And So It Has Come To Demon Pass

Republicans May Not Care About Deficits, But They Care About Cutting Social Spending
It’s tempting to just laugh at the hapless Republicans who are flailing away at their initial promises, and to conclude that they don’t care about the Deficit. This is all true, and they don’t. But that doesn’t mean they won’t engage in very consequential Spending Cuts. There’s no question that the new House rules allow for broad exemptions on deficit-busting Legislation, particularly the Repeal of Health Care. As Harry Reid said today in a statement, the re...

CBO: Health care repeal would increase deficit
WASHINGTON — Repealing President Barack Obama's landmark Health Care overhaul would add billions to government red ink and leave millions without coverage, Congress' nonpartisan Budget referees said Thursday ahead of a politically charged vote in the House. House Speaker John Boehner brushed off the Congressional Budget Office analysis as emboldened Republicans, now in the majority, issued their own report arguing that Obama's coverage expansion would cost jobs and increase Budget Deficits...

House budget chairman says deeper cuts ahead
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-led House of Representatives will push for Spending Cuts in the next Fiscal Year that will be even deeper than those they promised voters, the lawmaker leading the effort said on Thursday. "If people think we're afraid of cutting $100 billion they've got another think coming," House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said. "That's just a down payment." Ryan's comments come one day after he and other Republicans said they would not reach their target of $100...

CBO: Healthcare repeal price tag $230B
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- Repealing the healthcare law -- sought by U.S. House Republicans -- would increase the federal Deficit by $230 billion, the Congressional Budget Office said. The non-partisan CBO's preliminary analysis of the Republicans' Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act boosted Democrats' claims that overturning President Obama's signature domestic bill would devastate the deficit, Politico reported. The CBO score on the Affordable Care Act indicated it would decrease th...

Rep. Hank Johnson: Health Care Reform: Correct, Constitutional, and not Going Anywhere
In the past two years, President Obama and Congress have invested heavily in Economic Recovery, pulling America back from the brink of a second Great Depression and laying the foundations for renewed growth. The recovery is in progress. But in the shadow of a global Financial Crisis and a deep Recession, Unemployment remains high and the American People need Washington to stay focused on Job Creation. Americans will no doubt be confused by the priorities of the new Republican majority in the ...

SecDef Gates announces surprising cuts in defense budget
From The Hill: “Defense Secretary Robert Gates Thursday told Congress the administration is seeking $78 billion in cuts to the Defense Budget over the next five years on top of $100 billion in efficiencies. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) said after the morning briefing that he was deeply concerned about the surprising depth of the Spending Cuts. McKeon said he had gone into the meeting expecting to oppose the plan to trim $100 billion in waste when Gates a...

CBO: Health care repeal would increase deficit
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, right, accompanied by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Va., gestures during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 6, 2011. Repealing President Barack Obama's landmark Health Care overhaul would add billions to government red ink and leave millions without coverage, Congress' nonpartisan Budget referees said Thursday ahead of a politically charged vote in the House. House Speaker John Boehner brushed off the Congressional Budget O...

Republicans Boost the Deficit: A Farce in Four Acts
When Republicans brushed aside a couple of years of demagoguery about the transcendent importance of Debt and Deficits to push for an extension of high-end Tax Cuts at the end of the 111th Congress, the act of hypocrisy was rationalized by the usual discredited supply-side nostrums about Tax Cuts for "job creators" paying for themselves through Economic Growth and higher federal revenues. Then before the 112th Congress convened, House Republicans took this "logic" to the next stage, exempting...

Reid & McConnell Square Off On Health Care, Filibusters & Debt Ceiling
ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe reports:  House Republicans can Repeal the Health Care bill if they want, but they’re just wasting their time because it’s not going anywhere in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid emphasized today. “The Republicans have to understand that the Health Care bill is not going to be repealed,” Reid said at a Press Conference today after a Caucus meeting. “Are we saying the Health Care bill is perfect? Of course not,” he said. “W

Watch Paul Ryan Live
Get alerts when there is a new article that might interest you. Paul Ryan will soon sit down for a conversation with Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot. e21 and the Manhattan Institute are sponsoring the event, which will be at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. from 12-1 p.m. Bill Kristol will be introducing Ryan and Gigot. You can watch live on C-SPAN3 or online, here. The new Republican majority in the House has promised to reign in the federal Budget by cutting spe...

Official Change: GOP takes control of House in 112th Congress
Yesterday, shortly after noon, the Republican Party officially swept into power in the House of Representatives, led by 85 incoming GOP freshmen, as part of a net gain of 63 seats in the chamber. The House convened with swearing in of all 435 members, followed by a roll-call vote for Speaker of the House. John Boehner of Ohio was expected to take control of the Speaker's gavel, held by Nancy Pelosi of California for the past four years. Pelosi was still bidding to be the #1 Democrat and Speaker ...

Republicans Introduce Bill To Fire Obamas Czars
This bill was introduced in the Democrat-controlled House and was pushed aside, but with Republicans now in the House majority it’s seeing the light of day again, though with Demcorats controlling the Senate and Obama still in the White House the bill is unlikely to get much further than the House. Though that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. A group of House Republicans introduced a bill on Wednesday to rein in the various “czars” in the Obama Administration. Rep. Ste...

Get the Story (and Add What You Know) on the Freshman Members
The new Congress is here, which means it’s time for us to start holding them accountable. Over on the OpenCongress Wiki, we’ve got profiles of each of the 100+ members of the freshman class of 2012, and we need your help to record & track all the promises and positions they took during the campaign. With the new House leadership already backing off their spending-cut promises on the first day of Congress, it’s going to be critical that we create a permanent record of both w...

