Free Republic

Former Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer said Saturday he won’t run for the Senate in Montana — a surprise development that imperils Democrats’ chances of holding the seat in 2014.

<p>Most political observers had assumed that former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer would seek the Senate seat being vacated by Max Baucus, who is retiring. Had Schweitzer decided to run, the seat would probably lean toward a Democratic hold, and the GOP would have only an outside chance at taking back the upper chamber.</p>

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) declined Friday afternoon to meet a Senate Finance Committee deadline for answering detailed questions about the origins of the IRS scandal. The questions had been submitted jointly nearly two weeks ago by Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and Ranking Member Orrin Hatch (R-UT). In a joint statement to Breitbart News, Baucus and Hatch said: “It’s disappointing that the IRS failed to produce any of the documents requested by the Committee. "This is an agency that revolves around making the American taxpayer meet hard deadlines each and every year when they file their taxes, oftentimes penalizing those...

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) raised eyebrows across the country last month when he publicly fretted about an Obamacare “train wreck” as the Administration rushes to implement the many provisions of the law that take effect in 2014... --snip-- HHS is not just raiding the federal treasury to promote the exchanges. Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is now shaking down corporations and nonprofits to bankroll the Administration’s efforts. She’s solicited donations on behalf of Enroll America, a group headed by former Obama staffers that seeks to aid in the rollout of Obamacare. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) postulated that Sebelius’s fundraising may be illegal...

In the full-circle department, recall the moment last September when Senator Max Baucus and Medicare went after the insurer Humana for having the nerve to criticize one part of ObamaCare. It turns out those same regulators have different standards for their own political advocacy. This week Medicare sent a flyer to seniors, ostensibly to inform them of what ObamaCare "means for you." Many elderly Americans are worried—and rightly so—about where they'll rank in national health care, given that the new entitlement is funded by nearly a half-trillion dollars in Medicare cuts. They must have been relieved to hear that "The...

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has gone, hat in hand, to health industry officials, asking them to make large financial donations to help with the effort to implement President Obama’s landmark health-care law, two people familiar with the outreach said. Her unusual fundraising push comes after Congress repeatedly rejected the Obama administration’s requests for additional funds to set up the Affordable Care Act, leaving HHS to implement the president’s signature legislative accomplishment on what officials have described as a shoestring budget. Over the past three months, Sebelius has made multiple phone calls to health industry executives, community organizations...

The parents of a U.S. engineer found dead in Singapore last year said on Wednesday they will not take part in the rest of a coroner’s inquiry into his death, which they say was linked to a project involving the transfer of sensitive technology to China. In a statement issued through their lawyers, Rick and Mary Todd said they had lost confidence in the system investigating the death of their 31-year-old son, Shane, who was found hanging in his Singapore apartment last June. The Todds did not appear in court on Wednesday, the day after a U.S. medical examiner they...

Scandal: Senate Democrats, including supporters of the Disclose Act, provided the names of groups they wanted targeted in a taxpayer-funded witch hunt overseen by an IRS employee and Obama campaign donor. Using the Citizens United case as a pretext, retiring Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., on July 27, 2012, wrote IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman to investigate 12 conservative groups he accused of violating their tax-exempt status and engaging in coordinated political activity. The groups Levin asked to be targeted for special scrutiny were Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, Priorities U.S.A., Americans Elect, American Action Network, Americans for Prosperity, American Future Fund, Americans...

Democratic senator Max Baucus is retiring because he is “fed up” with the Affordable Care Act, according to his Republican colleague Chuck Grassley. Speaking at Friday night’s Lincoln Day dinner in Iowa, Grassley told the audience the Montana senator is leaving office ”because he’s so fed up with the possibility of the implementation of Obamacare being a train wreck.” Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, played a key role in writing the 2010 law. Grassley said that dissatisfaction with the health-care bill exists across party lines, describing a “bipartisan coalition in Washington” that considers the implementation of the...

img src=http://media.townhall.com/townhall/reu/ha/2013/107/c7b1cfae-761d-43ed-b714-66d6e385454a.jpg> Obamacare was supposed to be a big success by now, according to predictions made by liberals who railroaded it through Congress in 2010. Instead, as admitted by one of its leading architects, Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, it's heading for a "train wreck" later this year. Baucus' apt metaphor is being echoed by other Democrats because it is so obviously true. Harry Reid said, "I agree with him." Sen. Jay Rockefeller described it as "so complicated" that it's "beyond comprehension." Henry Chao, the government's chief technical officer in charge of implementing the exchanges, said, "Let's just make sure it's...

