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Capitol Hill talk regarding the Senate deal apparently includes a provision that would take away the Congress’ power to increase the debt ceiling. According to Politico, it looks like the buzz appears to be true.: The plan includes a proposal offered by McConnell in the 2011 debt ceiling crisis that allows Congress to disapprove of the debt ceiling increase, which means lawmakers will formally vote on whether to reject a debt ceiling increase until Feb. 7. Obama can veto that legislation if it passes. If Congress fails as expected to gather a two-thirds majority to override the veto, the debt...

I hate to be rude and I hate to be crass, but you know what, ladies and gentlemen, I've had it. I am sick and damn tired of of voting for a party that mocks me, torments me, and worst of all, collaborates with the fascist pigs in the Democrat party to destroy The United States of America in the name of "bipartisanship". In short, I no longer consider myself a member of the Republican't party. I'm done. The GOP can take a long walk off a short pier. I have had more than my share of being the political...

<p>The Senate Conservatives Fund, which has suggested it might oppose Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in a primary next year, alleges McConnell got a bit of sweetener in the Senate’s plan to reopen the government and extend the debt ceiling.</p>

Rush Limbaugh: GOP ‘so irrelevant’ By: Mackenzie Weinger October 16, 2013 02:25 PM EDT Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday blasted the Republican Party as “irrelevant” and responsible for “creating one of the greatest political disasters” he’s ever seen. “I was trying to think earlier today, if ever in my life I could remember any major political party being so irrelevant,” the conservative radio host said on his show, according to a transcript. “I have never seen it. I have never seen a major political party simply occupy placeholders, as the Republican Party is doing.” Limbaugh slammed the Republican Party for consistently...

The US Senate has passed a bill to reopen the government and raise the federal debt limit, with hours to spare before the nation risks default. The Democratic-controlled Senate's bipartisan compromise won swift approval by 81 votes to 18. It will now be sent to the House of Representatives, whose Republican leadership has begrudgingly said it will support the measure. It comes hours before the deadline to raise the $16.7tn (£10.5tn) limit. President Barack Obama is set to speak shortly at the White House. The deal would extend the federal borrowing limit until 7 February and fund the government to...

Capitol Hill talk regarding the Senate deal apparently includes a provision that would take away the Congress’ power to increase the debt ceiling. According to Politico, it looks like the buzz appears to be true.: The plan includes a proposal offered by McConnell in the 2011 debt ceiling crisis that allows Congress to disapprove of the debt ceiling increase, which means lawmakers will formally vote on whether to reject a debt ceiling increase until Feb. 7. Obama can veto that legislation if it passes. If Congress fails as expected to gather a two-thirds majority to override the veto, the debt...

Buried inside the new stopgap spending bill are several pork project goodies, including nearly quadrupling the maximum price of a dam project on the Ohio River that is turning into a boondoggle — up to nearly $3 billion. The bill also includes $174,000 of taxpayer money being sent to the widow of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg. The death gratuity, which has been paid to widows of other lawmakers in the past, raised hackles since Mr. Lautenberg was a multimillionaire, while the government is $16.7 trillion in debt. But lawmakers did nix one provision that was in an early draft...

At the last GOP conference meeting of the two-week government shutdown, no lawmakers went to the microphones to give their take. Instead, after Speaker John Boehner told Republicans they had “fought the good fight,” they all rose up to offer a standing ovation. “It was one of the easiest meetings we’ve ever had,” says Representative Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina. “I think he has strengthened his position in leadership,” Representative John Fleming says about Boehner. “He hung in there with us. He’s been reluctant to go to these fights and now that we have stood up and fought for our...

Carney announces that now the CR and Debt Ceiling have gone Obama's way, the president is putting "immigration reform" back on the front burner. "It's the right thing for America."

The legislation released by the Senate late Wednesday to reopen the government contains several surprises. The bill includes extra funds to fix flooded roads in Colorado, a $3 million appropriation for a civil liberties oversight board and a one-time payment to the widow of Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who died over the summer. It also includes a more than $2 billion increase in funding for construction on the lower Ohio River in Illinois and Kentucky. Current law authorizes $775 million in spending for related projects, and the bill increases it to $2.918 billion. The Senate Conservatives Fund quickly called that...

