Congress has mostly left Washington, with no resolution on a host of year-end measures that, if allowed to expire, will result in an average $1,000 tax increase, the expiration of unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, and a 27% rate cut in Medicare reimbursement. House Republicans left behind eight “conferees” for a conference on the [...]

The Republican plan continues to be to try and jam the Senate with the House-passed payroll tax cut legislation, by going home for the rest of the year and forcing Senate Democrats to decide whether everyone gets a tax increase next year. The House can only do that if they finish the bill funding the [...]

Democrats haven’t come close to ameliorating the foreclosure crisis, but Republicans have little in the way of answers in their own right. They sought to end HAMP, the disappointing foreclosure mitigation program that banks have used as a predatory lending scheme. But they sought to replace it with basically nothing. In fact, they have defunded [...]

It seems clear now that the President is not going to adopt the best strategy for passing the debt limit, by simply demanding a clean bill and letting Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein do the work of forcing Congress to act. He’ll allow the hostage-taking event to occur, he’ll let the hostage walk to school [...]

The Obama Administration called for a 5-year spending freeze in the State of the Union. Republicans have advanced rollbacks to 2008 levels in their early budget projections. And there are outliers like Rand Paul and Michele Bachmann as well. But now, Democrats are threatening to tip the balance over to the side of austerity by [...]

Bob Corker, speaking softly to Olivier Knox, casually says that the START treaty won’t pass if Don’t Ask Don’t Tell or the DREAM Act get a vote tomorrow. Corker voted against bringing up START in the first place. Nevertheless, you can’t totally dismiss this threat. Even though Corker voted against the treaty on the motion [...]

After the Senate dispenses with the tax cut bill today, they want to move to two other bills – the omnibus spending bill and the START treaty. There’s going to be a test vote on proceeding to the START treaty today at 2:15pm ET. Technically, they don’t need to file cloture on a motion to [...]

The single most important thing that House Democrats could demand, in exchange for the tax cut bill’s passage, is an increase of the debt limit inside the package. It would in effect protect whatever stimulus you might get out of the bill, and deny Republicans another hostage-taking event. But Harry Reid is somehow of the [...]

It’s hard for me to stir up any genuine outrage or praise over the imminent Elizabeth Warren appointment, because I don’t really know what it is, and for that matter, nobody else does. I trust Warren to make the most of whatever job has been offered, but find the best response to be “Meh.” Asked [...]

In a slightly surprising outcome (at least to me), three Republicans joined the Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in approving the new START arms reduction treaty with Russia. The final vote on the committee was 14-4. According to Tony Fleming, Richard Lugar, Bob Corker and Johnny Isakson joined all the Democrats in voting [...]

During the Bush era, Congress under Republicans would routinely set up tough votes for their counterparts on the other side of the aisle, using the results to their advantage in the coming elections. This happened before the 2002, 2004 and 2006 elections, and it was a win-win for the Republicans: either they got their way [...]