Fiscal slope talks have basically stalled out, but leader in the conservative movement Jim DeMint cried uncle this morning, affirming that the President will get higher taxes, though he exaggerated it to mean higher taxes on everyone, not just on those earning over $250,000. “He’s going to get his wish,” DeMint said. “I believe we’re [...]

The Senate passed, by a 90-1 count, an “Iran containment” resolution that creates that “red line” Benjamin Netanyahu pleaded for recently. And, it puts the red line for Iran’s nuclear program at a nuclear capability rather than a nuclear weapon, a shift from current Presidential policy.

Congress comes back for what promises to be a quick mop-up session before the election. The main items of business include two expiring authorizations, one for farm programs and the other for the federal budget. The former is up in the air; on the latter, the House and Senate are closing in on a deal [...]

This really ups the ante on a fight that has been simmering ever since the House GOP made the decision to renege on the debt limit deal: In a major escalation of a slowly building fight over funding the government, the White House has warned House Republicans, in no uncertain terms, that the government will [...]

I knew the House planned to send a short-term transportation bill up for a vote next week, right before the deadline of March 31, when US highway funds would expire. I didn’t realize until now that the House actually formally voted down the bipartisan Senate version of the bill yesterday: House Republicans on Wednesday held [...]

Paul Ryan sped into action with his 2013 budget resolution. After releasing it on a Tuesday, he put it up for a vote in the Budget Committee on a Wednesday. This should have been immediately unacceptable to the other 37 members of the Budget Committee who allegedly have a function in crafting the budget. But [...]

Let’s try to get our heads around what’s happening in the government shutdown/payroll tax cut/unemployment insurance Congressapalooza fight: • The House seems prepared to move forward on their omnibus spending bill, passing it and throwing it in the Senate’s lap. However, they will need to pass it entirely with their own members, because Nancy Pelosi [...]

It’s Thursday. The government runs out of money on Friday. And there doesn’t appear to even be negotiations on resolving the impasse, which is tied up in the year-end extensions of the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance. So the odds of a government shutdown are quite high. Last night, the White House released an [...]

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 [...]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is attempting a high-stakes gamble, tying the payroll tax/unemployment insurance legislation that the House will vote on today with the omnibus spending bill to avoid a government shutdown. Without compromise on the former, according to Reid, the latter cannot pass. Here are some remarks from Reid on the Senate floor [...]

Congress has apparently decided that it can only deal with one major fight at a time. At the same time that the parties jockey over whether to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance, at the end of this week the current continuing resolution to fund the government expires. Currently only one-quarter of the [...]