Pelosi bows out with a fib: 'Deficit reduction' was 'high priority' (Video)

Republicans vow austerity as they take Congress
Can’t wait for censored version of Huck Finn? Read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim Democrat Nancy Pelosi hands the speaker's gavel to Republican John Boehner as he is sworn in on Wednesday. Sheldon Alberts, Washington Correspondent, Postmedia News · Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2011 WASHINGTON — First came the tears. Then came the tough talk. Ohio Republican John Boehner, sworn in Wednesday as the new Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, vowed to restore fiscal aust...

A Humble Beginning for the 112th Congress
In case you missed it, via the Right Scoop, here’s video of John Boehner’s first Speech as Speaker of the House. You can read the transcript of the Speech here. Here’s an excerpt: “In the Catholic faith, we enter into a season of service by having ashes marked on our foreheads. The ashes remind us that life in all its forms is fragile - our time on this Earth, fleeting. As the ashes are delivered, we hear those humbling words: ‘Remember you are dust, and to dus...

Bipartisan consensus: A good first day for the new governor
Gov. Dan Malloy balanced Connecticut's past glories as an industrial and entrepreneurial power against the challenges of its contemporary fiscal crisis today in a State of the State address praised by fellow Democrats, opposition Republicans, business and Organized Labor. "I was impressed. I think it was a good start," said House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero Jr., R-Norwalk "When we are in these dark days and you have a brand new Governor, regardless of party, you want to see energy, you ...

Good Luck On The Bipartisanship Thing
“We must stand ready to find common ground,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said just before handing an outsize gavel to the new Speaker of the House, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio.). But in interviews off the House floor, several members from both sides of the aisle said that Compromise won’t come quickly, and it won’t be easy. Rep. Carolyn Mccarthy (D-N.Y.) said all the members were going through a period of adjustment to the new GOP majority. "I was in the minority befo...

Bipartisan Consensus: Democrats Looking for Social Security Changes
Many progressive advocates have said that Social Security is under a greater threat now than it was in 2005 with President Bush’s privatization scheme. Why? Because they have to now fend off attacks from both parties. It’s completely normal for the likes of Mitch Daniels to claim that Young People will live to be more than 100 because we will be able to “replace body parts like we do tires,” and so we must raise the Retirement Age. That kind of innumeracy and belief in ...

Opening Session of the 112th Congress -Livestreamed On Facebook
Watching the vote to officially hand the Speaker of the House title over from Nancy Pelosi to John Boehner. Give up the gavel Nancy, you have done enough damage!! At her final Press Conference as House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said, "Deficit reduction has been a high priority for us. It is our mantra, pay-as-you-go." The numbers tell a different story. When the Pelosi Democrats took control of Congress on January 4, 2007, the National Debt stood at $8,670,596,242,973.04. The last day of th...

Pelosi Sets Another Record: Least Amount of Party Votes For Speaker in Over 80 Years
(Washington Times)- When Rep. Nancy Pelosi lost 19 Democrats on Wednesday’s vote to be House Speaker, it marked the worst showing for a party’s nominee in more than 80 years. Mrs. Pelosi won the support of 173 Democrats, but 18 others voted for someone else and one voted “present.” Rep. John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, won the vote with the support of all 241 Republicans who voted. According to figures from the House historian’s office and the Congressional Researc...

WaPo temporarily upset at GOP deficit chicken-hawks
On Sunday, the WaPo editorial pages finally woke up and realized that the GOP isn't serious about cutting the Deficit.. On Monday, Jason Linkins at HuffPo took notice of the belated realization: WaPo Editors Finally Realize The GOP Isn't Serious About The Debt First Posted: 01- 3-11 12:37 PM | Updated: 01- 3-11 08:45 PM For the better part of the past year, the editors of the Washington Post have been generically a-screech with worry over the deficits, and their insistence that the Obama ad...

