I have been to a lot of U.S. Senate hearings, and I can tell you without a doubt that the best U.S. Senate hearings are the ones where U.S. Senators talk about masturbation. Better than war. Better than taxation. Better than Supreme Court confirmation fights. Senate hearings about masturbation easily top the rest.
Back in 2005, …
The budget debate is far from over, but the good news is that they’re still talking: Senate majority leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner are heading back to the White House at 1 p.m. on Thursday. But the morning’s gloomy prognostications don’t bode well for the chances of averting a government shutdown.
If you listen to …
President Obama and Speaker Boehner talked this morning by phone – always a good sign that the lines of communications remain open. Though, the fact that the discussion lasted all of three minutes is a tad troubling. As the government lurches towards a possible shutdown, I thought it would be useful to outline the choices facing the …
The odds of a government shutdown were raised significantly this morning after House GOP leaders and President Obama failed to reach an agreement to continue funding the government.
“While there was a good discussion, no agreement was reached,” Speaker John Boehner’s staff wrote in an e-mail to reporters following the White …
President Obama today rejected GOP criticisms that he has not done enough to address the rising price of oil and that his Administration had helped cause the spike by limiting domestic oil and gas production.
“Last year, American oil production reached its highest level since 2003,” Obama told reporters in a wide-ranging press …
You wanna cut? We’ll show you cuts. That seems to be the new mantra Democrats have adopted in response to the GOP’s assault on spending. Dems this week have suggested expanding the debate from discretionary spending to taking on all of the sacred cows: farm subsidies, Medicare, Medicaid, taxes and the Pentagon. Well, almost all. What’s …
As predicted, the Senate this afternoon rejected both the House and Senate versions of a bill to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year, sending negotiators back to the drawing boards.
The House version, titled House Resolution 1, or H.R. 1, failed 44-56 with three Republican senators voting against it from the right. The …
There used to be an old saying that in Washington there were actually three Parties: Republicans, Democrats and Appropriators. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees were so powerful that the subcommittee chairmen were dubbed “cardinals.” The committees were the most bipartisan on the Hill as both sides moved to protect each …
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took to the floor this morning to yet again rail against the House’s 2011 omnibus bill. He listed a number of the bill’s evils.
The last few days I’ve come to the floor and explained at length the damage that this Tea Party plan would do on the short term and on the long term. Let me now just again
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The Senate tomorrow is scheduled to begin deliberations on the long-term omnibus to fund the government for the rest of the year. In an example of why this will surely take longer than two weeks to decide, Dems aren’t even sure they can dispense with votes on both the House and Senate versions until Friday – even though every one …
Senator John Ensign is expected to announce in the next hour or so that he will not be seeking a third term in 2012. The Nevada Republican has been battling for his political life since copping to an affair with a former staffer and the wife of one of his closest friends. Ensign had been trailing GOP Rep. Dean Heller, who was widely …
For any kind of camel trader, used car salesman or politician the first bid in a negotiation is rarely the number they actually expect to get. Some suckers may agree to pay that price, but most people bargain. House Speaker John Boehner’s first bid was $32 billion in cuts, a number his freshmen laughed at. They jacked their bid up to …
Updated
Stop the presses! The federal government won’t shut down on Friday!! Okay, for anyone paying even a modicum of attention to the news in the last week, this shouldn’t come as much of a shocker. But, the two-week deferral passed by the Senate today 91-9 does nothing to bridge the $60 billion gap between the two chambers. So, …
