Defeat 6 Weeks Too Late Is Still Sweet

GOP senators kill spending bill over $8 billion in earmarks
Reporting from Washington — Republicans on Friday reveled in a victory over Government Spending that showcased their resolve in the fight over the federal purse. By killing a $1.3-trillion spending bill, the GOP extinguished a sheaf of earmarked expenditures and drew in straying GOP colleagues — even those who had inserted the Earmarks and helped write the bill, which would have funded the government through September 2011. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nevada) withdrew th...

Peter Robinson: 'The Hero of the Hour' on Ricochet.com
Sen. Mitch McConnell. The defeat of the omnibus spending bill in the Senate yesterday represented, as Steve Manacek notes below, an enormous achievement--just enormous. That achievement belongs to the senior senator from Kentucky. To be sure, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina did stout service, threatening to demand a reading of the 1,924 omnibus spending monstrosity, while Sen. John McCain appeared on all the Talk Shows, urging Americans to take to email and Twitter to oppose the outrage. (And...

McCain on DADT
Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), speaking on the Senate floor today, said that when Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell passes, which he acknowledged is likely, there will be “high fives across the liberal bastions of America,” where many have never served or known anyone who has served in the Armed Forces. The will be mistaken, he said. “This is not about the broader Social Issues that are being discussed in society,” McCain said — it’s about what’...

Christmas is That Time of Year...
...when Republicans and corporations think of themselves and each other. People more often than not get Laid Off at Christmas while their former company's executives receive huge Bonus checks. People tend to get evicted around Christmas, as if the most uncharitable and unconscionable elements of society save their worst for the worst time of the year. The Republican Party is just such a case. Out of 42 Republicans in the Senate, only one, Sam Brownback of Kansas, voted for the Zadroga bill that ...

Congress pontificated against earmarks, then then packed bill with pork
Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: Still the prince of pork (AP) More than two dozen senators — most of them Republicans — put hundreds of homestate projects in the $1.3 Trillion bill to fund the Federal Government even though they recently voted to ban so-called Earmarks. The effort to pass the 1,924-page bill collapsed Thursday night after complaints by Conservatives over its complexity and size and the relatively few days to be devoted to debating its merits. Anti-spending tea ...

Reid: DADT vote scheduled for Saturday
Nov. 3: Do Your Best editorial Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, said the initial vote to Repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" will take place on Saturday. (Source: Senate.Gov) WASHINGTON (RNN) - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, scheduled a vote on the Senate's version of a Repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" on Thursday, but a ticking clock could stand in the way of its passage. If the Senate fails to pass the bill as written, without amendments, there is a very slim chance t...

Democrats race clock, try to save programs
WASHINGTON — Two large defense contracts that would produce up to 900 jobs in Lynn and Pittsfield are in jeopardy after the Senate eliminated a major spending bill loaded with Earmarks this week, sending Massachusetts’ congressional delegation scrambling to get the funding added to another Budget bill before the end of their lame-duck session, which is expected to come next week. The programs — a backup engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and 10 new Navy coastal combat sh...

Earmarks foul body politic
Earmarks are perfectly fine if they go to a nice enough project, says Rep. Barney Frank (D-Newton), who helped bring us the worst Financial Crisis since the Great Depression because he also thought subprime Mortgages were fine. I don’t believe this man has ever been right on anything. Think of him as a kind of reverse thermometer. When he says it’s hot, it’s cold. And when he smiles on earmarks, you ought to frown. These devices for localized gift giving came within a whisker ...

What Mattered This Week?
No shortage, right? Final action on the tax deal was obviously pretty important, certainly substantively, and probably politically as well. And, today, we had Cloture (and, soon, final passage) of DADT Repeal. Both of these, by the way, fit nicely into "what mattered this week." These were not inevitable events that finally happened to take place over the last seven days; one week ago, neither of these was at all certain. Two weeks ago, they were totally up in the air. Both, of course, add to...

GOP senators kill spending bill over $8 billion in earmarks
Reporting from Washington — Republicans on Friday reveled in a victory over Government Spending that showcased their resolve in the fight over the federal purse. By killing a $1.3-trillion spending bill, the GOP extinguished a sheaf of earmarked expenditures and drew in straying GOP colleagues — even those who had inserted the Earmarks and helped write the bill, which would have funded the government through September 2011. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nevada) withdrew th...

'Don't ask' repeal moves toward law (Politico)
The Senate on Saturday cleared a crucial hurdle in repealing the Controversial 17-year-old ‘don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on gays serving openly in the Military, all but ensuring the Repeal will become law. The procedural Cloture vote marked a historic – and emotional – moment for the gay-rights movement and handed President Barack Obama a surprising political victory in the closing days of the 111th Congress. The Legislation had been left for dead as recently a...

Will the media hold the GOP up to their fetish standard for "bipartisanship" too?
Will the media hold the GOP up to their fetish standard for "Bipartisanship" too? Today the Senate tries to get much work done, as the Lame Duck session comes to a close -- which includes Don't Ask Don't Tell, the DREAM Act and the START Treaty. I wonder if the media will hold the GOP up to the same Bipartisan standards as they do the Democratic party? I know Villagers were very happy that Millionaires got their Tax Cuts, thereby raising the national Debt which happens to be the Tea Pa...

GOP senators kill spending bill over $8 billion in earmarks
Source: LA Times Republicans on Friday reveled in a victory over Government Spending that showcased their resolve in the fight over the federal purse. By killing a $1.3-trillion spending bill, the GOP extinguished a sheaf of earmarked expenditures and drew in straying GOP colleagues — even those who had inserted the Earmarks and helped write the bill, which would have funded the government through September 2011. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nevada) withdrew the bill Thursday night in t...