A proposal to end the government shutdown and avoid default orchestrated by Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic Leader Harry Reid includes a $2 billion earmark for a Kentucky project. Language in a draft of the McConnell-Reid deal (see page 13, section 123) provided to WFPL News shows a provision that increases funding for the massive Olmsted Dam Lock in Louisville from $775 million to nearly $2. 9 billion.

WHAT AN ASS!!!!!!!!!!!

RUSH: I want to go back to the lady on the phone who says this doesn’t feel right. What’s happening here to the country just doesn’t feel right. You know what’s happened here? You know what this feels like, folks? I’ll tell you exactly what it feels like to me. You tell me if this isn’t close. It feels like we’ve lost a war to a communist country. It’s almost like there’s been a coup. There’s been a peaceful coup. The media has led this coup, and the Democrats have taken over with popular support. We’re getting policies and implementations...

COLLEGE PARK, Md., Oct. 16 (UPI) -- To end the U.S. government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling without accepting any meaningful Republican conditions, U.S. President Barack Obama has resorted to falsehoods, wounded American democracy and damaged U.S. global leadership. The president has accused the House GOP majority of refusing to pay bills Congress has already racked up, not doing its job and defying the outcome of the 2012 election. The $17 trillion outstanding national debt funded past spending and raising the debt ceiling is all about the government spending more than it taxes going forward. The U.S. Constitution requires...

Grover Norquist isn’t happy with the Defunders. The Americans for Tax Reform president told reporters today that they have a lot of apologies to make and bridges to re-build. “It’d be a good idea if they stopped referring to other Republicans as Hitler appeasers because they opposed the strategy they put forward which failed,” Norquist says. “I think if you make a mistake as big as what they did, you owe your fellow senators and congressmen a big apology — and your constituents, as well, because nothing they did advanced the cause of repealing or dismantling Obamacare.” Norquist refrained from...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sat down with MSNBNC anchor Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday to discuss what appears to be a deal which is poised to end the government shutdown and raise the nation’s borrowing limit. She criticized the unfocused Republican members of Congress and praised Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) who she said had been “a master at work” during the shutdown. “Have you ever seen anything quite like this, a battle over what most people felt was nothing — nothing relevant to the issues at hand?” Mitchell asked. “I think that Republicans even forgot what they...

WASHINGTON, DC – House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) released the following statement regarding the bipartisan Senate agreement to reopen the federal government and avoid a national default: “The House has fought with everything it has to convince the president of the United States to engage in bipartisan negotiations aimed at addressing our country's debt and providing fairness for the American people under ObamaCare. That fight will continue. But blocking the bipartisan agreement reached today by the members of the Senate will not be a tactic for us. In addition to the risk of default, doing so would open the door...

Just heard Boehner say this on the hourly news five minutes ago regarding the Senate compromise. Hey John, THERE HASN'T BEEN A VOT IN THE HOUSE YET. You are deciding we didn't win when you can still defeat this compromise which gives us NOTHING! Lead, help...or get the hell out of the way! If you pass this with the Democrates and a minority of Republicans you need to be out as the GOP leader and Speaker of the House tomorrow.

Mark explains what President Obama is really doing - seizing the power of the purse from Congress and taking away their ability to control funding in the government. In essence, this has been a coup by the Executive to limit the power of all other branches so that there are no checks and balances. Obama will set spending levels and veto any bills that fall short of his demands as he threatens to single handedly push the nation into a default. Congressman Louie Gohmert calls in and gives an update on the inner fighting within the House, as nobody really...

<p>Washington (CNN) – There is no daylight between his vote against raising the debt ceiling as a senator in 2006 and his call for Congress to increase the limit in the next 10 days, President Barack Obama said Wednesday.</p> <p>“Nothing has changed,” Obama told WFLA in an interview. “I voted against a debt ceiling increase at the time because I had some concerns about what President (George W.) Bush was doing.”</p>

----"Plan B" and fiscal cliff vote, redux. Having hammered out a deal to shoot back to the Senate tonight -- with most Republicans reportedly on board -- House GOP leadership has been forced to delay or cancel those votes after support among conservatives collapsed in the early evening hours. The rules committee meeting, which would have formally drawn up the bill and advanced it to the full house, has been postponed indefinitely. The reason is simple. They don't have the votes: What happened? The counter-offer's broad outline, which I've been following all day, seemed to be on track. Then the...

