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The dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial is taking place this Sunday, October 16th. That’s also the 16th anniversary of the Million Man March, which took place on the National Mall in 1995.
House Republicans gathered Thursday at a lumber warehouse in Virginia to unveil their new “Pledge to America.” So what are they promising? To make the Bush tax cuts permanent for everyone, to repeal health-care reform, and to reduce federal spending. The Pledge is 45 pages. If this doesn’t Scare Democrats and Independents to the voting booth in November to vote for Democratic, well, nothing will.
Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein says “Their policy agenda is detailed and specific-a decision they will almost certainly come to regret. Because when you get past the adjectives and soaring language, the talk of inalienable rights and constitutional guarantees, you’re left with a set of hard promises that will increase the deficit by trillions of dollars, take health-care insurance away from tens of millions of people, create a level of policy uncertainty businesses have never previously known, and suck demand out of an economy that’s already got too little of it.”
The New Republic’s Jon Chait is also unimpressed:
“It’s a reprise of every theme of Republican economic policy-making the party has followed for 20 years.” He adds, “The Pledge to America fulminates against debt, but it should be read as a plan to explode debt through the ceiling.”
House investigators today officially accused veteran New York Rep. Charles Rangel of 13 violations of congressional ethics standards, throwing a cloud over his political career and putting Democrats in a pickle throughout fall elections.
The allegations – which include failure to report rental income from vacation property in the Dominican Republic and to report more than $600,000 in assets on his congressional financial disclosure statements – came as lawyers for Rangel and the House ethics committee worked on a plea deal.
One was reached, sources tell the Associated Press, but Republicans indicated it was too late.
The deal between the lawyers will have little meaning if the committee members don’t approve it, and Republicans said at the proceeding they were insisting on going forward with a trial. The panel is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.
“Mr. Rangel was given multiple opportunities to settle this matter. Instead, he chose to move forward to the public trial phase,” said Rep. Jo Bonner of Alabama, the senior Republican on the ethics panel
Many Democrats had urged Rangel to settle the case to avoid the prospect of televised hearings right before November congressional elections that will determine which party controls Congress next year.
However, as Friday’s public airing of the charges drew nearer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem resigned to the case proceeding.
“The chips will have to fall where they may politically,” she told reporters. Pursuing ethics cases against House members is “a serious responsibility that we have,” she said.