Taking the helm

GOP readies budget knives for House takeover
Republicans are sharpening their Budget knives, ready to take over the House when Congress convenes at noon Wednesday. At his first news conference with reporters on Tuesday, the incoming House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, R-Va., previewed the coming year with a promise to make a cut a week to the Budget to pare the $1.3 Trillion Deficit. Cantor described Republicans as "a cut-and-grow majority" that will trim spending and bolster The Economy. The GOP on Thursday will vote on a measure to trim...

"What is failing us is not our people or our places. What is failing us is the expanse of government."
"But we can do something about it right here, right now, today." The biggest applause line in Scott Walker's inaugural address. [Wisconsin's new Governor has called a] special legislative session and told lawmakers he wanted them to approve a string of bills by the end of February.... The bills would: give Tax Breaks to business owners and income Tax Credits for contributions to health savings accounts; reduce business regulations; provide protections from Lawsuits; give the governor more say i...

Scott Walker begins term facing $3B budget shortfall
MADISON, Wis. — Gov. Scott Walker began his term as Wisconsin’s 45th Governor Monday facing a $3 billion Budget shortfall and asked the new Republican majorities in the state Legislature to start work immediately on proposals to improve the state’s economy. The oath of office Walker took Monday from Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abrahamson was ceremonial. He had already been sworn in Thursday by Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen so there would be a seamless transi...

Scott Walker sworn in as Wisconsins 45th Governor
Walker, the son of a Baptist preacher, stressed to the audience the importance of Religious Freedom and the commonalities between all people of faith.  As published in The Wisconsin State Journal, Walker said, “I hope you appreciate the fact that it is not freedom from religion, it is freedom from a state religion that we celebrate.  The great creator, no matter who you worship, is the one from which our freedoms are derived, not the government.” The inauguration ceremony c...

Zandar's Thought Of The Day
Megan McArdle, ladies and germs. I view both parties right now as engaged in a colossal game of chicken. Everyone knows that eventually, we are going to have to do something about the Budget Deficit. So everyone wants to pass Legislation that will be politically toxic to undo. The idea seems to be that when the moment of truth finally arrives, the other side will have to make more concessions. I assume that at some level, Republicans understand that cutting taxes will make it that much more wre...

Wisconsin governor wants two-thirds vote for taxes
Chicago | Tue Jan 4, 2011 6:06pm EST Chicago (Reuters) - Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker unveiled draft Legislation on Tuesday that would require a Supermajority vote in the legislature for Tax Increases. Walker, a Republican who took office on Monday, released several bills to be taken up by lawmakers during a special session that began on Tuesday. The bill dealing with Tax Rates would require a two-thirds vote in each chamber to raise state sales, income or franchise taxes. Currently, a sim...

Obama Administration Hits Back against Health Care Repeal
Tuesday, January 04, 2011 By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Associated Press Washington (AP) - Republican Repeal of President Barack Obama's Health Care overhaul law would take away personal freedoms and put power back in the hands of Insurance Companies, the administration's top health official said Tuesday. House Republicans have scheduled a vote next week to Repeal the law, calling it a job-killing mandate that raises costs all around and promotes government intrusion in decisions that should ...

Jerry Brown Faces Difficult Choices in New Era
That's the theme at LAT, "Brown Sworn in as California's 39th Governor." And as promised, this is my chance to blast California Über Alles again: Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. was sworn in as California's 39th governor Monday — 36 years after first taking the same oath — warning of shared sacrifice and hard choices ahead to help the state out of its Financial Crisis. Striking a serious tone but with a strong undercurrent of optimism, Brown read, uncharacteristically, from prepared remark...

Hundreds protest Walker inauguration, demand jobs
MADISON: Monday's inauguration of incoming Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was the third such event I have attended. I was at both of outgoing Gov. Doyle's inaugurations in 2003 and 2007 and waited to greet him and Lt. Gov. Barb Lawton on both occasions. I did so without any ticket or RSVP. I simply joined a line of citizens wanting to congratulate them. Both Doyle events were notable by their openness. The entire Capitol remained open to the public. Today, only the ground floor was available for pu...

Government Uncertainty Hurts (High Speed Rail) Business
This played out over the holidays so I’m a bit late in coming to it, but Spanish train manufacturer Talgo is converting their new plant in Milwaukee to a maintenance facility set to employ far fewer people following the cancellation of the planned high speed rail line to Madison (and eventually to the Twin Cities) by new Gov. Scott Walker (R). Walker ran against the rail plan and expressed concerns that a Federal Grant of $810 million would commit the state to unaffordable maintenance cos...

Conn. Officials Brace For Possible Budget Cuts
RIDGEFIELD, Conn. (WCBS 880) - As Gov.-Elect Dan Malloy prepares to be sworn in on Wednesday, other Connecticut elected officials are preparing for possible Budget cuts and Tax Increases. Connecticut has a $4 billion Deficit that Malloy will be addressing, and Ridgefield first selectman Rudy Marconi hopes Malloy will give them the bad news up front rather than later down the road. “If they are going to be any areas of reduction—whether it be in Grants or whatever—for gosh...

File under 'can't win'
By Ezra Klein WashPost During the Bush Administration, Democrats made a Big Deal of the Republicans' tendency to pass big initiatives without paying for them. The Tax Cuts, for instance, went right onto the Deficit. So too did the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. The Democrats promised that they'd be more responsible. They'd pay for their big projects. When health-care reform came around, they made good. They cut $500 billion from Medicare, handing Conservatives a potent attack line. They i...

