Boehner-era begins, Opening day for new House majority

Republicans Drop Some Promises In Rising To Power In House
WASHINGTON — Republicans have already violated some of the vows they made in taking stewardship of the House. Their pledge to cut $100 billion from the Budget in one year won't be kept. And for a coming vote seeking to Repeal the Health Care overhaul, the first major initiative of the new Congress, lawmakers won't be allowed to propose changes to the Legislation despite Republican promises to end such heavy-handed tactics from the days of Democratic control. Is business as usual really b...

Here's hoping Speaker Boehner learns to speak the truth
By R.K. Barry A CNN / Opinion Research poll conducted between December 17 and 19 indicated that 56% of Americans hold either a positive view of Obama's health-care reform or are of the opinion that it is not liberal enough. More specifically, 43% like it as it is and 13% would probably have liked to see a Public Option. That leaves 37% who are opposed because the reform package is too liberal and 7% who have no opinion. Let's be clear here. Of those expressing an opinion, 56% reject the Repub...

The debt ceiling will spark 2011's first fight
Georgia’s congressional delegation became more Republican this year, partly on the promise to Repeal and replace ObamaCare.  Now, as the new congressional term begins, one of the first actions taken will likely be a vote in the House of Representatives for repeal.  This vote, however, will not mark the first real fight of 2011.  The vote for Repeal is likely to pass the Republican-held House, but its chances are far less certain in the Senate, which still has a Democratic ma...

Obama foes target office expenses for cuts (AFP)
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Republicans, the new rulers in the House of Representatives, move Thursday to make good on a campaign vow to slash spending with a mostly symbolic vote to cut lawmakers' office budgets. President Barack Obama's Democrats were expected to join Republicans to pass a bill to slice five percent from House expenses, a 35-million-dollar drop in the roughly 3.6-trillion-dollar bucket of annual US government outlays. Republicans also planned to read aloud from the U...

Applause for John Boehner's First Speech as Speaker of the House (The Atlantic Wire)
WASHINGTON, DC – John Boehner said he was humbled in his first Speech as Speaker of the House Wednesday, which was greeted by a lots of applause. Boehner said he would restore trust to "the people's House," The New York Times' Michael D. Shear reports, and "stand firm" for his party's principles. But despite his Republicans' solid victory in the Midterm Elections, he also pledged to respect the minority party's right to "an honest debate--a fair and open process." Here are the first rea...

House to open with reading of Constitution
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- U.S. House Republican leaders, fulfilling a pledge to make the chamber Constitution-focused, open Thursday's session by reading the document. Historians say the exercise will be the first time the Constitution has been read in chamber although it has been inserted as part of the congressional record. The man responsible, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., told Fox News the reading goes beyond a simple ninth-grade civics lesson. "This is a very symbolic showing to the American...

Pelosi perma-grins and bears it...
Why is this woman smiling? Nancy Pelosi smiled and applauded on the House floor Wednesday afternoon as the clerk read the tally of the vote that formally ended her speakership. She smiled even as 19 of her Democratic colleagues, one-tenth of her Caucus, called out their votes symbolically opposing her as their new Minority Leader. By the time she handed the oversized gavel to John Boehner, her emotional successor as House Speaker, he was weeping with the flow rate of a lawn sprinkler. Yet Pel...

Stand in Awe of the Power of Delusion
Two notes from today’s Morning Jolt, the first under Speaker Boehner… From Nancy the Fancy to Boehner the Saner No matter what you think of John Boehner, there was a nice note to his opening remarks as Speaker of the House: sometimes, less is more. This applies to government regulations as well as to grandiose Rhetoric. In the Corner, Tevi Troy was ebullient: “Speaker John Boehner’s (I love writing that) Speech today hit all of the right notes in focusing on humility an...

