NewsTrust - U.S. House of Representatives - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Obama’s Fantasy Budget Suggests Tax Hike Surprise

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 23:49:00 -0700

Bloomberg - By Ramesh Ponnuru, Bloomberg - Apr. 09 - Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor for National Review, where he has covered national politics for 15 years. The problem for Obama is that all he has is drizzle for a policy. His budget plan, as his Treasury secretary admits, doesn’t solve the country’s l

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Scott Brown pulls ahead of Elizabeth Warren in Mass. Senate race

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Christian Science Monitor - Mar. 06 - Sen. Scott Brown, the Republican who famously won the seat held by Edward Kennedy, has built an early lead against Elizabeth Warren in what will be a closely watched race ...

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Antitrust Official Gets Stampeded By Big Beef

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

All Things Considered - Jan. 26 - President Obama's appointee for antitrust issues in the meat industry wanted to give cattlemen more clout against big meatpackers. But he's quitting his job on Thursday. His reform efforts ran into fierce opposition from the country's packers and big cattle producers.

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The GOP's Payroll Tax Fiasco

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By WSJ Editorial Board - Dec. 21 (Opinion) - GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell famously said a year ago that his main task in the 112th Congress was to make sure that President Obama would not be re-elected. Given how he and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the payroll tax debate, we wonder if they might end up re-electing the President before the 2012 campaign even begins in earnest. The GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass. This is no easy double play. Republicans have also achieved the small miracle of letting Mr. Obama position himself as an election-year tax cutter, although he's spent most of his Presidency promoting tax increases and he would hit the economy with one of the largest tax increases ever in 2013. This should be impossible.

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Expanded Visa Law Would Give U.S. World’s Tired, Poor Technologists: View

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:13:00 -0800

Bloomberg - Dec. 01 - Congress works. Or so it seemed for a day this week when the House of Representatives voted 389 to 15 to ease restrictions on the entry of highly skilled immigrants to the U.S. The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2011 was sponsored by conser

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Barney the bully: Congressman Frank’s other legacy

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Dana Milbank - Nov. 30 (Opinion) - The morning after his retirement announcement, Rep. Barney Frank scored an interview on NBC’s “Today” show, gaining the opportunity to act as an elder statesman in front of a TV audience of millions. Instead, the Massachusetts Democrat chose to quarrel with the interviewer.

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DNC chair blames Tea Party ‘tyrants’ for S&P credit rating downgrade

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Hill - By Alicia M. Cohn - Aug. 08 (Opinion) - Alicia M. Cohn / The Hill: DNC chair blames Tea Party ‘tyrants’ for S&P credit rating downgrade — The head of the Democratic National Committee joined Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Monday in casting blame for the U.S. credit downgrade on the Tea Party movement. — Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) …

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Congress Divides on Libya, Moves Toward Key Votes

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Conor Friedersdorf - Jun. 22 (Opinion) - Senators John McCain and John Kerry are from different political parties, but the former presidential candidates have a lot in common: both men fought in Vietnam, voted to authorize the Iraq War, and are now pushing their colleagues to support another war of choice. On Tuesday, they introduced legislation permitting "limited use" of U.S. troops for 12 months in Libya. "It is time to authorize the president's use of force, whether he thinks he needs it or not," McCain said.

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Newt Gingrich’s meltdown on the launch pad

Fri, 20 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Eugene Robinson - May. 20 (Opinion) - “I want to make sure every House Republican is protected from some kind of dishonest Democratic ad. So let me say on the record, any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood, because I have publicly said those words were inaccurate and unfortunate.”

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Obama's Permanent Spending Binge

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By John B. Taylor - Apr. 22 (Opinion) - Americans are clamoring for a fact-based debate about the budget, but the numbers they're hearing from Washington are terribly confusing. Here's an example: Speaking at a Facebook town hall meeting here on Wednesday, President Obama sometimes talked about saving $4 trillion, at other times $2 trillion, and he varied whether it was over 10 years or 12 years, never mentioning any one year.

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On the budget, Obama has Republicans cornered

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Michael Gerson - Apr. 05 (Opinion) - If there were any doubts about the political skills of the new White House team under Chief of Staff William Daley, they have now been satisfied.

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NPR's Toothless Defense Strategy

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Howard Kurtz - Mar. 20 (Opinion) - Steve Inskeep, A veteran National Public Radio correspondent, is calling from Cairo, having just visited a 23-year-old man with welts on his back who says the Egyptian Army tortured him. “That, to me, is a real story,” he says. At a time when he is trying to get flak jackets to his colleagues in Libya, Inskeep has little patience for charges that NPR leans to the left. “What’s important to us is the work we do,” he says. “I actually get accused of being a conservative as often as I get accused of being a liberal.” In Chicago, Ira Glass, who hosts This American Life, has used his own network’s airwaves to challenge his bosses for being timid. “Public radio is being hit with a barrage of criticism that it’s left-wing media–biased, reprehensible—and we’re doing nothing to stand up for our brand,” he tells NEWSWEEK. “They’re not responding like a multimedia organization that’s actually growing and superpopular.” These exasperated reporters are speaking out against their embattled company in what amounts to a revolt in the ranks. NPR, reeling from an undercover sting that cost the network its chief executive and a chunk of its credibility, is facing the biggest threat in its 41-year history. The House just voted 228 to 192 to eliminate the federal funding that makes up 10 to 15 percent of public-radio budgets, an effort fueled by longstanding conservative complaints about NPR’s alleged leftist leanings. But with its future on the line, NPR’s decimated management has opted for quiet diplomacy rather than a full-throated defense of one of the few news operations that is actually expanding, reaching an impressive 27 million listeners a week.

