For months now, Bill Daley has been living in a sort of Washington purgatory. His title, White House chief of staff, usually the second most powerful job in Washington, remained the same. But his role was something less. Over the holidays, he decided it was not a job he wanted to keep.
In a city that thrives on power, being attacked is often a sign that you have some. So in mid-December, when President Obama’s advisers took aim at Americans Elect, a bipartisan clutch of political elites planning to bankroll a third candidate in the 2012 presidential election, the group’s members reacted with dramatized indignation that couldn’t [...]
The ubiquitous fact-checking outfit PolitiFact has chosen Democrats’charge that Paul Ryan’s budget would “end Medicare” as its Lie of the Year. This dubious honor, which follows 2009 and 2010 rulings that both went against the GOP for its health care claims, is a coup for House Republicans, who will no doubt face an onslaught of [...]
For what feels like the 624th time this year, the federal government on Friday will run out of money unless Congress acts. This deadline hasn’t gotten much ink because a) we’re all tired of writing the same fishbowl, government shutdown story, and b) congressional negotiators for once in their lives are on track to sign [...]
With the demise of the supercomittee today, there’s a certain section of Washington that is mourning the death of bipartisan compromise, too. Michael Scherer deftly writes its eulogy with an eye to the next election:
“Good riddance!” say the pundits on both left and right. The Super Committee is dead, and with it any short-term hope of a solution to the nation’s long-term deficit woes. For the right, this is a victory, because no tax increases were bartered away. “Good for America,” says Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich. For the [...]
Three months closer to an election year, Congress is proving every bit as dysfunctional as it was during the debt ceiling deal that created the supercommittee in August, and looming primaries – both presidential and congressional – have put bipartisan compromise even farther out of reach. Really, there should be no shock that the committee has failed – there were too many people who stood to benefit from its demise.
Are Republicans caving on tax hikes? The short answer is no. But the more nuanced answer is that there’s been some significant movement. No one has been talking about tax hikes per se. Allowing George W. Bush’s 2001 tax cuts to expire simply returns taxation to previous levels, and no one, Republican or Democrat, has [...]
Yesterday I posted a commentary in this space on what I believe was liberal hypocrisy in the wake of last Thursday’s Washington Post article on conservative U.S. Senator Marco Rubio. But today, in fairness, I think former Massachusetts Governor and leading Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney should be called to question for labeling the Post [...]
The Senate Tuesday night is expected to vote down President Obama’s jobs bill. Democrats aren’t even sure they can get 51 votes, let alone the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. And even if it passed, Republican House Speaker John Boehner has declared it dead on arrival in the lower chamber. So, what’s [...]