AP Pretends GOP Is Breaking Promises
From the professional propagandists at the Associated Press: PROMISES, PROMISES: GOP drops some out of the gate By Andrew Taylor And Calvin Woodward, Associated Press January 6, 2011 WASHINGTON - Republicans have already violated some of the vows they made in taking stewardship of the House. Their pledge to cut $100 billion from the Budget in one year won’t be kept. As is their Fashion, the AP is parroting a New York Times article from yesterday. Which, as we noted in detail, was s...

Who Should Nancy Pelosi Conk On the Head?
Think about it. Pretend you’re Nancy Pelosi yesterday. First take a sedative. Now that you’re calm hear me out. Imagine if you had the gavel in your hand just like Pelosi did yesterday. She was forced to give it to John Boehner but don’t you think she’d love to use it to whack a few people? If you were Nancy Pelosi who would you conk on the head?  Should she conk herself for pushing a partisan agenda that didn’t have the backing of the majority of Americans? Should she con

Morning Bell: Repeal Doesnt Increase the Deficit
When now-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was sworn in as Speaker on January 4, 2007, the National Debt stood at $8.67 Trillion. By the time Pelosi surrendered the gavel to Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) yesterday, the National Debt stood at $14.01 Trillion. At $5.34 trillion, that means Speaker Pelosi added more than $1 trillion in Debt per year during her tenure as Speaker. And yet she has the audacity to tell reporters Tuesday: “Deficit reduction has been a high priority for...

Republicans Want Spending Cuts for Congress, States
Now that Republicans have control of the U.S. House of Representatives and greater numbers in the U.S. Senate, they're ready to make good on campaign promises to cut spending. "We will start by cutting Congress's own Budget," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. The new speaker promised to call weekly votes on Spending Cuts. Individual states, which have been major beneficiaries of Washington, D.C. spending lately, are sure to feel the federal fiscal pinch. By the end of June, some states...

God Bless You Speaker Boehner
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivering her seemingly never-ending exit Speech as she prepared to hand the gavel over to new House Speaker John Boehner. Pelosi seemed to use her remarks to boast about what she considered her accomplishments, sounding much more like a campaign Speech than a graceful stepping aside. Eventually, she got around to John Boehner, praising him as a “skilled legislator” and a servant of the people, and then handed him the gavel as Speaker of the House. There was vis...

John Boehner sets humble tone as he claims House gavel
The clerk called his name twice to vote for speaker, but John Boehner wasn't on the House floor. He didn't have to be, of course. Once the tally was announced, the Republican from Ohio emerged, now officially speaker of the House. He looked up at his wife, two daughters and 10 of his 11 siblings in the gallery above. They were crying, and so was he. This Story A changing of the gavel as 112th Congress is sworn in John Boehner sets humble tone as he claims House gavel Boehner assumes speaker's...

Doctors urge GOP to improve, not repeal, reform law
A pro-reform physician group is asking leading House Republicans to strengthen - and not Repeal - last year’s healthcare overhaul. Doctors for America on Thursday morning delivered a petition, signed by more than 2,000 physicians and medical Students, to the offices of Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) that urged the new House majority to improve the Healthcare Reform law. The petition, delivered less than a week before the GOP is set to vote on a mea

Democrats Plan Attack on Republican Repeal Effort
Source: Washington Post Democratic leaders in Washington plan to spend the next week doing what they all but refused to do during the 2010 Midterm Elections: mount a vigorous defense of President Obama’s Health Care Legislation. The “all fronts” plan is a response to the decision by the new House Speaker, John Boehner, to schedule a vote next Wednesday on a complete Repeal of the Health Care legislation that Mr. Obama signed last March. Senior Democratic officials said their effort will be ma

Cantor: Repeal push is still on
A top House Republican said Thursday that the GOP is going full speed ahead to Repeal President Obama’s Health Care reform to “send a signal” to the American People, even though Senate Democrats have the votes to thwart any rollback. Speaking on several morning TV shows, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said he is determined to keep Repeal of the law in the national spotlight and hold a House vote on the measure next week, particularly as new evidence shows health ca...

