Is Harry Reid in Trouble?

Harry Reid has been one of two U.S. Senators from Nevada since 1987, so could his incumbency really be in trouble after 20 years in office?

Possibly, at least it doesn’t look great for Reid.

For starters Reid hasn’t technically dominated his contests since being elected in 1986. He’s like the Texas football team of the Senate, winning close contests and making it all the way.

His first election he won by six points, his second election he pulled out a nine point victory, and in 1998 he only beat republican John Ensign, who would later become a Nevada U.S. Senator, by 428 votes. His first three elections were all under 10 point victories, they’re respectable, but I wouldn’t call it domination. I also wouldn’t say the GOP had lost all hope.

In 2004 he was able to completely dominate the race, winning 61% to 35%.

The key to Reid’s victories, and really any national politician’s victory in Nevada, relies heavily on three counties; Clark, Mineral, and Washoe. Clark County is home to Nevada’s largest city and tourist attraction, Las Vegas.

In his dominating 2004 election, Reid carried Clark and Mineral counties by over 30% and won Washoe County with 58% of the vote. Fairly dominating victories in the three most important counties in the state.

The reason Ensign was able to get so close in 1998 was because he snuck out a win in Washoe County and kept the race very competitive in Clark and Mineral counties.

So let that be known, a key to victory in Nevada rests heavily on a politician’s success in Clark County, after all it’s the most populated county in the state.

So why might Reid lose in 2010? For starters the poll numbers say he will, the latest polls show both potential republican challengers beating Reid by at least six points. The latest poll also shows 49% of Nevadans have an unfavorable opinion of Reid (only 38% hold a favorable view). The latest poll also shows that a majority of Nevadans are against Obama’s health care reform which Reid is attempting to run through congress.

But we all know how polls can be, especially with just under a year until the election. A lot can change, and the republican challenger hasn’t been selected yet. The GOP primary race has a field of six, but it really comes down to two people; Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian. Both have a business background, but I think only one can beat Reid; Lowden.

Remember what the key to winning Nevada is? Did you not pay attention? The key to winning Nevada is Clark County. If a republican has a chance of beating Reid they have to win Washoe County and come close, or win, Clark County.

Now what’s the one advantage incumbents have over newcomers? Recognition. Everyone in Nevada knows who Reid is, so the republicans have to put up a candidate that has name recognition.

Bearing those two things in mind, here’s why Lowden can take down Reid.

First, she was a state senator from Clark County. Clark County is heavily democratic and Lowden was able to win as a republican. She served in 1992 through 1996 so she’s not coming right from serving, but most older voters will recognize the name.

If they don’t recognize her from being a state senator, chances are they’ll recognize her from television. Lowden was a reporter and news anchor on KLAS-TV in Las Vegas. It just so happens KLAS has been the ratings leader in Las Vegas for quite some time, giving Lowden plenty of face time and recognition, not only in Clark County but the surrounding areas as well.

Lastly she was a businesswoman, and the economy and spending are the top issues on the voters minds. She was the President of Santa Fe Hotel and Casino and Executive Vice President for Sahara Hotel and Casino. No doubt she will tout her business background, and in this political climate, where voters feel disenfranchised and aloof from Washington mainstays, that will give her a huge advantage.

We might be a year out from Harry Reid’s reelection bid in Nevada, but if Lowden can pull off a victory in the Republican Primary there’s a good chance Reid will be in a big heap of trouble.

–jb

The Budget Magicians: Making Deficits Disappear…or Something Like That

Obama said yesterday that he plans to cut the budget deficit in half by the end of his first term. Which I guess is kind of sour good news. After all the deficit sits at $1.3 trillion, even if he did cut it in half he’d still have a $650 billion deficit, which is much greater than most of the deficits under Bush.

Speaking of Bush, Obama made it very clear yesterday that the budget woes are not of his doing, but rather the doing of his predecessor.

At one point, Obama criticized “the casual dishonesty of hiding irresponsible spending with clever accounting tricks, the costly overruns, the fraud and abuse, the endless excuses. This is exactly what the American people rejected when they went to the polls. They sent us here to usher in a new era of responsibility in Washington, to start living within our means again and being straight with them about where their tax dollars are going.”

The people didn’t go to the polls to decrease the deficit, if that were the case they wouldn’t have voted for Obama, the plans he laid out on the campaign trail would have increased the deficit.

I make no excuses for Bush’s handling of the budget, however, Obama’s hands aren’t clean on this issue. There were two massive drags on the budget in Bush’s last year. The first was the summer stimulus and the second was the TARP bailout. It just so happens that Obama voted for both of them.

