Word: gop
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...reductions to avoid adding to the deficit. Their presence could also indicate that the group is considering moving the final bill through budget reconciliation, the end-of-the-year budget bill that needs only a simple majority of 50 votes to pass the Senate, thus avoiding a potential GOP filibuster. Republicans have repeatedly warned Democrats against trying to pass health care in that fashion, saying it goes against the spirit of the normal legislative process for such a sweeping bill. In return, many Democrats have argued that President Bush pushed through several large initiatives by this same process, such...
...respectively, of the Finance Committee's Subcommittee on Health Care. In recent months Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, a top HELP Committee Democrat, was added as Kennedy's understudy as the Massachusetts Democrat sought treatment for brain cancer. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad of North Dakota and his GOP counterpart Judd Gregg of New Hampshire were also added after President Obama included his $634 billion outline for health-care reform in his 2010 budget request. Other Senators from the Democratic leadership and the HELP and Finance Committees have been intermittently involved, and the core group has encouraged the participation...
...legal battles. Franken attorney Marc Elias recently sent a letter to the Federal Election Commission requesting an expedited advisory opinion about whether the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee can set up two recount funds on Franken's behalf; Coleman's campaign says it agrees with the request. Meanwhile, dozens of GOP leaders solicited donations for Coleman's recount fund via YouTube in late February...
That only fuels the suspicion, voiced by Franken, that the GOP wants to drag out Coleman's legal battle as long as it can to delay the Democrats from gaining another vote in the Senate, which would bring them even closer to a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority. "They're willing to let Minnesota have one Senator in order to delay my getting there," Franken recently told the Associated Press. For his part, Coleman has said he is "not in this to prolong it" but "to get it right" - though his decision to attend meetings with his former GOP colleagues...
...same time, Dodd is looking increasingly vulnerable. The silver-haired father of two young girls is facing his toughest re-election fight ever, and he doesn't even have an opponent yet. (CNBC pundit Larry Kudlow and former GOP Representative Rob Simmons have both expressed interest in running.) In a January Quinnipiac poll, 51% of Connecticut voters said they would not vote for Dodd in 2010. "It's the subject matter - people are watching their tax dollars go into institutions and they wonder when it's going to get better and they wonder where it's going," Dodd says...