Tag Archives: federal budget

national news, political news

A congressional breakthrough … maybe?

Pelosi-Ryan-jpg

A single dinner involving two political leaders of opposing parties likely doesn’t signal much all by itself.

It might portend a potential thaw in relations on Capitol Hill. I reiterate … it might.

Newly elected House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., invited House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to his Capitol Hill office for a two-hour get-together. They had a meal in the office and talked a little shop and got to know each other a little better.

What does this mean?

It might be a precursor to some actual progress in Congress between political leaders who’ve been fighting each other — often using some intemperate language to describe the other sides’ motives and intentions.

Democrats and Republicans are battling at the moment over a new budget. They did manage to cobble together a five-day stopgap measure that keeps the government running … but only for a short time. More bargaining is due in the next few days for everyone to agree on a $1.1 trillion federal budget that funds the government through most of next year.

Oh yeah. It’s also an election year.

Ryan and Pelosi reportedly don’t know each other well. This meal in Ryan’s office was billed as sort of an ice-breaker.

Where do we go from here? That remains anyone’s guess.

Congress, though, needs to figure out a way to assert its constitutional responsibility to actually govern. There’s been too much fighting between the parties, not to mention between the majority party — that would be the Republicans — and the White House.

The president must share responsibility in this ongoing inability to find common ground. However, just as members of Congress want to take credit for the good things that happen, they also need to take responsibility for the negative occurrences.

Ryan and Pelosi likely aren’t going to become best friends forever — aka BFFs. A dinner, though, well might set the stage for a new working relationship that restores the concept of good government to Capitol Hill.

national news

Speaker’s parting gift to country? A budget deal

boehner

John Boehner is about to leave the House of Representatives’ speakership, but he also is set to leave the country with  thoughtful parting gift.

A two-year budget deal he and the White House hammered out.

What does this mean? It means that President Obama won’t have any more threats of government shutdowns during the remainder of his time in office. It also means — with Congress set to approve the deal — that Boehner is sticking it in the eye of the TEA Party cadre of legislators who have bedeviled him and the White House.

Deal averts crisis

Perhaps the best part of the deal is that is recognizes the need for the United States to honor its debt obligations by increasing the debt ceiling. This is sure to anger the TEA Party folks, who keep insisting on fighting with others in Congress — including the so-called “establishment Republicans” — over whether to honor our obligations or default on them.

Boehner has made no secret of his disdain for this tactic. The pressure from the far right of his party, though, got to him. He packed it in.

The presumed next House speaker, Paul Ryan, is on board with the deal.

Well, I and millions of other Americans will accept the speaker’s parting gift gladly.

 

national news, political news

Obama rising; GOP standing firm

Do you kind of get a sense that a huge political struggle is going to become the hallmark of Barack Obama’s final two presidential years?

The president’s poll numbers are up significantly in recent weeks. Congressional Republicans — feeling pretty flush themselves with their takeover of the Senate after the 2014 mid term election — are going to dig in their heels.

Can Obama keep rising?

Get ready for the fight.

So many fronts. So many battles. So many hassles.

Ah, politics. Ain’t it noble?

Polling suggests Obama is scoring better with some key demographic groups. Hispanics and young voters are approving of the president once again. Hispanics particularly are buoyed by the president’s executive action on immigration.

But as GOP strategists are quick to point out, as noted in The Hill article attached, the president’s base is holding firm right along with the impenetrable ceiling that keeps him from soaring even higher. That ceiling is put there by stubborn Republican resistance to almost every initiative he proposes.

That’s where the GOP thinks it will win the day.

Well, what happens then will be — dare I say it — more gridlock and more “do-nothingness.”

Obama is planning to reveal a $4 trillion budget that will seek tax breaks for middle- and low-income Americans while asking wealthier Americans to pay more. There will be other areas of the budget that are certain to draw a sharp line between the White House and Congress.

The president believes the wind is behind him. Then again, Republicans believe they have the advantage.

All that talk about “working together” is likely to give way — rapidly — to more of what we’ve witnessed for the past, oh, six years.

Get ready for a rough ride, my fellow Americans.

 

Uncategorized

Jobs numbers ‘bad’? Not really

I was preparing myself this morning for a terrible jobs report from the U.S. Department of Labor.

It didn’t arrive. What we got instead was a tally of 148,000 jobs created in September, with unemployment falling to 7.2 percent, the lowest it’s been since November 2008.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/22/news/economy/september-jobs-report/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Are those figures great? No. Are they dismal? No.

I don’t quite know how to describe them. The political hounds on either side will spin it in their direction. Democrats will say the fight over whether to shut down the government hampered hiring. Republicans will say the shutdown didn’t have that much of an effect. Democrats will say 148,000 jobs added means more Americans are working than the previous month. Republicans will say the economy is still too sluggish to be described as being in “recovery” mode.