And oh by the way, roughly a quarter of that $1.3 trillion deficit is Obama’s recently signed stimulus. He’s talking out of both sides of his mouth. One week he signs one of the largest new spending bills the next week he preaches about fiscal responsibility. Stop talking about fiscal responsibility and start practicing it.

Even after Obama promised to cut the budget deficit two stories broke today that display just how tough that promise will be to keep.

First, Hillary Clinton is expected to announce close a billion dollars in aide to help rebuild the Gaza Strip.

The United States plans to offer more than $900 million to help rebuild Gaza after Israel’s invasion and to strengthen the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, U.S. officials said on Monday.

The money, which needs U.S. congressional approval, will be distributed through U.N. and other bodies and not via the militant group Hamas, which rules Gaza, said one official.

The money is being distributed through the U.N., so I’m sure it won’t be misspent. Lord knows the U.N. has never misspent money.

Bush also allocated money through the U.N. for the Gaza Strip as well, but it was a mere $85 million, that’s quite the dwarf when compared to $900 million. With our current economic and fiscal condition, can anyone really justify spending nearly a billion dollars to rebuild a territory that we didn’t destroy?

The second story is more fiscal irresponsibility from the democrats.

House Democrats unveiled a $410 billion spending bill on Monday to keep the government running through the end of the fiscal year, setting up the second political struggle over federal funds in less than a month with Republicans.

The measure includes thousands of earmarks, the pet projects favored by lawmakers but often criticized by the public in opinion polls. There was no official total of the bill’s earmarks, which accounted for at least $3.8 billion.

The spending is an 8% increase over last year, which is clearly more than the rate of inflation (at least for now). Republicans have called for a spending freeze to display fiscal responsibility, however I wouldn’t hold my breath on the democrats agreeing.

Literally the day after Obama announces his plan to cut the budget deficit in half, the democrats purpose $410,900,000,000 in spending. Obama, Pelosi and Reid have to be some sort of budget magicians to pull this one off.

–jb

Sheltering the Stimulus

Something smells very funky about this stimulus plan.

I’ve always thought it was a bad idea, but the new “compromised” bill from the House and Senate has a stench to it that is worrying me very much. It has nothing to do with what’s actually in the bill, very few people are privileged enough to have even read it, it has to do with how Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are handling the situation.

First, they promise the bill will be online for the public to read at least 48 hours before a vote takes place. The bill wasn’t placed online until last night around 11pm and a vote is expected today. Obviously that’s not 48 hours.

The reason the Democrats didn’t get the bill up in time is because they were converting it to unsearchable PDF files. Usually a bill is placed online and you can search through the text by typing in keywords. However, with this stimulus bill three out of the four PDF files are images, meaning there’s no search functionality.

Why would the most open and transparent Congress and presidency not want the people to search their bill? Probably because there’s some controversial items. If the bill is online for…lets say 20 hours before a vote, someone could easily use the search functionality and find all the ridiculous stuff the Dems crammed in there. However, if it’s online for 20 hours with no search functionality you basically have to read the bill. And at 1,071 pages you’d have to read 54 pages an hour for 20 hours straight. It is impossible to read the stimulus in its entirety before the House votes on it.

Oh but it gets better.

Republicans have been calling for the vote to take place at a later time, maybe over the weekend or on Monday. The Democrats have scoffed at that idea without giving a reason as to why a vote shouldn’t be delayed.

Well they’ve found a reason now.

John Culberson of Texas says that a vote on the stimulus has to take place today because Speaker of the House Pelosi is leaving on an 8-day trip to Europe tomorrow.

Give me a second to grab a tissue to wipe my tears.

I thought this bill is suppose to save the economy, clearly Pelosi could cancel a trip to Europe for that!

What exactly is Speaker Pelosi doing in Europe that she has to go. According to Drudge…

Pelosi is hoping to lead a delegation to Europe; there’s a meeting with the Pope and an award from an Italian legislative group.

So basically increasing her ego. Certainly nothing urgent, certainly nothing she couldn’t cancel.

I’ve yet to read the bill or see any detailed summary of it, but this certainly smells fishy. Let me lay it out for you one more time.

