Poll: Vast support for new health care effort

Over the course of this week, I'll be asking some health-care experts what they'd like Santa to add to the bill during conference committee, and publishing their responses on the blog.

In the filibuster thread this morning, commenter Spotatl asked, "If you really just dislike the filibuster overall and not just because the democrats currently have the majority you would support doing away with it in 7 years when no one has any idea who is going to be in control?"

Americans are more supportive of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline than Canadians are, according to a poll by Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Every Hill office I've spoken to in the past week has had the same complaint. "Where," they ask, "is the White House?"

This column originally appeared in the Sunday business section. Also, I'm off today for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Regularly blogging resumes tomorrow.

One of the impulses you have to resist as a writer is the desire to say things that are new, as opposed to things that you've already learned. A lot of this post will be stale to longtime readers, but in my chat today, someone asked after the cost controls in the Senate. A bit later, I was on the radio and heard Darcy Burner say that this bill lacked any real cost controls. Herewith, a partial list of the cost controls in the Senate bill: