Virginia Senate passes states' rights bill on health insurance
By: Health Insurance
Submitted: 2010-02-11 09:57:29 | Word Count: 479
Five Democrats joined all 18 Republicans in the Virginia Senate Monday in passage of a bill that would prevent Virginians from having to buy health insurance. That puts the Senate’s money where its mouth is regarding “states' rights.” A companion bill in the state House has been passed out of committee by an 8-2 vote. Proponents say the bills are a line in the sand against Washington that was forced on Virginia by the plan of congressional Democrats and the Obama administration to force Americans to purchase health insurance. Opponents say a federal bill making insurance mandatory would override anything passed by the state. And some say the bills are so much election-year bluster by Republicans.
--“No cow left behind.” If that sounds like the kind of punch-line Texas entertainer Kinky Friedman would dish out if he were running for state agriculture commissioner, that’s because it is.
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Running as an independent, Friedman won 12% of the vote in the 2006 governor’s race, not to mention countless belly laughs from political voyeurs around the nation. He insists he’s serious this time around, although “serious” about winning or promoting himself is the question. Friedman has thrown in with the Democrats this time, but he lags behind both his primary opponent and his potential GOP general election foe by about $800,000 each in cash on hand.
--The plot thickens yet again in the Charlie Crist-Marco Rubio Republican US Senate primary race in Florida. A new Rasmussen poll of likely voters has Rubio surging ahead by an astonishing 49% to 37%. That’s a marked improvement for Rubio, who was about even with Crist in a poll in late January, and a complete about-face from polls last year that showed the better-known governor winning in a landslide. If both recent polls are accurate, it could well be that the surprise victory by Republican Scott Brown in the recent Massachusetts Senate race may be further emboldening conservative Republicans across the nation. Rubio is seen as the candidate for the party’s right-wing, and Crist as the one for moderates and independents.
--Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen gave his valedictory state-of-the-state address to the General Assembly Monday night, and the message was necessarily sober. He urged lawmakers to cut state spending by over five percent for the next fiscal year. Tennessee is fiscally positioned better than many states, according to Bredesen, but that didn’t stop him from proposing cuts that could cost the jobs of anywhere from a few hundred to nearly 2,000 state workers.
