Brian Beutler broke the story of how Obama was working to undermine Schumer’s $1 million tax cut compromise last week, but Glen Thrush fleshes it out even more today. Key graf: But privately, White House officials, who have long viewed Schumer as a talented but essentially self-promotional operator with no abiding loyalty to Obama, think [...]

Ron Paul (R-TX) and Walter Jones (R-NC) wrote a letter to their colleagues urging opposition to KORUS, President Obama’s NAFTA-Style Korea Free Trade deal

The defense authorization bill containing a repeal of the discriminative “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy failed today in the Senate for a second time this year because it could only secure a majority of 57 votes. Once again, the shameful history of the filibuster being mainly a tool of bigots used to crush the rights [...]

The House Democratic caucus voted today to reject the Obama-McConnell tax deal. From Sam Stein: In a meeting on Thursday morning, the House Democratic caucus rejected the president’s proposed deal on the Bush tax cuts but did not fully submarine the possibility of its passage, multiple sources tell The Huffington Post. Members, by voice vote, [...]

Sometimes the often irresponsible behavior of the United States Senate rises to a new, more disgusting level that still manages to physically make me ill. Today, a bill that would provide help finding health care for the 9/11 rescue workers sickened as a result of their selfless actions failed in the Senate because it managed [...]

Statement by the Communications Workers of America on the proposed Korea-U.S. Trade Agreement: Washington, D.C.– In July 2010, delegates to the CWA Convention called on the Administration to renegotiate the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) to enhance “larger societal goals of economic justice, sustainable communities and a sound environment, and human rights, including trade union [...]

USW Opposes Passage of Revised US-Korea Trade Agreement (Pittsburgh) – The United Steelworkers (USW) issued the following statement by its International Executive Board today after concluding an extensive examination of the terms of the proposed agreement: “The Obama Administration has now concluded negotiations with the government of South Korea on the revised terms of the [...]

Statement by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka On Korea Trade Deal For more than a decade, the labor movement, environmental groups, development advocates and others have advocated for a new trade policy that is part of a more coordinated and coherent national economic strategy. The proposed U.S.-Korea trade deal does not live up to that model [...]

Today, in a pathetic attempt at fear mongering to get Congressional Democrats to vote for a massive transfer of wealth to the rich, Larry Summers, Barack Obama’s outgoing National Economic Council chief, told reporters that failure to pass the Obama-McConnell extension of the Bush tax cuts could leed to total DOOM! a double-dip recession. From [...]

President Obama, in an attempt to sell the deal he cut on extending the Bush tax cuts, keeps holding up the one-year payroll tax holiday as his big win. Defenders of the deal, such as Ezra Klein, act like without this deal, there would be no way Obama could have gotten this payroll tax holiday. [...]