Ah, the Beauty of Collective Choice
You feature a Reuters’s story reporting that “Most Americans think the United States should raise taxes for the rich to balance the Budget, according to a 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll released on Monday….  Sixty-one percent of Americans polled would rather see taxes for the wealthy increased as a first step to tackling the Deficit, the poll showed.  The next most popular way - chosen by 20 percent - was to cut defense spending (“Poll: Tax the rich to ...

Republicans' New Deficit-Cutting Rules Include a Long List of Exemptions
The new House operating rules being proposed by the incoming Republican majority would generally require all bills that add to the federal Deficit to be offset with new Spending Cuts. But they have written in a pretty substantial Loophole for themselves. Under the rule, the “budgetary effects” of a whole slate of Republican legislative priorities would be exempt from the new offsetting rule, including their bill to Repeal the deficit-reducing Affordable Care Act. Here, straight form ...

The Do-Anything Congress
Inside the Beltway, Democrats are touting the achievements of the outgoing Congress.  Historian Alan Brinkley asserted that this is the most productive Congress since the Great Society.  These congratulatory assessments stand in stark contrast to the fact that Democrats, for all their labors, suffered a defeat of such historic proportions that it gave rise to a new word: “refudiation.”  What explains this paradox? First, much of the Legislation passed in the 111th Congress is...

Boehner Gets a Boost From Tea Party
The dozens of fiscally conservative new House Republicans, most calling themselves Tea Party movement members, should help incoming House Speaker John Boehner curb spending and limit appropriators from inserting Earmarks into Legislation, according to some of his advisors. "These new members will bolster Boehner's position," said one key adviser to the GOP leadership. "Not only does he get along with them very well but they think like he does. They want to cut spending and taxes...

States grapple with health care
As House Republicans revive debates of the past with the planned Repeal vote on Health Care reform, their state-level counterparts are quietly pushing into health reform’s future. All states — including those led by Republican governors who campaigned against reform — have implemented at least some of the new law’s provisions. And every state has now received Federal Funding from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The action in the states is a sharp contra...

Midday open thread
The American Taliban in action. Someday, the media will finally abandon the narrative that Republicans give two shits about the Deficit. Republicans' deficit reduction platform, which may have helped catapult them into the majority, is about to run headlong into a hard reality: Many of their key policy goals will increase the deficit dramatically. To get around this fact, they've included measures in their new rules package to exempt some of their biggest legislative priorities from deficit ...

Ahead of the Bell: Factory orders
Orders to U.S. factories are expected to strengthen in November outside of transportation in a further sign that manufacturers will be cranking up production in anticipation of greater spending by businesses and consumers in 2011. Economists at JPMorgan Chase are forecasting that factory orders will post a 0.2 percent increase in November. The Commerce Department will release the report at 10 a.m. EST Tuesday. Economists believe Tax Cuts will give consumers and businesses the incentive to spend ...

Nader to the Times: 'There Is Too a Left!'
In a letter To The New York Times, Ralph Nader takes issue with the paper's editorial asserting that Tea Party victories show there is "no progressive champion" for the poor and powerless. "Hello!" writes Nader. "There are plenty of progressive champions lobbying, rallying, exposing, suing and organizing at the national, state and local level," he says. The problem, he says, is that the Mainstream Media, including The New York Times, fails to cover their efforts. You can understand N...

ND Legislator: Tax Break For Oil Industry Will Be Tough Sell To Citizens Paying $3.20 Gallon
Oil revenue is a key part of the state’s financial health Stenehjem says that the current idea of simplifying the excise tax will be a difficult for North Dakotans to understand “If the bottom line is that we are just going to give Tax Breaks to the Oil Industry it will be a tough sell. If it looks like you are balancing that with incentives that is better but if it is just Tax Breaks that will be a really tough sell when citizens are paying $3.20 per gallon.” I get the feeling...

Obama through the liberal-progressive prism
Barack Obama preceded the lame-duck Congress with his usual vitriolic rants against any policy that would provide Private Sector jobs; a repeat of the Rhetoric of his first two years in office. His animus toward any Republican proposals that would throw a lifeline to the sinking economy was right in line with his strategy of appeasing his political base and paying off contributors, and his core belief of redistribution of wealth. Obama’s default setting is always campaign mode, and he quic...

Quinn, leaders try to map out tax increase
Gov. Pat Quinn and top Democratic legislative leaders spent the morning huddled up behind closed doors trying to craft an income-tax increase that lawmakers could vote on this week. Senate President John Cullerton said he, the Governor and Speaker Michael Madigan are looking for a tax hike that could pass the House. Options range from a 1- to 2-percentage-point hike that could be permanent or temporary. "Whatever it takes for (the House) to pass an Income Tax is what they're talking about rig...

Fed Saw Economy Needing Bond-Buying Program
Federal Reserve officials stuck with the pace of their $600 billion Treasury Bond-buying program last month because The Economy wasn't improving fast enough to make a noticeable dent in Unemployment. Spending by consumers and businesses had improved heading into the final month of 2010, and Congress was on the verge of enacting a tax-cut package that would bolster the economy, Fed officials said. That made them more confident the economic recovery would gain momentum, according to minutes of the...

They Got Tweety: raising taxes doesn't count
They Got Tweety by digby On Hardball this afternoon Matthews was talking about "cut-go" with Todd Harris and Steve Mcmahon, the Tweedledum and Tweedledummer of the Village and he ranted and raved about how both parties promise Spending Cuts to bring down the Deficit but refuse to give any big specific items that would really make a difference. The Republican Harris went on about how "it's going to be tough, it's going to be painful and like I said, I hope entitlements are on the table." (Now ...