With Rep. Pelosi’s picks announced today, the SuperCongress is set. From The Associated Press:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s appointment Thursday of three Democrats to Congress’ new debt-reduction supercommittee completes the roster of a panel whose members are already being tugged in competing directions.

Pelosi selected Reps. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina and Xavier Becerra of California, who both are members of the party’s House leadership, and Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee. The choices bring racial diversity to the supercommittee because Clyburn is black and Becerra is Hispanic.

The 12-member panel, divided evenly among Democrats and Republicans, has until Thanksgiving to propose $1.5 trillion in 10-year budget savings. If it does not propose a package or if Congress doesn’t approve it, $1.2 trillion in automatic budget cuts will be triggered.

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In a story that will appeal to lovers of irony and hypocrisy everywhere, and is perhaps illustrative on the micro-level of the attitudes that precipitated this historical wave, Chellie Pingree (ME-01) finds herself down by four to Dean Scontras.

As an aside, I had to look up the state abbreviation for Maine when I wrote that last sentence, because I have never had to use it while working in my day job for Peter Roskam in Congress.  Maine has been pretty blue, and shockingly, nobody has reached out to collaborate on legislative issues. But today, Republicans are within the margin of error on both Congressional seats in Maine.

Back to Pingree.  Pingree was President of Common Cause prior to being elected. During her first term in Congress she lobbied for a ban on private travel for Members of Congress.

Here are Pingree’s remarks at a Congressional hearing:

“Most Americans never have and never will fly on a chartered jet, much less a fancy corporate jet complete with wet bar and leather couches. So when members of Congress constantly fly around on corporate jets and pay only the cost of a commercial ticket, it contributes to the corrosive public perception that members of Congress are more like the fat cats of Wall Street than they are like the rest of us.”

Now that Pingree is dating hedge fund manager Donald Sussman, she apparently feels no shame in catching a ride on his jet. As a bonus, Sussman is under investigation by the SEC.

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Last Wednesday, I announced on Big Government the launch of a new initiative that would enable taxpayers to directly propose federal spending cuts on the House floor. Today, over a quarter-million Americans will get to see whether their representatives in Congress share their specific fiscal priorities.

For those who hunger to hold their elected officials accountable for perpetuating a culture of reckless runaway spending in Washington, meet YouCut.

This first-of-its-kind interactive initiative empowers taxpayers with direct democracy at a time when their faith in Congress’ fiscal prudence has reached its lowest. YouCut allows the public to vote each week on one of five wasteful spending items that they would like to strip from the federal budget. Once the votes are tallied, Republicans force a vote on whether or not to take up and debate the cut on the House floor.

During the first week, a plurality of voters – over 81,000! – chose to axe a recently created $2.5 billion annual welfare program that undercuts cost-saving welfare reforms made in the mid 1990’s.  Within 5 days of the experiment, 280,000 Americans have cast a vote either online or by text message.  At several points, more than 5,000 votes were being cast per hour, with less than one percent of votes originating from inside the beltway.

The overwhelming response speaks to the extreme levels of frustration that you feel toward a Congress that refuses to listen to you.  Over the last decade, taxpayers have grown weary of the incessant federal spending binges – no matter which party has been in power. They now look across the Atlantic with horror as Europe collapses under the weight of its own debt. Fear that America will go down the same road has only amplified calls for spending restraint.

Through YouCut, concerned citizens are cracking through the wall of resistance put up by big spenders in Washington to create a new culture of savings. This poses a threat to several in Congress who are invested heavily in preserving the status quo – hence the Democratic National Committee’s vigorous effort to discredit the program.  Worse, rather than listening to the hundreds of thousands of Americans, Tim Kaine (Chairman of the DNC) and Chris Van Hollen (Chairman of the DCCC) chose to mock the opinions of those who voted.  Not listening – a common theme for Democrats.

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House leaders are preparing to ram through ObamaCare this week  without a vote.  Not only is the legislation unconstitutional, but the process being used to pass it is unconstitutional.  The House is preparing a rule that would consider the Senate-passed version of ObamaCare passed in the House even though members would never directly vote on it.  That would violate Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution.

Here is how the trick would work:  In the House, the Rules Committee sets up the parameters for debate on legislation.  House leaders are considering a complicated rule that would be structured so that a vote on the rule setting down the structure for the ObamaCare debate would allow the Senate’s version of health care reform to pass without a vote.  First, there would be a vote on a rule.  If the rule is passed by the House, then the House would vote on a health care budget reconciliation measure that is an amendment to the Senate passed ObamaCare bill.  If that reconciliation measure passes, then reconciliation goes to the Senate and the ObamaCare legislation is deemed passed without a direct vote.  The plan for the legislation is unclear.  House leadership will either structure the rule to either immediately present ObamaCare to the President for his signature or they will hold the bill and deliver it only if the Senate passes a health care reconciliation measure.  Either way, the Constitution and the American people are the losers.

Understand that this procedure is drafted in a way so your average American can’t understand it.  The simple way to understand the situation is that the House is trying to pass a bill without a vote.

The Constitution states that the House and Senate are supposed to pass identical versions of a bill before the President can sign it into law.  One of the reasons for this tricky procedure is to provide cover for moderate Democrats who don’t want to vote for the Senate-passed ObamaCare bill because it includes the federal funding of abortion.

Michael McConnell, Professor and Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, explains it this way at the Wall Street Journal today:

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