We ran this piece about a month ago, before the steady drip drip drip of Republicans started arguing more or less the same thing.
The basic argument was that House Republicans could limit Obama’s policy victories — and possibly secure some of their own — by caving quickly on income tax rates for the rich. Once the grieving process had run its course, the GOP would find itself in a much stronger negotiating position next year. Obama would still be well short of his overall revenue goal, without a mechanism to force Republicans to yield again on taxes; and the debt limit would allow Republicans to reopen their 2011 playbook and force Obama to cut social insurance programs against his will.
Since then a few things have happened to make me question this analysis: Read More
Speaker Boehner says Congress will never give up the right to regular debt-limit hostage taking.
Filibuster hawk Jeff Merkley (D-OR) circulates memo to colleagues pushing for action on filibuster reform.
Covering the Duke Cunningham scandal was part of what inspired me to launch TPMMuckraker at the end of 2005. Of course, it was the inspiration for the Golden Duke Awards. And it was the inspiration for so much more, with the sheer level of abject corruption (remember the “bribe menu”), sheer boffo and cartoonish misbehavior and clownishness. Coming in 2005, Duke in many ways was the John the Baptist of corruption paving, a voice crying out in the wilderness of Muck heralding the advent of the Muck Messiah Jack Abramoff a year later. Read More
Randy “Duke” Cunningham was just released to a halfway house last week. So this is a special sixth annual edition of our annual Golden Dukes Awards, celebrating, mocking the year’s great feats in public corruption, muck and general bamboozlement. Tomorrow’s the deadline for nominations. Click here to find out how to get in your slate of nominees today.
Gop Pollster: Republicans have “run out of” white people.
Miami businessman Claudio Osorio, the alleged fraudster who had Jeb Bush on his company’s board of directors, turns out to have been a pretty hefty political donor before his arrest last week. His investors say he used that political weight to lure them into a scam.
We’re now into the implementation of ‘Obamacare’ (aka the Affordable Care Act), with most but not all states setting up health care exchanges but some states refusing to do so and leaving the job up to the federal government. It’s extremely complicated process, with a lot of economic and political questions in the mix. This afternoon at 4 PM we’re doing a Live Chat with Health Care policy expert Dr. Len Nichols at TPMPrime. Have questions about the ACA implementation or other health care policy and economics questions, submit them now and then tune in at 4 PM.
Chris Van Hollen says he thinks Speaker Boehner may be stalling fiscal cliff negotiations so he can get his Speakership election out of the way first.