When President Obama announced Jack Lew’s nomination for Treasury Secretary he promised Lew would help bring people together, I doubt this is what he meant. From ABC News: Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, declared today that Jack Lew must “never” become secretary of the Treasury. “To confirm Mr. Lew would [...]

One area that has been pushed to the side as we contemplate the lame duck session and all the expiring fiscal measures is the debt limit. When last we left our story, the debt limit was extended by $2.1 trillion last August, with the expectation being that this would keep the country able to borrow [...]

I’m not a big fan of the recess appointment per se. It was designed at a time when Senators traveled back and forth between their states and Washington in horse-drawn carriages, and was meant to be used in case they could not return in a timely manner and an appointment needed to be filled. Needless [...]

If you’re like me, you believed that the Senate rules reform effort devolved into nothingness. Only a few things were accomplished on the periphery: • Senators could not force the reading of amendments as long as they were public for 72 hours. This almost never happened anyway. • Senate confirmations for hundreds of appointees would [...]

Today’s big pre-SOTU story is that the President will propose a five-year freeze on non-security discretionary spending, which comes fairly close to Republican demands on the budget. Essentially, since the country is operating under a continuing resolution, the budget is currently frozen at 2010 levels. The Republicans want to scale it back to 2008 levels. [...]

A particularly insidious dog whistle to the right has cropped up in the Elana Kagan confirmation hearings. Suddenly the most popular topic for discussion is Thurgood Marshall, the late Supreme Court Justice for whom Kagan clerked for one year and with whom she disagreed quite a bit during that clerkship. Marshall dominated yesterday’s opening statements, [...]

You’re not going to believe this, but Senate Republicans don’t like an Obama appointment and say he’s beyond the mainstream. I know, it’s crazy. Senate Republicans are preparing to mount an assault against one of President Obama’s federal appeals court choices, offering a preview of a possible Supreme Court fight this summer. Goodwin Liu, the [...]