-The bill is 1,071 pages long making it impossible to read in less than 24 hours and large enough to hide some radical stuff
-The Democrats promised the bill would be online 48 hours before a vote, if they vote today (depending on the time) it will only have been online for around 20 hours.
-The bill, unlike every other bill that goes through Congress, is not searchable online
-Negotiations on the bill took place exclusively between Democrats and Obama staffers, Republicans weren’t invited
-The bill was distributed to K Street lobbyists before congressional offices
-According to Democrats the bill has to be voted on today because Pelosi is leaving for Europe
-Democrats and Republicans are teed off that they don’t have time to read the full text

This is a very concerning and frightening situation. To think that Congress would authorize a trillion dollars in spending without the entire delegation reading the bill is mind numbing. This irresponsibility must come to an end.

And ya know who should lead that charge. The guy who’s been talking all the bipartisan rhetoric over the last month…Barack Obama. Where is the outcry from the White House over these outrageous actions?

–jb

Stimulus Deal Reached

The democrats have reached a compromise on the competing stimulus plans from the House and Senate. Notice I how I say the Democrats, because they were the only ones allowed into the meeting. Obama had staff there, Reid and Pelosi were obviously there, but somehow the Republican’s didn’t get a seat at the table.

Republicans have caught the Democrats in a midnight “stimulus” power play that seeks to cut Republican conferees out of the House-Senate negotiations to resolve a final version of the Obama “stimulus” package. Staff members from the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) met last night to put together the “stimulus” conference report.

They intend to attempt to shove this $1.3 trillion spending bill through in the dead of the night without Republican input so floor action can take place in both chambers on Thursday.

That’s interesting because I could have sworn Obama said these things at his press conference Monday night…

“It’s a plan that is already supported by businesses representing almost every industry in America, by both the Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO. It contains input, ideas and compromises from both Democrats and Republicans.”

“And whether we’re Democrats or Republicans, surely there’s got to be some capacity for us to work together, not agree on everything, but at least set aside small differences to get things done.”

He sure threw out a lot of bipartisan rhetoric in that press conference didn’t he? Most of which wasn’t followed through on when the final stimulus compromise was going down. Obama could have asked Pelosi and Reid to bring Republicans into the negotiating room and work through the night to get a compromise, but he didn’t.

Despite the Republicans not even having a say in the final “compromised” bill, Vice President Joe Biden thinks it’ll pass with bipartisan support.

On a trip to Pennsylvania, where he stumped on behalf of the economic recovery plan, Biden told reporters: “We are going to have this bill, hopefully, by today.”

I understand being optimistic but that’s a bit too optimistic. Saying that would assume that the House can vote it through tonight and the Senate could vote it through, without a filibuster, as well. I don’t think the GOP is too receptive of this bill after being shut out of negotiations.

But let’s talk about the compromised bill.

First off, they did cut some money from it, that’s a good start. The total now sits at $789 billion, down from up to $838 billion. According to Harry Reid, a third of the bill is tax cuts (actually tax credits, I’m assuming there are no rate cuts in the bill). According to reports the bill falls short in money for school modernization. Most likely because some moderate Republicans in the Senate stood against that measure and would vote if it was included.

Oh but it gets so much better. There was talk before the compromise that the Senate bill included some creepy stuff about health care, including forcing doctors to get approval for procedures by the government. According to reports, the new compromised bill goes further and begins to ration health care.

Rep. John Shadegg (R.-Ariz.) issued a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) asking language be stripped from the bill to eliminate the creation of a $1.1 billion government agency he says could deny lifesaving medical treatment to Americans under a nationalized health care system.

The provision at issue is one placed into the bill by House Appropriations Chairman Rep. David Obey (D.-Ohio) to create a “Federal Coordinating Council.” The council would be established to conduct “Comparative Effectiveness” research on the efficiency of health care treatments.

“In other countries where they’ve done this research they’ve used it to deny care…It’s preparing America, at least in this instance, the worst aspects of universal health care and that’s government rationing,” Shadegg said.

The provision in the bill would allow the council to review procedures and then those “that are found to be less effective and in some cases, more expensive, will no longer be prescribed.”

There’s this distorted notion that the government has the people in mind and, unlike the big health care corporations, they don’t care about money. That’s false. If the government is providing health care they’ll find the most cost effective way to do it. And if that means cutting procedures that cost too much, despite their effectiveness, so be it.

This bill doesn’t have to be on Obama’s desk until February 16, at least that’s Obama’s due date. I sincerely hope that for the sake of democracy Congress spends that time wisely and debates this bill. Most of this spending won’t even happen until 2010, they have time. As I’ve said before it would be irresponsible to pass an 800+ page bill that spends nearly a $1 trillion in a matter of days. They need to give time to Congressmen to at least pretend like they’ve read it.

