCH: Well, it‘s going to be very difficult. Look, the Democrats are going to do everything they can to pull every trick they can to try and get all of the Democrats lined up to go with a public option.

But, look, if you pass a health care bill that involves one-sixth of the whole American economy and you don‘t get at least 70 votes, meaning bipartisan votes, you‘re not doing what‘s right for the American people. And I can tell you right now, Doug Elmendorf said that it‘s virtually next to impossible to be able to have a public option which would be a level playing field.

There‘s no way it would be level, and that‘s one of the problems. And I think the people out there realize that. And they also realize that you know they promised the same level playing field for Medicare back in 1965. It wasn‘t long until they realized they couldn‘t keep up and had to start setting prices.

Today Medicare pays less than 20 percent to doctors, less than 30 percent to hospitals, and by the way, Medicare‘s $38 trillion in unfunded liability, that‘s what you get when you just have the federal government involved.

Continue reading »

Jon Stewart takes the GOP hypocrites to task for wanting ACORN investigated while defending the likes of Karl Rove and refusing to investigate torture, and for freaking out over a video of school children praising President Obama.

Russell Wheeler, visiting fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution, predicts trouble for Obama's judicial nominees.

This Jeffrey Toobin piece in the latest New Yorker illustrates what I predict will be the fatal flaw of the Obama administration: this strange, intellectualized fixation with a non-partisan strategy that is in no way supported by the results on the ground - nor is it an appropriate response to the electorate, which overwhelmingly rejected Republican policies.

The president doesn't yet seem to understand that the continued opposition to his choices doesn't have anything to do with his choices. It's Republican obstructionism, plain and simple. (Although Orrin Hatch contends: "He started it!" Uh huh. Go take a nap, Orrin, you nasty old coot.)

The Obama Administration wanted to send a message with the President’s first nomination to a federal court. “There was a real conscious decision to use that first appointment to say, ‘This is a new way of doing things. This is a post-partisan choice,’ ” one White House official involved in the process told me. “Our strategy was to show that our judges could get Republican support.” So on March 17th President Obama nominated David Hamilton, the chief federal district-court judge in Indianapolis, to the Seventh Circuit court of appeals. Hamilton had been vetted with care. After fifteen years of service on the trial bench, he had won the highest rating from the American Bar Association; Richard Lugar, the senior senator from Indiana and a leading Republican, was supportive; and Hamilton’s status as a nephew of Lee Hamilton, a well-respected former local congressman, gave him deep connections. The hope was that Hamilton’s appointment would begin a profound and rapid change in the confirmation process and in the federal judiciary itself.

[...] “The unifying quality that we are looking for is excellence, but also diversity, and diversity in the broadest sense of the word,” another Administration official said. “We are looking for experiential diversity, not just race and gender. We want people who are not the usual suspects, not just judges and prosecutors but public defenders and lawyers in private practice.” Yet Hamilton and Sotomayor are the usual suspects—both sitting judges, who had already been confirmed by the Senate. Of Obama’s seven nominees to the circuit courts, six are federal district-court judges. The group includes Gerard Lynch, a former Columbia Law School professor and New York federal prosecutor, and Andre Davis, who was nominated to the Fourth Circuit by Bill Clinton. (At the time, Republicans blocked any vote on Davis.) Two of the seven are African-American; two are women; all but one are in their fifties. (None are openly gay.) The one non-judge is Jane Stranch, who has represented labor unions and other clients at a Nashville law firm and is nominated for the Sixth Circuit. They are conventional, qualified, and undramatic choices, who were named, at least in part, because they were seen as likely to be quickly confirmed.

But then, as the first White House official put it, “Hamilton blew up.” Conservatives seized on a 2005 case, in which Hamilton ruled to strike down the daily invocation at the Indiana legislature because its repeated references to Jesus Christ violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Hamilton had also ruled to invalidate a part of Indiana’s abortion law that required women to make two visits to a doctor before undergoing the procedure. In June, Hamilton was approved by the Judiciary Committee on a straight party-line vote, twelve to seven, but his nomination has not yet been brought to the Senate floor. Some Republicans have already vowed a filibuster. (Republican threats of extended debate on nominees can stop the Democratic majority from bringing any of them up for votes.)

“The reaction to Hamilton certainly has given people pause here,” the second White House official said. “If they are going to stop David Hamilton, then who won’t they stop?”

See what I mean? Why are they surprised? Why do they constantly split the difference on everything, watering down any meaningful differences? If I were making these decisions, I'd be pushing the most liberal judges I could find, and make the Republicans explain over and over why they don't want judges who rule in favor of working people. Why would you throw away that opportunity?

Republicans in the Senate have not allowed a vote on any of the other nominees, either. So far, the only Obama nominee who has been confirmed to a lifetime federal judgeship is Sotomayor. The stalemate provides a revealing glimpse of the environment in Washington. Obama advisers (and Democratic Senate sources) aver that all the nominees, even Hamilton, will be confirmed eventually, but contrary to the President’s early hope the struggle for his judges is likely to be long and contentious.

“The President did not set a good example when he was in the Senate,” Orrin Hatch, the senior Republican senator from Utah, told me, pointing to Obama’s votes against the confirmation of John G. Roberts, Jr., and Samuel A. Alito, Jr., to the Supreme Court. “You have to be a partisan ideologue not to support Roberts,” Hatch said. “There is a really big push on by partisan Republicans to use the same things that they did against us.” Hatch himself, who had voted for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, and every other Supreme Court nominee in his Senate career, voted against Sotomayor. (The vote for her confirmation was sixty-eight to thirty-one.)

Eric Cantor clutches his pearls and repeats the Republican's latest talking point du jour; the President's speech was too partisan. That's rich coming from Mr. Party of "No" Eric Cantor. These statements didn't sound too partisan to me.