GOP House Leaders and New Spending Promises
One of the most explicit promises Speaker John Boehner, R-Oh., and the newly empowered Republicans made was to cut Deficits immediately by returning to 2008 spending levels. "Which, if we were able to do with the whole Fiscal Year, would reduce spending by 100 billion dollars," says Representative Mike Pence, R-In. But Republicans won't have a whole Budget year to work with. Congress failed to pass a current Budget even though the fiscal year began last October. So the government is now operatin...

Former Bush Budget Director Mitch Daniels: I Did Not Blow Up The Deficit (VIDEO)
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) -- on the short list of contenders for the GOP's presidential nomination in 2012 -- has an explanation for why the Deficit exploded under George W. Bush. And it's not the massive Bush Tax Cuts, which Daniels helped shepherd as Bush's director of the OMB. "The nation went into a Deficit then because the bubble burst and we had a Recession," Daniels told CNN this afternoon. "It wouldn't have mattered what policies you tried to implement, we were going to have a gre...

Republicans take over House, dilute cuts
By Thomas Ferraro and Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON | Wed Jan 5, 2011 12:45pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans scaled back plans for deep cuts in Government Spending as they took power in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, diluting a key promise that helped them to victory in November's election. A senior Republican also signaled the party could work with the administration of President Barack Obama, a Democrat, to avert a Debt crisis in the coming months. "Our spending has caught up...

John Boehner takes over as House speaker
WASHINGTON -- Rep. John Boehner was sworn in as the 61st speaker of the House as Republicans took control of the chamber Wednesday. He pledged to make the House "honest, accountable and more responsive" to the needs of the American People. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the dean of the House and its longest-serving member, swore in the 20-year Ohio congressman after he defeated the outgoing speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in a 241-173 vote. "The American people have humbled us. They have refreshed our mem...

Hume on Pelosi: It was as if the nations first woman speaker could not quite believe today was not about her
Jeff Poor covers the media for The Daily Caller. He covered business news at the Media Research Center prior to coming to The Daily Caller. Jeff is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama. He is also a political columnist for Mobile, Ala.-based Lagniappe. On the opening day of the new Congress, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke longer than the newly minted Speaker of the House John Boehner. What should one make of that? On Wednesday’s “Special Repor...

House Speaker John Boehner makes a big deal on his first day about being humble.
By John DickersonPosted Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2011, at 7:50 PM ET Usually when politicians come to their big moment they crank up the lofty Rhetoric. They swirl around in the heavens, or do some resolving, or take a backstroke through the great American this or that. Backward run their sentences as Kennedy they try to approach but closer to Yoda they come. John Boehner, the new House Speaker, went the other way. He started in the dust—the Catholic Ash Wednesday ritual of smearing ashes on the...

Eric Cantor's Top 12 False and Misleading Statements in the Last 24 Hours on Twitter
6. "This is going to be a results-driven Congress." EXTREMELY UNLIKELY (It's already started out with a bunch of made-for-TV gimmicks, like voting to "Repeal" Health Care reform, reading the Constitution out loud, etc. How is that "results-driven?") 7. "Government for too long has operated under the flawed assumption that growing bigger & controlling more is necessarily better" WILDLY MISLEADING (Who made that argument? In fact, government for too long has operated under supply siders and Repub...

House adopts new rules
WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 (UPI) -- Lively, partisan debate Wednesday gave way to a vote along party lines, 240-191, to accept new rules for the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives. The new rules of the U.S. House of Representatives either make the legislative process more transparent or obfuscate it, depending on the party speaking in the well. The new rules "establish a Constitution-focused House of Representatives," said Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and sends "a credible signal to families, ...

Send in Your Transpo Questions for the 112th Congress
The new Congress has been sworn in and John Boehner has been elected Speaker of the House, 241-173. Nancy Pelosi has handed him the (strangely over-sized) gavel and he just took the oath of office. In his Acceptance Speech, he stressed fiscal discipline and Spending Cuts. The first vote the new Congress will take will be on new rules governing the Congress, including the one we told you about Monday that would allow Congress to withhold transportation funds. By holding the money in the bank, law...

