GOP Senator’s Obamacare Threat, Weiner’s Alleged New Sex Chats, and More

Nothing Doing:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday responded to comments Speaker John Boehner made on “Face the Nation” over the weekend that Congress should be judged by how many laws it repealed, not how many it creates (which explains why the House has voted dozens of times to repeal or scale back Obamacare, doesn’t it?). The Nevada Democrat says that by Boehner’s own measure, however, the House is failing. “They’ve replaced virtually nothing. So by the speaker’s own admission, they’re not getting anything passed and by his own analysis, they’re getting nothing repealed,” Reid said. “So they’re doing nothing.” (Read more)

Shut It Down: Desperate Republicans who refuse to accept Obamacare have come up with a last ditch effort to block President Obama’s signature health care law from being fully implemented. Their solution? Shut the entire government down. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, made the bold declaration during an appearance on Fox News on Monday. “Congress of course has to pass a law to continue funding government — lately we’ve been doing that through a funding mechanism called a continuing resolution,” Lee said. “If Republicans in both houses simply refuse to vote for any continuing resolution that contains further funding for further enforcement of Obamacare, we can stop it. We can stop the individual mandate from going into effect.” Lee says so far, he has the support of “13 or 14” Senate Republicans and a slew of House GOP members. (Read more)

Thumbs Down: President Obama’s poll numbers have plunged to a near two-year low, according to the latest McClatchy-Marist Poll. Roughly 41 percent of the survey’s respondents said they approve of the job Obama is doing, the lowest figure for the president since September 2011 when 39 percent did so. That figure is also a 9 percent drop from the last time the McClatchy-Marist Poll was conducted, which was three months ago. Also according to the new survey, about 48 percent disapprove of the job the president’s doing, while 11 percent responded that they were unsure. “The driving force is that, by two to one, Americans think the country is moving in the wrong direction, and they see Washington in gridlock,” said Dr. Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. (Read more)

State of Disarray: The Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature is on the verge of passing what would amount to the worst voter suppression legislation in the entire country. Among dozens of changes to state voter laws, the bill would enact a strict voter ID requirement, end same-day voter registration, cut the early voting period by a week, eliminate voter preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds and increase the number of “poll observers.” It would also raise the maximum campaign spending contribution to $5,000 while dismantling three of North Carolina’s public financing programs. The impact on the state, Think Progress notes, could be “disastrous.” The new voter law would follow several other controversial measures undertaken by the state legislature, including the passage of anti-choice legislation and cutting of the state’s unemployment benefits. (Read more)

Staying on Message: Here we go again. New illicit messages purportedly sent by New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner have surfaced on the Internet. Weiner, as you may recall, resigned from Congress two years ago after admitting that he was sexting with women who were not his wife. The former congressman is married to Huma Abedin, an aide to Hillary Clinton. What’s notable about the latest round of messages is that they are alleged to have been sent last year, well after his resignation. “I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have,” Weiner said in a statement. “As I have said in the past, these things that I did were wrong and hurtful to my wife and caused us to go through challenges in our marriage that extended past my resignation from Congress.” (Read more)

Video of the Day: On Monday night’s “Colbert Report,” host Stephen Colbert mocked McDonald’s over its recently released budgeting tool for its employees. The montly budget has been much maligned already for being unrealistic, as it allots just $600 for rent or a mortgage, $20 for health care costs and no money for heating, all while assuming the employee has two jobs. “So, if you work two jobs at 75 hours a week and follow this budget to the letter, McDonald’s non-bindingly promises you’ll have $100 for savings a month, because as McDonald’s says ‘You can have almost anything you want as long as you plan ahead and save for it.’ Unless the thing you want is money,” the satirist said. Colbert goes on to note that an employee at a Chicago McDonald’s makes $8.25 an hour while the CEO of McDonald’s makes $8.75 million a year. He concludes: “$8.25, $8.75, they’re practically the same if you don’t care about math, and McDonald’s budget proves they don’t.”