Democratic leaders are wooing staunchly pro-gun candidates to run in pivotal Senate races at the same time they are discussing a strategy for bringing gun control legislation back up for debate. The two-pronged effort has prompted Republicans to accuse the Senate Democratic leadership of hypocrisy, but Democrats say it is simply smart politics. The question is whether two of the Democrats’ most promising potential candidates in Montana and South Dakota will pay a price for the leadership’s political maneuverings in Washington. Or will recruiting candidates who do not support President Obama’s gun control agenda have any effect on Democratic fundraising...

Political and policy fiasco alert: The GOP Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee is gearing up to waste the House Republican Majority's energy, time and political goodwill on a doomed-to-fail scheme that conservative realists know cannot emerge from Congress. The price of pursuing this strategy will be the loss of many good and necessary initiatives that could get done, initiatives that could unify and energize the voting public behind an expanded GOP House majority in 2014 and gains in the Senate as well. The consequence of this strategic blunder could be the loss of the House majority. Everybody...

2014 retirements: Dems heading for the hills By: Alexander Burns April 23, 2013 04:49 PM EDT Doesn’t anyone want to run for Senate in 2014? Midway through candidate recruitment season, the bad news for Democrats is this: They are watching a generation of talent leave the Senate and head for retirement. The less-bad news: So far, few marquee-name Republicans are interested in these seats either. When Montana Sen. Max Baucus called it quits on Tuesday, he became the latest in a long series of senior legislators to announce that they’ve had quite enough of life on the Hill. National Democrats...

One of the most consistent media themes of the last few years has been the “divisive” efforts of conservatives to “drive people out” of the Republican Party.” You probably noticed this in stories about Charlie Crist and Arlen Specter, both of whom were described as being “driven” from the party even though both left in the face of certain defeat at the hands of primary voters. ...But now we have today’s retirement announcement by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. As recently as last Wednesday, Baucus was acting like a senator seeking re-election. He was attempting to distance himself from...

President Barack Obama delivered an impassioned speech Thursday at the memorial service for victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. But that was to be expected. We all know Obama can give a stem-winder. What wasn’t expected was that this would be by far the toughest week of the Obama presidency—the first time I can remember the president being dealt an unequivocal policy defeat. Only the “shellacking” of the 2010 midterm comes close, and even there a case can be made that achieving the decades-old progressive dream of universal health care was worth losing the House of Representatives and a filibuster-proof...

Organizing for Action (OFA) executive director Jon Carson said his group will now pour resources into opposing Senators who opposed gun control--especially Democrat Senators. This means Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Mark Begich (D-AK), Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), and Mark Pryor (D-AR) are marked for defeat by their own party. While OFA does not engage "in electoral politics," they can go from now until the 2014 elections doing what they will to create a divide between these Senators and their constituents. Said Carson: "This is one of those moments where we have to prove that in the face of a setback we're...

Senate votes on climate change and the Keystone XL oil pipeline laid bare divisions among Democrats — and underscored why the White House, not Congress, will be where the critical climate decisions reside in President Obama’s second term.Several votes during the freewheeling debate over a nonbinding budget plan provided a political barometer of where the chamber, including vulnerable Democrats, stand on the topics. Advocates of the proposed pipeline scored a symbolic victory Friday when 62 lawmakers voted for an amendment backing the project to bring oil from Canadian tar sands projects to Gulf Coast refineries. Seventeen Democrats supported Sen....

With the usual note that the source is not reliable, the Washington Post reports big money Democratic donors such as Buzzfeed’s Kenneth Lerer have given the Democrats an ultimatum.. Pass gun controls or you get no more money from us On the other hand, if the Dimmos do pass gun control they will almost certainly suffer the consequences in both Congress and at the State level. Which puts Andy Jackson’s Jackass Partei on the horns of the dilemma. Briefly quoting the item linked above: Lerer also said he would be intensifying his contributions to Democratic Senate candidates in the next...

"The President’s part of the sequester – the White House recommended it, frankly, back in August 2011, so now we’re feeling the effects of it..."

Leading Democrats are putting together fallback proposals if Washington fails to reach a deal on the “fiscal cliff” that would allow the party to cast itself as seeking to cut taxes. “Of course, I’ve got a backup plan in the event that we don’t succeed here,” Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Friday. “I’m sure the White House has one too.” Tax rates are set to expire on most households in January if Congress does not act to extend some of the rates, something some Democrats have long seen as giving their party an advantage....