Hanging over all this is that 16-day shutdown, which delayed the release of the government figures. Maybe we need to wait for the October jobs report to determine what impact the shutdown had, if any.

I’m getting the sense that the mood in Washington is casting a pall over everything these days. Americans are angry at Congress and the White House. Although polling — the scientific kind, not those instant media polls that tell us nothing — tells us Republicans are taking the major body blows as a result of the shutdown and the debt ceiling “crisis.”

That’s the bad news. You want worse news?

The 2014 midterm elections are just around the corner. Get ready for even more politicization.

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Leave health care act alone, poll says

Would it surprise you to learn that a new poll says that Americans do not want Congress to defund the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare”?

It surprised me.

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/most-americans-against-defunding-obamacare-cnbc-survey-4B11231267?ocid=msnhp&pos=7

CNBC’s latest survey suggests, therefore, that congressional Republicans are playing with fire in their attempt to gut a law that Congress approved, President Obama signed and the Supreme Court affirmed.

They contend the law is “failed.” How they know that is beyond me, given that it hasn’t even been implemented yet. Those all-knowing GOP lawmakers, though, are prescient enough to predict what they do not yet know.

The stakes in this game are getting a bit too rich for my stomach. The House has approved a spending measure that takes money away from Obamacare. The president will have none of it. Neither will the Democrats who run the Senate. Failure to approve the spending measure, thus, means the government could shut down.

All this is a precursor to an even bigger battle over whether to boost the nation’s debt ceiling. The tea party goofballs within the GOP don’t want to do that. Never mind that their patron saint, President Reagan, raised the debt ceiling 18 times during his two terms in office (1981-89).

Yep, Republicans are playing with fire, which is going to burn them. I don’t care about that. I do care about suffering the damage myself, especially if my retirement income starts flying out the window.

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Cruz is feeling the heat

Ted Cruz is my favorite U.S. senator. He’s providing so many opportunities to those who like to comment on the state of public affairs.

The latest on the junior Texas Republican lawmaker is that he’s apparently making as many foes as friends — among Republicans, no less — on Capitol Hill. Seems that some of those so-called “establishment Republicans” with whom he serves dislike the fervor with which he’s pushing for a government shutdown as a way to defund the Affordable Care Act.

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/19/20091453-cruzs-steps-into-spotlight-earn-him-backlash?lite

Cruz has been on the job all of seven months and he’s acting as if he’s an expert on the nuances of governing, legislating and deal-making. Then he encounters the likes of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who actually knows about all those things and who says a government shutdown is a patently bad idea. “The problem is the bill that would shut down the government wouldn’t shut down Obamacare,” McConnell told NBC News.

McConnell wants to defund the ACA as badly as Cruz — or so he says — but doesn’t want to punish the entire country to do it.

Cruz, meanwhile, is blustering all over the place about how a shutdown would be good for the country if it accomplishes what he wants, which is to take “Obamacare” off the books.

I haven’t yet mentioned that Cruz is being mentioned as a possible 2016 presidential candidate. That likely explains why the know-nothing senator is hogging the spotlight with his government-shutdown rhetoric.

Cruz forgets that the Senate is full of capable individuals on both sides of the aisle who know how the place functions. Cruz would argue that the Senate’s long-standing traditions are part of the problem and that he wants to change it for the better.

Well, good luck with that, Sen. Cruz. He’s likely learning that good manners still count for something — or at least they used to — in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.

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Now comes the time for negotiation

President Barack Obama has just given his congressional Republican foes something with which to negotiate in the drive to boost the nation’s economy.

Will they take the deal or will they insist – as they seemingly always do – that the president isn’t dealing in good faith, or some such nonsense.

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/domestic-taxes/314497-obama-offers-deal-to-cut-corporate-tax-rate-to-28-percent

Obama has proposed a dramatic reduction in corporate tax rates in exchange for spending on infrastructure improvement, the kind of thing that at least one notable Republican president – Dwight Eisenhower – used to favor.

Now, where I come from, Obama has just given the Republicans who control the House of Representatives and who comprise a sizable minority in the Senate, something upon which to negotiate.

The spending program would produce more jobs for those willing to work on infrastructure improvements – roads and bridges, that sort of thing. Politicians of both parties say they want to put more people back to work. Republicans, meanwhile, insist that corporations pay too much in taxes. Thus, the president has gone the extra mile – maybe two or three – in meeting their demands.

Initial reaction to the plan, as reported by The Hill, is lukewarm at best. “The plan, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) insisted, was ‘an unmistakable signal that the president has backed away from his campaign-era promise to corporate America that tax reform would be revenue-neutral to them,’” the Hill reported.

Maybe McConnell is merely using that response as a negotiating ploy. Then again, maybe it’s just the Republicans digging in their heels yet again on another proposal from their Democratic adversary in the White House.

If it’s the latter, we’re heading for a rocky autumn season, courtesy of continuing GOP intransigence.