Recently in Congress Category

I have cross-posted today:http://www.untilmysoncomeshome.com/2013/03/trading-places.html...

It became apparent fairly early in the evening last night that the Republicans were going to get thumped.  As state results began to march across the map, with major battleground states turning blue, and Tea Party candidates losing, Republican hopes waned.  Their plan simply didn't work.  The hundreds of millions of billionaires' money didn't work.  The politics of division didn't work.  The Tea Party revolution of 2010 failed. Despite almost unanimous prognostication that the race...

Updated for WP link:Thomas E. Mann is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This essay is adapted from their book "It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism," which will be available Tuesday....

I'm cross-posting, but this deserves your attention as the BS in this political world is astounding.Got a phone call this week from my soldier. This time it was a request for his dress uniforms to be sent in time for an inspection coming up now that he has his 'permanent' post. By the way, he's in climate shock since he's used to Southern winters and is on a base in the North. When you're accustomed...

If there's one thing you can take to the bank, so to speak, in these times of political polarization in Washington it's this-any bill that passes the House and Senate with margins like 390-23 and 73-26 isn't, in the words of John Nance Garner, worth a warm bucket of spit. The passage of the so-called JOBS Act yesterday is no exception.(Just as an aside, giving bad legislation names with catchy acronyms like JOBS Act is...

Hallelujah! At long last, some backbone. Following his recess appointment of Richard Cordray as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau yesterday, President Obama announced 3 appointments to the National Labor Relations Board: "The move, which is arguably as important as the Cordray appointment, will ratchet up opposition from Republicans and make this an even bigger fight, since they have been attacking the NLRB regularly for its moves to streamline union elections and inform...

Here's my TV viewing schedule for this evening. Seinfeld re-runs on TBS from 6 o 7, followed by Saints-Packers pre-game on NBC at 7, followed by the kickoff somewhere around 7:30. No speech. Why bother?By all accounts, President Obama's jobs speech before a joint session of Congress tonight will just be more of the same old, same old, Republican-lite, warmed over policies on unemployment--tax cuts. If I'm going to get yadda yadda yadda, I'd rather...

Harry Reid has announced his three choices for the joint committee in charge of focusing on the wrong problem: "In the first of what will be a closely watched selection process for a powerful new deficit panel, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he will appoint Democratic Sens. Patty Murray (Wash.), Max Baucus (Mont.) and John Kerry (Mass.) as his three choices for a super committee charged with finding more than $1 trillion in spending...

Congress did not pass a bill funding the FAA before leaving Washington for their paid summer vacation.  Republicans are trying to cut a program that subsidizes small, rural airports.  This cut would save American taxpayers $16 million per year.  Congress was unable to agree on cutting this program before they left for vacation, so now the FAA is shut down.  Here are the numbers:FAA employees working without pay or out of a job:    4,000FAA construction...

I offer this viewpoint as an alternative and not necessarily something I believe in strongly. It's hard to believe in anything strongly when you work seven and eight days at a time and work the graveyard shift. That being said, I know progressives are up in arms over what the president and Congressional Democrats did in facilitating a debt ceiling deal. Funny, but the new job has a way of putting things in perspective.I think...