Boehner's Kinda Awesome Speech

Speaker of the House John Boehner
Get alerts when there is a new article that might interest you. “Madam Speaker, thank you for your kind words, and thank you for your service. I’d like to welcome our new colleagues and their families. My own family is here as well: my wife, Debbie, our daughters, Lindsay and Tricia; my brothers and sisters, brothers-and-sisters-in-law, and their Children. “I am honored and humbled to represent a great, hard-working community in Congress. The people of Ohio’s Eighth Congr...

Constitutional Reading in the House: Why not the Unabridged Version? Why the Empty Chamber?
By T. CHRISTOPHER, Republican Redefined I am sure you have heard by now that the new Republican Majority in the House of Representatives kicked off the new session of Congress with a reading of the United States Constitution. The decision to do so ruffled a few feathers on the Left - I guess they have a problem with “reading” anything presented in that Body, but the endeavor went off in spite of their objections all the same. Republicans and Democrats rotated in a first come ...

Re: No, Ezra Klein, Obamacare Will Not Reduce the Deficit
Kevin is right. How could the health-care bill reduce the National Debt when it increases spending in the next ten years and leaves long-term federal spending on Health Care unchanged in the best-case scenario (and the best-case scenario won’t happen)? There are a lot of things in the health-care bill; but savings is not one of them. Using the Congressional Budget Office data, the chart below shows that the bill has left the Cost Curve of federal health-care spending virtually unchanged ov...

Oops! Two Republicans Weren't Sworn In -- but Voted Anyway
Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas. (Credit: AP) This morning, the House Rules Committee started meeting to consider amendments to the Health Care Repeal bill being pushed by Republicans. Aides warned that the meeting would go all day thanks to Democratic opposition and amendments, and indeed, it dragged into the afternoon. That's when members realized they had a problem: One of the Republicans on the committee, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), was not officially a member of Congress. That's because he m...

Local Congressman Boehner becomes speaker of the House today
WASHINGTON – Local congressman John Boehner, who today will become just the third Ohio lawmaker to be speaker of the U.S. House, will tell House members that Americans in November “voted to end business as usual and today we begin carrying out those instructions.’’ In a Speech delivered to the House moments after being sworn in, the West Chester Township Republican will press the new Republican majority to aggressively reduce federal spending at a time when the government...

Ezra Klein: A very smart speech by Speaker Boehner
If you spent the afternoon watching C-SPAN, as I did, you heard applause. A lot of it. Over and over again. And when John Boehner took the podium to be sworn in as Speaker of the House of Representatives, it swelled back up, and stayed there. No one Republican member of Congress wants to be the first to stop applauding the new speaker. Luckily, Boehner did it for them. "It's still just me," he said with a smile. Traditionally, politicians overpromise in these moments. If you look b...

Small Biz Owners Say Health Care Reform Helps Cover Workers
Here’s something that certainly isn’t going to be highlighted when Republicans began their let-no-facts-get-in-the-way show trial of Health Care reform. Small Business owners say the Affordable Care Act will spur them to provide Health Insurance for their workers. Yep, while House Republicans stage their Health Care reform Repeal vote Kabuki dance this week and next, the same small business owners Republicans claim to represent are looking at Health Care reform as way to cut their health c...

Why Health Reform Isnt A Job Killer
Why Health Reform Isn’t A Job Killer A central component of the GOP’s argument for repealing the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with some yet-to-be-determined alternative is that some of the new requirements and regulations in the law will eliminate jobs and hurt small businesses. “What we believe is that ObamaCare has been a job killer,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) explained this morning on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe.’ “If you look...

Democrats Have Finally Decided to Defend That Health-Care Thing They Passed
Obama's signature on the health-care bill. Photo: Official White House photo by Chuck Kennedy Rather than sit back and allow Republicans to grandstand and make a big show of voting for a time-wasting, dead-end Repeal of the Obama health-care act, Democrats have finally grown a pair and decided to fight back. (Now that the next election is two years away, at any rate.) They're putting together a coordinated public defense against the Republicans' plan to bad-mouth Ᾱ and then chip away at ...

Richard (RJ) Eskow: It's Simple: Reform The Filibuster, Shame The Hypocrites
There are a lot of complicated issues out there, ones that require detailed analysis and serious number-crunching. The Senate will be debating its own Filibuster procedures over the next three weeks, which will give us plenty of time to dig into the numbers. But the basic principle is surprisingly simple: it's about Democracy itself. So why aren't we calling our Senators right now and telling them to fix the Senate's ridiculous Filibuster procedures? It could be the biggest step toward real de...

B.C. NDP candidate steps up with rallying call to ‘older white males’
Last updated Thursday, Jan. 06, 2011 3:10PM EST Promising to welcome “older white males” back into the NDP, MLA Harry Lali launched his bid to become the party’s next leader with a message that included an attack on equity quotas and the party establishment. “We need to re-democratize the New Democratic Party. We need to end the control of the party and party apparatus that is increasingly being concentrated in the urban elites of Vancouver,” the Fraser-Nicola MLA s...

