Happy to allow a debate on birth control in 2012, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will give Republicans a vote on an amendment to the surface transportation bill authored by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), known as the “Freedom of Conscience” amendment. The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), would let employers opt out of [...]

One part of the State of the Union I forgot to mention is that the President formally backed legislation that wold ban insider trading among members of Congress. If the Administration has been serious about anything related to financial fraud, it has been insider trading, where they have engaged in multiple criminal prosecutions. And the [...]

PIPA will not survive next week. The latest whip count from Open Congress shows 45 Senators now opposed to the legislation, with 41 of those on the record in the media. That would be enough to stop the bill on the floor. Moreover, Mitch McConnell has asked Harry Reid to postpone the legislation, a pretty [...]

The series of anti-SOPA activism going on today has already claimed an early victory. Marco Rubio, the Florida Senator and Tea Party favorite, dropped his support after being a co-sponsor of the bill. Home to the Disney World and Universal Studios theme parks, Rubio’s Florida may be the most Hollywood-centric state outside California, and Rubio [...]

If you look at Harry Reid’s statement to John Boehner today, coupled with what Mitch McConnell said previously, you can see an endgame coming around on this payroll tax/UI/doc fix situation. Here’s Reid’s statement: I agree with Senator McConnell and the many other Republicans who have spoken up in recent days that the most reasonable [...]

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who negotiated the two-month stopgap bill on the payroll tax, unemployment insurance and the doctor’s fix that passed the Senate with 89 votes, ended his silence on the House GOP actions on the bill, by saying that they should go ahead and pass the stopgap. This further isolates John Boehner [...]

I haven’t seen Republicans mismanage the public relations of one of their schemes this badly in quite a while. Check out this scene on the House floor from today. During a pro forma session designed to block recess appointments (streams crossing), Steny Hoyer asks for unanimous consent to bring up the Senate two-month stopgap on [...]

The House has begun voting on a series of Parliamentary measures on the payroll tax deal, where they will try to reject the deal by voting Yes on a conference committee to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the bill. Harry Reid reiterated today that he has no interest in appointing conferees: Senate Majority [...]

Regarding the payroll tax cut deal, apparently the plan is for a straight up-or-down vote tonight on the measure. House Speaker John Boehner promised that the vote would fail: Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he expects House Republicans to reject a Senate-passed payroll tax cut package later Monday and then head into an eleventh-hour conference [...]

Harry Reid basically thumbed his nose at John Boehner’s call for more negotiation on a year-end bill to extend a payroll tax cut, unemployment insurance and a doctor’s fix on Medicare reimbursement rates. Here’s the statement from Reid’s spokesman, Adam Jentleson: Senator Reid has been trying to negotiate a yearlong extension of the payroll tax [...]

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 [...]