Now that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) has sent out his spokesman to lie for him to obscure that Durbin plans to whip against the public option, the hot potato has been passed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Pelosi is saying she will not include the public option because it does not have the votes [...]

After Dick Durbin (D-IL) got attacked for saying that he would whip against the public option, he sent out his spokesman to lie about reconciliation in a pathetic attempt to justify Durbin’s role in trying to kill the public option. (Which is curious because we were told we could not have a public option because [...]

I’m still skeptical that Democrats will ever be able to find the votes to pass their current health care reform strategy. Their plan is to have the House pass the comprehensive Senate bill as it is, then pass “fixes” using reconciliation. With even the Democratic leadership basically admitting that there is no way out of [...]

The good news is that Democrats might have to include some form of student loan reform in the reconciliation bill to meet the cost-saving requirements of their reconciliation instructions. From Politico: The Senate parliamentarian notified Democratic leaders that, in order to meet the reconciliation requirements, both the Senate health and finance committees would need to [...]

We recently learned that Harry Reid (D-NV) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) were actually whipping against the public option and trying to deny the American people a real up-or-down vote on the issue in the Senate. It is good to see that Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is willing to defy them and instead go with the will [...]

The Senate Republicans’ strategy on health care reform right now is warning House Democrats that they will do anything to derail a set of reconciliation votes. All 41 Republicans have already signed a letter saying that they will vote against any waiver of the Byrd rule, and are clearly working through every possible route to [...]

Democrats seem to have an unsolvable legislative problem on their hands. It does not seem that their current strategy of passing the Senate bill as is and then arranging some fixes through reconciliation will work. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and his anti-abortion gang want changes to the abortion language before voting on the bill, and Senate [...]

Remember all those great list building exercises that Harry Reid and Dick Durbin engaged in? You know, the ones where they told you how much they support the public option, and asked you to fork over your email for their polls? Ah, memories. Now they’re whipping against the public option — and students.

Sign the petition — tell the Senate to pass the damn student loan bill NOW and just for once say “no” to Citibank and JP Morgan.

The push by lobbyists of Citibank, JP Morgan, Sallie Mae and other student lenders to kill student loan reform is working. Kent Conrad is trying to keep the President’s plan from going through reconciliation this year, which means it can’t pass for another year — and guarantees that the Wall Street banks can keep carving [...]

With little public notice or fanfare, the federal government has been providing financial institutions involved in the student loan business with a bailout projected to be over $100 billion: 2007-2008 2008-2009 2009-2010 TOTAL Loan Purchase Commitment Program $997,945,088 $48,538,600,137 $2,540,422,115 $52,076,967,340.00 Loan Participation Purchase Program $33,359,067,388 $25,565,704,156 $58,924,771,544.00 Asset-Backed Commercial Paper $31,540,088,059 $31,540,088,059.00 This makes [...]