Hoyer pushes to restore voting rights to delegates
Minority Whip Steny Hoyer introduced Legislation Thursday to reinstate the limited Voting Rights of House delegates, who had those powers stripped by Republicans a day earlier. The Maryland Democrat said the "unacceptable" change will leave millions of U.S. citizens without a voice in Congress. "It is absolutely unacceptable to deny nearly 5 million Americans a voice in Congress,” Hoyer said in a statement. “Republicans continually declare they are focused on listening to the American peo...

Pete Sessions Breaks Rules, Briefly Shuts Down Rules Committee
Call it a stumble out of the gate. Or a failure to find the gate entirely. Veteran Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) and freshman Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA) failed to make the official swearing in ceremony yesterday, a violation of the Constitution that has sent Republicans scrambling and briefly brought an end to the new majority's push to Repeal the Health Care reform law. Freshly-minted House Rules Committee chair David Dreier (R-CA) had to recess hearings on repealing the Health Care law after h...

TWU Newsreel Warns Viewers on Republican Goals
Our friends at the Transport Workers (TWU) have taken a light-hearted video look at rather serious subject: how Republicans might use their new found congressional strength and powers. The black-and-white mid-century newsreel/educational film style is complete with deep voiced narrator and swelling music. “TWU Presents: The Powers of Congress” looks at various Republican lawmakers and Party Leaders and what they’ve said about vital issues from Social Security cuts to Health Care Repeal t

Reading the Constitution should be taken seriously
Some on the left are mocking today’s reading of the Constitution on the House floor as a political gimmick. While this is a largely symbolic act by the Republican House, it accompanies a series of more substantive new House rules that require lawmakers, for instance, to cite where the Constitution authorizes the bill they introduce. Neither reading the Constitution nor initiating this new rule will by itself restore the Limited Government conceived of during the early republic. But it is an...

Rep. Joe Courtney: On Day One, Republicans Cripple Construction Industry
It took just hours for the new Republican House majority to break their vows of transparency and Bipartisan cooperation. In the new rules they authored, Republicans exempted Budget-busting items like Health Care Repeal from their own pay-go requirements, and they took the Budget-writing process behind closed doors, consolidating it in their own hands. Without input from Democrats and without even an amendment process, they crafted a dangerous set of rules that threatens not just the way Congre...

After Railing Against Government Spending, Speaker Boehner Cant Name One Program He Would Cut
After Railing Against Government Spending, Speaker Boehner Can’t Name One Program He Would Cut Campaigning before the recent Midterm Elections, House Republicans were adamant that, if given power, they would cut government spending. However, when pressed for specifics, many were unable to list even one single item they would cut from the Budget. “The line-item will be across-the-board,” Rep. Kevin Mccarthy (R-CA) embarrassingly responded when asked for specific cuts. Speaker...

After Railing Against Government Spending, Speaker Boehner Cant Name One Program He Would Cut
Campaigning before the recent Midterm Elections, House Republicans were adamant that, if given power, they would cut Government Spending. However, when pressed for specifics, many were unable to list even one single item they would cut from the Budget. “The line-item will be across-the-board,” Rep. Kevin Mccarthy (R-CA) embarrassingly responded when asked for specific cuts. Speaker of the House John Boehner was no stranger to the promise to cut Government Spending. In fact, he prom...

Schumer says Obama should push China on trade
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top Democrat in the Senate said on Thursday that President Barack Obama should back a bid to Crack Down on China's trade practices -- or get Beijing to take action on its own. Charles Schumer, a member of the Democratic leadership, said he expects his bill, to pressure China to let its currency rise, will enjoy Bipartisan support in the new Congress that convened this week and expressed hope it will become law. "It's one of the things that's seriously on the table," Sch...

Repeal Obamacare Now!
House Speaker John Boehner took issue with  preliminary analysis from the Congressional Budget Office which found that repealing ObamaCare “would add about $230 billion to the federal Deficit over the next ten years“: “I do not believe that repealing the job killing Health Care law will increase the deficit,” Boehner told reporters Thursday. “The CBO is entitled to their opinion, but they’re locked into the constraints of the 1974 Budget Act. …If you bel

Gandhi warns D.C. bond rating might fall
Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi welcomed Mayor Vincent C. Gray and Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown to their new posts with a letter warning that District's hard-earned bond rating is in danger of falling with the depletion of reserves and continued subsidy of United Medical Center. Gray (D) repeatedly criticized the administration of former Mayor Adrian M. Fenty for proposing Budgets that drew down on the rainy day fund. In a letter to Gray and Brown, Gandhi points to a December credit...

Sperling to Head National Economic Council
Bloomberg reports: President Barack Obama will name Gene Sperling, a counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, as head of the National Economic Council, according to a person familiar with the matter. Sperling, 52, is returning to the post he held from 1997 to 2001 under former President Bill Clinton. He replaces Lawrence Summers, who was NEC director for the first two years of Obama’s presidency and left last month to return to Harvard University. Obama is set to announce several ap...

Boehner Bullish on Health Care Repeal
New York, NY— January 6, 2011— Representative John Boehner sat down today with NBC News’ Brian Williams for his first interview as Speaker of the House. Below are excerpts from the exclusive interview. If used, mandatory credit: “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.” Additional portions of the interview will air tonight on “NBC Nightly News” at 6:30 PM/ET. The transcript and an extended interview will be available on nightly.MSNBC.com. Photos will be a...