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How Boehner is playing the Democrats

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By E.J. Dionne Jr. - Mar. 07 (Opinion) - Speaker John Boehner is casting himself as the reasonable man fully prepared to reach a deal to avoid a government shutdown. But he also has to satisfy a band of "wild-eyed bomb-throwing freshmen," as he characterized new House members in a Wall Street Journal interview last week by way of comparing them fondly to his younger self.

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Shock wave is coming

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Hill - By Brent Budowsky - Mar. 01 (Opinion) - Those waging war against American workers are winning. Incumbents of both parties will be losing. The next great change election is coming. The economic and political shock wave will be momentous as budget politics will increase joblessness and reveal with brutality that Washington is out of touch with heartland America and dominated by special interests that voters deplore.

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Congress Finally Earns Its Pay

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Kimberley Strassel - Feb. 18 (Opinion) - "Chaos," "a headache," "turmoil," "craziness," "confused," "wild," "uncontrolled" are just a few of the words the Washington press corps has used to describe the ensuing late-night debates. There's a far better word for what happened: democracy. It has been eons since the nation's elected representatives have had to study harder, debate with such earnestness, or commit themselves so publicly. Yes, it is messy. Yes, it is unpredictable. But as this Presidents Day approaches, it's a fabulous thing to behold. And about time. The Democrats' style of management—on ObamaCare, cap and trade, financial regulation, stimulus—was to secretly craft bills and ram through a vote, denying members a chance to read, to debate, to amend. They learned this from former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who infamously micro- managed his GOP majority from 2003-2005. The House had become a place where the leadership called all the shots and the majority saluted. But this week the country witnessed the House coming together to argue over and exercise its foremost responsibility: power over the purse. And from the look of the amendments, both sides were eager to use that funding authority to put the Obama policy machine on notice.

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Ron Paul's economic Rx: a Southern secessionist

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Dana Milbank - Feb. 10 (Opinion) - The Republican takeover of the House put a chairman's gavel in the hands of Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, the gadfly GOP presidential candidate with a cult following. On Wednesday, he used that gavel for the first time - to remarkable effect. The hearing itself was lively - based on Paul's desire to abolish the Federal Reserve and bring back the gold standard - but what really stood out was Chairman Paul's leadoff witness: a Southern secessionist.

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Republicans Fault Democrats on Vote

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Janie Lorber - Feb. 10 (Opinion) - When House Republicans suffered an embarrassing defeat Tuesday in trying to pass an extension of the Patriot Act, they pointed a finger not at defiant members of their own party, but at Democrats who didn’t play along as expected.

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Healthcare repeal would harm women around the world | Michael Williams

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Michael Williams - Feb. 09 (Opinion) - Around the world, people are fascinated by the political tussle between Democrats and Republicans over attempts to repeal the landmark US healthcare bill passed last year. Few people realise, however, that if the new Republican-dominated House of Represe

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The 'dish' Boehner will miss

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Jena McGregor - Jan. 19 (Opinion) - Political pundits have been abuzz in recent days over John Boehner's decision to skip President Obama's state dinner for Chinese president Hu Jintao.

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Ike was right all along: The danger of the military-industrial complex

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Rupert Cornwell - Jan. 17 (Opinion) - If you doubt, half a century on, that Dwight Eisenhower had it right, then consider the advertisements on WTOP, the Washington region's all-news radio station. Every big metro area in the US has one, where car dealerships tout their bargains, and fast food chains promote a new special offer.

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The War On Logic

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Jan. 17 (Opinion) - A Republican report about the “cost” of health care reform points to spending that would have taken place even without reform.

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GOP test: A civil and honest health-care discussion

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By E.J. Dionne Jr. - Jan. 16 (Opinion) - President Obama's call for "a more civil and honest public discourse" will get its first test much sooner than we expected.

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Big business is back in business

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Dana Milbank - Jan. 12 (Opinion) - Fifteen million Americans are out of work, thanks in part to reckless Wall Street activities. Yet corporate profits are at record highs, companies are sitting on vast amounts of cash, and, after a tough two years, business interests are again atop the Washington power structure.

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The Caucus: Ailes to Fox Anchors, 'Tone it Down'

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Michael D. Shear - Jan. 11 (Opinion) - Roger Ailes said Fox News would try to cool the heated rhetoric.

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Climate of Hate

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Jan. 10 (Opinion) - When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?

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