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The House passed a short-term spending extension only hours after the bill cleared the Senate, pushing the next shutdown threat to March and surrendering Republican leverage on enacting a border security package. The continuing resolution (CR) passed 314-108, extending spending levels and priorities set by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in December 2022 during a lame-duck session of Congress.

The House is under new management but is operating under business as usual as it prepares to pass a continuing resolution (CR) that once again extends spending levels and policies pushed through by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in last December’s lame duck session. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is moving a laddered CR that extends current spending levels for Agriculture, Energy and Water, Military Construction-VA and Transportation-HUD spending bills through January 19 with the remaining eight bills extended through February 2.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday said a stopgap funding deal that would fund the government until January might be necessary as talks on a long-term spending package drag on. “We’re at a pretty significant impasse,” McConnell told reporters on Tuesday. “Time is ticking. We have not been able to agree on a top line yet, and I think it’s becoming increasingly likely that we might need to do a short-term CR into early next year,” McConnell continued, using the shorthand for continuing resolution. “We are running out of time, and that might be the only option left...

Mark S. Zaid, the activist attorney representing the so-called whistleblower at the center of the impeachment movement targeting President Donald Trump, advocated for Robert S. Mueller III to become an anti-Trump whistleblower. On April 25, 2018, while Mueller’s Office of the Special Counsel was investigating ultimately collapsed claims of collusion between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign, Zaid co-authored an oped in the New York Times calling for Mueller and his staff to become “lawful whistle-blowers.” The scheme outlined by Zaid was an option to be implemented if Trump had moved to fire Mueller and dismantle the Special Counsel’s office. Zaid...

Cloture NOT invoked

Stefan Halper's story of Flynn trip with Russian woman deemed 'not plausible … not accurate.' Five days before the FBI formally opened the Michael Flynn probe in summer 2016, a confidential informant alleged to agents that Donald Trump's national security adviser had left a 2014 foreign meeting alone with a Russian woman. Agents ultimately deemed the account "not plausible" and "not accurate" but proceeded to investigate Flynn anyway, newly declassified documents show. FBI confidential human source (CHS) reports show Stefan Halper, an academic who long worked for the bureau as a trusted informant, was the original source of a story...

WASHINGTON — Top Capitol Hill negotiators sealed a deal on a $900 billion COVID-19 economic relief package, finally delivering long-overdue help to businesses and individuals and providing money to deliver vaccines to a nation eager for them. “More help is on the way,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in announcing the agreement for a relief bill that would total almost $900 billion. “Moments ago, in consultation with our committees, the four leaders of the Senate and House finalized an agreement for another major rescue package for the American people.”

Agents fretted sharing Flynn intel with departing Obama White House would become fodder for ‘partisan axes to grind.’ Just 17 days before President Trump took office in January 2017, then-FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok texted bureau lawyer Lisa Page, his mistress, to express concern about sharing sensitive Russia probe evidence with the departing Obama White House. Strzok had just engaged in a conversation with his boss, then-FBI Assistant Director William Priestap, about evidence from the investigation of incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, codenamed Crossfire Razor, or “CR” for short. The evidence in question were so-called "tech cuts" from intercepted...

Congress is racing the clock as they rush to prevent another shutdown poised to start in two weeks. Though lawmakers have until Dec. 20 to get a funding bill to President Trump’s desk, negotiators say they really have just a matter of days to reach a deal on the fiscal 2020 bills to prevent having to approve another stopgap measure, formally known as a continuing resolution (CR). Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer warned Republicans that a wall was a “non-starter for Democrats” and that drawing red lines on the border could result in “another Trump shutdown.” “We had hoped the...

The Senate passed a short-term funding bill Thursday amid dispute over border wall funding that delays the risk of a government shutdown through Nov. 21. The Senate voted 82-15 in favor of the continuing resolution after the House already passed it, and it will go to President Donald Trump next for his signature.

