Backlash.

“I certainly wouldn’t presume to speak for Harry Reid, but I think he’s starting to get nervous,” Cruz said in an interview with conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh… “I think he’s starting to get nervous because the American people are starting to pay attention,” he said… “There are probably 20 Republican senators in the U.S. [...]

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Let's try this again.

Back in 2011, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa introduced a bill to seriously reform the ailing United States Postal Service — a move to which postal-worker unions and their Democratic allies in both the House and Senate were most vociferously unreceptive, and they effort ended up going nowhere. That was a [...]

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Showdown.

Another one bites the dust. — and largely thanks to a governor who, once upon a time, was an outspoken opponent of ObamaCare. Per Politico: Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer muscled her way to victory in her crusade for Medicaid expansion Thursday, outmaneuvering conservative opposition to push through a key piece of President Barack Obama’s agenda. [...]

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"The IRS simply cannot sustain itself with this overall funding level."

Simple logic via the Weekly Standard: If the IRS is already this corrupt at its current funding level, imagine how much more corrupt it’ll be once there’s less money to pay for oversight and ethical training of IRS employees. By the same token, presumably if we increased the agency’s budget tenfold, we’d see a sharp [...]

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Because that would simply be too much to ask.

I’ve been keeping a weather eye on the Obama administration’s recent resurrection of the very practical attempt to reform the United States’ food-aid programs from the current system that mostly requires the government to buy up food from American producers, and then ship it abroad to poor and/or disaster-stricken zones, to the more efficient method [...]

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Debt.

Via Joel Gehrke, a scene from the intramural debate over the debt ceiling between Maverick and the Paul/Lee/Cruz tea-party coalition. If you read Erika’s post last night, you already know the background. The tea partiers are threatening to block the Senate’s budget from being sent to the House for a conference committee unless Reid assures [...]

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Boom.

Heh. For a quick addendum to Mary Katharine’s earlier post chronicling the continuing Senatorial drama with the indignant claims of procedural “bullying” that Majority Leader Harry Reid is leveling at Sen. Ted Cruz, you know Cruz wasn’t going to take that one lying down. Try if you will, but there’s just no denying that Sen. [...]

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Juice?

After the first 100 days of his second term, President Obama just can’t stop talking about the limits of his own power. At a press conference Tuesday morning, he said he wanted a smooth roll out for ObamaCare, but then added, “even if we do everything perfectly, there’ll still be, you know, glitches and bumps.” [...]

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The new 1%ers.

Actually, Barack Obama’s promise that his tax hikes wouldn’t apply to 95% of Americans expired a long time ago, but his new budget drives a stake right through its heart.  Earlier, I pointed out that Obama had underreported his tax hikes in his new budget proposal by at least half.  Today, the Washington Post looks [...]

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Reforms.

Many of the wildly debt crisis-laden EU countries are currently railing against the oh-so-draconian, unacceptably harsh, and practically inhumane “austerity” budgets toward which their years of state-sponsored profligate living are now herding them, but up in Scandinavia, things are taking a slightly less dire turn. A couple of months back, Mary Katharine highlighted the steps [...]

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And there was much rejoicing.

Curious to see where it is your tax dollars are going on this fine spring day? The Heritage Foundation has a handy infographic with the breakdown: Or, if you prefer, you can check out the White House’s version of your tax receipt, which gets a tiny bit more specific — but conspicuously not that specific, [...]

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Sweet.

The ongoing Slowest Recovery Ever has had our economy growing at only meager rates, and yet the federal government is about to collect record revenues — but President Obama’s budget is chock full of new ideas for still more taxes and still more government spending. The Office of Management and Budget reports that, under the [...]

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Price check.

A not-at-all surprising admission from President Obama’s budget release on Wednesday. We already knew that the administration’s mishandling of the whole situation was going to cost us, but Bloomberg reports on the more exact figures: The $1.3 trillion U.S. health-care system overhaul is getting more expensive and will initially accomplish less than intended. Costs for [...]

