Today, Senator Tom Harkin and Representative George Miller offer a ray of light amid the austerity blight in Washington. They are announcing introduction of a bill – the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 – to raise the minimum wage gradually to $10.10 and index it so it adjusts annually with inflation. Their legislation would [...]
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The Speaker of the House last week said that taxing people to pay for government is theft. Let’s look at just where actual theft is occurring. Michael McAuliff and Sabrina Siddiqui covered the story at the Huffington Post, in John Boehner Compares Tax Proposals Of White House To Stealing, We don’t have a revenue problem. [...]
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The “sequester” is a terrible idea. It will do terrible things to the economy and the lives of millions of Americans. It was a terrible idea from the beginning, when it was born of an ugly deal on the “fiscal cliff.” It will be disastrous for the country, and cost up to 1 million American [...]
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Anyone who thinks H.R. 325 -- the No Budget No Pay law that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) wants everyone to believe will do so much and be so important -- will, in fact, make any difference is both falling for Boehner's spin and doesn't understand how the congressional budget process really works.
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Josh Holland has a nice succinct rundown on the possible roadblocks to the immigration reform effort. It's a little bit more complicated than it seems at first. It's hard to know where this is going to go. The President seems to be doing the usual thing of starting out on the center right before negotiations begin, but maybe it will work out this time. Rubio has adopted the Democratic attitude that the Republicans will get big points for making the attempt and the nation --- specifically Latinos, I'd imagine --- will blame the other side for the failure. I think maybe Marco's confused. It's either going to be the Republicans walking away from a deal because it doesn't offer up enough punitive measures, "enforcement", "border security" and offers a much too easy path to citizenship or Democrats walking away because it's too punitive and makes a path to citizenship too difficult.
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Last week, 11 European nations forged ahead to create a new tax while American Republicans walked backward into a no-new-tax trap. On Jan. 22, the European Union gave 11 member countries – including economic giants Germany and France – permission to institute a financial transaction tax, a tiny fee charged on trades of stocks, bonds [...]
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It now looks like the Senate on Wednesday will pass the "no budget no pay" version of the debt ceiling increase that has already been adopted by the House.
This will be the third GOP budget miscalculation, misstep and mistake in a row.
The problem with the no budget no pay plan is that, while the Senate will likely pass its own version of a congressional budget resolution because of the law, will not spur any real action on budget issues. The ultimate result, therefore, will be that the GOP talking point will be gone -- after all, the Senate will have adopted a budget -- but Republicans will have gotten nothing real for allowing the debt ceiling to rise.
Here's why.
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When it comes to beating back extremists, I'm all in favor of living to fight another day, so the idea of kicking the can down the road on some horrible debt deal never seems like the worst thing that could happen. But I can't figure out why everyone seems to believe that by extending the debt ceiling three months the House Republicans have been vanquished for all time. It doesn't sound as if the Republicans believe that.
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Congressional Republicans are really struggling to come up with a strategy for avoiding the blame if they refuse to raise the debt limit, allowing the Treasury to pay off the debts that Congress already voted to incur. Newt Gingrich already warned his party that holding the debt limit hostage again is a “dead loser” because [...]
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I hope Greg Sargent is right about this. It sure sounds like Boehner and McConnell are hedging to me. If they are,then that means any more "offers" from the Democrats to make a "big deal" are offers the Democrats want to make, not ones they have to make.
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