OBAMA: Well the time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action. Now is when we must bring the best ideas of both parties together, and show the American people that we can still do what we were sent here to do. Now is the time to deliver on health care.

[.....]

OBAMA: Finally, many in this chamber – particularly on the Republican side of the aisle – have long insisted that reforming our medical malpractice laws can help bring down the cost of health care. I don't believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet, but I have talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs. So I am proposing that we move forward on a range of ideas about how to put patient safety first and let doctors focus on practicing medicine. I know that the Bush Administration considered authorizing demonstration projects in individual states to test these issues. It’s a good idea, and I am directing my Secretary of Health and Human Services to move forward on this initiative today.

[.....]

OBAMA: But those of us who knew Teddy and worked with him here – people of both parties – know that what drove him was something more. His friend, Orrin Hatch, knows that. They worked together to provide children with health insurance. His friend John McCain knows that. They worked together on a Patient’s Bill of Rights. His friend Chuck Grassley knows that. They worked together to provide health care to children with disabilities.

Newshounds has more on the segment- Hannity And Cantor Complain About Partisanship In Obama’s Health Care Speech, Ignore GOP Heckling And Disrespect:

Sean Hannity and Republican Congressman Eric Cantor last night (9/9/09) blithely accused President Obama of being too partisan in his health care speech to the Joint Session of Congress while they just as blithely ignored the heckling and disrespect from Republicans that included booing, holding up antagonistic signs, using Blackberries during the speech and, in one case, shouting out that the president is a liar. With video.

Hannity opened his post-speech show last night with a commentary that accused Obama of delivering “an attack speech that could have been written by James Carville.” He forgot to mention that the Republicans’ reaction would have been scripted by middle schoolers.

Hannity went on to complain about Obama’s “cynicism and intimidation… Everyone disagrees with him is either a liar or a thug.”

Yet Hannity made no mention of Republican Congressman Joe Wilson yelling, “You lie!” during the speech.

Continue reading...

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

(h/t Heather at VideoCafe)

The Hill:

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said on Sunday that Vicki Kennedy should be considered to replace her late husband in the Senate.

Hatch, one of Kennedy's closest friends in the Senate, said on CNN's State of the Union that Vicki Kennedy is well-qualified to serve, even if only until a January special election to fill the rest of the term.

"I think Vicki ought to be considered. She's a very brilliant lawyer. She's a very solid individual. She certainly made a difference in Ted's life, let me tell you. And I have nothing but great respect for her," Hatch said on CNN.

Another close friend of Kennedy, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), acknowledged that Vicki Kennedy has not expressed much interest in filling in for her husband, but said he would support her next step.

"Whatever Vicki wants to do, I'm in her corner," Dodd said on State of the Union. "She knows that. And she's expressed to me her own sort of reluctance to [fill in for Kennedy], but she could change her mind. If she did, I'm for it. I think she'd be great."

"She brings talent and ability to it, and to fill that spot I think is something the people of Massachusetts would welcome. We could certainly use her in the Senate," Dodd said. "But I leave that up to her. She's got a lot on her mind right now, and frankly, I'll leave it up to her decision-making process."

Massachusetts lawmakers, spurred by a letter from Kennedy himself, have begun discussing new legislation that would allow Gov. Deval Patrick (D) to appoint a temporary replacement to serve until an election. State law passed when Gov. Mitt Romney (R) was in office took the power to appoint a replacement away from the Republican when Sen. John Kerry (D) appeared in strong position to win the presidency.

Kennedy was reportedly worried that the Democrats would fail in their health care reform push without that 60th vote and wanted to make sure that Patrick could appoint someone before that January special election. You gotta love that about Teddy, optimistic 'til the end that the Dems would find their spines.

Meanwhile, BoldProgressives has started the Honor Senator Kennedy petition:

PETITION TO THE SENATE: "Ted Kennedy was a courageous champion for health care reform his entire life. In his honor, name the reform bill that passed Kennedy's health committee 'The Kennedy Bill' -- then pass it, and nothing less, through the Senate."

Sign it, it's getting passed on to the Senate today as they come back from recess.

I'm not sure what's more infuriating here, listening to Orrin Hatch pretend he doesn't know full well that what was done to the prisoners in our custody was torture, or John Kerry defending the Obama administration's decision not to go after the ones at the top who ordered it, and then smile and nod politely while Hatch spins.

STEPHANOPOULOS: OK. Let me move to another issue that came up earlier this week. The attorney general decided to investigate possible CIA abuses in the prisoner interrogation cases.

And Vice President Cheney this morning has blasted that decision by the attorney general.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DICK CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, how did you do it? What were the keys to keeping the country safe over that period of time?

Instead, they're out there now threatening to disbar the lawyers who gave us the legal opinions, threatening, contrary to what the president originally said, they were going to go out and investigate the CIA personnel who carried out those investigations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: He called it an outrageous and possibly dangerous act.

KERRY: Well, Dick Cheney has shown through the years, frankly, a disrespect for the Constitution, for sharing of information with Congress, respect for the law, and I'm not surprised that he is upset about this.

The Obama administration has no intention -- I think the president himself has been unbelievably bending in the direction of trying to be careful about what happens to national security, protecting our national security interests, being very sensitive about the CIA's prerogatives and needs and so forth.

And in fact, I think there is a little bit of a tension between the White House itself and the lawyers in the Justice Department as they see the law and as what their obligation is.

And in a sense, that's good. That's appropriate, because it shows that we have an attorney general who is not pursuing a political agenda, but who is doing what he believes the law requires him to do.

And we have an administration, on the other hand, that is balancing some of those other interests.

Continue reading »