What do Republicans and Democrats have in common? Neither party can seem to muster a bill to head off the sequester looming on Friday. Two proposals were raised in the Senate today to address the sequester. Both failed. The Republican proposal would have let the cuts stand and allowed the President to decide on the…
Wow, all that coffee tonight and I didn’t even need to stay up very late! Almost all of the major networks and media have called the race for President Barack Obama. It appears that the Senate will be controlled by the Democrats and the House will be controlled by the House (as predicted). So, what’s…
Now that the dust is settling a bit on the SCOTUS decision on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, questions are starting to come in fast and furious (no, not that fast and furious). One of the most confusing aspects of the decision hinges on the characterization of the mandate as a tax. If…
You know how when you were a kid, you’d think about something coming up that you were really looking forward to – like Christmas or your birthday or vacation – and then it would come and you were all, “This is it?” The tax deal passed last night in the House. It was kind of…
Word out of the House today was that the controversial tax deal is going to pass with no significant changes. They just aren’t going to do it this afternoon. Last night, the House Rules Committee agreed to a vote that would separately address the estate tax provisions desired by House leadership. The idea was to…
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) indicated just a few weeks ago that a vote on the expiring Bush tax cuts would happen in mid-December. It turns out that the rest of the House is a bit more optimistic than she is: Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) has announced that he expects a vote on Thursday….
Democratic leaders met this week to talk turkey and decided on two things: A vote on the Bush tax cuts won’t happen until after Thanksgiving; and The Bush tax cuts will be extended for those making $250,000 or less. And that’s all we have. That means there’s a lot, obviously, that we don’t know. Here…
Last night, NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff spoke with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) about the upcoming elections and key issues affecting voters. Not surprisingly, tax cuts were at the forefront of the discussing. Speaker Pelosi indicated that she was amenable to considering cutting corporate tax rates: We’re all for putting everything on the table, talking about…
Remember those new reporting requirements for businesses that were tucked away inside the health care bill? “Unpopular” doesn’t even begin to describe the provision. So what’s a legislator to do in the midst of an election year? Repeal the very piece of legislation that you passed earlier in the year. Now you can take credit…
If there’s one thing that both parties in Congress can agree on, it’s that any hope for economic recovery is going to hinge on getting unemployment under control. At the end of 2009, one out of every ten Americans able to work wasn’t working. Fortunately, there’s some good news. Last month, the national unemployment rate…
