Back in 2010, US Senator from New Hampshire, Jeanne “IRS Letter” Shaheen,voted along party lines to kill a Republican Resolution designed to repeal the grandfather rule in Obamacare…
Washington (CNN) – Senate Democrats voted unanimously three years ago to support the Obamacare rule that is largely responsible for some of the health insurance cancellation letters that are going out.
In September 2010, Senate Republicans brought a resolution to the floor to block implementation of the grandfather rule, warning that it would result in canceled policies and violate President Barack Obama’s promise that people could keep their insurance if they liked it.
Emphasis mine.
If your memory is not too short you will recall that the same Jeanne Shaheen who asked the IRS to investigate 501(c)4’s (an act from which she could benefit politically) later said there needed to be an investigation into why the IRS was investigating 501(c)4’s and other non-profits. This is the same Jeanne Shaheen who refused to delay Obamacare in exchange for spending concessions to avoid a shutdown, but recently suggested that maybe, just maybe, we should delay Obamacare.
In case you didn’t follow me there, Shaheen voted to keep the Obamacare rule that made it likley that 93 million people would lose their existing health plan (by regulatory design) and now wants to put that whole mandate thing on sabbatical until after her re-election campaign in 2014.
Astute students of civics, and keen observers of clever bloggers (including observers of those like myself who are not nearly as clever as they think) will have noticed a pattern in the preceding paragraphs.
Jeanne Shaheen has a habit of being at the fore-front of things Democrats want (even if they seem creepy or back handed or will ruin healthcare–something Shaheen excels at) until they appear to pose a risk to her future as a member of the ruling class, at which point she sticks a cautious political toe in the electoral pool with a rhetorical moon walk.
You know. She was for it before she was potentially against it.
I put it that way becasue she isn’t against it.
She signed not one but as many as three letters to the IRS poking that grumpy behemoth into continued pursuit of non-profits that may have been violating the law*. When it became clear that the IRS had been caught doing exactly what she and other Democrat Senators had been asking, she immediately pretended it was awful and hinted that someone should look into it. That was it. She didn’t ask to start a committee, or head up hearings. She was just pressing the long term Swedish memory foam mattress of the bureaucracy and hoping that as it sprung back to “business as usual” the short term memory of her constituents would save her from herself.
*Speaking of violating the law, Jeanne has been doing that for years. But at any moment now she’ll recall that she has a responsibility by law to pass a budget every year, should in fact have been in the press non stop since 2010 asking Democrat Harry Reid why he hadn’t allowed one to come to full debate in the Senate (The way Republican Kelly Ayotte continues to vote to allows things that piss off her base to come forward for debate) if, and only if there is more to gain politically by doing so.
We should also point out that Shaheen should have been continuously remarking on how the Democrat Chief Executive has run roughshod over any number of things (and then some) that got her all bunched up when Bush was in the Oval Office.
When the Shutdown loomed and Republicans came to the table asking for a delay in ObamaCare in exchange for generous spending concessions, no Democrats showed up. The party whine was to make the shutdown hurt and pin it on Republicans. But not two weeks ago Shaheen was one of the first Democrat Senators to suggest that maybe a deal was a good idea. It wasn’t a good idea when it would have been of some use to both parties. It was only a good idea when doing what your party originally told you to do turned out to be a threat to your (and their) re-election.
And now we learn that the single biggest threat to the curse of moving forward toward socialized medicine–a part of that bill we had to pass to learn what was in it–is something that Jeanne Shaheen not only knew about but voted to keep (grandfather clause), even though it would do the very thing she is now afraid might risk here chances at re-election. The thing Obama promised dosens of times in public.
Stupid Republicans saw it coming, why didn’t the oh-so-clever Democrat Jeanne Shaheen? Nope. Nothing to see here, party line vote.
And I’m adding this because it is just too easy. Anyone recall the Democrat Senator from NH wailing like a banshee about irresponsible “Republican” spending (despite the Democrat majority Congress being in charge of the purse strings) and a nearly 9 trillion dollar deficit? She was reading the same palm card as every other Democrat back then. So what happened? Shaheen has overseen the near-doubling of that sum to 17 trillion; does she agree with Pelosi–nowhere to cut? No whining? Hmmm.
Remember Shaheen declaring that opponent John Sununu was voting money to big oil when he was just voting to let them keep what they had earned by not taxing the crap out of them. How much in direct payments, loan guarantees, and easy money (not tax breaks mind you actual taxpayer cash or borrowed money) has Shaheen watched pour out to failing green energy interests who went bankrupt, some of them leaving hundreds jobless, acres of empty factory space, and in some cases toxic messes in their wake? Hundreds of billions of Dollars? (At least what John Sununu did would actually create some necessary jobs.)
We could go on (and on) but I’ve run long enough already. These few examples demonstrate that Senator Shaheen, while she may be a great grandma (when you are worth 14 million you have to work hard to be a bad grandma), that she is supportive of her daughter (who ‘runs’ a ladies underwear business in California but registers it in NH to evade California taxes–a favor she returns by voting here during important elections and for all of mom’s Democrat cronies), and is perhaps a wonderful person, but when it comes to politics she is not brilliant, or even clever. She does as directed by the party machine, including putting the other rhetorical toe in the electoral pool when it appears as if she may need to save her political backside.
Brilliant and clever politicians are not out front on the wrong side of common sense, time and time again. Brilliant and clever legislators do not goad bureaucrats employed by ultra-partisan superiors in a ultra-partisan environment, to investigate opposing non-profits with the expectation that they wont get caught doing it. They do not ignore the thing they know should happen (delay Obamacare) when it is offered by Republicans on a silver platter (easy-out) and then suggest that very thing a few weeks later as if she actually cares about the people affected when that very thing contradicts a very specific vote she cast that her party boss Obama and his administration knew would kick tens of millions of people of their health plans (while the same administration–echoed by the party apparatus–was claiming that that thing wasn’t going to happen.)
Unless….
Unless she is just a Progressive parrot for the party agenda and more interested in being in power and connected to the money than in using that power to better the state and the constituents she was (in theory at least) elected to represent.
Jeanne Shaheen is not in Washington to represent New Hampshire. She is in Washington to represent the Democrat party agenda. She does what she is told; what she thinks will keep her in good with the Progressive money train, and when something goes wrong she presents her other face and pretends to be surprised by the outcomes instigated by her own actions, hoping that the press and her party propaganda machine (pardon me for being redundant) massage the message, flood the echo chamber, and shout down any reasoned objection to her policies and tactics.
She has no problem ignoring laws she is told to ignore, looking the other way when members of her party violate the constitution or peoples rights, turning a blind eye to hundred of billions of political hand outs to progressive rent-seekers in the green lobby, or following the blame someone else party line when no one but a Democrat voted for it or supported it.
She is a political creature, bought and sold in the District of Columbia, already destined to earn benefits and a healthy paycheck from the taxpayers for as long as she lives–preferably out of public office. She long ago stopped serving any people other than the monied fringe in her own party. Jeanne Shaheen has to go.
