The problem with President Obama’s willingness to give into Senate Republican’s “hostage taking” tactics is that it just ends up encouraging them to take more hostages and demand even bigger ransoms. The most recent hostage taker is Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and his latest hostage is the South Korean free trade deal. From The Hill: [...]

In contrast to the analysis by Goldman Sachs and Moody’s Anlaytics–which both concluded the immediate cuts pushed for by House Republicans would significantly reduce economic growth–Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke claimed they would do little harm. The backing of such an important official should be a real boost to Republican efforts to push for immediate [...]

How many times have you heard Democrats claim that “this moment” will be the magical opportunity when they convince the American people to like the new health care law? The newest “opportunity” to win the public over is apparently the House Republicans’ push for repeal. From the Hill: “Our biggest failure was that we passed [...]

Our long-term deficit problem is due basically to the incredibly high cost of health care if we fixed that we won’t have a long term deficit problem. The reason our health care costs so much is that Congress allows providers to engage in practices that rip off the public and the government. A great example [...]

With chances fading quickly that Congress will end the policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” The Hill has concluded this will be a political disaster for Obama. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) may not be able to secure enough votes to pass the bill because of language repealing the ban on gays in the [...]

In case it wasn’t clear to everyone after watching two years of politically driven lockstep obstructionism in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, fresh on the heels of Tuesday’s big Republican victory, has again directly stated that his top goal is to make sure Obama loses in 2012. From The Hill: “Over the past week, [...]

The Senate Republicans have made it clear since the beginning of 2009 they had no desire to reach bipartisan compromise with the Democrats. Instead they choose the surprisingly successful strategy pure obstructionism using a set of broken and arcane Senate rules. By effectively preventing the Democrats from governing (or preventing the Dems from governing effectively, [...]

Spiro Agnew — sorry, Robert Gibbs — says “the professional left is not representative of the progressives who organized, campaigned, raised money and ultimately voted for Obama.” Well, the Obama in the White House is not representative of the Obama who organized, campaigned, raised money and ran for office, so I guess it’s a wash. [...]

The Hill has an article on the Progressive Caucus strategy for dealing with cap & trade.  It leaves the reader to infer quite a bit, so I thought I would helpfully translate. Liberal House Democrats are shifting their political tactics on climate change after failing to secure a public option in the new healthcare reform [...]

Mike Ross (D-Ark) sent a letter to his constituents praising the Baucus bill.

Ross used most of the letter to strongly endorse Conrad’s small, state-based co-ops idea. This should surprise no one given the overwhelming evidence that Ross has been working directly and/or indirectly with Conrad to get the co-ops idea included in the House bill.