Free Republic

**SNIP** Here's a breakdown of the annual salary of members, officers and officials of the House. Salaries have not gone up since 2009, CRS notes. Speaker of the House: $223,500 Majority and minority leaders: $193,400 All other representatives (including delegates and resident commissioner from Puerto Rico): $174,000 Chief administrative officer: $172,500 Clerk of the House: $172,500 Sergeant at arms: $172,500 Chaplain: $172,500 Legislative counsel: $172,500 Law revision counsel: $172,500 Parliamentarian: $172,500 Inspector general: $172,500 Director, interparliamentary affairs: $172,500 General counsel to the House: $172,500 Here's a breakdown of the annual salary of members, officers and officials of the Senate: President...

Full headline: Monumental hypocrisy: Steve King gets slapped down over racial misquote by same Congress that tolerates race-based caucusesBased on Congress’ historic low approval rating, you’ll not likely find many Americans who have much faith in the Legislative Branch doing the right things most of the time. Or even some of the time. Case in point: While pretending to care about furloughed federal workers who have now missed paychecks, claiming their jobs are all-important to the proper function of the country, lawmakers can’t and won’t come together with the president of the United States and work out a deal that...

FRiends, call your U.S. Representative today! Whether Democrat or Republican, all Congresspersons need to hear from the people in their Districts. Keep it short: We need the wall. Approve the funding. The Democratic Party has approved more than enough funding in the past, so quit playing politics with the People's security. Don't know your District or Rep? There's a link for your Congressional District in the thread.

House Resolution 1 — Enforce Federal Control Over State Elections _______ If you thought the midterm elections had problems, wait until you learn about Nancy Pelosi’s plan to terminate state control over American elections. Democrats in Congress have announced their top legislative priority, and it isn’t health care, immigration, or taxes. Instead, they want to centralize power over elections in Washington, D.C. H.R. 1 is number one on the legislative agenda because it is the number one priority of House Democrats, leftist groups, deep-pocketed dark money, and those who use election process rules to help win elections — or at...

FULL TITLE: HOW AWFUL! GOP Lawmakers Vote to Remove Steve King From ALL COMMITTEE POSTS Over COMPLETE LIE by NY Times THEY DID NOT EVEN INVESTIGATE THE REPORT! They just tossed Rep. King off of all committees over a COMPLETE LIE by the liberal media! Republican lawmakers voted to remove Rep. Steve King from all of his committee assignments this session. And it was all based on Fake News by The New York Times.

Does everybody understand Trump is trying to make Congress work like it is supposed to?? That includes citizens calling their representatives and telling them what you want them to do. SO, Have you called or written your Representatives and told them to Fund the wall once and for all and quit kicking this can down the road? They keep making the deal the Democrats want now, open the government first then we will deal with the rest... That is the proverbial football Lucy has been pulling at the last second for my entire voting lifetime now, 35 years. I say...

President Trump is working around the clock during the government shutdown trying to negotiate with Pelosi and Schumer to secure border wall funding. The Democrats however, are partying at a beach resort in Puerto Rico on day 22 of the government shutdown. The Democrats don’t care about the 800,000 federal workers who are currently not receiving a paycheck. Democrat Senator Bob Menendez was spotted hanging out with a bikini-clad “colleague” on the beach in Puerto Rico three weeks into the shutdown without a care in the world. The Hispanic Caucus of liberal Democrats is holding their retreat at a posh...

Members of Congress would not be paid during government shutdowns under legislation introduced Tuesday by Indiana's new U.S. senator. Republican Sen. Mike Braun's first bill, the No Budget, No Pay Act, would prohibit compensation for lawmakers unless they approve annual budget resolutions and all appropriations bills by the Oct. 1 start of every fiscal year. The pay suspension would last until spending bills are passed, and retroactive pay would be banned. Parts of the federal government have been closed since Dec. 22 after the House and Senate failed to reach agreement on continuing federal funding. The central dispute has been...

The Democratic lawmaker — who has represented parts of the Bronx and Westchester County for three decades — added that there “wasn’t a great clamor” from lawmakers to keep the terrorism panel, which was formed after the Sept. 11th attacks. Instead, he said, his committee will focus on what Trump promised Russian President Vladimir Putin during their private meeting last year — and the president’s business ties to Russia and Middle East countries.

My pal Ron thought of this term last night in order to define a new level of dumb. He's so dumb. How dumb is he? He's #acostadumb Cute, huh?

