Morning Must Reads — Delusional Democrats

But big issue is that there is no bill to pass yet.

Part of the reason that the White House had to abandon its March 18 deadline so quickly is that even having embraced the procedural end-around of budget reconciliation to prevent a Republican filibuster, Democrats can’t agree on what will be in the plan. Nancy Pelosi says the House will soon pass the Senate bill and then both Houses will pass curative legislation. But the contents of that 100-page remedial bill are still undecided as work continues behind closed doors today.

After a late-night meeting of the House Democratic caucus, members left knowing no more about the plan than they had before and feeling grumpier than they had before.

The good news for President Obama is that as long as there is no bill, he can keep cajoling “maybes” in the House. The bad news: with no bill there is no CBO score and no answers to the questions that keep “maybes” from being “yeas.”

Despite all the Democratic bravado of late, it’s proving hard for them to cut the switch Republicans will use to whip them.

Writer Robert Pear looks at the harsh reality of timing as the cruelest month approaches.

“House Democrats said Ms. Pelosi had assured them they would have at least one week to examine the text of the budget bill before voting on it.

Democratic aides said House leaders wanted the vote to occur before a two-week spring break scheduled to start on March 26. Otherwise, they said, wavering lawmakers might buckle to pressure from critics of the bill, who plan to step up their campaign against it during the recess.

President Obama plans to leave Thursday on a trip to Indonesia and Australia. With his health care bill hanging in the balance, he faces intensifying questions about whether he should put off the trip, which was timed to coincide with his daughters’ spring break.”

Washington Post — Democrats move toward grouping health reform with student-aid bill

With health care mired in procedural complexities, Democrats are rushing to add another degree of difficulty by attaching the president’s stalled proposal to take over student lending to the package.

The argument goes that Democrats should get the maximal benefit out of breaking the rules. If you’re going to go nuclear, why not maximize the megatons?

Plus, a bill that ends a sweetheart deal for student lenders and gives away more money for college is likely to be more popular than the politically catastrophic health bill.

Obama can’t pass the plan because Democrats from states that are home to the student lending business won’t sign off, so he wants to reconcile his troubles away.

But with his presidency hanging in the balance, it hardly seems like the time to get greedy or complicate things further.

Tell us, writers Shailagh Murray and Lori Montgomery, who is behind this too-cute plan?

“White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who supports pairing the measures, said Thursday night that lawmakers had made ‘a lot of decisions’ but were still addressing several concerns related to the education bill. ‘We’re getting close,’ Emanuel said after meeting at the Capitol with Democratic leaders.”

The Atlantic — Eric Massa’s Navy Files

Good grief, Eric Massa!

Writer Joshua Green looks back at a creepy history of allegations against the former congressman from Western New York from his days as a candidate and his time in the Navy.

The theme is the harassment of junior officers and subordinates. They tell tales of waking up to find Massa attempting to “snorkel” them and of the anxiety of junior officers at having to serve under the ambitious, mercurial officer who had hitched his wagon to Gen. Wesley Clark’s still-rising star.

Green tells us that members of the House Ethics Committee already knew this when the moved Tuesday to drop they investigation into Massa’s alleged harassment of his male staffers. Massa may have been beyond their jurisdiction but weren’t they curious how someone with such a wild record and a quick succession of complaints in Congress escaped the notice of leaders?

On Thursday, House Republicans forced a vote on demanding ethics re-open the Massa probe to see what Nancy Pelosi knew and when she knew it, but Democrats defeated the measure. They did, however, go along with suggesting, politely, that the ethics committee take another look.

This could mean headaches for Pelosi, whose staff was said to have been tipped off five months ago.

Green tells us of some of the over-the-top antics ethics committee members had heard about:

“According to Peter Clarke, a Navy shipmate, Massa was notorious for making unwanted advances toward subordinates. He tells the story of his friend Stuart Borsch, with whom Massa shared a hotel room while on leave during the first Gulf War. ‘Stuart’s at the edge of the bed,’ Clarke says Borsch told him at the time, ‘and [Massa] starts massaging him. Massa said, ‘You’ll have to get one of my special massages.’ He called them ‘Massa Massages.’ Ron Moss, a Navy shipmate and Borsch’s roommate, confirmed that Borsch told him this story at the time.”

New York Times — Holder Did Not Disclose Briefs on ‘Enemy Combatant’

Fans of Eric Holder had scored a string of victories in pushing back against criticism of the attorney general’s hiring of seven lawyers for senior posts who had done extensive work representing Guantanamo Bay terrorists.

But Holder has suffered some collateral damage in the fight.

In answering Holder’s defenders in a National Review piece two Bush lawyers revealed that as a private lawyer, Holder had petitioned the Supreme Court on behalf of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen accused of a dirty bomb plot and convicted of aiding terrorist groups abroad. Holder argued against charging Padilla in a military court as the Bush administration initially did. The Bush team eventually relented and sought civilian charges when the dirty-bomb plot evidence thinned.

The problem for Holder is that he did not disclose his participation in the Padilla case during his confirmation process document dump.

Writers Charlie Savage and Bernie Becker explain that Holder’s less-than-candid response may give Republicans a chance to dig deeper on the ties between his team and the effort to defend Gitmo terrorists.

“Republicans signaled that they were likely to attack Mr. Holder over his joining the briefs — and his failure to list them, along with other public documents, on a routine confirmation questionnaire — when he testifies before them later this month.

‘Are we expected to believe that then-nominee Holder, with only a handful of Supreme Court briefs to his name, forgot about his role in one of this country’s most publicized terrorism cases?’ asked Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona.”

Caddell and Schoen — If Democrats ignore health-care polls, midterms will be costly

One of the problems with President Obama and his team believing they are transformative vanguards of a new American politics is that they won’t listen to anybody with experience.

Pat Caddell was a pollster and strategist for Jimmy Carter. He knows a thing or two about a political morass. Doug Schoen was a pollster and strategist for Bill Clinton. He knows a thing or two about making a political comeback.

But Democrats of the Obama breed discount their counsel because they are of the old Democratic guard they disdain.

But perhaps a warning as dire as the one Caddell and Schoen offer will be enough to get a few to take another look.

“For Democrats to begin turning around their political fortunes there has to be a frank acknowledgement that the comprehensive health-care initiative is a failure, regardless of whether it passes. There are enough Republican and Democratic proposals — such as purchasing insurance across state lines, malpractice reform, incrementally increasing coverage, initiatives to hold down costs, covering preexisting conditions and ensuring portability — that can win bipartisan support. It is not a question of starting over but of taking the best of both parties and presenting that as representative of what we need to do to achieve meaningful reform. Such a proposal could even become a template for the central agenda items for the American people: jobs and economic development.

Unless the Democrats fundamentally change their approach, they will produce not just a march of folly but also run the risk of unmitigated disaster in November.”

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