DL Open Thread: Saturday, Sept. 30, 2023
“Dianne Feinstein Dies. Staff Insists She Can Still Carry Out Her Senatorial Duties.”-Fake headline dedicated to Jason.
Kevin McCarthy Could Earn A Profile In Courage. Yes, it would cost him his worthless Speakership, but could remove some tarnish from what remains of his reputation:
“I hope the speaker snaps out of the vise grip he’s put himself in, and stops succumbing to the thirty or so extremists who are running the show in the House,” Schumer said. “Mr. Speaker, time has almost run out.”
House Democratic Whip Katherine M. Clark said plainly that the House needs to take up the Senate CR. “Take the deal that they already negotiated and prevent the pain of a shutdown.”
House Republicans are privately admitting that a government shutdown could last for at least two weeks, with pressure to reopen building before the military is set to receive their next paycheck in the middle of October, according to several Republicans familiar with discussions.
A majority of House Republicans do not want the government to shut down, but have found it difficult to find any compromise that funds the government for a short period. The plan for House Republicans is to continue passing full-year appropriation bills during the next two weeks, which do nothing to fund the government in the short-term. They have passed four out of 12 of those bills so far
“The House has got to realize something — we don’t get to make the decision as Republicans over here,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said. “We’ve got to have something that can get Democrats on board as well. Democrats aren’t going to simply take whatever the House sends us unless it’s a program that the Democrats think is a reasonable compromise. So let’s see if we can cut to the chase, find something that is reasonable, and at least keep government open while we do the 12 appropriation bills.”
Of course, final passage of the CR in the Senate may be delayed until Monday because–Rand Paul:
One of the Senate’s most vocal opponents of more aid to Ukraine said dropping that provision was essential.
“The only thing that I think will pass the House in the Senate is a clean CR without Ukraine funding on it,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). “And if [Senate Democrats] don’t do that, they’re shutting the government down because they believe more strongly in funding Ukraine’s government than they believe in funding our own government.”
Gen. Milley’s Great Retirement Speech:
We don’t take an oath to a tribe. We don’t take an oath to a religion. We don’t take an oath to a king or queen, or a tyrant, or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution and we take an oath to the idea that this is America and we’re willing to die to protect it. Every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, guardian and Coast Guard: Each of us commits our very life to protect and defend that document regardless of personal price.
Federal Judge To Defendants: “No Federal Court For You.” Barring successful appeals, all of them, including Meadows, Clark and the fake electors, will be tried in Fulton County.
A federal judge in Atlanta has shot down former Trump DOJ official Jeff Clark’s attempt to remove his RICO prosecution to federal court in a Friday ruling.
Clark has the dubious distinction of being the sole high-ranking DOJ official to attempt to enlist the full force of the Justice Department in Trump’s effort to muddy the election result and declare victory. Clark, who was acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Division at the time, sought to have the DOJ send a letter declaring that fraud had impacted the election result and advising state legislatures to consider sending different electors to Congress.
Former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows made and lost a similar argument, though legal experts believe that a live question remains in that case.
Clark had attempted to argue that Trump delegated him the task of drafting the letter and working on the election, but the judge said he found “no evidence that the President directed Clark to work on election-related matters generally or to write the December 28 letter.”
The judge also found that the work Clark was trying to do ” would have been outside the scope of DOJ more broadly.”
ChristianaCare To Pay Huge Fine For Kickbacks. News-Journal to pick up story after–reading it here?:
ChristianaCare, Delaware’s largest health system, has reserved $47 million for a pending whistleblower settlement, the nonprofit disclosed in the audited financial statement it released Friday.
The tentative settlement involves alleged violations of the federal False Claims Act and anti-kickback laws at Christiana Hospital in Newark, Del. The nonprofit health system’s former chief compliance officer, Ronald Sherman, filed the lawsuit in 2017.
The lawsuit alleged that ChristianaCare provided free services of its employed doctors, residents, and nurse practitioners to a group of neonatology physicians in exchange for referrals to ChristianaCare’s neonatal intensive care unit.
Hospitals are not allowed to pay doctors for referrals under federal law.
“As far as we are aware, this groundbreaking settlement is by far the largest False Claims Act recovery of any kind in Delaware history,” said Miller, a partner in the Wilmington office of Walden Macht & Haran LLP.
What do you want to talk about?
I hadn’t heard about that ChristianaCare story before. Thanks for that. I’m sure I’ve mentioned I work in medical billing, albeit for a small-ish independent group practice.
Nearly ten years ago, before I worked there, we had a tiny little incident ourselves: https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/crime/2015/03/18/former-dover-office-manager-sentenced-embezzling/24988773/ 🫤
McCarthy’s Last-Ditch Effort Might Just Work–Might Cost Him The Speakership:
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2023/09/30/congress/house-gop-eyes-deal-00119259
An excerpt:
“After a private House Republican meeting on Saturday morning to try to figure out spending strategy, GOP leaders announced they would push ahead with a 45-day stopgap spending bill to avert a shutdown and allow them more time to pass their own full-year spending bills.
Executing that plan would require help from a significant swath of Democrats — the exact scenario under which conservatives have threatened to try to end McCarthy’s speakership.
“If I have to risk my job for standing up for the American public, I will do that,” McCarthy said. He had previously likened a vote on such a clean funding patch, without border policy changes or any other conservative provisions, to surrender.”
Of course, funding for Ukraine would be left out of the bill. Stay tuned.
My friend immediately said they’d roll her out to vote Weekend at Bernie’s style anyway.
Thanks Jason you’ll be missed.
Looks like the House Rethugs have tried to sneak a–wait for it–congressional pay raise into their supposedly ‘clean’ continuing budget resolution:
From the Washington Post:
“Democratic lawmakers complained Saturday that a GOP-backed bill to fund the government would allow members of Congress to receive pay increases for the first time in years.
With just hours until the shutdown begins, Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the appropriations committee, criticized the legislation for leaving out language included in the Senate’s short-term spending bill that would prohibit pay increases for lawmakers.
Oh, and this from the NYTimes:
“As some Democrats are leaning toward supporting the Republican stopgap spending bill, progressives are circulating a point-by-point list of items that they say have been stripped out of it, including funding for pandemic response, public health and student aid. This appears to be what Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, was referring to when she said the Republican bill was “not so clean.”
Bill is, um, not clean.
Ever heard of the 27th Amendment to the Constitution? Any pay raises to Congress can not occur until the next election. Plus, 209 Dems voted for it. Your point is?
Hello, is this mic on? If so, I’ll once again quote from the Washington Post:
“Democratic lawmakers complained Saturday that a GOP-backed bill to fund the government would allow members of Congress to receive pay increases for the first time in years.
With just hours until the shutdown begins, Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the appropriations committee, criticized the legislation for leaving out language included in the Senate’s short-term spending bill that would prohibit pay increases for lawmakers.”
Absent such language, pay raises would automatically take place. Perhaps not until 2024, but then.
And it wasn’t MY point, asshole. Keep it up, genius.
Dems Bail Rethugs Out. For 45 days, until the next artificial crisis:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/09/30/us/government-shutdown-news