The House Republican leadership is planning to bring up for a vote a “clean bill” to raise the government’s borrowing limit. The House leadership intends for this vote to fail in order to prove the debt ceiling bill can’t pass without reaching some agreement on major cuts in spending. Of course, to “prove” this, Speaker [...]

As last week drew to a close, the Republicans that control only the House of Representatives clearly bested President Obama and the Democrats that control the Senate in the budget fight.  Speaker John Boehner, despite controlling only one third of the relevant institutions in the budget fight, was able to get the President to agree [...]

There are two negatives that stop a hostage taker from shooting a hostage. One is that once the hostage is dead, they lose the leverage to make demands; the other is that without the hostage, the police will come at them without restraint and with the intent to punish them even more severely. Thanks to [...]

It is not unusual for politicians to lie, but, in his efforts to repeal health care reform, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has turned it into a metaphysical art form. In his first press conference as speaker, Boehner was asked to defend his party’s official claim that the new health care law will increase the deficit [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

Yesterday, Ezra Klein pointed out that while soon-to-be-Speaker of the House John Boehner intends to to fight tooth and nail to extend the Bush tax cuts for those making over $250,000, they account for only about one percent of the constituents in his district. There are 238,781 households in John Boehner’s district. There are 2,824 of [...]

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has recently called on President Obama to fire Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Director of the National Economic Council Larry Summers. Now I don’t know how Boehner’s mother raised him, but where I come from, that behavior would be considered downright rude. Where is the gratitude? I think John [...]

Many people are still trying to figure out what exactly Congress voted to do last week when they passed their fake budget. Kagro and Dave Dayen go back and forth here, here and here. But one thing is for certain: if procedural experts are still trying untangle what happened, there is no way 215 members [...]

Alice Rivlin is the chief wonk appointed by President Obama to the debt commission, and has long supported cutting Social Security benefits as a way to address the country’s financial woes. Alex Lawson caught up with Rivlin and asked her about her plans right after his famous interview with Alan Simpson when the commission met [...]