When Health Repeal Fails, What Should the GOP Do?
The Republican plan to Repeal the Democrats Health Care bill won’t succeed.  But as my latest column for The Week points out there is still much the GOP can do to repair the bill’s flaws. Next week, Republicans in the House of Representatives will vote to Repeal Democratic health reform. Promise kept! Then the “Repeal-the-Job-Killing-Health-Care-Act of 2011″ will proceed to the Senate. Where nothing will happen. What then? What should happen then is a Republican focus ...

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...

Boehner hedges on debt limit
Speaker John Boehner isn’t saying he will raise the Debt Limit, but he’s also hedging a bit on how he’ll go about the vote. The Ohio Republican, in a statement, said that he’s been notified that the White House will formally ask to increase the borrowing ability of the Federal Government. Continue Reading Text Size - + reset Politico 44 But he doesn’t exactly respond that he’ll hold a quick vote on the Debt limit. “The American People will not stan...

Repealing health care reform deserves to fail
In their first major act as the House majority, Republicans have set a vote on repealing Health Care reform for next Wednesday.  It is a reprehensible move, and one that will inevitably fail, given Democratic control of the Senate and President Barack Obama's Veto power. With Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, among those leading this disgusting effort, the American People as a whole would suffer big time from Repeal, which would only benefit the ins...

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...

VIDEO: Ted Williams, Man With The 'Golden Voice,' Reunites With His Mom
What is this? We've got one more heart-warming video today involving Ted Williams, who in just a couple days has gone from living on the streets in Columbus, Ohio, to national fame for his "golden voice." Today he saw his mother, Julia, for the first time in about 20 years. MSNBC.com has the video: What is this? Please note that all comments must adhere to the NPR.org discussion rules and terms of use. See also the Community FAQ. You must be logged in to leave a comment. Login / Register More in...

VIDEO: Ted Williams, Man With The 'Golden Voice,' Reunites With His Mom
What is this? We've got one more heart-warming video today involving Ted Williams, who in just a couple days has gone from living on the streets in Columbus, Ohio, to national fame for his "golden voice." Today he saw his mother, Julia, for the first time in about 20 years. MSNBC.com has the video: What is this? Please note that all comments must adhere to the NPR.org discussion rules and terms of use. See also the Community FAQ. You must be logged in to leave a comment. Login / Register More in...

Ted Williams, 'Golden-Voiced' Homeless Man, Reunites With Mother After 20 Years
The last couple days have been emotional for Ted Williams, the 'golden-voiced' Homeless man from Ohio who's won the country over with his story -- and vocal talents. But the most momentous part of the transition from Homeless to YouTube darling came when Williams reunited with his mother Thursday in New York, after 20 years of separation. NBC's "The Today Show" captured the tearful reunion. WATCH: Visit MSNBC.com for breaking news, world news, and news about The Economy Read more about how t...

Department of Education touting leftist radicals
Little Marathon Pundit came home from school a few months ago and told me that she learned that the signers of the Declaration of Independence were all men, all Protestant, and some of them were slaveholders. I quickly clarified matters. One signer, Charles Carroll of Maryland, was Catholic. As for those Protestants, theologically speaking, they were quite a diverse bunch. Most were Episcopalian, but members of the Unitarian, Presbyterian, and the Congregationalist faiths also signed that histor...

It's symbolic, not a gimmick
When the 112th Congress meets for the first time today, they plan to do something unique. They plan to read the Constitution of the United States aloud. Some people are deriding the plan as a meaningless political stunt. I would mock the naysayers by saying that this reading is just as meaningless as the oath of office all congress will take or swearing to “tell the whole truth” when anyone testifies in court. Some people apparently don't have much respect for the Constitution. F...

New York: If They Can Fix It There...
State of the state speeches usually have the feel of New Year’s resolutions. This year, say the Governors, the state will be richer, smarter, better, happier thanks to new programs, new rules, and new ideas. Of course, this year the pronouncements are more sober and dourer. But good times or bad, implementation is always the hard part. That’s where the state of the state Speech from New York’s newest governor, Andrew Cuomo, looks really interesting. He has made governance refo...

Where Are the Atheists in Congress?
Even with a new Republican majority, the religious Makeup of the 112th Congress is virtually identical to that of its predecessor, according to a recent Pew analysis. Catholics are still the largest single Christian denomination—at 29.2 percent of all members—followed by Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians. Mormons have 15 members in Congress, or 2.8 percent of the total, and as far as other religious traditions are concerned, Judaism dominates with 39 members or 7.3 percent of th...

Why Is John Boehner's Gavel So Big?
As outgoing Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi officially handed over her job to John Boehner on Wednesday. In doing so, she gave him the House's symbol of power: the Speaker's gavel. "I now pass this gavel, which is larger than most gavels here, but the gavel of choice of Speaker Boehner," Pelosi said, a cheeky remark that elicited laughter from the Representatives gathered in the chamber. She wasn't kidding. Boehner's gavel is so big, it resembles a croquet mallet. Sadly, it won't be the one...

Flanagan files three-casino plan
Sen. Jennifer Flanagan of Leominster remembers the days and nights lawmakers devoted last spring and summer to formulating an accord on expanded gambling in Massachusetts. And like others around Massachusetts, she can vividly recall the bill’s surprising demise. “I don’t want to see a repeat of last year,” Flanagan told the News Service Thursday, explaining why she filed a three-casino proposal Wednesday, the first day of the new two-year session, and why she’d like...