The White House formally threatened a veto of the House version of a surface transportation bill, opening the question of whether any long-term bill will get signed before March when current funding on roads and bridges expires. There are currently different versions of the surface transportation bill moving through each chamber of Congress. The House [...]

Senate Democrats have a plan for the payroll tax cut legislation that House Republicans basically gave up on yesterday. When we last left our story, Republicans said that they would offer a bill in the House extending the payroll tax cut to the end of the year without an offset. This would mean that the [...]

When the Senate passed the STOCK Act, the bill that bans insider trading on non-public information picked up in Congress (yes, that’s not against the law right now) along with some other ethics reforms, I thought that could be a vehicle that would move expeditiously through the House. However, even though Majority Leader Eric Cantor [...]

House Speaker John Boehner, escalating the birth control access controversy, said in a rare floor speech today that the House would act legislatively to roll back the Administration’s policy of universal access, particularly as it relates to religiously affiliated institutions. The video of the short floor speech is above; the full text is below. In [...]

House Republicans are honoring a deep tradition in American politics by trying to save their political skins and their majority through the passage of a highway bill. In past years these would be earmark-laden affairs designed to channel resources to particular districts and bolster the case for re-election. That’s not quite the case this year. [...]

The Texas redistricting mess, which with a Supreme Court ruling looked to be moving in the direction of Republicans, could bounce back. The SCOTUS only ruled on which interim maps to use while a lawsuit from minority groups against the maps worked out by the legislature made its way through the courts. The underlying court [...]

The House GOP caucus definitely wants to try to force the issue on the Keystone XL pipeline with another vote. What’s not yet clear is where they want to place the rider. If they choose to attach it to payroll tax cut/UI legislation, that’s an indicator that they really want it to pass. If not, [...]

Richard Cordray is appearing before a House Financial Services subcommittee at this hour, and I’m not available to watch the testimony. However, I do have Cordray’s written testimony, which he will presumably deliver in a truncated form. It’s pretty good, actually. I especially like how Cordray frames his mission as protecting honest businesses. Second, the [...]

The Supreme Court just boosted Republican chances to hold the House of Representatives today by throwing out maps drawn by a panel of judges, and ordering new maps for the state’s reapportionment. To step back a bit, initially Texas lawmakers drew a redistricting map that advantaged Republicans and created no new Hispanic districts, despite the [...]

The House of Representatives did their little resolution of disapproval stunt last night, voting 239-176 to disagree with the President’s assessment that bills already incurred by the federal government ought to be paid for. This is a vote fated to go nowhere, as the Senate will not be able to pass it, based on the [...]

In its first day back, Congress held a quorum call and voted on a new Sergeant-at-Arms. That’s it. It’s going to be that kind of year. Today, there’s a “resolution of disapproval” on the President’s request for another tranche of debt limit funds. You’ll recall that this is the request the Administration delayed so that [...]