It’s telling that a key selling point being used by Eric Cantor to get his caucus behind John Boehner’s debt ceiling bill, is that such a move would call President Obama bluff on his threat to veto any short term increases. From Politico: “The debt limit vote sucks,” he said, according to an attendee of [...]

With less than two weeks until President Obama’s August 2nd deadline for raising the debt ceiling, there seems to be no coalescence around a single solution. If anything, the scope of ideas being discussed seems to grow wider not narrower. There is the $4 trillion grand bargain offered by President Obama. This deal was rejected [...]

It currently appears that the most likely resolution to the debt ceiling situation will be the use of the Mitch McConnell-Harry Reid back up plan. This plan will probably include some form of the Catfood Commission II. A bipartisan commission that would work in secret to come up with a package that would be fast [...]

When progressives wanted the public option fast-tracked through the Senate by putting it in a reconciliation bill, Harry Reid simply choose not to do it. Yet now, Reid is working on a way to potentially allow a devastating package of cuts in Medicare and Social Security to move through the Senate at lightening speed.

The only way cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits can become law as part of a debt ceiling deal is if a significant number of Congressional Democrats vote for those cuts. A bloc of Congressional Democrats can stop these cuts if they simply vote against them, using the leverage they have. Republicans control the [...]

There is no liberal plan that Sen. Joe Lieberman won’t try to scuttle. Now he is pushing cuts in Medicare as a way to reduce the deficit on the backs of elderly Americans. Hell of a guy, isn’t he?

The Senate is so broken that even a bipartisan agreement to limit the number of Senate confirmed appointees gets filibustered.

Looking at the current political environment and gaming out the possible actions that could be taken it seems abundantly clear that progressives best course of action on Social Security is to simply refuse to even think about allowing any changes in the program. Progressives should also follow Harry Reid’s advice by sticking to this “just [...]

Again, some of my darkest predictions about the new health care law are coming true. With businesses again clamoring for corporate tax reduction, the go-to in Pay-Go-obsessed Washington are the affordability subsidies for people who will be using the new health care exchanges. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared that he supported the House Republicans’ [...]

Today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid didn’t just fail to deal with filibuster reform, he totally committed himself to the defense of this disgraceful practice. From his floor speech about his deal with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: Senator McConnell and I both believe our reverance for this institution must always be more important than our [...]