The payroll tax cut and extended unemployment benefits expire on February 29. And though the House-Senate conference committee charged with figuring out a year-long extension met yesterday, there really isn’t a lot of movement toward a solution. Pay-fors seem to be the biggest stumbling block. On Wednesday, the House approved one of the GOP’s favored [...]

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, [...]

The Super Committee, what we’ve been calling Catfood Commission II, held its first meeting today. There wasn’t much on the agenda, just the internal governing rules of how the committee will proceed, under the direction of co-chairs Patty Murray (D-WA) and Jeb Hensarling (R-TX). Both sides are talking about compromise and the need for action, [...]

I was on the radio yesterday and I explained that Max Baucus is probably to the left of all the announced members of the Catfood Commission II, something the interviewer could hardly believe. But I think the available evidence shows this to be the case. He dissented from the original Catfood Commission because of Social [...]

Alan Simpson has a problem with Max Baucus. He talks too damn much about “balance.” “He’s chairman of the Finance Committee and feels a competition with Kent Conrad, which is not good, because Conrad moves and does things, and Max is just holding back,” Simpson said. “He didn’t come to many of our meetings. And [...]

I think there’s reason to be happy about the three selections by Harry Reid for the Catfood Commission II, and there’s just as much reason to be skeptical. All three are on the record for a balanced deficit solution – so is the public, incidentally, because no other option has really been put before them [...]

Via everywhere, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has chosen Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA), John Kerry (D-MA) and Max Baucus (D-MT) for the Super Congress, the bipartisan committee charged with finding at least $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years. They will make up 1/4 of the 12-member committee: the other Majority and [...]

I was fairly certain that the Catfood Commission II, the new bipartisan supercommittee of 12 that will find at least $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction recommendations, which will then get fast-tracked through Congress, would be referred to colloquially as the “Conrad-Ryan Commission.” The heads of the Budget Committees of each house of Congress would get [...]

The showy move by Eric Cantor – and Jon Kyl – to walk out of the Biden debt limit talks was a planned event, prepared for weeks as an ostentatious way to force the President into the negotiations. “There have been discussions about when these talks need to end and when the Speaker and the [...]

Max Baucus, a participant in the now-stalled debt limit talks led by Joe Biden, told the Senate Finance Committee that the new “grand bargain” in the deal, what Eric Cantor balked at and left to John Boehner to authorize, is a swap of Medicare cuts for tax increases. “I’m disappointed that Leader Cantor’s withdrawn,” said [...]

Work on the National Defense Authorization bill in the House wrapped up today, and there were high points and low points. Among the lows was that House members voting against stripping the “forever war” provision from the bill, essentially a reauthorization of the AUMF, by a 234-187 margin (20 Democrats voted against that, by the [...]