Free Republic

Ted Cruz launched a searing critique of Capitol Hill's bipartisan budget deal on Tuesday afternoon, slamming outgoing House Speaker John Boehner for leaving Congress via a "golden parachute" and accusing GOP leaders of capitulating to President Barack Obama."It is complete and utter surrender," Cruz said. "We now have a GOP Congress, but no one watching this budget surrender would know it." Though dozens of Capitol Hill Republicans have knocked the compromise legislation, Cruz's criticisms stood out from the rest of the pack just a day before he will take the GOP debate stage in Colorado. And they continued his running...

When we presented America's new debt ceiling of $19.6 trillion lasting through March 2017 last week...  ... some took offense saying a debt ceiling deal is nowhere near done, and that the conservatives would at least put up a token fight. A few days later, the deal is virtually complete, the Freedom Caucus has been isolated, Paul Ryan never even got his hands dirty, and Boehner has caved one last time corporate/democratic prerogatives, precisely as we said would happen. Yes, the republicans will pretend to demand concessions, such as a balanced budet and other "sound money" conditions but they...

It's not the ever elusive "grand bargain." But Washington may have solved almost all of its budget problems through the 2016 presidential election. Congressional leaders and the White House came to tentative terms on a major budget deal in the wee hours of Tuesday morning — one that could stave off many of the fiscal land mines remaining through next year's election and beyond. Its passage is far from certain, but it will most likely be the final act for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) before he leaves Congress at the end of the week and hands over the role...

Congressional leaders have reached a breakthrough tentative budget deal with the White House that would set government funding levels for the next two years and extend the nation's debt limit through 2017, avoiding routine talks of a government shutdown. The 144-page bipartisan funding bill, labeled a 'discussion draft,' was posted online just before midnight setting up a potential vote in the House as early as Wednesday. If approved, the agreement would be a milestone after years of gridlock and annual threats of government shutdowns......

House Republican appropriators say they will follow the two-year budget deal reached after the 2013 government shutdown regardless of who wins control of the Senate in November’s elections. Winning the Senate would give the GOP more leverage in spending fights with the administration, but GOP lawmakers have signaled they don't want to open a new bruising war over spending by rolling back the 2013 budget deal, in which Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) agreed to spending caps for the government for the 2014 and 2015 fiscal years. On the cusp of an election that could deliver...

For Florida’s nearly 200,000 military retirees — more than any state except Texas — a budget deal moving through the U.S. Senate Wednesday is projected to shave $20 billion dollars from the country’s deficit in ways that have many veterans organizations outraged. The legislation struck by House Budget Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray has a provision that drops the cost of living allowance for military retirees and disabled veterans to 1 percentage point below inflation. That is, if inflation for a given year is 3 percent, cost of living adjustments will rise only 2...

All those sanctimonious tears shed by Democrats over how the government shutdown hurt Americans? Turns out they were of the crocodile variety. Ed Schultz gave away the game in opening his show tonight. Avoiding another shutdown is "bad news" for Democrats, said Schultz. View the video here.

Republicans in the United States just damaged their chances of winning elections in 2014, while trying to increase their chances. That is what is wrong with the Republican Party: A total failure to properly diagnose or understand the Party’s circumstances cripples it. Obama lied. He broke his promises about ObamaCare. Broken faith is melting the Democrats’ hopes of winning elections in 2014. Obama cannot smooth-talk voters back who no longer trust him and are no longer listening. Republicans had to save the Democrats and throw away the GOP’s advantage for 2014. Republicans broke their own promise to the voters –...

He is the new tax collector for the welfare state. And House Speaker John Boehner’s latest gift to the American people — a 124% tax increase on air travel — can aptly be called The Air Boehner Tax. But first…a short time travel trip. The date: Monday. January 11, 1982 The place: The White House Wrote President Ronald Reagan in his diary of this day: Repub. House Leaders came down to the W.H. —Except for Jack Kemp they are h—l bent on new taxes… Another date: Wednesday, August 4, 1982 The place: The White House. Another entry from Reagan’s diary:...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has not yet committed to supporting the new House-Senate budget deal, which could prove problematic for those looking to lock down 60 votes for the measure. Last week Sanders issued a statement praising the deal for not cutting entitlement benefits like Medicare and Social Security, but as of Monday he has not said he would support a cloture vote on the deal, according to an aide. The budget deal will need 60 yays when the votes to cut off debate comes up on Tuesday. Democratic leaders expect they will get all 53 Democrats on board, according...

