The National Review scoops the Senate GOP’s next move, and note in particular the last paragraph: Frustrated by the months of non-stop budget fights, Senate Republicans are set to mount a fiscal counteroffensive this week with the reintroduction of a balanced-budget amendment. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and minority whip John Cornyn are leading the […]

Speaker John Boehner  @SpeakerBoehner House GOP has voted to replace the president’s sequester twice. Here’s why, courtesy @whitehouse: http://j.mp/WzhNgY #obamaquester — Twitter, h/t Politico, Boehner’s office dubs it “Obamaquester,” Feb. 8 Oh, dear.  I guess this is going to be a regular thing.  A few days earlier, our dignified House Speaker created the twitter hashtag #spendingstheproblem. […]

And the plain fact is that Obama has reiterated that the same spending and entitlement cuts he offered in 2011 are still on the table, even irking his own base in the process. — Greg Sargent, this morning That really surprised me, so I clicked the link Sargent offers, which turns out to be to […]

* Don’t forget about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Paul Krugman has the goods on a story that’s getting far too little attention: In filibustering Richard Cordray, Obama’s choice to head the consumer protection bureau, and demanding major changes to the agency, Republicans are trying to transform it into something that’s essentially unable to carry […]

Politico’s Glenn Thrush reports this morning that Republicans believe the GDP report showing the economy is shrinking gives them political “leverage” over Obama, since bad economic news is terrible for the President. But Thrush notes that this shouldn’t be the case, since the contraction was the result of spending cuts, which in theory should undermine […]

This was a throw-down-the-gauntlet speech.   We have ourselves a leader.   —-UPDATE: E.J. Dionne equates this speech with FDR’s second inaugural speech and Reagan’s first one, in its importance. I hadn’t thought of Reagan’s–and of course the substance of today’s speech was the mirror image, the opposite, of Reagan’s–and I wasn’t alive for any […]

Today, in another step forward, the National Review calls on Republicans to take the threat of default off the table: Republicans should recognize that the prospect of default is the Democrats’ chief weapon in their campaign of avoidance. That prospect is not a source of Republican leverage in the debt-ceiling fight; it is the primary […]

[I]sn’t it paramount the president explain to the public what the debt ceiling issue actually is, rather than allowing the Republicans to keep misinforming the public that it’s an increase in budget allocations rather than a payment for budget allocations already made?  This quirk in the law–the requirement that Congress authorize payment of costs already […]

In the wake of the fiscal deal raising taxes only on income over $450,000, Republicans are declaring that the debate over taxes is finished. The next fiscal deal will contain nothing in new revenues. Yesterday, Mitch McConnell said: “The tax issue is finished. Over. Completed. That’s behind us. Now the question is what are we […]

Yesterday in Springfield, Ohio, the crowd listening to Barack Obama booed when the President brought up Mitt Romney and the Republican Congress. That prompted Obama to say: “No, no, no — don’t boo, vote. Vote! Voting is the best revenge.” Romney promptly pretended to be very outraged by this. He told his supporters: “Yesterday, the President said […]