Last night, it didn’t look as if the Senate would be able to get the clean extension of both the FAA authorization and the surface transportation authorization before a deadline of today. Tom Coburn was holding up the bill in a fruitless crusade against bike paths. It’s a long story. Well, Coburn had a lot [...]

Harry Reid went to the Senate floor this morning and accused Tom Coburn of stopping 80,000 Americans from working. It’s largely true: Coburn is blocking the consideration of the FAA and surface transportation authorization bill in time to avoid an expiration of FAA funding on Friday. I’m disappointed, however, in one of our Republican colleagues [...]

The attempt to meet looming deadlines and avoid shutdowns of part (or all) of the government resembles the aftermath of a car wreck right now. It’s unclear whether the Senate can move the broken-down vehicles off the road in time to let the traffic move through. Here’s what’s going on. The FAA authorization runs out [...]

The House of Representatives today passed by voice vote a bill that would extend both the FAA authorization and the surface transportation authorization ahead for several months (FAA until the end of January, surface transportation for six months until the end of March). This represents a significant victory for those who didn’t want to see [...]

I have a piece for The American Prospect today about the Gang of Six proposal, and how it increased the possibility of default: Gang of Six fever has overtaken the Senate, and everyone has an opinion on how to incorporate the proposal into the debt-ceiling deal. Senator Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, wants [...]

Just about the only specific piece of the Gang of Six proposal, as explained well by Rep. Peter DeFazio above, is the move to chained CPI, a benefit cut for Social Security, veteran’s benefits and any program with a cost of living adjustment, along with a regressive tax cut. So that should give you a [...]

Update: the Gang of 6 announces they have reached a deal, and the President has praised it — ed To the extent that there’s anything routine about the federal government’s fiscal state with just 14 days until the Treasury runs out of cash, the events on Capitol Hill appeared to fall into a pattern. The [...]

Tom Coburn’s big vote in the Senate on repealing $5 billion a year in ethanol subsidies is today, one that has support from both the Club for Growth and the Sierra Club. In fact, even the Koch Brothers – the KOCH BROTHERS! – support repeal. “Koch Industries has opposed federal mandates and subsidies for decades,” [...]

In the new Senate, when we’re not in an endless quorum call we’re using amendments to tack on major legislation to innocuous bills. The handshake agreement between Democrats and Republicans at the beginning of the year traded less filibusters on the motion to proceed with more leeway on amendments. As a result, Republicans still filibuster [...]

Greg Sargent has more of the story about Tom Coburn’s unceremonious exit from the Gang of Six. We pretty much knew it had to do with Coburn seeking a global spending cap for Medicare. We didn’t know the details: The “Gang of Six” talks on deficit reduction broke down after Senators Dick Durbin and Tom [...]

Bipartisan fetishists everywhere poured a little out, after Sen. Tom Coburn quit the Gang of Six deficit reduction talks. The impasse, according to Coburn, came over entitlement cuts. This is the second “Gang of Six” since the beginning of the Obama Administration to waste months of time without accomplishing anything. At the beginning of the [...]