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"His budget really lays out kind of a shocking attack on seniors."

Via TPM, I … can’t help sharing Liz Mair’s feeling here: Kill me now. Are we for breaking bank on entitlements? MT @tpm Top R blasts O budget as “shocking attack on seniors” bit.ly/YLRLs2 — Liz Mair (@LizMair) April 10, 2013 Justin Green elaborates: Real talk? Those seniors created this mess. They were born into [...]

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Nevermind.

With the realities of technology and competition slowly but surely rendering much of their ‘business model’ obsolete, the U.S. Postal Service is on the strugglebus. The ‘self-supporting’ government enterprise managed to run up a deficit of $16 billion in 2012 alone, prompting them to once again look for ways in which they might be able [...]

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The Romney Plan?

Another startling look into the mindset of the administration during the ongoing budget negotiations came out of the Sunday morning talk circuit today. This one was picked up by Robert Costa at The Corner and involves senior White House aide Dan Pfeiffer during an interview with George Stephanopoulos. George asks him why the President is [...]

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Mm hmm.

You’ll pardon me if I retain a healthy skepticism. Ah, so that’s why it’s coming a full two months late! Womp. Anyhow, whatever the details are, a proposal that ever actually comes close to balancing in any span of time was always too much to hope for, and he’s throwing in some types of concessions [...]

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ZOMG.

And only two months late, plus conveniently after the Senate Democrats and House Republicans both released their own budgets. President Obama will release his fiscal 2014 budget on April 10, more than two months after it was due, White House principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday. Republicans have lampooned Obama for failing to [...]

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Waste.

As I already mentioned earlier this week, President Obama just unilaterally designated five new national monuments and parks to the federal government’s keeping, and it might be easy to dismiss any partisan objections to his decision as just the complaints of those gosh darn spiteful, stubborn Republicans for whom the president can’t do anything right. [...]

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Phoning it in?

H/t Via Meadia, this Congressman thinks so, and I have to say, my interest is piqued. Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) wants to create a “virtual Congress,” where lawmakers would leverage videoconferencing and other remote work technology to conduct their daily duties in Washington from their home districts. Under a resolution Pearce introduced on Thursday, lawmakers [...]

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Crisis, averted. Kind of.

So… that’s exciting, I guess. Senators voted 73 to 26 to approve the bipartisan budget legislation, which provides just over $1 trillion in budget authority, a level of spending which reflects the spending cuts stipulated by the budget sequester that took effect at the beginning of March. Consideration of this Senate bill – known as a [...]

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Woof.

In his State of the State address in January, Gov. Jerry Brown proudly proclaimed that, “Two years ago, they were writing our obituary. Well it didn’t happen. California is back, its budget is balanced, and we are on the move.” …Which is interesting, because the January unemployment numbers just came in, and California is apparently [...]

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Plus, Pelosi in a bind on entitlement reform?

Ah, yes, but is it seriously seriously? Inquiring minds at the White House want to know! As Barack Obama continues his “charm offensive,” John Boehner isn’t sounding charmed. He tells Martha Raddatz that the House is done with raising revenues after January’s tax hike, and that Obama should be showing more courage than charm: Unfortunately [...]

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Taking a little off the top.

Well, isn’t this just peachy. This is actually the first time I’ve heard anything about it, but apparently, the public servants of the United States Senate have been enjoying taxpayer-subsidized trims and shaves on Capitol Hill since before the Civil War — an oh-so-beloved tradition that, in merely the past fifteen years, has cost taxpayers [...]

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Radicals.

You know, men who would dare to balance the federal budget within 10-28 years, who would ravage federal programs with modest slow-downs in their increased spending, who would bend cost curves to the breaking point…like, four degrees or so. Joel Gehrke reports: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., expressed misgivings about the efficacy of President [...]

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