After two days of trying and failing to pass a short-term extension of the surface transportation bill, Republicans will now use the regular process to try to force their extension through, with just days to go before a shutdown of federal transportation funding. A 90-day extension of current law that provides funding for road and [...]

The Supreme Court arguments this week has taken the focus away from budget week in the House. A series of budget bills have already come up for a vote, with final passage of the Ryan budget, which ends Medicare as we know it and ratchets down discretionary spending over time to a tiny nub, expected [...]

The House may not have been able to pass a transportation bill yesterday to enable the smooth functioning of two million construction jobs, but they did find the time to kill a bunch of investor protections and deregulate the securities markets: The House on Tuesday afternoon approved the final, Senate-passed version of the Jumpstart Our [...]

We are four days away from the expiration of the surface transportation bill, and Congress looks no closer to actually getting an extension done. The House adamantly won’t pass the bipartisan Senate bill, but they also can’t seem to pass their own short-term extension: House Republicans on Tuesday failed for the second time in as [...]

The House vote on the budget will not just include an up-or-down vote on the Paul Ryan version. As per custom, several budgets will get a vote that day. The Republican Study Group introduced their budget, which slashed spending even further and more quickly than Ryan’s and cut Medicaid more deeply, today. Hardline conservatives who [...]

The close call in the House Budget Committee for the Ryan budget led many to wonder whether the House leadership would have trouble with the bill on the floor. But The Hill reports that they’re making progress toward that goal: Conservative House Republicans on Thursday said they support the 2013 budget resolution, leaving GOP leaders [...]

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 [...]

The Senate’s transportation bill, which passed earlier this week, is more bipartisan than good. The bill lasts for two years rather than the 5 years requested by the White House, and it funds at about 2/3 the level in the President’s budget request, which itself is relatively low according to infrastructure experts. That said, it [...]

The Senate completed work on a two-year surface transportation bill, which costs $109 billion and will provide clarity to local infrastructure projects. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, extolled the measure, passed on a bipartisan vote of 74 to 22, as “a jobs bill in the true sense of the word.” “I hope [...]

The New York Times writes of a divided House on the question of whether to submit a budget below the targets defined in the spending cap of the debt limit deal, between hardline conservatives and members of the Appropriations Committee. Trying to demonstrate anew their push to reduce the size of the government, conservative House [...]