We have been subjected to a White House negotiating process that violates every standard of rationality and transparency. The public never once saw an integrated budget proposal that showed the quantitative and qualitative implications of various policy options. The public has not been told that yesterday’s agreement threatens the financing of crucial programs for education, [...]
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Boehner Opens House on Sunday, Hoyer Invokes Child Hostage Being Shot on Debt Limit
SHOCKING! SHOCKING, I say. Speaker Boehner is bringing back the House on Sunday, because Republicans are looking really small in this and at the bottom everyone knows middle class tax cuts will pass at some point and they might as well appear in the game. But, yes, I still believe a deal will get done [...]
Obama Reaffirms Grand Bargain Pitch, as Debt Limit Looms Over Fiscal Scheme Debate [Video]
Boehner and the Republicans don’t want to give up the leverage of the debt ceiling forever, or for 10 years, or even, as John Engler, head of the Business Roundtable and a former Republican governor suggested, for five years. But the White House isn’t very interested in compromising on this issue, as they figure that [...]
Obama Sent Medicare Message First and Now Republicans Move to Privatize It
IT DIDN’T surprise me that I’d come back from our festive holiday to find Medicare cuts being floated by the likes of Jonathan Chait, but especially Ezra Klein. If Klein is tagging it from the White House it’s not just a trial balloon or a bargaining point, as some have speculated, but Administration conventional thinking. [...]
News Desk: Fast-food Workers Walk in Biggest Effort to Unionize Ever Launched
“Hey, hey, what do you say? We demand fair pay.” PEOPLE CAN’T live a quality life on what fast-food companies pay their workers. Their bosses are making millions and the disparity has finally reached the tipping point. Fast-food workers at several restaurants in New York walked off the job on Thursday, firing the first salvo [...]
Is Grover Over?
The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive “I think we ought to take the 98 percent deal right now,” [Republican Rep. Tom Cole] said of freezing income tax rates for all but the top 2 percent of earners. “It doesn’t mean I agree with raising the top 2. [...]
Goldman Sachs Bailout King Blankfein to Powwow with House Republicans, While Obama Rules Out Social Security For Now
GOLDMAN SACHS bailout king CEO Lloyd Blankfein is headed to Capitol Hill to push his ideas for the fiscal cliff scheme in person. The guy who advised that the Social Security “retirement age has to be changed” in an interview with Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes recently, is headed to a meeting with House Republicans [...]
Top Story — Sen. Patty Murray: If No Revenue from Republicans, Let Tax Cuts Expire, Start Over in 2013
“If the Republicans can’t see their way to significant additional revenues targeted toward the people who are best off and targeted toward passive income and other things like that, then we’re better off going over the cliff and readdressing this with a better Congress in January,” Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said. “And we would have [...]
AFP: Congress, Obama Set to Resume ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Talks
Congress, Obama set to resume ‘fiscal cliff’ talks (via AFP) Congress returns from its week-long Thanksgiving holiday on Monday, as lawmakers and President Barack Obama try to avert a looming fiscal crisis that could send the entire US economy plunging into recession again. Officials in Washington are hoping to find a way to avoid what [...]
Chambliss Blasts Grover Norquist, but Larger Fight Centered on Elizabeth Warren
“I care more about this country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge.” – Senator Saxby Chambliss GROVER NORQUIST has no plan to pay down the debt, Chambliss charges. That’s because Norquist and the American right really do want to drown government in the bathtub. But if Republicans choose to listen to people championing this [...]
Showbiz Beat: Larry Hagman Passes, Made “J.R.” an ’80s Icon
In his memoir, Hello Darlin’, Mr. Hagman said, “Ronald Reagan was campaigning against Jimmy Carter, American hostages were being held in Iran, Polish shipyard workers were on strike, and all anyone wanted to know was, who shot J.R.?” [Dallas News] NO ONE represented the good old excess of the 1980s better than “J.R. Ewing” in [...]
AFSCME, the National Education Association, and SEIU Target Democrats in “Jobs Not Cuts” Ads
THERE’S A campaign not so quietly growing in volume, with Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh the loudest, that has Republicans having a hissy fit over Obama’s proposed tax increases for the wealthiest. Rush is using the Santa Claus line, a take off on O’Reilly’s people want stuff belch, but both are focused on making people [...]
Martha Raddatz Latest to Ask If Democrats are Super Serious about Taxing Wealthy [Transcript]
IT’S A repeated question that continues to reveal the general media denseness on taxes when it comes to expanding the amount the wealthiest in this country pay. Even Martha Raddatz seems genuinely perplexed at why President Obama has emphasized the need to raise taxes, which is supported by congressional Democrats. From ABC’s “This Week,” with [...]
Obama to Progressives: “Campaign Isn’t Over”
Obama “wasn’t talking about what was on or off the table” and didn’t discuss specifics in terms of Social Security, one participant said. [The Hill] THE REPORTS out of the meeting with progressive leaders and unions revealed a couple of things. President Obama told the group at the White House that he won’t budge on [...]
Top Story — Obama’s 2011 Grand Bargain Detailed in Documents Obtained by Bob Woodward
“He is, in his gut, a fiscal conservative. There is a Blue Dog Streak in him.” – David Plouffe in The Price of Politics, by Bob Woodward IF YOU haven’t read Bob Woodward’s latest book, The Price of Politics, you may not appreciate the documents below fully. We’re about to see Obama’s “excessive pragmatism,” as [...]
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