By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 11th at 12:45 PM  | 

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and House Republican leader John Boehner today jointly announce that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal will give the response to President Obama’s budget message on February 24: Gov. Jindal to Deliver Republican Address to the Nation on February 24 -Speech to immediately follow President Obama’s First Address to Congress- WASHINGTON, DC –House Republican Leader John Boehner (OH) and Senate Republican Leader | Read More »

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 11th at 12:24 PM  | 

Update: you can watch Assemblyman Tedisco’s announcement video here. In the race to replace now-Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the Democrats have nominated a wealthy newcomer to the region. But he won’t admit he’s a newcomer. Instead, he stresses having lived in New York since ‘the early ’90s,’ when the truth is that he was living in Missouri as recently as the year 2000. Truth be told, | Read More »

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 11th at 10:40 AM  | 

The Wall Street Journal says that Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Arlen Specter may have been snookered. Now that the Senate has passed a slimmed-down porked up version of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi debt spending plan, the White House is pushing to add back many of the items that it cut out to get their support:

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 10th at 10:55 PM  | 

Several days ago I wrote about the toothless and useless ‘Blue Dog Democrats,’ who strut around bragging about their commitment to balanced budgets, but who regularly take a dive when told to. Apparently their liberal masters have told them it’s time to shut up and get in line.

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 10th at 03:05 PM  | 

This provision was not in the House version of the bill, and was not in the Senate version of the bill. And now Carl Levin wants to sneak it into the conference report — despite the fact that Republican supporters are insisting that the bill be slimmed down? General Motors Corp. may win protection from a tax liability of as much as $7 billion when | Read More »

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 10th at 11:21 AM  | 

In 1992 the Republican party lost control of the White House, the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Political commentators asked whether the party was likely to matter in the near future, or be consigned to long-term irrelevance. Yet the inexperienced new president put too much trust in Congressional liberals to set his agenda, failed to properly vet high-level nominees, and embarked on a | Read More »

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 9th at 07:17 AM  | 

Bloomberg reports on the news that Treasury Secretary and Tax Cheat Tim Geithner has delayed until tomorrow the announcement of the ‘TARP II’ request. White House Economics Director Summers says that they’ve pushed it off because they don’t want any distractions from the cloture vote today on the Obama-Reid-Pelosi debt spending bill. Summers is right about one thing: if the administration announced today it was | Read More »

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 7th at 11:02 AM  | 

I’ll give Joe Biden this: he is making me seriously re-examine my pre-election statements that he was a terrible pick for Vice President. Did you know he went to the House Democratic retreat the other day, and warned them that their vote for the Obama-Reid-Pelosi debt bill would be used against them in 2010? Democratic Members and staff were grumbling about the path that the | Read More »

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 6th at 05:16 PM  | 

This is rich. Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and every Democrat on Capitol Hill worth his salt has been busting it over the last week to try to get a compromise that would attract some Republican votes. After all, there are only 58 sitting Democratic Senators, and Ted Kennedy cannot vote. So Democrats must have 3 GOP votes to overcome a filibuster. And it’s not easy | Read More »

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 6th at 03:30 PM  | 

Freshman Democrat Walt Minnick (D-ID) is one of the Blue Dogs who opposed passage of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi spending plan. He has now introduced his own stimulus legislation. And how does it differ from the legislation being debated in Congress now?

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 6th at 03:13 PM  | 

Keep calling your Senators! 202-224-3121 Roll Call (subscription required) reports that George Voinovich has bowed out of the compromise discussions and Susan Collins is no longer as optimistic about passing the bill today. It’s not clear from the article whether Collins has gotten more pessimistic because she didn’t like the Democratic offer — about which she offered no comment — or simply because losing Voinovich | Read More »

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 6th at 12:00 PM  | 

Nate Silver points out that so far, Democrats have been marching in lockstep support of the Obama agenda at a significantly higher rate than Republicans have been voting against. And this is despite all the attention to the ‘moderate Democrats’ who are trying to reduce the size of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi spending bill: There have already been 13 distinct votes on various amendments and elements related | Read More »

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 6th at 10:34 AM  | 

Now we know why Barack Obama apparently expected a big bipartisan vote for the c___ sandwich. He figured that once he rode a 53% tidal wave to the White House, on a platform specifically calling for: Hope; and, Change, that there was no way Republicans would actually vote against a trillion dollar payoff to liberal constituencies. He apparently didn’t believe all that Democratic rhetoric about | Read More »

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 5th at 03:59 PM  | 

In the debate over the ‘stimulus,’ Barack Obama’s biggest problem is that he has not wanted to take the lead on the legislation. For weeks Congressional Democrats complained that his reluctance to set out his recommended legislation was slowing the process. When all was said and done, he never did reveal ‘his’ bill; he simply communicated his priorities to Congress and let them carry the | Read More »

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 5th at 03:12 PM  | 

It is starting to seem that Barack Obama and Harry Reid may finally be browbeating enough Senators to get 60 votes for their debt spending bill. The word is that moderates might be coalescing together on a compromise at around $800 billion or so. But just as if the Democrats seem like they might be pulling it together to pass a terrible bill through the | Read More »

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 5th at 11:53 AM  | 

I want to recommend a strategy for Senate Democrats. They ought to stop playing around, and lay down the law to the Republicans. No more Mr. Nice Guy: The administration should use its supposed vaunted community organizing to build public pressure for its version of the stimulus, and then Obama, Pelosi, and Reid should hold a press conference where they say: 1) The only reason | Read More »

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 4th at 02:42 PM  | 

Today Barack Obama announced a cap on salaries for executives of companies that receive bailouts, and he briefly addressed the ongoing debate over the Obama-Reid-Pelosi spending plan. Interestingly, the word ‘bipartisan’ never crossed his lips. Nor did he speak about a desire to bring both parties together on a consensus plan. Instead, he rejected criticism of the current spending bill, and retreated to a position | Read More »

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 4th at 09:40 AM  | 

News flash: Congress is an institution with deep and serious rifts. It’s a challenge to build a majority in support of anything, which is partly the reason it has such a bad reputation. In the Senate, it generally takes 60 votes to pass any meaningful legislation. For this reason, a President who cares about his agenda will involve himself closely in negotiations. Barack Obama on | Read More »

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 3rd at 10:36 PM  | 

It’s a poorly kept secret that Rahm Emanuel hates most Republicans and most Republicans hate him back. But now it turns out that any House Democrat who wants to be Speaker is also probably hoping that Rahm fails in his current job. That’s because Rahm’s let it slip that his ambition to be Speaker is so strong, he intends to pursue it again once he’s | Read More »

By: Brian Faughnan (Diary)  |  February 3rd at 05:36 PM  | 

While Barack Obama talks about trying to build bipartisan support for the Obama-Reid-Pelosi spending package, he and his fellow Democrats are simultaneously trying to hide the other elements of his spending agenda until this one passes. That’s why there’s no detail currently available on the next bank bailout, the Big 3 bailout, the president’s health care reform plan, or the 5-year transportation reauthorization that Congress | Read More »