–jb

Someone Get the Dems a Thesaurus

The Democrats just finished up their press conference regarding the auto industry bailout and there’s one thing I learned from it; if Nancy Pelosi is on your Christmas list get her a thesaurus.

The words of the day for the democrats were accountability and viability. Together they were said 27 times, Nancy Pelosi delivering them 20 times.

Overall, I liked the press conference; if it was delivered about two and a half weeks ago.

Basically the democrats said they wanted the auto industry to provide them with a report about how they would be, you guessed it, accountable with tax payer dollars and viable for the future. That makes sense to me, I’d like to know if the auto industry is going to be able to survive with a measly $25 billion; and, unlike the $700 billion bailout, I’d like to make sure they are accountable for the money they receive.

However, the democrats are a tad late. The auto makers asked for this money weeks ago. That’s when this press conference should have taken place. Instead they had Carl Levin draft legislation for the bailout, they had musings of taking it from the $700 billion, there was talk that they’d do it if they got an ownership stake in the companies, there was talk today that a bipartisan group had finished legislation, there was rumor that it would be voted on soon. The House and Senate leadership let rumors fly.

What’s the problem with that? Take a good hard look at the market. No one knows what the hell is going on in Washington, their teetering is creating massive unease on Wall Street. Had the democrats come out the day after the auto industry asked for the money, we would have had a clear message as to what the procedure was going to be. We would have known when the decision was going to be made, and we would have understood that Congress had understood the idea of “accountability and viability.”

By the way, as I’m writing this Carl Levin, my Senator from Michigan, is speaking to the press. I unmuted the TV to hear what he had to say, I then remuted it after hearing this line…

“Auto industries around the world including China and Europe are requesting loans from their governments because of the dramatic decline of the global economy and the drastic reduction in car purchases and the availability of credit.”

So Levin’s justification for a bailout of the auto industry is that everyone else is doing it. Since when did we follow communist China’s lead?

–jb

Patient Pelosi

Just two days removed from electing “change” into the White House, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi urged people to be patient, saying that change will not happen immediately.

“The country must be governed from the middle,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday. Repeating themes from election night, she said she plans to emphasize “civility” and “fiscal responsibility.”

Does anyone remember Pelosi’s acceptance speech in 2006. Where she promised that this congress would be the most ethical and would bring back “civility” and “integrity” to Washington. You can refresh your memories here.

In any event, does anyone take this woman seriously? She was part of the majority that lead the congress to its lowest approval rating ever. And now she turns around and promises the same stuff that she didn’t deliver on in two years.

And don’t even get me started with “fiscal responsibility.” It wasn’t more than a few weeks ago that Barney Frank (D-MA) said that we need not worry about deficits, and that we need an immediate increase in spending and higher taxes down the road. Not even democrats believe they are the party of fiscal responsibility. Hell, currently the republicans aren’t the party of fiscal responsibility either.

Her comments emphasized that after an election consistently referred to as “historic,” Democrats face the daunting task of dealing with the plunging economy and two wars.

Yet, they face massive expectations for change and deep-seated fears of overreaching. But senior aides say they’ve learned from the mistakes of the past. Nearly every member of the current Democratic leadership in the House served through the 1992 election, when Bill Clinton was elected president. Two years later, the GOP gained control of Congress.

They may not have been paying close enough attention during that lesson, or any others for that matter.

They’ve already planned a new $300 billion stimulus package, despite the failing of the first one, and all the other instances when government has intervened in this crisis. Not to mention spending $300 billion when you just spent over $1.7 trillion on the economy, and carry a deficit of $450 billion, isn’t very fiscally responsible.

“There is a wave of hope that swept the country … not a mandate for any hope or ideology, but a mandate to get things done,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Wednesday morning on National Public Radio.

Isn’t being elected as a senator or representative a “mandate to get things done?” Did you really need the election of Obama to receive that mandate? Remember, democrats have held the majority in the house and senate for two years; and have gotten nothing done.

So here’s my idea to bridge the partisan divide in Washington. It’s not much, and without the cooperation of politicians it most likely won’t do anything, but I think it would bode well for our country.

The position of Speaker of the House is very much so a national position. They determine legislation that is voted on (remember when Pelosi refused to bring up the vote on drilling), they are second in line for the presidency (behind the vice president) and often times they travel the world singularly representing our country.

Instead of the majority party voting on the Speaker of the House, the position should be voted on in a national election, side-by-side with the President of the United States. The person doesn’t have to be in the majority party, the only rule to run is that they must not be seeking reelection that year. I think that would put pressure on the position holder to be more bipartisan and truly legislate from the center.

–jb