Archive for the ‘Congress’ Category

For all the talk of how America is following in the footsteps of debt-riddled Greece, here is one way our politics is charting a very different course: We are not waiting to reach the very edge of the abyss before moving our parties away from the center.

One of the big stories from today’s primaries, which for the most part have been rendered less than front-page news outside the states holding them any given day, will be whether longtime Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar survives a challenge from tea-party favorite and State Treasurer Richard Mourdock. A recent poll (there haven’t been many of them) suggests Lugar’s time is up.

The headlines will be about the tea party throwing out a respected member of the D.C. establishment in a fit of ideologically pure pique. Yet, increasingly this kind of result is dog-bites-man news — for both parties.

Last month, Pennsylvania Democrats threw out a pair of “Blue Dog Democrats” from the U.S. House. The Blue Dogs, who tried to push laws such as …

Continue reading 2012 Tuesday: Should we worry about the primary losses of moderates? »

A tough slog for Democrats in Georgia may be getting even tougher, thanks to one of their old friends: Cynthia McKinney has filed paperwork to run for Congress in Georgia’s 4th District as a member of the Green Party.

The incumbent, Hank “capsized Guam” Johnson, has made more than his fair share of gaffes since defeating McKinney in 2006 and entering Congress. But compared to her, he’s a statesman of the highest order.

Still, it took a runoff for Johnson to beat her in that year’s primary, and even then she won 41 percent of the vote. This will be a general election, and 41 percent of the Democratic vote would be enough to keep Johnson from winning a majority. The GOP candidate last time out, Liz Carter, won 25 percent against Johnson. Neither she nor any other Republican will win this heavily Democratic district. But the GOP candidate will get enough votes to make it tough for Johnson to beat McKinney — or (shudder) vice-versa — without a runoff. McKinney would need just a …

Continue reading Here we go: Cynthia McKinney is running for Congress again »

Some cheery news from Bloomberg to start your week: The banks that were “too big to fail” just four years ago are now even bigger than before:

Five banks — JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. — held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56 percent of the U.S. economy, according to central bankers at the Federal Reserve.

Five years earlier, before the financial crisis, the largest banks’ assets amounted to 43 percent of U.S. output. The Big Five today are about twice as large as they were a decade ago relative to the economy, sparking concern that trouble at a major bank would rock the financial system and force the government to step in as it did in 2007 with the Fed-assisted rescue of Bear Stearns Cos. by JPMorgan and in 2008 with Citigroup and Bank of America after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the largest in U.S. history.

“Market participants believe that nothing has changed, that …

Continue reading From ‘too big to fail’ to even bigger in just four years »

Last week, I looked at U.S. Rep. Tom Price’s bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. His bill includes a section on tort reform authored by Congressman Phil Gingrey, who, like Price, was a physician before entering politics.

Well, Gingrey and Price aren’t the only doctors-turned-congressmen from Georgia. Paul Broun, who represents much of northeast Georgia in Congress, has submitted his own repeal-and-replace bill, the OPTION Act. It caught the attention of Avik Roy, a health-policy blogger for Forbes, who gave it a fairly positive review as “The Tea Party’s Plan for Replacing Obamacare.”

Some of the OPTION (Offering Patients True Individualized Options Now) Act’s provisions are similar to Price’s Empowering Patients First Act. Both provide for repealing the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare; both change the tax treatment of health care to put those buying coverage in the individual market on equal tax footing with people in employer-sponsored plans; and both allow for …

Continue reading Another Georgia congressman proposes possible Obamacare replacement »

A remarkable show of public opposition this week threw a wrench into the legislative gears in Washington, at least for now.

The Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the Protect IP Act in the Senate were moving along toward passage until campaigns against them, boosted by blackouts by Wikipedia, Reddit and some other websites, grew so strong that lawmakers stopped to reconsider. A dozen members who had co-sponsored SOPA or PIPA pulled their names off the bills. Each piece of legislation seems likely to undergo a significant rewrite before it surfaces again.

