I’d love to hear read more analysis of the new bill that’s going to be voted on tomorrow. I’m particularly interested to hear analysis of the CBO scoring. On George Stephanopoulos this morning, Sen. Kyl claimed that the CBO estimate is over-reliant on nominal legislative language, and he claimed that the CBO even expressed their own reservations about the fulfillment of those promises.

What should we expect from the conferencing stage? Polls aren’t showing much popular support for the bill–how is this going to affect the midterms/reelection? Has Obama completely staked his presidency to this and Afghanistan already? On the show, Sen. Durbin seemed to be exhausted by the idea of even thinking about cap and trade legislation.

I hope at some time you will address the justification in our republican form of government, which already slices and dices the power of the people in many ways, for a system that has evolved to the point where the resolution of any issue on which there are important differences of opinion can be blocked by 40% plus one of the members of the U.S. Senate.

It seems to me that this situation threatens the ability of American government to cope with the extraordinary challenges our nation faces until they have reached crisis proportions so severe that any solution is too late.

I also suspect that this near-deadlock situation may be one of the reasons why the national government is held in such disdain by so many Americans.

Bob Johnson

An insightful read as always!