Imagine how crazy it would be if Michele Bachmann lost her House seat to a Tea Partyer even more conservative than she was—that’s the equivalent of what happened on Tuesday when three-term Rep. Jean Schmidt lost the Republican primary in Ohio’s 2nd District to political rookie Brad Wenstrup. The upset was big—just last cycle, Schmitt won her primary by a whopping 40%. She lost this time by 6%.
TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures of the past week from the Beltway and beyond.
Just when everyone had written off Congress as too dysfunctional to produce a bipartisan agreement on deficit reduction, the supercommittee is actually showing a pulse. Up until this week there was nary a wonk, flack or politico in Washington who thought the supercommittee would succeed. But late Monday, nine days before the Thanksgiving deadline, negotiators [...]
The tone of the past month of debt negotiations has hardly been Washington’s finest hour. In fact, the most popular words to describe the situation, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, were “ridiculous,” “disgusting,” “stupid” and “frustrating.” A whopping 72% viewed the process negatively and only 2% had warm feelings about [...]
If the definition of a compromise is something that most folks don’t like, then the $2.4 trillion debt-ceiling deal worked out over the weekend by President Barack Obama and GOP leaders in Congress is a resounding success. As details of the framework began to leak early Sunday, the far wings of each party quickly rejected [...]
House Republican leaders have sweetened Speaker John Boehner’s debt-ceiling plan to make it more palatable to conservative holdouts, and rank-and-file members said the tweaks would likely be enough to give Boehner enough votes to pass his bill later on Friday. A night after a dramatic rebuke to Boehner’s stewardship of the House, House Republican leaders [...]
“Tweet,” said the President of the United States, Friday, speaking from the Diplomatic Reception Room. He was renewing his call, first issued in Monday’s primetime address, for Americans to contact their Senators and Congressman to demand a bipartisan compromise to the debt limit standoff. This is what it has come to: The collapse of Speaker [...]
House Speaker John Boehner failed to muster enough GOP votes to pass his plan to raise the debt limit on Thursday night, throwing into question the fate of Boehner’s proposal as well as that of his speakership. Republican leaders must now rewrite the legislation in order to attract more conservatives as they try to pass [...]
Updated, 10:00 PM House Republican leaders have delayed a pivotal vote on Speaker John Boehner’s proposal to cut the deficit and raise the federal debt ceiling, suggesting they may still be scrambling for votes after three days of whipping wavering members. Laena Fallon, a spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, said the vote will [...]
As John Boehner hunts for enough votes to pass his debt-limit proposal, the Washington-New York Republican establishment is coming out in vehement support for his plan. on Tuesday, the Chamber of Commerce announced its backing of the Boehner plan, calling the legislation “critical” and saying that “default is not an option.” (The Chamber’s statement, incidentally, [...]