House Republicans are in trouble. GOP leadership pulled their bill to open the government and lift the debt ceiling because they didn’t have the votes to squeeze it through the chamber. There will be no vote Tuesday, which means Washington will have one day to lift the debt ceiling before the U.S. government reaches its borrowing limit. It’s unclear what Speaker John Boehner’s team will do next. This could, once again, sideline the House and kick action over to negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The U.S. government reaches its debt limit...

My sources tell me House Republicans have postponed tonight’s vote on their plan to end the fiscal impasse. “The votes aren’t there,” says a leadership aide. “We’ve been amending the bill all day, but we’ve been unable to get people around this strategy.” This development leaves Speaker John Boehner with few options as Thursday’s debt-ceiling deadline nears, and it throws the action back toward the Senate, which has been working on a bipartisan package.

Every time we have a congressional impasse over budgetary issues, we hear from liberals predicting Shutdown-mageddon. Why don't they ever join us in expressing concern over the inevitable financial collapse that will result from their policies? We always seem to hyperventilate over these mini-crises involving the temporary shutdown of small parts of the precious federal government, while we totally ignore the real financial catastrophe we're headed toward unless we begin to move in the direction Sen. Ted Cruz and other congressional Republicans are insisting on in these budgetary battles -- defunding Obamacare, reining in spending and reforming unsustainable entitlements. Indeed,...

<p>States across the country are being told to stop the supplemental nutrition assistance program for the month of November, pending further notice.</p> <p>That’s according to a letter from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Fox 13 obtained a copy from the Crossroads Urban Center in downtown Salt Lake City. Crossroads says if Utah families don’t get food stamps, they’ll turn to the local food pantries, which are already strapped due to the government shutdown. Homeless people Fox 13 talked to, some who use SNAP, say losing food stamps would mean going hungry.</p>

If Washington doesn't reach a deal soon to keep paying its bills, an economic crisis could start unfolding so quietly on Thursday it will give little hint of its potential to throw millions of Americans out of work. Many people would not notice right away if the government hits a $16.7 trillion cap on its debt, which could come on Thursday. But that day will also mark America's passage into a period of heightened risk that its financial sector could freeze up in a panic, dealing a potentially severe blow to the nation's businesses and households. That's because, after then,...

The troops will get paid on Tuesday, but the check after that could come in the form of an IOU if the nation defaults on its debt obligations, Treasury Department officials said. Default on top of the government shutdown would cancel out the hastily-crafted legislation that brought back furloughed Defense Department civilian employees and allowed for the payment of back pay, death benefits, incentive pays, re-enlistment bonuses, veterans disability benefits and survivor benefits. All would be eliminated if Congress and the White House fail to reach agreement on raising the debt ceiling to avoid default on Oct. 17, Treasury Secretary...

The basic framework of the deal Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid have hammered out is coming to light. The provision the GOP is crowing over — that the Obama Administration will check the income levels of those who receive a subsidy — is already the law. Meanwhile, the GOP will let the rest of the year proceed above sequester level spending, give the unions another carve out of Obamacare, and extend the debt limit to February. I’m sure at the last minute they’ll also delay the medical device tax so it looks like Harry Reid caved on something. Really, it’ll...

Democrats may think they've won, but the nation will lose if warnings about spending, debt go unheeded. If congressional negotiators fail to raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government, voters will blame House Republicans, but it's the president and fellow Democrats that are behaving like teenagers by wanting to spend irresponsibly. Studies by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and Medicare and Medicaid actuaries indicate if Washington continues spending and borrowing as current law requires, then all Americans, and not just the wealthy, will be paying higher taxes and more on private health care. Federal spending on Social Security and...