Shut down the government in favor of border security? Absolutely. It's a Constitutional mandate to protect the citizenry from invasion. The bigger picture for this current political climate is the cycle of continuing resolutions. We haven't had a real federal budget since Obama was elected. It's time to stop the brinkmanship that comes with each round of continuing resolutions (with the waste hidden in pages of legislation no one reads) and get back to fiscal sanity... and following the Constitution. Build the border wall, yes. More importantly... fix the process that spends the people's money. People are tired of crisis...

I could use a little help here from some of our Constitutional Scholars. When President Trump signed a Continuing Resolution yesterday for another 21 days for budgeting the entire Federal Government, did he do so willingly or was his decision forced upon him? I believe the President has the can return the Bill to Congress, with comments as to why he won't sign it. (VETO) Has to happen within 10 days excluding Sundays. To sustain his VETO it takes a 2/3's vote from both houses (Representatives and Senate). Otherwise the VETO is over-ridden and the bill becomes law. Here comes...

LIVE on the Senate floor: Senators debate the short-term funding bill passed by the House last night. If the bill fails, it will trigger a government shutdown just before the Christmas holiday.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) rejected President Donald Trump’s call to partially fund the border wall with a simple majority vote on Friday, suggesting not enough Senate Republicans support the measure. President Trump called on McConnell to use the “nuclear option,” or switch to a simple majority vote in the Senate, to pass the continuing resolution (CR) that would partially fund the border wall...

This is what it come down to- democrats are siding with illegal aliens over American soldiers. They would starve the US military for those who do not belong in this country. democrats, led by Schmuck Schumer, are willing to shut down the government and halt pay for the Armed Forces if Republicans do not agree to amnesty for illegal aliens (read that as "future voters"). The House passed a short term spending bill but democrats are blocking it in the Senate, holding fast for non-Americans. ( I think it was Bob Grant who coined the phrase "Schmuck Schumer") The Trump...

House Republican leaders presented their rank and file with a one-month spending bill Tuesday aimed at keeping the government open ahead of a Friday night deadline, as hopes for a deal on young undocumented immigrants faded. The bill would extend existing spending levels through Feb. 16 and include an extension of a popular children’s health insurance program — aimed at winning Democratic votes — and a new sweetener for conservatives and Democrats alike in delaying several taxes included in the Affordable Care Act. Few lawmakers were enthusiastic about the legislation, but several described it as a necessary evil to avoid...

House Republicans voted today to approve a bill that would defund to Planned Parenthood abortion business. This was the second attempt to get enough votes on the reconciliation bill that would not only defund the nation’s biggest abortion corporation but also repeal major portions of Obamacare. The first attempt to pass the bill saw liberal Republicans oppose the repealing Obamacare portion and conservative Republicans not happy as well because it did not repeal Obamacare fully. Republican leaders reworked the legislation, called the American Health Care Act, and Republicans passed the measure today despite Democrat objections. The House voted 217-212 for...

The point at the end is good, this is the last action with the 2017 budget, the discussion about the 2018 budget starts today.

Mick Mulvaney, the budget director, is currently having a press conference. I was watching it, and learned for the first time, that there is several hundreds of millions of dollars in the budget, for ramping up fencing on the border (now) upgrading to a 20-foot structurally sound, actual border. This is the first I had heard of that. It seems the President is looking at playing much harder ball in September. It seems the 2017 budget was closed, as of the budget agreement. I am much, much happier than I was a couple of days ago. Good discussion Mr. Mulvaney,...

I cast my first vote in 1972. I was four months into my eighteenth year, and pulled those levers with pride. Unlike republican Rome, America doesn’t have a formal coming of age ceremony in which teenagers leave adolescence, don a toga, and are recognized as men worthy of self-government. When I voted for Richard Nixon, I felt the rush of being a citizen, of one burdened yet privileged to partake in the civil society and having a say in local, state, and national affairs. Since then, I never missed a congressional election . . . until 2016. While I voted...