You know what? I'm a good Democrat, but shit like this just makes my blood boil. We did not work for change last month to have this shit go on.
In the wee hours of the morning Dec. 7, Senate negotiators rejected a Medicare measure pushed by outgoing House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) that would have meant big revenues for an insurance company in Hastert's home state. But a day later, the $100 million proposal was alive and well, paired with a plan for a major Nevada land swap backed by Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), the incoming Senate majority leader.
The leaders' dealmaking went on behind the scenes during the final, frenetic hours of the 109th Congress. Hastert's provision, which would give certain Medicare beneficiaries additional time to change their health-care coverage, and Reid's plan, which involves more than 900 square miles of federal land, were included in a massive tax and trade measure approved by Congress shortly before its final adjournment early last Saturday morning.
Both provisions have been criticized as potentially harmful to public interests. Land-use activists complained this week that Reid's provision would sell too much of the federal land to private developers and that it circumvents land-disposal procedures. Several senior senators objected to Hastert's provision on the floor of the Senate, saying it favored one type of Medicare plan over others. Representatives of Aon Corp., an insurance company based in Hastert's home state, lobbied for the provision.
If that's what we can expect from Reid, he's gotta go. If we wanted lackeys, we'd have voted republican. The thought of anyone in the Democratic Leadership (and I use that term, "leadership", loosely) doing a favor for fat-fuck Hastert is pretty disgusting, given his treatment of virtually every Democrat in the House of Representatives over the last dozen years.