Sarah Palin Obama’s Debt Default is on His Shoulders While We Shoulder His Impeachable Offenses Apparently the president thinks he can furlough reality when talking about the debt limit. To suggest that raising the debt limit doesn’t incur more debt is laughably absurd. The very reason why you raise the debt limit is so that you can incur more debt. Otherwise what’s the point? It’s also shameful to see him scaremongering the markets with his talk of default. There is no way we can default if we follow the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 4, requires that we service our...

Alternate Headline: "Your Move, Mr. Cruz." There is talk of a deal being worked out this afternoon, but I thought I might mention that even if a deal is worked out today or tomorrow, we are almost certainly going to find out what happens when the debt ceiling isn't raised by Thursday. Quite simply, there isn't enough time for the Senate to consider a bill before the Thursday deadline . . . unless there's unanimous consent to waive the Senate rules. Here's what has to happen before the Senate can pass a bill raising the debt ceiling. (1) The bill...

President Barack Obama used his Saturday radio address to press for an end to “this Republican shutdown” and for an increase in the debt limit. “It wouldn’t be wise,” he said, “to just kick the debt-ceiling can down the road for a couple months, and flirt with a first-ever intentional default right in the middle of the holiday shopping season. Because damage to America’s sterling credit rating wouldn’t just cause global markets to go haywire; it would become more expensive for everyone in America to borrow money. Students paying for college. Newlyweds buying a home. It would amount to a...

[Breaking news update 1:15 p.m.]President Barack Obama said Monday there had been some progress in Senate negotiations on a possible compromise to reopen the federal government and avoid a U.S. default as soon as Thursday. And he added that the partial shutdown of the government for the past two weeks was "completely unnecessary," and he blamed the use of "brinksmanship as a strategy time and time again to try to extract extreme or partisan concessions."

As I mentioned yesterday, the medical device tax that went into effect last January is just one of the many insidious job-killing measures contained within ObamaCare, but it is an especially terrible one. The 2.3 percent excise tax is meant to raise a handsome $30 billion to pay for ObamaCare over the next decade, except that, added bonus: It’s going to stifle innovation and competition in an industry that provides all manner of life-saving medical devices, from MRIs to pacemakers to blood tubes. And this hasn’t just been a Republican refrain, by the way. Thursday night, the Senate voted overwhelmingly...

So, a small part of the Federal Government is shut down, for how long I really do not care. Most of the EPA is shut down, so that is nice. Some parks I rarely visit are closed, but the ones I do visit normally close after Labor Day, so I would like to care, but I don't. Maybe the Obama Administration will close the ski slopes I use (they lease their land from the Forest Service), but nothing so drastic yet. Things are about the same, really, so the motivation to write a Shout Bits article is slight at best....

The terms: Government re-opens and is funded until mid-December, debt ceiling is raised for another six to nine months, and Democrats maybe agree to repeal ObamaCare’s medical-device tax and reinstate anti-fraud measures for O-Care applicants — depending upon what Republicans give them in return.Peace in our time? The proposal would set up a framework for larger budget negotiations with the House over the automatic sequestration spending cuts and and other major deficit issues, the sources said…McConnell is still reviewing the offer and is privately huddling with groups of GOP senators Monday who could be key to providing enough votes in...

On the pages of The Washington Post, columnist Kathleen Parker (who poses as a Republican) compared the Republican Party to a fictional mafia crime family and refers to Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz as "Ted bin Laden," an obvious reference to the Osama bin Laden, the Islamist terrorist responsible for the murder of thousands of Americans: In trying to understand the Republican Party’s internal battles, it helps to think of Michael and Sonny. Corleone, that is. … That would be Ted Cruz, the Texas senator who grabbed headlines by speaking for 21 hours against Obamacare. Cruz is neither Michael nor...

After Republicans drifted for years without a pilot, Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have taken the helm of the GOP, steering their party and its grassroots into a much-needed, head-on battle with the Democrats. On the campaign trail on the way to his win in November 2012, President Barack Obama promised to finish the work he’d gone to Washington to do: “fundamentally transforming the United States.” Things look tough for the right in Washington today, but the reality is these three conservative Republicans, aided by friends in the Senate

The Donald weighs in

WASHINGTON — Several Republican senators said Sunday a Democratic request to increase government spending is hurting chances of a deal to end the 13-day-old shutdown. Leaders of the Democratic-led Senate were dismissive of a proposal Saturday, in part, because it kept in place for too long the automatic spending cuts that went into effect earlier this year. Another round of those decade-long cuts -- dubbed the sequester and approved by Congress and the White House in 2011 -- is expected in January. The Republican complaints came as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., spoke...

