House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), a longtime advocate of a strong military with a robust budget, is considering a few ways to help Defense Secretary Robert Gates save some cash.

Beginning with a speech a stone’s throw from President Eisenhower’s boyhood home, Gates recommended the Pentagon begin finding ways to cut its own budget in order to save key programs and forces from the crippling cuts seen in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

With rising deficits, plans to draw down forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and a changing mood on Capitol Hill, even defense spending stalwarts such as Skelton are looking for places to trim.

Read the rest of this story at Politico byline Jen DiMascio.

Interesting story but DiMascio points out that Skelton remains supportive of a second engine for the F35 Joint Strike fighter.

My translation: We’re open to defense cuts. We’re going to do it next time. Recall that Congresswoman Betsy Markey voted to strip funds for this second engine that Defense Secretary Gates says is not needed.

Photo Credit: Politico

Posted by Gypsy Chief

F35 Joint Strike Fighter

The US House of Representatives voted 193 to 231 on a motion to strip funding from the Defense Authorization Bill of 2010 for a second F35 Joint Strike Fighter engine that the Defense Department does not want. Since the motion failed funds for a second engine stay in the defense bill. The rollcall vote on the motion may be found here

Congresswoman Helen Elizabeth “Betsy” Markey [D-CO4th] voted to strip the funds. 135 other Democrats voted to strip the funds along with 57 Republicans. House members voting to retain funds for a second engine included 115 Democrats and 116 Republicans.

After the vote Markey was critical of her colleagues for being hypocritical on budget deficits. See the story in the Fort Collins Coloradoan This story also ran on the ColoradoPols Blog

Photo Credit:KCBY TV Coos Bay / North Bend, OR

Posted by Gypsy Chief

Betsy Markey, CO 4th District Rep.

Most Democrats voted with the House leadership Thursday evening as the House passed the Patrick Kennedy amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill of 2010.

I got the news live on The Rachel Madow Show But how did my congressperson, Betsy Markey, vote? A rollcall of the vote can be found here

Turns out that Markey voted with that other Congressman Markey, the one from Mass., she voted yes. By voting yes she proved once again that she is no Marilyn Musgrave. In case you do not remember, Marilyn, when she was our congressperson campaigned for a federal constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage. Imagine how she would have voted on the question to repeal DADT.

In researching this story I went to a favorite source, ColoradoPols They didn’t have any details of interest until the next day when they had a story headlined Colorado Delegation Casts Party Line Vote. I will let you find the specific reference on that site. About the same time, i.e. the next day after the vote, Politico had a credible story House Votes to Repeal ‘don’t ask’

Speaking of Politico, they had an interesting story in mid May about five Democrats, Markey among them, whose flip from no to yes provided the margin of victory for House passage of Health Care Reform. The other four Democrats are Alan Boyd, John Boccieri, Scott Murphy, and Suzanne Kosmas. All five have been targeted by the GOP.

Now that I have the actual rollcall on DADT I decided to see if any of these ‘targeted’ reperesentatives voted no on the Partick Murphy amendment. The answer is that all five voted with the House majority. The one no vote that leaps out at you is Rep. Ike Skelton [D-MO] who is House Armed Services Committee chairman. Republicans voting yes include Ron Paul of TX, no surprise, the newest House member Djou of HI, and Cao of LA along with two others.

Posted by Gypsy Chief

reliably snarky

On November 7, 2009, the US House of Representatives passed HR3961, its version of comprehensive health care reform. The late Saturday night vote came after an all day debate which played out for the American people on C-Span.

For C-Span this was like the first game of the World Series.

The very next morning on his Sunday talk show, Reliable Sources, Kurtz quipped that the vote had come late on Saturday night ‘when no one was watching’.

I think this means that the vote came when Howard wasn’t watching. Sorry, Howard, real people out here in the hinterlands were watching. I put in a supply of low fat popcorn, took a break from reading Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Bright Sided” and planned my day around this event. For those of us in the Mountain time zone the vote came early enough.

I feel that Mr. Kurtz is not a reliable source on the C-Span’s audience size since he represents a commercial network, CNN, which competes with C-Span for attention.

I’m posting this now because, once again, we have a Saturday night event, this time in the US Senate, and this time on C-Span2, as Senate Democrats got exactly the 60 votes they neeed to bring their version up for floor debate. Will Kurtz display a similar degree of snarkyiness on his show this morning?

Posted by Gypsy Chief

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Marilyn rambled all the way to New York’s 23rd Congressional district to endorse a candidate who does not live there. See the video for details.

Posted by Gypsy Chief

Death Panel Idol

Dog days, mid August. Congress is out, health care reform is a hot topic. This is a great time to scare seniors with talk of death panels and euthanasia. These imaginary death panels seem to be the work of Betsy McCaughey, a thinktanker at the right-leaning Hudson Institute.

There is a provision in one of the health care bills that says doctors may be compensated by Medicare for the time they spend counselling patients on end of life decisions like Living Wills, Advanced Health Care Directives and such. It takes an evil imagination to twist a noncontroversial idea – seniors should make end of life decisions ahead of time – into some sinister plot to have the government pick who gets health care or not.

Your Gypsy Chief blogger will be 73 next month. Procrastination has been a life issue with me. But the bullshit being foisted off on seniors by Betsy McCaughey, Sarah Palin, Chuck Grassley and friends didn’t make me scared – it made me mad.

Mad enough to do something about it. First thing is we’re all going to die. Recognize that fact. Make it easier on those you leave behind by making your wishes known now, before you fall into a vegatative state.

Second, I don’t feel that I need counselling by a doctor in order to determine what end of life options are best for me.

For me, a consideration is do I want to live a little longer with tubes sticking out until the money is gone, or would I rather leave something for my kids to inherit.

I am so mad about this death panel stuff that I decided to stop procrasting and make a Living Will. I went to LegalZoom.com . The proces is very easy and straightforward. You can save a partially completed worksheet and return to it later. It took me less than half an hour to get the whole thing done.

That is how I beat the Betsy McCaughey – Sarah Palin – Chuck Grassley death panel.

Two other points to be made. People who deliberately make stuff up like these false death panels should not be considered as having a credible voice in the health care debate. I think that news directors make a huge mistake by allowing folks like Betsy McCaughey to have any air time when they have proved they do not deserve it. News directors do so to ‘present the other side of the story’. But that is just nonsense. The story is do we or do we not want to provide Medicare reimbursement for doctors to consult with patients on end of life decisions like Living Wills.

Final point. People think they can scare seniors by using loaded terms like death panels and forced euthanasia. Not all seniors are dumb enough or so poorly informed as to fall for such tactics.

Posted by Gypsy Chief

Photo Credit: Paula Abdul Death Panel photo is the work of Mike Licht. See http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/

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I for one am glad to see Marilyn Musgrave resurface this way. Some people express disappointment that Betsy Markey seems to be more of a conserv-a-dem than they would like.

Well, having Musgrave resurface this way just reinforces Gypsy Chief’s take that conserv-a-dem or not Markey is vastly superior to the congressperson she replaced.

Posted by Gypsy Chief