We’ve gotten several reader emails since yesterday about our reporting that the budget talks are stalled over “abortion.” They are all similar to this one from a physician-reader:
Hey, I love you guys, BUT!
Please describe the issue of why the government may shut down as about Family Planning and Birth Control, not Abortion. Planned Parenthood and the other clinics are mostly there to prevent abortions by providing birth control.
Don’t buy into the rhetoric please. Call it what it is!
So a quick rundown on what’s going on here: Read More
Harry Reid says Speaker Boehner can take it or leave it. But take a closer look. Reid says Dems have agreed on cuts of $38 billion. I’m not sure anyone outside of a few people in DC are going to care whether it’s $30 billion or $40 billion in cuts (unless your job or program is in that extra $10 billion that gets slashed) but if the Democrats are all the way up to $38 billion, kind of hard to see how Boehner isn’t getting most of the pie that was on the table.
This is the third decade in which Donald Trump has entertained a run for President. Before there was Donald “The Apprentice” Trump, there was so many other incarnations and reinventions and … wives. If you’d forgotten about The Donald in the ’80s and ’90s, take a look:
A tea party freshman congressman explains to TPM why the policy riders are such an important part of the budget negotiations:
“As Republicans, we promised in the pledge to America to cut $100 billion off of Obama’s plan. If we’re going to come back with less than that, we’ve got to come back with some policy riders to say look, I took less than $100 billion, but I’ve defunded Planned Parenthood or abortions in the District of Columbia. Or I’ve ended Obamacare,” Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) said in an interview with our Ryan Reilly this morning.
Far-right Tea Partier Rep. Allen West (R-FL) slams House Republicans for using military personnel as a bargaining chip in budget negotiations.
Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) just spoke to the press a few moments ago. And made a very interesting and cutting claim. It’s all cryptic and as yet we have no response from the Republicans as to whether they confirm this account. But Reid seemed to suggest that he had a tentative agreement with Boehner for a deal but then Boehner or someone on his behalf emailed early this morning saying that he couldn’t convince his caucus to go along with it.
There’s a decent amount of interpretation there. Here’s the verbatim of what Reid said: “I dont know what happened last night. At 4 o’clock in the morning, i got an email saying we’ve tried, but they backed off the number they’d agreed to.”
Are you a federal government employee? A contract worker? A federal contractor?
We want to hear your government shutdown stories — from the preparations for the shutdown through the shutdown itself (assuming no deal is reached before midnight ET tonight).
Shoot us an email at the comments line on the top right-hand side of this page.
And if you’re on the Hill, we want to hear from you, too, as the negotiations enter crunch time.
As always, anonymity assured.
“Donald Trump says Obama wasn’t born here. We’ll show you the evidence, and let you decide.”
That was CNN’s teaser this afternoon for their package on Donald Trump’s new birther evidence. Here’s the package.
Getting worried over the direction of the ‘shutdown’ debate, more than a dozen female Republicans from the House held a snap conference late this afternoon to push back on women’s health, Planned Parenthood front.
We’ve gotten a flood of reader emails in the last couple of hours in response to our request for your shutdown stories. Thanks so much for the responses. Here’s a sample. Keep them coming.