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— [...]

I guess the good news about the state of the fiscal slope negotiations is that nobody seems to like what’s on offer. Dick Durbin, seen as close to the President, just rejected including the chained CPI for Social Security benefits in a final deal. That rejection came even faster than the rejection of raising the [...]

Some skullduggery on the Senate floor today. If I can piece together what happened, Mitch McConnell up and requested unanimous consent for an immediate vote on the Geithner plan – the initial offer that the White House made to avert the fiscal slope. And Harry Reid, calling it a “stunt,” objected to the UC request. [...]

John Boehner delivered a letter to the White House today about the fiscal slope, and I just find it to be weird. He starts off by calling the events of November 6 a “status quo election” where the American people expect a “fair middle ground” on fiscal issues (the fact that House Democrats got more [...]

President Obama supports the Senate rules reform effort, effectively giving a vote to reformers as they build toward a January showdown. In a statement to the Huffington Post, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer responded positively to the effort, now led by Majority Leader Harry Reid, to reform the process in the Senate. “The President [...]

It definitely looks as though we’re headed toward a shift in the Senate rules, though mainly one that facilitates the scheduling of the Senate calendar rather than actually turns the Senate into a majoritarian institution. An exchange between the two leaders on the Senate floor yesterday previewed the expected rule changes: On the Senate floor [...]

Today everyone is supposed to be optimistic about avoiding the fiscal slope. Considering the potential consequences of that avoidance, I’m not sure “optimistic” is the right word. But the idea works like this: House Republicans will allow the Senate-passed bill of extending the Bush tax cuts up to $250,000 of income into law, if they [...]

With the expectation of a series of new cabinet appointments (though not Attorney General, apparently) comes the expectation of a number of bruising nomination fights on the floor of the Senate. In particular, Senate Republicans seem to want to collect a scalp if UN Ambassador Susan Rice gets nominated to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary [...]

So here’s what we got out of MoveOn’s Justin Ruben, who participated in that meeting between President Obama and some labor and progressive groups today. MoveOn’s 7 million members will be pleased to know that President Obama today strongly reiterated his steadfast commitment to ensuring that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent [...]

Peter Orszag’s column today, which I highlighted earlier, says that a deficit deal should include Social Security changes even while admitting they have nothing to do with the deficit. It’s worth pointing out that the Senate leadership is right now making a lot of statements that will be difficult to walk back on this matter, [...]

Jon Tester has been called the winner of the Senate election in Montana. This leaves the North Dakota race as the only one uncalled, and there, Democrat Heidi Heitkamp leads by 3,000 votes with all ballots counted. So the likely outcome is a Heitkamp win, and a 55-45 majority for Democrats (putting independents Angus King [...]