There’s an interesting possibility, even a likelihood, we may see unfold over the coming days. And if it happens, we might find out quickly whether there’s a limit past which consensus opinion, the Wall Street/business interests who hold such a sway over national politics and even elements within the GOP will not indulge this mania. Read More

TPM congressional reporter Brian Beutler will be on Countdown tonight to discuss all today’s budget crisis ridiculousness.

I get that reporters are hungry for color and that members of Congress and their staffs sometimes err when they decide what to reveal. But it’s hard to imagine who was thinking what when House aides leaked to the Washington Post this eye-popping anecdote about a House GOP caucus meeting today in which leadership got their troops pumped up to support the Boehner debt bill with a scene from a gangster film where loyalty trumps morality and justifies brutal assault.

Check out how House Republican leaders are reportedly whipping support for John Boehner’s troubled debt limit bill. Read More

A remarkable thing happened yesterday. Less than 24 hours after Speaker John Boehner went mano-a-mano with President Obama on national TV to flog his own plan for a debt deal, Republicans began rejecting the Boehner plan in a big way. So much so that Boehner, citing other reasons, has delayed a vote on his bill until at least tomorrow.

Here’s our look at which Republicans have sided with Boehner and which have abandoned him.

Maine GOP chair tries to scare state college students from legally voting in the state with threats of felony prosecutions.

The CBO has scored Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-NV) debt plan at $2.2 trillion in savings rather than the advertised $2.7 trillion. But it still comes in with vastly higher savings than the Boehner plan.

So now the Congressional Budget Office has evaluated both the Boehner and Reid debt ceiling plans. Here’s how they score the purported spending cuts over the next 10 years compared to what advocates for the respective plans said that the plans would cut:

Harry Reid’s plan as advertised: $2.7 trillion
CBO projection: $2.2 trillion

John Boehner’s plan as advertised: $1 trillion
CBO projection: $710 billion

Reid still wins, by a large margin. You can see why many Republicans aren’t smitten with Boehner’s plan.

But forget those figures for a moment. Here are the two numbers I’d really like to see: forecasted GDP under each plan and projected unemployment under each plan. That’s a much sounder basis on which to evaluate these plans — and the whole austerity craze — than just … whose is bigger.

South Carolina Tea Party leader who says President Obama’s selling the country a phony birth certificate gets busted for selling pirated software.

Perhaps signs of some movement toward the Boehner debt plan from House conservatives. The hints came from Members leaving a Republican caucus meeting being staked by the press, so you can’t rule out that these backbenchers who had changes of heart were specifically rolled out to stop the bleeding. But notable regardless.

There are some fascinating mutterings out of Capitol Hill over the last few hours. As we’ve noted, the prospects for Speaker Boehner’s debt bill look substantially better this morning than they did last night. And John Stanton has a new piece just out from Roll Call on the dressing-down Republican Study Committee Chair Rep. Jim Jordan (R) got in a caucus meeting this morning for allegedly (but hardly surprisingly) rallying outside groups to help kill the Boehner bill. Read More