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Showing posts with label BaucusHealthCareBill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BaucusHealthCareBill. Show all posts
Real trouble for Senator Max Baucus: Recommended that his secret girl friend at the time be US Attorney for Montana

Real trouble for Senator Max Baucus: Recommended that his secret girl friend at the time be US Attorney for Montana

Will this scandal impact the health care debate?

Max Baucus, chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, recommended that the White House nominate his girlfriend as a U.S. attorney in Montana, his office announced late Friday night.

Earlier this year, Baucus recommended that the White House consider Melodee Hanes and two other names for the U.S. attorney post – at the same time that the senator was carrying on a romantic relationship with Hanes, who had been his state director. Baucus was separated with his wife at the time when the two began their involvement, according to a source familiar with the situation, and now the two are divorced from their spouses and live together on Capitol Hill.

Baucus’ office contends that Hanes was recommended because of her qualifications – and that the relationship had nothing to do with her nomination to the position or their respective divorces from their spouses.

“While her personal relationship with Senator Baucus should in no way be either a qualifier or a disqualifier for the position, during the nomination process and after much reflection, both Senator Baucus and Ms. Hanes agreed that she should withdraw her name from consideration because they wanted to live together in Washington, DC,” Ty Matsdorf, Baucus’ spokesman, said in a statement. . . .

And despite Baucus’ office contention that nothing was improper about his recommendation, it will almost certainly spark calls for Ethics Committee inquiries given the appearance that Baucus was assisting his girlfriend secure a top spot as a prosecutor in the Obama administration. To combat that criticism, Baucus’ office released Hanes’ lengthy resume Friday night, portraying her as a highly educated and well-versed attorney in prosecutorial issues – as well as detailing a long list of community service activities. . . .


UPDATE: Things look even worse for Baucus.

Jodi Rave, a former reporter for the Missoulian revealed over the weekend that the paper informed Baucus in March that it was poised to publish a story about Hanes’s relationship with the senator and the fact that he had nominated her for the U.S. attorney job.

The next day, Hanes withdrew from consideration. According to the Missoulian, Baucus’s office never acknowledged a relationship between the two, and the paper did not run a story. . . .


Baucus also apparently gave his girl friend a large raise right when he was starting to get romantically involved with her.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, gave a nearly $14,000 pay raise to a female staffer in 2008, at the time he was becoming romantically involved with her, and later that year took her on a taxpayer-funded trip to Southeast Asia and the Middle East, though foreign policy was not her specialty. . . .
If one only lived in Nevada -- not all states are equal when it comes to the health care bill

If one only lived in Nevada -- not all states are equal when it comes to the health care bill

Kimberly Strassel has this in the WSJ:

A central feature of the Baucus bill is the vast expansion of state Medicaid programs. This is necessary, we are told, to cover more of the nation's uninsured. The provision has angered governors, since the federal government will cover only part of the expansion and stick fiscally strapped states with an additional $37 billion in costs. The "states, with our financial challenges right now, are not in a position to accept additional Medicaid responsibilities," griped Democratic Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland.

Poor Mr. Strickland. If only he lived in . . . Nevada! Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is worried about losing his seat next year, worked out a deal by which the federal government will pay all of his home state's additional Medicaid expenses for the next five years. Under the majority leader's very special formula, only three other states—Oregon, Rhode Island and Michigan—qualify for this perk, on the grounds, as Mr. Reid put it recently on the Senate floor, that they "are suffering more than most." . . .


Note that with the exception of Nevada where Reid is a Senator all the other three states are states where both the Senators are Democrats.
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