Tag: john boehner
Taking a beating on budget compromise, Boehner turns up heat on...
Conservative celebrity Sarah Palin and right-wing blogger Erick Erickson are just two of the high profile far-right leaders disparaging Speaker of the House John Boehner for the budget deal he hammered out with President Obama and Democratic Senate leaders last week. Colorado "liberty movement" talk radio hosts are unhappy. Colorado Tea Party freshmen Congressmen Scott Tipton and Cory Gardner as well as Colorado Springs conservative Doug Lamborn broke with the Speaker and voted against the budget. But Boehner can't go back on the deal and he won't likely win over the Tiptons and Palins and Ericksons with a lecture on the delayed gratification of budget cutting and the difference between outlays and spending. On the contrary, it would just make him seem more establishment. So instead, Boehner followed the lead of GOP presidential hopefuls and took a provocative and distracting stand against gay rights.
Republican opposition mounts to budget deal ahead of congressional vote
U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told POLITICO he would “get there” on corralling Republican votes for the budget deal that averted a government shutdown last weekend, but since the details of the plan were made public, conservatives have grown increasingly agitated.
‘Patriotic Millionaires’ battle Tea Party-fueled ‘war on the weak’
It's tax time 2011, which means it's the second anniversary of the Tea Party. It's also nearly a week after the first great Washington budget battle of the Tea Party-era in what's sure to be a series of similar battles pitting the Republican-controlled House against the Democratic-controlled Senate and President Obama. Indeed, as many of its critics have noted, the controversial GOP budget plan written by Wisconsin Tea Party-Rep. Paul Ryan for the next fiscal year would turbo-charge the trend in U.S. politics of attacking the poor, ignoring the middle class and rewarding the rich. Against that backdrop, Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, a group of dozens of extremely wealthy Americans, is backing the Democrats and calling on lawmakers to end the Republican tax-cuts-for-millionaires experiment in federal government "fiscal discipline."
WashPo details ramifications of looming government shutdown
It looks increasingly as though the Tea Party wing of the Congressional Republican caucus is winning the battle within the caucus on whether or not to avoid budget compromise with Democrats and shut down the government Friday. Republicans cheered the prospect of a shut down behind closed doors this week and some of them have been openly stumping with shut-down rhetoric in their districts. Should it happen, the reality of severely reduced government operations and spending will arrive with a jolt Saturday morning. The Washington Post offers bloggy details.
Udall to Boehner: Shut-down would be counterproductive
Senator Mark Udall today sent House Speaker John Boehner a letter urging him to allow the government to be shut down. In addition to Udall, 15 other senators--including Michael Bennet--signed the letter.
DeGette says mainstream Republicans are running scared
Congresswoman Diana DeGette says the right wing of the Republican Party is not doing what voters sent them to Washington for.
ACLU to Congress: Vote on Obama’s use of force In Libya
The American Civil Liberties Union on Friday sent a letter to both chambers of Congress, asking Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to schedule floor debates and then vote on whether President Obama can continue the use of military force in Libya, which he ordered on March 19 without approval from Congress.
VIDEO: Polis co-sponsors bill that would repeal Defense of Marriage Act
Colorado Congressman Jared Polis joined with more than a hundred members of Congress to re-introduce the Respect for Marriage Act, a bill that would repeal the ban on same-sex marriage put in place by the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. Polis urged members of Congress to support New York Rep. Jarred Nadler's legislation as a matter of fairness and states' rights.
PolitiFact exposes budget lies–from both sides of the aisle
PolitiFact, the nonpartisan fact-checking arm of the St. Petersburg Times, this week evaluated key talking points about the federal budget made by both Republicans and Democrats.
Colorado rights group celebrates Obama move to back off Defense of...
President Obama Wednesday directed Attorney General Eric Holder to stop battling legal attacks on the federal Defense of Marriage Act, saying he believes the Act unconstitutionally discriminates against gay couples. It's a move many Obama supporters have anticipated for years with diminishing hope as the attorney general's office fought back a series of challenges to the Act.