Talking Points Memo snagged the details, written up by the House Ways and Means Committee, of the payroll tax cut/unemployment insurance/”doc fix” bill. So let’s go over it. We know the topline stuff: it’s a $150 billion piece of legislation, and $52 billion will be paid for. The payroll tax cut, extended to the end [...]

The details on this emerging deal on various expiring measures are getting worse by the minute. Here’s what we know: The $150 billion bill, extending the payroll tax cut, some extended unemployment insurance benefits and the “doc fix” on Medicare reimbursement rates, will only require $50 billion in offsets. The payroll tax cut won’t get [...]

In their ongoing quest to make themselves look completely retrograde and ridiculous, House Republicans will hold a grandstanding hearing on the Administration’s birth control access rules tomorrow, featuring testimony from a leader of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Republican Darrell Issa, chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, will convene a hearing [...]

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 [...]

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has not ceased its holy war on birth control access, shunting aside the obvious contradiction of an organization beset with sexual abuse scandals telling other people what they should and should not do when it comes to sex. Cardinal-in-training Timothy Dolan plans to support legislation like Roy Blunt’s bill [...]

Mitt Romney, struggling to regain the lead from Rick Santorum in national polls and facing a serious deficit in the key primary state of Michigan, has doubled down on his position against the auto industry rescue, arguing that the industry should have gone through a “managed bankruptcy,” mainly to squeeze out the United Auto Workers: [...]

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops have now either reversed field from their previous reaction to the Obama Administration’s birth control accommodation policy announced yesterday, or they’re in negotiation mode. That’s what we can make of their latest missive, laden with unnecessary bold-facing, on the birth control access issue. The bishops made it fairly clear [...]

Catholic bishops had a mixed reaction to President Obama’s new plan for birth control access, which preserves universal cost-free access and uses a Hawaii-type compromise to leave the religiously affiliated institutions out of the exchange of services between an insurance company and the employee. Catholic officials say President Obama called New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, [...]

Senior Administration officials outlined the imminent compromise to be announced by President Obama, which follows the “Hawaii compromise” by mandating that insurance companies reach out directly to employees at religiously affiliated institutions and offer them contraceptive care. The officials described a process that “accommodates religious liberty while protecting the health of women.” Under the new [...]

In my monomania yesterday on the foreclosure fraud settlement, I didn’t attend to the raft of developments on the President’s birth control regulations and the backlash from religious groups, onto which Republicans have piggy-backed. This has caused some competing actions on the Democratic side. On the one hand, you have in particular Democratic women, speaking [...]

As a kind of counterpoint to House Speaker John Boehner’s vow to legislate away the Administration’s regulations on universal access to birth control, including for certain religiously affiliated institutions, five Senate Democrats will “reaffirm their commitment to ensuring that women have access to the full range of preventative health services covered under the Affordable Care [...]