Let's Hope So
Posted by John at 7:50 AM Michael Ramirez comments on the transition that took place in the House of Representatives yesterday. If you watched the ceremony--I caught part of it over the lunch hour--his characterization certainly seems fair. Nancy Pelosi embarrassed herself with a rambling, self-promoting, and nearly endless Speech that was accompanied by a weirdly inappropriate affect. John Boehner, in contrast, was brief and sober. Click to enlarge: One of the first tests of the House Republic...

More Dissension Among Georgia Democrats
During yesterday's voting for the Speaker of the House, it was once again the Democrats from Georgia that delivered a message to the national Democrats that everything isn't so rosy in the Peach State for their brand. Following on the defection earlier this year of several prominent Democrats to the Republican party in Georgia, a couple of the representatives refused to go along with the party line and vote for Pelosi to be their leader. Two representatives John Barrow from Savannah and Sanfor...

PROMISES, PROMISES: GOP drops some out of the gate
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio holds up the gavel during the first session of the 112th Congress, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2011. Republicans have already violated some of the vows they made in taking stewardship of the House. Their pledge to cut $100 billion from the Budget in one year won't be kept. And for a coming vote seeking to Repeal the Health Care overhaul, the first major initiative of the new Congress, lawmakers won't be allowed to propose changes to the l...

A changing of the gavel as 112th Congress is sworn in
The House and the Senate have a split personality by design, but Wednesday's debut of the 112th Congress revealed a stark contrast between the two chambers that could define the direction of every major debate over the next two years. This Story A changing of the gavel as 112th Congress is sworn in John Boehner sets humble tone as he claims House gavel Boehner assumes speaker's gavel House Republicans adopt new rules for tax and spending Legislation For GOP freshmen, congressional swearing-in...

Boehner elected House speaker as 112th Congress convenes
Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), taking the gavel Wednesday as the new speaker of the House, promised to work for Fiscal Responsibility while offering "openness" to the chamber's Democratic minority. This Story A changing of the gavel as 112th Congress is sworn in John Boehner sets humble tone as he claims House gavel Boehner assumes speaker's gavel House Republicans adopt new rules for tax and spending Legislation For GOP freshmen, congressional swearing-in is 'game day' Ezra Klein: ...

New DCCC Head: Yes, We Want Pelosi to Be Speaker Again
The NRCC is giddy this morning: Dem campaign chief: Goal is making Pelosi Speaker again House Democrats’ goal is to make Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) the Speaker of the House again, their campaign chairman said Wednesday evening. Rep. Steve Israel (N.Y.), the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), set his goal as nothing short of winning back control of the House in the 2012 Elections. ”We’re all trying to win it back,” Israel said on MSNBC whe...

Behar and Huffington Posts Sekoff Paint GOP as Trying to Ruin and Destroy Health Care
On Wednesday’s Joy Behar Show on HLN, when host Behar asked, referring to House Republicans, "Are they going to ruin Health Care?" guest Roy Sekoff - founding editor of the Huffington Post - referred to a Repeal of ObamaCare as "destroy[ing] health care." Moments later, he also claimed that ObamaCare "will actually lower the Debt," and accused Republicans of being hypocritical for wanting to Repeal it: JOY BEHAR: Let’s talk about what they’re going...

Behar and Huffington Posts Sekoff Paint GOP as Trying to Ruin and Destroy Health Care
On Wednesday’s Joy Behar Show on HLN, when host Behar asked, referring to House Republicans, "Are they going to ruin Health Care?" guest Roy Sekoff - founding editor of the Huffington Post - referred to a Repeal of ObamaCare as "destroy[ing] health care." Moments later, he also claimed that ObamaCare "will actually lower the Debt," and accused Republicans of being hypocritical for wanting to Repeal it: JOY BEHAR: Let’s talk about what they’re going...