One of the best pieces of news I have seen in awhile is that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) is not very optimistic about a grand bargain being reached. He currently puts the odds at less than 50 percent.  From The Hill: The odds of a grand bargain deficit-reduction deal are less than 50-50, Senate Majority [...]

If you were hoping that the sequester being only hours away from taking effect would spur Congress to take action, you are going to be very disappointed. There are currently no serious negotiations taking place. Instead we are still in the kabuki theater phrase. When Congress only pretends to be doing something while trying to [...]

The sequestration cuts maybe one of the worst policies Congress has ever knowingly created yet with each passing day the chance of them actually going into effect grows. We are now three weeks away from the cuts going into effect and Senate Democrats still haven’t even come up with what would be an opening proposal [...]

An old saying goes victory has 100 fathers but defeat is an orphan. So one of the better indications that something is likely to succeed in Washington is how many members of Congress are rushing to claim paternity of a proposal. That is why this report by The Hill that a bipartisan group of House [...]

Unwilling to be the victim of yet another fake hostage crisis, some Congressional Democrats have already begun pushing for a unilateral solution to the debt ceiling. On Friday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi reaffirmed her position that President Obama should simply invoke the 14th Amendment to declare the debt ceiling unconstitutional. From The Hill: The [...]

It hasn’t been stated enough that if members of Congress are really concerned about the negative economic consequences of letting the sequestration cuts go into effect, they can simple take ten minutes to repeal them. There is zero need for a broad deal or a can-kicking back-up plan to address the immediate economic issues.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has played an outsize role at national conventions for both parties for years. He was Al Gore’s VP pick for Democrats in 2000, and he spoke at the Republican convention in 2008 in support of John McCain over Barack Obama. This time around, though, neither party wants him to show up [...]

Senate Democrats are growing concerned about how many extensions the Social Security payroll tax cut has already received and are leaning towards not extending it again when it runs out. From The Hill: “We’re running into this problem. The critics said, ‘You’ll never get rid of it. It’s going to ultimately jeopardize the Social Security [...]

Every time Washington goes through a new bout of deficit hysteria, it’s important to remember that most of the politicians warning about the dangers of the annual deficits or the national debt don’t really care about them. From the The Hill: House Republicans say they have no plans to pay for the extension of the [...]

The Obama administration’s new budget for fiscal year 2013 (begins October 2012) is apparently going to be so bad they have decided to start warning some liberals ahead of time. From The Hill: Top White House officials are warning liberal and labor leaders to brace themselves for President Obama’s budget proposal. [...] “A senior White [...]