Liberals have the Democrat Party, Establishment Republicans have the GOP and conservatives have no party that represents them in Washington. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of Republicans who say they’re conservative. There are even plenty of Republicans who will vote like conservatives when it doesn’t matter. But, how many conservatives are actually willing to fight for conservative principles the way Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi fight for liberal principles? In the House and Senate combined, there are a few dozen, tops and the establishment Republicans are incessantly bemoaning the fact that anyone stands up for conservatism. So when...

When Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew testified in the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, urging Congress to enact a new law allowing the administration to increase the federal debt, his description of how the Treasury handles that debt mirrored the Securities and Exchange Commission’s definition of a Ponzi Scheme. “A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors,” says the Securities and Exchange Commission. … On Thursday, Lew candidly told the Finance Committee that the U.S. Treasury will not be able to pay off current government debt-holders...

The United States is just “days away” from causing a global economic disaster unless politicians devise a plan to raise the nation’s debt limit and avoid defaulting, the president of the World Bank has warned. … “We're now five days away from a very dangerous moment,” Jim Yong Kim said in a briefing on Saturday, then the 11th day of the crisis, following a meeting of the bank’s Development Committee in the US capital Washington DC. …

Bob Woodward said that sequestration was Obama's & Lew's idea. Why now is Obama againt it? Why was he for it before he was against it? Why does he flip-flop on his CORE beliefs (raising the debt ceiling, the individual mandate, sequestration, etc)? Not secondary or tertiary beliefs...core beliefs. And why is Lew fearmongering over the debt ceiling? What he has said about it recently has been debunked by Moody's.

You would have had to be under a rock to miss our President stating that recently. He mouthed that repeatedly during the budget debate and the government shutdown. It became his mantra leading up to the impending vote for raising the debt ceiling. The constitutional lawyer was apparently absent the day they taught that we have three co-equal branches of government. More than anything else, Mr. Obama apparently does not understand how the debt ceiling works. President Obama has regularly repeated “I will not negotiate over the full faith and credit of the United States.” Certainly he may mean that,...

Most of the talk on the cable gab festivals regarding shutdown mania has focused on the interplay between House Speaker John Boehner and the President. And rightly so, since all spending bills really are supposed to originate in the House. (Of course, there are little tricks they can use in the Senate to get around inconvenient facts like the Constitution.) But the upper chamber began making noises about taking matters into their own hands this week. “It’s been clear to me for a while we can’t wait for the House to save us,” said Richard Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking...

In his weekly radio address on Saturday, President Barack Obama said the government shutdown needed to end so Congress could work on comprehensive immigration reform. Obama rejected a House Republican proposal that would have re-opened the government and raised the debt-ceiling for six-weeks in return for an agreement on a "framework" on negotiations on more long-term budgetary issues. He said "this Republican shutdown" had to end "because there is so much else we should be focusing our energies on right now" and cited immigration as one of the things the government had to "fix." "We’ve got to create more jobs,...

The centerpiece of the Obama Administration domestic policy has been to raise taxes, raise the debt ceiling, increase spending and expand the welfare state. Indeed the great and glorious “struggle” of Obama, his “progressives” in Congress, and amplified by their media echo chamber, has been the passage of the stimulus package which was a massive increase in borrowing, mostly from the Federal Reserve at interest, in order to mostly bail out government agencies and state governments which experienced a shortfall in revenues due to the recession, and to hand over money to various liberal special interests and corporate cronies. Obama...

[with AUDIO] House Republicans wouldn’t accept a bad deal on the government shutdown and the pending federal debt ceiling negotiations from President Barack Obama, House Rules Committee chairman Texas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions announced. “I will tell you we will not back down, but there is much, much that we must understand about what is out there and how to accomplish it,” Sessions said on an interview set to air on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on Friday night. Hewitt asked Sessions about the possibility of a deal made by the first of the month to ensure the government fulfills certain...