A Few Words In Praise of Fear
Today is definitely a love day in my love-hate relationship with the Republicans. A 2,000-page pork-bomb replaced with a one-page continuing resolution? That is some nice work, Senator McConnell. Other words that do not trip easily from my keyboard: John McCain really pulled it through. Something has got into the Republican leadership, and that something is: fear. Wonderful, salubrious fear. For this we can thank the Tea Party movement, for several reasons. The first is that, while our European ...

DREAM Act dies in Senate
The weeks of rallies, Hunger Strikes and sit-ins and the thousands of phone calls placed to Senate offices didn’t pay off for Immigration Activists. The decade-old DREAM Act once again failed to break a Filibuster in the Senate on Saturday morning, effectively killing the bill this year and shutting the door on what perhaps was the last chance for pro-immigration reform Legislation until at least the 2012 election. Continue Reading Text Size - + reset Politico 44 Senate Democrats came...

"Don't Ask" Repeal Gets Past GOP-Led Filibuster
The Senate today overcame a Republican-led Filibuster to move forward with consideration of a Repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," essentially ensuring that the 17-year-old policy of barring gays from serving openly in the Military will come to an end. After multiple failed attempts to pass the repeal, hearings on the issue and reviewing an exhaustive Pentagon study on the matter, the Senate voted 63 to 33 to move the bill forward. The Senate must take one more vote to officially pass the repeal;...

Who Needs Safe Food? Or Health Care?
According to Senate Republicans, Americans don't need to improve the safety of our food supply by increasing the number of food inspections, despite recent outbreaks of food borne diseases and warnings by the USDA about Food Safety? What's surprising about this particular action by Senate Republicans is that it is occurring now after the same food safety bill was previously approved by the House and Senate earlier this month but failed the Constitutional requirement that bills that raise revenu...

The End of Obamaism
Welcome readers, to the beginning of a new political era. This week, three watershed and definable events signaled the end of Obamaism as a governing mandate. On Thursday, Nancy Pelosi's House of Representatives joined with Harry Reid's Senate in approving an extension of the Bush Tax Cuts, from 2001 and 2003. In breathtakingly Bipartisan Fashion, the Senate approved the cuts 83-19. The House similarly affirmed the Legislation 277-148; notable for the 142 Democrats who joined 136 Repub...

Dems' deflated dreams
Scarcely two years ago, the Democratic Party was in the driver's seat. Or so it seemed. Barack Obama had just won the biggest victory by a Democratic Presidential Candidate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and the party had rolled up huge margins in both the House and Senate (eventually gaining the all-important 60 seats in the upper body). Who'd have thought that, 24 months later, Obama would be signing an extension of the Bush-era Tax Cuts that he had demonized in 2008 -- and spinning the hu...

Fed gov't is still in business - for now
The Federal Government is still in business — for now. President Barack Obama signed a bill Saturday morning to fund the Federal Government through Tuesday. Congress passed the measure Friday night. The three-day continuing resolution allows lawmakers to have a weekend at home with their families, but then return to Washington for wrap-up votes in the days before Christmas. House and Senate negotiators will turn their attention to a spending bill to fund the government through early next y...

Food safety bill could die (the one that already passed)
Source: CNN Washington (CNN) -- A sweeping Food Safety bill that passed the House and Senate earlier this year before stalling because of a legislative technicality now will likely die because Republicans object to giving it quick approval in the waning days of the congressional session, Senate leadership aides on both sides of the aisle said Friday. The bill, designed to increase government inspections of the food supply in the wake of recent deadly food borne disease outbreaks, originally pass...

Harry Reid Pulls Massive Omnibus Spending Bill; Mitch McConnell Reacts Video 12/16/10
Here is video of GOP Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell reacting to news that Democrat Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid had pulled the massive $1.1 Trillion Omnibus Spending Bill because he did not have the 60-votes for Cloture - which would bring it up for an Up or Down vote. The massive bill was filled with more than 39,000 Earmarks, and was 1,924-pages long . This means some kind of continuing resolution will likely be needed to fund the Government until the new Congress can act in J...

With big spending bill's demise, is 'earmark' new dirty word on Hill?
Deficit hawks and Watchdog groups see Thursday's demise of an omnibus spending bill in the Senate as a turning point. A critical mass of lawmakers, they say, are committed to an earmark ban. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., holds a copy of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington Thursday. There was no last hurrah for Earmarks - known to supporters as “congressionally mandated spending,” and to critics a...

Begich: Sorry about those earmarks, Alaska
From Erika Bolstad in Washington D.C. -- Earmarks have taken a hit in recent weeks, and only in Alaska would a senator apologize for not being able to deliver them. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaksa, did just that, though, in a letter to Alaska organizations that had earmarks in an omnibus spending bill that fell apart last night. "I am disappointed, plain and simple, since we have worked in a Bipartisan manner to create a bill that contains projects as requested by nearly every Senator," he wrote. "M...

"Dream Act" immigration bill blocked in Senate
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Controversial measure providing a pathway to Citizenship for Illegal Immigrants who came to the United States as Children was dealt a death blow in the U.S. Senate on Friday by Republicans who said it would reward illegal activity. The so-called "DREAM Act" passed the House of Representatives earlier this month, but it failed in the Senate. The Legislation would provide legal residency to Young People who came to the United States illegally before age 16 and who graduate...