House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) misled his colleagues in the House of Representatives about several major areas of the budget deal he cut with Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), Breitbart News has learned. Misrepresentations include serious budget details ranging from how much deficit reduction is actually in the plan to how spending in this plan compares to spending if the current law, the Budget Control Act (BCA), remains the law of the land. The budget deal passed the House 332-94 on Thursday evening, with 169 Republicans voting for it and 62 Republicans voting against...

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), the second-ranking Senate Democratic leader, said Sunday that Republicans jockeying for the White House in 2016 and Tea Party challengers in 2014 have imperiled the budget deal. Durbin estimated that Democrats will lose three members of their caucus on the vote, which means they’ll need at least eight Republicans to cross the aisle and vote with them. The challenge Democratic leaders face in trying to round up the vote has been compounded by the outspoken opposition to the deal from Republicans weighing presidential bids and a slew of Republican primary races in 2014. “A...

While others in these parts have teed off with admirable vigor on House Speaker John Boehner’s oddly shrill anti-conservative budget deal offensive, I’d like to offer a little something to study in contrast: Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) pulling the rip cord and trying to blast herself clear of the ObamaCare tailspin. Here’s the Landrieu ad: [snip] This is all a bit much to swallow given the role Landrieu played in dumping ObamaCare on us, but it’s also amusing to see Barack Obama get a dose of his own Empty Chair medicine. She’s doing what Obama does: pretending she just arrived...

Forget the Dubai Mall or the New South China Mall...THIS is the World's most expensive shopping mall, and as far as our lawmakers are concerned, you can NEVER have enough shoes. Imelda Marcos would be scandalized. Hello Dear Readers. I've been sidelined for awhile by my own inexplicable sense of invincibility. It's beyond comprehension or explanation because my 'bulletproof' teen years are long behind me. So it's lingering immaturity, but in spite of myself and prior warnings, I set up a work ladder underneath the rain gutter on my home to clear them from leaves. The result? While standing on...

WILL WARREN WING SCUTTLE BUDGET DEAL? - Speaker John Boehner delivered on his promise to pass a bipartisan budget bill through the House, and he’s taking plenty of blowback from conservatives for it. But the real test for the two year can-kick seems to be whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can tame an increasingly unruly liberal wing of his own party. Far-left senators like Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Al Franken, D-Minn., Tom Udall, D-N.M. and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., can’t be happy about maintaining more than half of the spending caps from the 2011 debt-limit deal and making...

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Thursday pushed back on criticism to the budget agreement reached with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), saying he wants Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to "read the deal and get back to me." In a post on Breitbart.com on Wednesday, Rubio wrote that the deal would continue to “make it harder for Americans to achieve the American dream.” Ryan was asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”on Thursday what he would say to Rubio. “Read the deal and get back to me,” Ryan said. Rubio was one of the first lawmakers to express opposition to the budget, even before...

With the clock quickly winding down on the legislative year, Congress has cobbled together a budget deal, something they have failed to do since April 2009. The details have yet to be finalized, but many are praising it as a return to regular order, ending the budget brinksmanship that dominated Washington for most of Harry Reid's tenure as Senate Majority Leader. Unfortunately, the budget deal breaches the spending caps created under sequestration-the only measure of fiscal discipline that has made it through Congress in recent years-in exchange for promises of budget cuts down the road. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and...

2013 has not been a pleasant year if you work for the federal government. You’ve been subject to pay freezes, furloughs and shutdowns. One of you got yelled at by a Tea Party Republican at the World War II memorial. And if Congress passes the budget deal announced Tuesday night by Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray – a big if – you will get a final Christmas present: You’ll have to pay more into your pension, an effective wage cut that just adds to the $114 billion, with a “B,” federal employees have already given back to the...

The actual text of the Ryan-Murray budget deal came out late last night, so it’s only now possible to really consider the particulars and see how it looks. It seems to me that the details look a fair bit better than the general outline that had been reported in the press over the past week or so, particularly on the question of whether the entitlement cuts that would replace some discretionary sequester cuts could be expected to actually materialize. As it stands, this strikes me as more or less a very small-scale version of the sort of thing that Republicans...

Nicolle Wallace played the quintessential DC insider on today's Morning Joe, proclaiming herself a "groupie" of both conservative Senator Tom Coburn and liberal partisan David Axelrod, while also saying she was "inspired" by Paul Ryan's leadership in forging a budget compromise deal. But the Sooner senator wasn't letting the inside-the-Beltway bonhomie blunt his criticism, saying the budget deal "sells out" what needs to be done, and gives up "core values." View the video here.