Still, it is true that the Obama administration is winning the zero-sum contest. One way to measure this is polling, which already shows movement toward the Democratic side. Another way to measure it is that Republicans, who have spent months refusing any budget deal, are suddenly desperate to make a budget deal. A flurry of…
Category: Congress
GOP Congressman Pushes For Obamacare Repeal: “This is not a Democracy”
Doug Collins, representative from Georgia came on Politics Nation and it was no surprise when he started spouting the typical one-sided nonsense about how they weren’t shutting down the government and were in fact funding the government – as long as it didn’t include the affordable care act. Nothing shocking there, but what may have…
Republican Court Unpacking Plan Takes Judicial Manipulation to a New Level
Republicans in the Senate have made no secret of their efforts to block the President’s constitutional responsibility to appoint federal judges. They have filibustered unquestionably qualified nominees, like Caitlin Halligan. And their obstruction of the confirmation process kept several nominees waiting more than a year for a vote. In fact, on average, our judicial nominees…
The GOP’s dangerous Obamacare strategy
In today’s New York Times, Jonathan Weisman and Robert Pear report on a peculiar problem faced by the Affordable Care Act: Republicans who’re unable to repeal it also refuse to permit any tweaks or technical correction that would help it work better. In fact, they’re creating new problems by withholding implementation funds. This is…
Oklahoma Senator Won’t Support Tornado Relief Without Budget Cuts
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who has long objected to federal funds being spent on everything from veterans benefits to relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, is already insisting that any additional appropriations should be paid for with cuts elsewhere. “That’s always been his position [to offset disaster aid],” Coburn spokesman John Hart said….
A New Progressive Voice From New Mexico Joins the Senate
When Martin Heinrich was in seventh grade, he learned a lesson about labor relations. His mother worked in a non-union auto-supply factory; when management informed the workers that their hours were going to shift from five days a week to six, there wasn’t much they could do. When they then moved to seven days…
Rand Paul Wants to Loosen Laws on Offshore Tax Evasion
Late Tuesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced a bill that would repeal part of a law aimed at fighting offshore tax evasion. The law, called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, was passed in 2010 and is supposed to go into effect on January 1, 2014. It requires foreign financial institutions to report information…
Judicial Vacancies Languish On Key Federal Appeals Court
The federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., is sometimes called the second most important court in the country, regularly delivering the final word on major environmental, labor and national security cases. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has a whopping four vacancies, the most in the nation, including one…
Obama Parries With House GOP on Budget, Immigration
President Barack Obama continued his push for a grand bargain, an immigration overhaul and the rest of his agenda in a meeting with House Republicans on Wednesday, but GOP leaders immediately shut the door on any compromises that would include new taxes. Obama appealed to Republicans to come to the table on a bipartisan budget…
14 GOP Congressmen Who Think Government Shouldn’t Borrow Have Big Debts Of Their Own
Government is nothing like a business and cannot be run as one — its aim is to protect its citizens, not to turn a profit. Businesses and individuals often borrow in the short term to make investments for the long term — mortgages, lines of credits, and other sorts of loans are facts of…
Paul Ryan’s budget: Social engineering with a side of deficit reduction
Here is Paul Ryan’s path to a balanced budget in three sentences: He cuts deep into spending on health care for the poor and some combination of education, infrastructure, research, public-safety, and low-income programs. The Affordable Care Act’s Medicare cuts remain, but the military is spared, as is Social Security. There’s a vague individual…
Ryan in Fantasyland
Voters might not have focused on the fact that Ryan’s original plan wouldn’t have produced a balanced budget until today’s high-school students reached middle age, but the true deficit hawks in the House Republican caucus certainly noticed. They demanded a budget that reached balance much sooner. Hence Ryan’s revised plan, which claims to accomplish this…
Congress Approval Stagnant at Low Level
The current 13% reading, based on interviewing conducted March 7-10, is just a few percentage points above the all-time low of 10% reached twice last year. At this low level, negative views of what Congress does, or does not do, are probably already “built into” the ratings. These low ratings could improve if Congress…
Dueling Budgets Will Show Partisan Differences On Medicare And Medicaid
At the same time, President Barack Obama appears to be harboring hopes of reaching a big deficit-reduction deal that could include some of the money-saving changes that Republicans favor. The idea worries some congressional Democrats. The Wall Street Journal: Opening Budget Bids Set Parties’ Battle Lines Congress opens a new chapter in the budget…
With Budget, GOP Lawmakers Renew Push To Undo Health Law
The budget plan for 2014 being advanced by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., includes a proposal to give states more authority over Medicaid. Meanwhile, the bill being considered by the Senate to fund the federal government through the end of this year does not include the funds for the exchanges that the administration wanted. The Washington Post:…
Obama Reaches Out to GOP on Spending
President Barack Obama is following through on his search for a “caucus of common sense” with that rarest of presidential commodities — his own time. The president’s poor relationships with most rank-and-file congressional Republicans are well-known. He rarely calls lawmakers personally — something that was especially true in the past year and a half as…
Four Things To Know About The Next Big Budget Battle
Now that the sequester has taken effect, there’s a new phrase that keeps popping up in Washington: the “continuing resolution.” If Congress doesn’t pass a continuing resolution by March 27, the government will run out of money and will likely shut down. Here’s a list of four things you might want to know about how…
This is why Obama can’t make a deal with Republicans
My column this weekend is about the almost comically poor lines of communication between the White House and the Hill. The opening anecdote was drawn from a background briefing I attended with a respected Republican legislator who thought it would be a gamechanger for President Obama to say he’d be open to chained CPI — a…
Democrats offer bill to curb Big Oil’s tax benefits | Reuters
Senate Democrats on Wednesday introduced a bill to eliminate billions of dollars in tax benefits enjoyed by big oil and gas companies, one day after President Barack Obama renewed his call for plugging tax loopholes in his State of the Union address. Obama and fellow Democrats for years have targeted oil and gas tax breaks,…
Congress Is Trying to Kill Internet Privacy Again
House lawmakers have reintroduced a bill that civil liberties groups say would destroy the right to Internet privacy as we know it. An earlier version of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA pdf, passed the House back in April 2012; it died quickly under threat of presidential veto and widespread protest from…