Rumblings of a Tea Party coup against Speaker Boehner seemed to be unfounded as he sailed to re-election. But now Roll Call is reporting that the plot was very much real and robust enough to force a second ballot: A concerted effort to unseat Speaker John A. Boehner was under way the day of his [...]

Two more years of tears. In a closer-than-usual vote, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) was elected to a second term as Speaker of the House on Thursday, with 220 votes. Eight members of the Republican majority cast protest votes for others including Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), former Rep. Allen West (R-FL), and former Comptroller General [...]

Is Speaker Boehner in trouble? Conservative media mogul Matt Drudge, of the Drudge Report, has been running a poll since yesterday about whether John Boehner should remain speaker. Currently over 420,000 people have voted 84% against Boehner. This as the House prepares to vote today for Speaker. Conservative media outlet Breitbart.com is reporting that some [...]

governorchrischristie on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free In a press conference today New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie slammed Speaker Boehner for failing to allow a vote on Hurricane Sandy Relief. After issuing a joint press release with Governor Cuomo of New York, Christie went on the offensive against Boehner and the House Republicans. “There is [...]

More news from the Republican meltdown: It was only a few days before the nation would go over the fiscal cliff, no bipartisan agreement was in sight, and Reid had just publicly accused Boehner of running a “dictatorship” in the House and caring more about holding onto his gavel than striking a deal. “Go f— [...]

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has created a Power Point presentation about Bowles-Simpson, the recommendations of the two leaders of the deficit commission. And this offers a window into Tea Party preferences for the fiscal slope and deficit deals. This is actually the key swing bloc in Congress; with President Obama on board with a [...]

The Senate farm bill is likely to pass today. And while I disagree with the cuts to the food stamp program dressed up as fraud prevention, the bill does end the practice of paying farmers not to produce, which in practice was a subsidy to southern farmers who relied on the subsidies (insert your snarky [...]

The renewed battle over the expiring Bush tax cuts, which has begun with Republicans clear on their goals and Democrats mired in confusion, will begin over the summer with the House of Representatives set to vote on a full extension in July. House Republican leaders on Friday unveiled a legislative calendar for the summer, revealing [...]

The White House is on a veto spree today. They threatened to veto the House’s new 90-day surface transportation extension because it includes a quick approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. Without an explicit veto threat, they “oppose” any version of a cybersecurity bill that violates user privacy (more on that later). And they threatened [...]

So I hear that Richard Trumka is personally outraged by the JOBS Act, and the larger idea that “this administration thinks that it’s going to be good for the country to re-inflate a stock market bubble.” This didn’t deter Trumka’s AFL-CIO from endorsing the President who signed that bill for re-election, of course. “Labor weighs [...]

Last year, the watchdog group Citizens for Tax Justice put out a paper showing that 30 Fortune 500 companies had a negative tax rate for the cumulative years 2008-2010. The corporations singled out by the report submitted a number of excuses to explain away what they claimed was an anomaly, owing to things like short-term [...]