From TPM Reader CA …
I would like to see TPM emphasize more strongly not just the history of raising the debt limit, but the essential dynamics by which it is made necessary.
Congress passes budgets that are unfunded and require borrowing; Congress must vote to raise debt limit. The President can be described as structurally incidental to this process.
Lindsay Graham (and others) are therefore (as always) lying when they seek to describe the problem as overspending on the part of the executive, and that needs to be hammered home again and again.
It’s not the holiday season without the Golden Duke Awards, TPM’s annual homage to the year’s best purveyors of public corruption, outlandish behavior and The Crazy. (The awards are named in honor of Congressman-turned-inmate Randy “Duke” Cunningham. See the letter Cunningham sent our reporter Ryan Reilly last year.) This is the sixth annual installment of the Golden Dukes! (See last year’s winners here.)
Nominations are due no later than Friday, December 14, 2012.
Submission details after the jump!! Read More
For it doesn’t get better than a Congressman accosting a noisy protestor and threatening to cane him. But that’s just me. Liberal groups down in Florida were protesting 82 year old Rep. Bill Young (R-FL) when one protestor got into Young’s face and it pretty much went down hill from there. Read More
What’s the story with the new social phenomenon of the verite Mitt sighting? The anti-Zelig? Guerilla rebranding? Just deeply weird dude? We’re discussing it at TPMPrime.
Tomorrow at 4pm eastern, Dr. Len Nichols, the Director of the Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics and a Professor of Health Policy at George Mason University, will answer your questions on TPMPrime. Submit your questions right now.
Obama may have them over a barrel on taxes. But Mitch McConnell says Republicans will have the last laugh next Spring with another debt ceiling hostage drama.
Idaho Gov. Butch Otter (R) announced today that he plans to build a health insurance exchange in his state as mandated by ‘Obamacare’. As you may know, many Republican governors, including New Jersey’s Chris Christie have refused to do so — which is an option states do have under the law. In a statement Otter made it clear that his move doesn’t signal an endorsement of the law but rather his “continued determination for Idaho to be actively engaged in making the best possible choices – to the degree we are allowed – in the interest of more accessible and affordable health care for our citizens.” Read More
Eric Holder suggests national standards for conducting elections are “worth consideration.”