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When one or the other does re-emerge, however, the same basic tension — between the rights of digital companies and their users to operate freely …

Continue reading Poll Position: Whose interests to guard in SOPA/PIPA debate? »

There exists a hope that this November’s elections, with such a stark divide between Democrats and Republicans on many issues, will provide some political clarity for at least a couple of years. There’s a chance that comes to pass. Yesterday’s actions by President Obama, however, suggest the more likely outcome is an even nastier, dysfunctional Washington.

I’m talking about Obama’s appointment Wednesday of four officials: three to the National Labor Relations Board, and one as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. He styled these as “recess appointments.” Which wouldn’t be problematic if Congress were in fact in recess. But it’s not: The House and Senate are conducting pro forma sessions expressly to avoid going into recess.

Democrats will point out that Republicans in the House forced this situation to prevent recess appointments, which are constitutional, and which President George W. Bush and others made at times …

Continue reading Obama’s non-recess appointments herald more bickering post-2012 »

National Journal is reporting that the House has backed down and agreed to pass, for now, only a two-month extension of the payroll-tax holiday. The AP and The Hill are reporting the same.

The bill reportedly will be the same as the one the Senate passed with a large bipartisan majority, except for “a technical correction to the language designed to minimize difficulties businesses might experience implementing the short-term, two-month tax cut extension.” As part of the deal, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will appoint conference-committee members to negotiate away the differences between his chamber’s bill and the House version, which called for a full-year textension.

House Republicans made this more embarrassing than they had to, by not backing Speaker John Boehner’s reported pledge to pass the two-month extension in the first place. They had a victory in hand with the agreement by the Senate and President Obama — who’d originally threatened a veto — to include a …

Continue reading Reports: House GOP gives in, agrees to two-month tax holiday »

No one is completely in the right in the Washington-wide temper tantrum over extending the payroll-tax holiday. I don’t understand how Senate Republicans — who voted in large numbers for a two-month extension of the holiday — could have been so far out of step with House Republicans who insist on the year-long extension they’ve already passed.

That said, I have a hard time understanding the sudden conventional wisdom that public opinion about the situation will favor:

a) Senate Democrats, who want to enact a two-month extension offset by a tax on middle-class mortgagees and then spend even more time early next year arguing about the very same issue rather than moving on to other issues — rather than enacting a one-year extension offset by the exact same tax on middle-class mortgagees as well as a reduction in welfare and entitlement benefits for wealthy Americans and illegal immigrants, a pay freeze for federal workers, the auctioning of some wireless spectrum, and a few …

Continue reading The stupid payroll-tax fight isn’t going to benefit anyone »

The debate in Washington about extending the payroll tax holiday has been remarkable. It has managed to put Republicans and Democrats alike in opposition to things they support, and in support of things they oppose. All at little actual benefit to them — or the rest of us.

OK, let’s make that “remarkably bad.”

Here are the basic facts: Last December, as part of a broader deal, the president and the Congress agreed to a one-year reduction of 2 percentage points in employees’ portion of payroll taxes, which are supposed to fund Social Security and Medicare. Leaders of both parties propose extending the holiday through next year. Both have tacked onto their proposal an unrelated extension of unemployment benefits. They have competing plans to offset the extension, which is projected to reduce revenues by $120 billion.

After that, there’s little agreement about anything.

Republicans don’t share President Obama’s obsession with raising taxes on “millionaires and …

Continue reading In payroll-tax debate, both parties rush to abandon principles »

The House is expected to vote today on its version of an extension for the payroll-tax holiday, which would cut spending (the bulk of it years from now) to pay for continuing the 2-percentage-point tax cut in 2012. Also included is an attempt to force President Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline project that has been put on ice while everyone from Big Oil to Big Labor wonders aloud why an administration that says jobs are Job No. 1 would drag its feet on such a huge employment boost.

Here’s part of a preview of the vote, and the reaction it would get in the Democrat-controlled Senate, from Reuters:

Republicans are widely seen as using Keystone as a bargaining chip in their negotiations with Democrats over how to pay for the $120 billion cost of the payroll tax cut. Democrats are pushing for a surtax on millionaires to pay for it, which almost all Republicans reject.

“There will be an agreement,” a Republican aide said.

“It’s just a matter of when,” a top Democratic aide …

Continue reading Payroll tax holiday: A hunch about where this is headed »