If you are an individual without employer-provided health insurance that plans to get insurance on the exchange, the existence of the individual mandate (or lack there of) will likely have little or no impact on what you will pay in premiums. The way the new exchange is designed is as follows: If you are an [...]

The House Democratic caucus is truly pathetic. They are, in fact, so pathetic that I’ve been forced to use a thesaurus to find new ways of describing their pathetic behavior: weak, impotent, pitiful, feeble and toothless. Last night, they again folded completely and passed the Senate’s version of the Obama-McConnell tax deal–as is–even though only [...]

On the last Daily Show of the year, Jon Stewart dedicated 14 minutes to the Republican filibuster of a bill that would provide health care to 9/11 first responders who are now suffering from horrible diseases directly as a result of their patriotic sacrifice and the government telling them working conditions were safe. The Republican [...]

It is the nature of American politics and our modern media environment that presidents almost always win political standoffs with Congress, especially when their very public stands seem principled and have popular support. This is why it pains me when people pretend that Obama got the best deal he could on the Bush tax rates. [...]

Women members of Congress contribute significantly to the DCCC’s coffers. But they don’t appear to be getting much for their money.

President Obama, like all presidents, often says he “wants” or is even “fighting” for something, but in fact puts no real effort into actually making it happen. It could be he doesn’t want to spend political capital because he thinks it is a lost cause, thinks it is fairly unimportant, or even doesn’t really want [...]

Calling the behavior of Republicans “hostage taking” has become the new buzz phrase used by both President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders. It is a decent analogy for how the Senate Republicans have exploited the Senate’s rules. The 41 Senate Republicans have used the filibuster and the other horribly broken rules of the chamber to [...]

President Obama couldn’t get his deficit commission to agree on a plan to cut Social Security, so they’re setting up a plan whereby the GOP “makes them do it” as the price of raising the debt ceiling: Congress is expected to vote sometime in the first half of next year on legislation to raise the [...]

If a majority of Democrats won’t vote for the Obama-GOP tax plan, Speaker Pelosi must not bring it to the floor for a vote. So let’s find out where Democrats stand. We’re organizing an EMERGENCY whip count to call Democratic Members of Congress and find out where they stand on the Obama-GOP tax plan.

Now that federal judge Henry Hudson has just struck down the individual mandate in the new health care law, the case will likely end up before the Supreme Court. While I suspect, in the end, the constitutionality of the individual mandate provision will be upheld, this individual mandate is not critical. There are many alternative [...]