Republicans retake US House, target expenses
A day after retaking the House of Representatives, US Republicans moved Thursday to make good on a campaign vow to slash spending with a mostly symbolic vote to cut lawmakers' office budgets. President Barack Obama's Democrats were expected to join Republicans to pass a bill to slice five percent from House expenses, a 35-million-dollar drop in the roughly 3.6-trillion-dollar bucket of annual US government outlays. Republicans also planned to read aloud from the US Constitution -- but omit secti...

Republicans retake US House, target expenses
A day after retaking the House of Representatives, US Republicans moved Thursday to make good on a campaign vow to slash spending with a mostly symbolic vote to cut lawmakers' office budgets. President Barack Obama's Democrats were expected to join Republicans to pass a bill to slice five percent from House expenses, a 35-million-dollar drop in the roughly 3.6-trillion-dollar bucket of annual US government outlays. Republicans also planned to read aloud from the US Constitution -- but omit sec...

Boehner moved to tears as he moves to speakership (AP)
WASHINGTON – The chin started trembling partway down the center aisle as the applause rose to a roar. John Boehner, the emotional Ohioan about to become the House's new speaker, took his time, shaking hands with colleagues and their Children on his way to the rostrum. At its foot, the hankie came out. "It's still just me," he told the House after departing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, dry-eyed, handed Boehner his outsized "gavel of choice." It is known to bug Boehner that he can't keep it toget...

Meet the New Boss
The deal is done: With a wave of his new, huge wooden gavel, John Boehner seized control of the House of Representatives. The gavel is an outsized block of wood that looks like the sawed-off top of a sledgehammer, far bigger than the medium-sized one Boehner handed to Pelosi four years ago, made by one of Boehner's constituents in western Ohio and given to the new Speaker as a gift. The symbol of Boehner's new power fits well with his straightforward, old-boy demeanor, which the outgoing Speak...

HUFFPOST HILL - Top O' The Mornin', 112th Congress
Jeez Louise! What a Wednesday!!! First day of the 112th Congress not enough for you??? BOOM!! Robert Gibbs announces he's leaving the White House. Not satisfied yet? KAPOW!! President Obama huddles with the man who might be his next chief-of-staff. Haven't gotten your fix? SHUH-ZAM!! Michele Bachmann is reportedly mulling a White House bid. Still need more? Um...uh...ShamWow!! Russ Feingold is going to lecture Law Students on the precedence of motions and things!!!...Yeah! This is HUFFPOST HIL...

Boehner cries again (and again, and again)
Stumble This! Incoming House Speaker John Boehner -- already famous for his crying stints -- let the waterworks flow Wednesday as he assumed the Speaker's chair from outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi. ABC News reports that Boehner broke out in tears no fewer than three times during the ceremony on Capitol Hill -- once as he walked down the aisle to applause, again as Pelosi read her introduction, and finally as he took the podium. And Boehner was apparently not alone -- his relatives teared up too,...

Ten Questions for Vin Weber
Vin Weber was in the vanguard of conservative change before some Tea Party Activists were born; he won a House seat from Minnesota in the 1980 Republican revolution led by then-President Ronald Reagan. He worked alongside Newt Gingrich in the years-long effort to break the Democrats’ grip on the House. Now a prominent Washington Lobbyist, he spoke with John Harwood of The Times and CNBC about the new Republican majority in the House. Here’s a condensed, edited ...

Bill OReillys First Concern For Speaker Boehner: The Crying Thing
Today rang in a new era in Washington as the Republican majority settled into their places in the House of Representatives and their leader, House Speaker John Boehner , took the gavel away from outgoing Nancy Pelosi . With questions flying about what this takeover (and Boehner’s leadership) would mean for Congress, tonight Bill O’Reilly opened his first discussion with a different concern about Speaker Boehner: the “crying thing,” and what it would mean for his leadershi...