A non-profit group linked to Fusion GPS has ties to a cybersecurity firm recently implicated in a self-described “false flag” operation in the Alabama Senate race. The Democracy Integrity Project, which works with Fusion GPS and dossier author Christopher Steele, partnered before the 2018 midterms with New Knowledge, an Austin-based firm that has been tied to an operation that created fake Russian bots in Alabama’s December 2017 special election. New Knowledge recently produced a report for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and TDIP’s founder was in contact with two Democrats from the committee. A nonprofit group linked to Fusion...

Republicans and Democrats are carrying on in Washington as if the fate of the world depends upon how they resolve the partial shutdown of the federal government. But let's be honest, this is not the Cuban Missile Crisis. A more realistic assessment of the situation suggests that the elected politicians are merely confirming the low opinion voters already have of them. Just 27 percent of voters believe that their representative in Congress cares about what they think. Most (53 percent) believe their own representative trades votes for cash. Moving beyond skepticism of individuals, voters tend to see the federal government...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claims she's a college graduate, having earned an undergraduate degree from Boston University. Apparently, a basic understanding of how governments are structured around the world wasn't a graduation requirement...

Wouldn’t be the worst way this drama could end for POTUS, frankly. Having the party break ranks to thwart him would be momentarily embarrassing but it would bail him out of a potentially thornier situation. If the feds miss a pay period and federal workers start walking off the job en masse, that’d be messy and might force a full presidential surrender. If congressional Republicans start flipping first, that’s much more easily explained. The treacherous RINOs would have proved once again that they’re unwilling to stand and fight. Trump did his part. He was stabbed in the back. Result:...

Most of what has been written about what can be learned from the Trump tax returns has no basis in reality. While the President’s tax returns may be voluminous, his tax returns will yield far more questions than the occasional answer. For example, no tax return identifies lenders or whether the borrower has personal liability; tax returns only identify how much interest is paid. So, if President Trump borrowed funds from Russia or Bank of America, his tax returns would not disclose the lender. The tax returns will also not include the identity of the purchasers of his properties....

Rep. Rashida Tlaib appears to have allowed the media to think that the radical Muslim would be sworn in to office on a copy of "Thomas Jefferson's Koran". The media had previously found Thomas Jefferson's Koran to be a very useful propaganda stunt for making it appear that Islam is as America as... Thomas Jefferson. But then Rep. Rashida Tlaib announced that she hadn't actually used Jefferson's Koran, but an actual Koran. Despite her announcement, many media outlets didn't bother correcting their fake news. But that's typical of the media, which acts as the communications arm for the most radical...

Nancy Pelosi said it looks as if Trump just wants to abolish Congress and that a border wall is immoral. Elizabeth Warren says the Republican Party is corrupt and caters to the rich and powerful .... Here is just a small sample of what Pelosi, Warren, Obama, the Clintons, and other Democrats have done over the years where the media and other Democrats not only didn't care, but supported the moves wholeheartedly. Obama, the authoritarian, couldn't get DACA through Congress, so he dictatorially and unconstitutionally implemented it. Pelosi didn't care about Obama usurping congressional authority. ... The immoral and corrupt...

The left wing of the Democrats is playing with fire, advocating revenge against those who have succeeded in making a lot of money by taking almost all of it away.  Yesterday, a probable candidate for president (and a former Obama Cabinet member) one-upped even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who broke the ice on public discussion of stratospheric income tax rates by suggesting a marginal 70% federal rate on incomes of ten million and up.  That would yield an effective rate over 80% for residents of New York and California, the states that produce the highest number of super-earners. Julián Castro, the former mayor of San...

WASHINGTON – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested in a Sunday sit-down that President Trump would like to “abolish” Congress. “The impression you get from the president is he would like to not only close government, build a wall, but also abolish Congress, so the only voice that mattered was his own,” Pelosi said in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” host Jane Pauley. Pauley asked if it was “bluster” when the president told Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other Congressional leaders at a meeting Friday that he would keep the government closed for months or even...

“[Madam] Speaker is the proper way to address Nancy Pelosi”, CBS host Jane Pauley instructed viewers as she led into her gooey puff piece interview with the California Democrat featured on the network’s Sunday Morning. How gushy was the interview with the new Speaker? Well, it could be argued that the toughest question Pauley asked was about whether or not Pelosi could work with President Trump. The video began with Pauley hyping how “Nancy Pelosi capped her comeback this past week surrounded by children”, (a.k.a political props). If that didn’t set the tone for what was to come, then the...