(WASHINGTON) — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he believes marriage should be between a man and a woman but that states should decide whether it’s legal for same-sex couples to marry. The Nevada Democrat says he believes that people should marry whomever they want, and that, in his words, “it’s no business of mine [...]
TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures of the past week from the Beltway and beyond.
It was Washington’s most charming bipartisan bromance. When Barack Obama ran for President in 2008, he was eager to embrace Indiana’s Republican Senator, Dick Lugar. Obama dropped Lugar’s name into his announcement speech, featured him in a TV ad, and cited him as a key foreign policy influence in a debate. Hugging Lugar, the widely-admired [...]
In a 51-48 vote on Thursday, the Senate rejected a Republican amendment that would have allowed any employer to deny medical coverage for services it objected to on religious grounds. Drawn up in the wake of the Obama Administration’s decision to mandate contraception coverage at Catholic universities and hospitals, the amendment, championed by Roy Blunt [...]
From its start, the race for Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat seemed destined to be one of most expensive political battles in Massachusetts history. Challenger Elizabeth Warren, bank-scolding darling of the left, and Scott Brown, the Tea Party pinup who swept into office in early 2010 to strip President Obama of his congressional supermajority, are [...]
President Obama is reportedly planning to name Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in a recess appointment today, which means the drawn-out Congressional standoff over Cordray’s nomination to head the watchdog agency may be drawing to a close. Last year, 45 Senate Republicans blocked a procedural vote that would have allowed [...]
Ben Nelson, the conservative two-term Nebraska Democrat, won’t seek re-election to the Senate next year, according to Politico. Nelson is 70–not exactly an adolescent, but hardly outside the norm for a Senate whose average member is 62. He had $3 million in the bank for what was expected to be a uphill re-election battle, with [...]
Now that President Barack Obama has embraced his inner populist, he’s finding all kinds of weapons lying around to beat Republicans with. The payroll tax cut is getting a lot of attention. If his success with conservative appellate court judges is any indication, the constitutionality of ObamaCare will be another. The latest weapon Obama is [...]
The White House is threatening to veto a long-awaited defense funding bill over a perennial policy dispute: whether the President can prosecute terrorists in civilian courts, or must transfer them to military custody. The battle has raged since the very first day of Barack Obama’s presidency, but this time Obama’s opponent is not the GOP. [...]
As Capitol Hill enters a critical 48-hour stretch, the sense on the Hill is that momentum is gaining, however incrementally, for a supercommittee deal on deficit reduction. Negotiations kicked up a level as House Speaker John Boehner met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Tuesday morning. But whatever deal Reid and Boehner may strike, it [...]
