Roll Call reports on the widely-anticipated announcement of Representative Kirsten Gillibrand’s elevation to the Senate, and the special election that is likely to follow. This looks like an excellent opportunity for a Republican pickup — as the district is reported to have a Republican advantage of roughly 3 points:
Some of Jack Murtha’s staunchest supporters — at least since a former staffer of his joined the company — have been raided by the FBI: Federal agents raided the Kuchera Companies in Windber, which include Kuchera Industries and Kuchera Defense Systems. The entrance of the building was blocked by state and federal authorities. One by one, Kuchera employees drove off the property. People who were | Read More »
Today Al Franken sought to eliminate the role of the Minnesota courts in deciding whether he won the state’s Senate election, and instead let Harry Reid decide: Democratic candidate Al Franken made a bid Wednesday to short-circuit the court case that’s intended to give Minnesota a winner in its closely contested Senate race. Attorneys for Franken argued that a state court should dismiss the lawsuit | Read More »
There’s a lot of self-congratulation on the left about how open and accessible the Obama administration will be, but it seems there’s a lot of reluctance among his representatives to talk about the Big 3 bailout.
Apparently Representative Carolyn Maloney appeared on MSNBC this morning to discuss Caroline Kennedy’s withdrawal from consideration for Hillary Clinton’s vacant Senate seat. She made a surprising argument: Representative Carolyn Maloney – a Senate hopeful – appeared on MSNBC this morning and tried extrapolating a political lesson from the airplane crash in the Hudson. “We did have one good news with the tragedy with the U.S. | Read More »
Opponents of excess government meddling in the private market often argue that it puts government policymakers in an inherently unfair position: that of picking winners and losers. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson gives us an excellent example: he’s working to raise milk prices, leaving dairy farmers the winners while everyone who consumers dairy products winds up losing. Also winning: steak lovers, who will see | Read More »
Ambinder points out that Barack Obama will get his fancy-shmancy Blackberry: President Barack Obama is going to get his blackberry.
I referenced this yesterday in another post, but it bears repeating here: the Democratic stimulus package has already failed. That is the finding of Congress’ own budget office — the CBO — which has determined that the spending component of the bill will come far too late to help restore economic growth: Less than half the money dedicated to highways, school construction and other infrastructure | Read More »
Barack Obama is President today because he cultivated a veneer of moderation that made a greater impression on voters than his voting record. On no issue was this clearer than abortion. I’ve talked to committed pro-life voters — evangelicals, catholics, and others — who told me that this country needed change above all. And anyway they assured, this man was clearly not the extremist that | Read More »
It was always hard to imagine that every Democrat would march in lockstep support of a massive spending bill that stands little chance of actually doing anything to help the economy. But I would not have expected that a Blue Dog like Shuler would choose inauguration day to rain on Barack Obama’s parade: Shuler, who twice voted against the $700 billion bank rescue and the | Read More »
Barack Obama requested $775 billion. The current pricetag is $825 billion. But the House Progressive Caucus thinks it needs to be a little bigger: say, $1.4 trillion. Liberal Democrats in the House are lobbying hard to put President-elect Obama’s economic stimulus bill over the trillion-dollar mark. “Some of us are saying we need a stimulus of 1.2 or 1.3 or 1.4 trillion to prevent a | Read More »
It’s been interesting to follow the debate over earmarks in appropriations bills. Everyone knows that they increased dramatically in recent years, to the point where public anger at the practice led Congress to consider ‘reforms.’ There seems to be little confidence that Congress has really learned the lesson though, so the discussion about earmarks in Barack Obama’s risky spending scheme has been illustrative.
Faced with a slow economy and a large deficit, Democrats in Washington are going to try to solve the problem by adding more than $1 trillion to the national debt. Many governors are faced with similar challenges, and some at least, are trying a different approach. One noteworthy example is Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty: In his State of the State Address to a joint body of | Read More »
Who’d have thought that Barack Obama’s inauguration would be such an opportunity for lonely liberals to hook up? Despite The One’s deific ability to bring people together, it seems that there are still tons of Obama supporters — straight, gay, transgender, and ‘other’ — who are looking for company. David Herbert did a little snooping around on Craigslist and found some of them: Graham, a | Read More »
It appears that Obama fatigue is starting to set in among Capitol Hill Democrats. That might come as a surprise — particularly considering that Obama served in Congress with all of the Democratic leaders, that he hasn’t even been sworn in, and that his 76 percent approval rating contrasts sharply with the 23 percent rating that Congress gets. Nevertheless, it’s clear that the leadership on | Read More »
Amanda Carpenter has the story: A reputable source tells Big Labor is “in a panic” because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid isn’t ready to call up a vote on the Employee Free Choice Act, known as “card check” to its opponents.
The 2010 elections are a long way off, but it’s interesting that the Democrats have already lost their top recruits for Senate races in New Hampshire and Florida. In New Hampshire, Democrats had hoped to make it a race against three-term incumbent Judd Gregg. Instead, Democratic Governor John Lynch will seek re-election: There’s no doubt that Lynch would be the strongest Democrat the party could | Read More »
The Washington Times reports: The United States will “look like a banana republic” unless it gains control over its budget deficit and federal debt, economist Allen Sinai warned Congress on Thursday. “The deficit and debt prospects under almost any scenario are daunting,” Mr. Sinai, chief global economist for Decision Economics Inc., told the Senate Budget Committee. “This territory is uncharted, with no real historical analogue | Read More »
Was it really just a few weeks ago that the United Auto Workers came to Washington with the Big 3, and promised to work together with management to ensure the companies’ viability — if only Washington would bail them out? Didn’t the UAW ultimately agree (if unhappily) to the requirement in the bailout that the companies reduce their labor costs to a level comparable to | Read More »
Roll Call with the story: According to several Congressional sources, the House Administration Committee has alerted Members that their office accounts will increase by an average of $90,000 this year, an overall increase of about $40 million and significantly more that the increases of recent years.
![[RS]](/t/img/logo-footer.jpg){kind=logo}