Free Republic

LUBBOCK, TX-- US Senator John Cornyn took a break from the capitol grind Thursday to meet with students at Lubbock ISD and to share his thoughts on the upcoming primary election. "It's good to be back home," said Cornyn The senator visited Estacado High School to showcase a new web-based program that helps students make wise financial decisions. "Part of this curriculum is even being taught at the elementary school level is pretty amaznig because these are things people need to learn you might call them life skills," Cornyn said. It's a program Cornyn said congress could even benefit from....

First, men - a reminder: Get your woman something for Valentine’s Day. Flowers, chocolate, a diamond ring, whatever it takes. Show your love. Even if you are a dishonest scoundrel, do that. Especially if you are a dishonest scoundrel, do that, it might get your mistakes forgiven. Maybe that is why scoundrels sometimes learn to be good at the ‘do something bad, then make a big display of some small token of goodness to cover the tracks’. Which kinds of reminds me of our scoundrels in DC, coming home and saying “See, I brought flowers” and we are wondering “What...

U.S. Senator John Cornyn will visit Estacado High School this week to showcase a new web-based financial literacy curriculum. The curriculum, which was underwritten by Prosperity Bank, uses the latest in new media technologies, including video, animation, 3-D gaming, avatars and social networking, according to a news release from the Lubbock Independent School District. The program is designed to bring complex financial concepts to life for today’s digital generation. It will assist hundreds of students each year in understanding money management principles.

Senators Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn say they put the country first. The debt ceiling needed to be raised. Ted Cruz opposed raising it. So McConnell and Cornyn voted to shut down Ted Cruz. They voted to cut off debate on raising the debt ceiling so that it could be raised. McConnell and Cornyn have both been very clear about this. John Cornyn told the Austin American-Statesman “I think it would have been bad for the economy, bad for the American people, and I don’t think it would have been good politics either.” Mitch McConnell declared it his job to...

Very few Americans know how close the country came to catastrophe this week. The final tally shows that the Senate voted by a wide margin Wednesday, 67 to 31, to break Sen. Ted Cruz’s filibuster of an increase in the debt limit, thus avoiding a default on the United States’ full faith and credit. But 15 minutes after the voting should have ended, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell had apparently secured only two of the five Republican votes he needed to join all 55 members of the Democratic caucus to pass the measure. He raised three fingers in the air and...

The first wave of Tea Party lawmakers strode into Congress in 2011 on a wave of denial and anger. They were angry at President Obama and business as usual in Washington. But they were also in denial about their power—or rather powerlessness—to change it. Three years later, the right-wingers have progressed through the stages of grief (which are not real, incidentally, when it comes to grieving). Now, in the debt-ceiling debate currently under way in Washington, we have proof they’ve reached the final stage: acceptance.

Most of the political world’s attention this week was focused on Speaker John Boehner’s decision to let President Obama continue borrowing without limit until next March. Speaker Boehner’s decision to break with his conference — and break with his own dollar-for-dollar rule in raising the debt limit — shows that the House GOP conference is without leadership today. While this should strike fear in all who hope to see a conservative governing majority by 2017, Heritage Action’s Conservative Policy Summit showed that there is a path out of the wilderness, if only Washington’s political class can find the courage to...

If you follow an all or nothing strategy you usually end up with nothing!I was very disappointed that both Speaker Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell(R-KY) both caved on efforts to exact a compromise from Obama for a debt ceiling increase. I had hoped that attaching approval of the Keystone pipeline would force Obama to accept this worthy and environmentally safe project and help create tens of thousands of new good paying jobs for Americans. But Tea Party Republicans in the House refused to vote for ANY increase in the debt ceiling. Had Speaker Boehner brought up a...

When Speaker of the House John Boehner said that conservative groups like the Club for Growth have been “misleading their followers” and have “lost all credibility,” I didn’t pay much attention to it. After all, members of Congress are constantly saying the Club doesn’t matter — even though it’s belied by the facts: Since 2006 the Club’s PAC has helped nearly 50 endorsed candidates get elected to Congress. Some of the party’s brightest stars — senators Marco Rubio of Florida, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, and Ted Cruz of Texas, congressmen Ron DeSantis of Florida and Justin Amash of Michigan —...

Texas firebrand spews out lukewarm senators in both parties The debt ceiling fight in Congress has revived internal GOP tensions still lingering in the wake of last year’s government shutdown.   After the House of Representatives passed a “clean” debt-limit increase without any spending cuts attached, Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas), whose 21-hour Obamacare filibuster preceded the government shutdown, announced that he would block any effort to pass the measure by simple majority vote in the Senate. “If you ask anybody outside of Washington whether we should keep increasing the debt ceiling without fixing the underlying problem of out-of-control spending,...

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Is there any end to this debauchery?By now, we all know President Obama has received a bill that raises the debt ceiling through the mid-term elections. After all, we can't have another fight like this when our politicians have better things to worry about. Such as winning another term. The House Republican leadership (I refuse to say House Republicans because some of them stayed the course and voted against this nonsense) capitulated earlier, voting to raise the debt ceiling and sending the bill to the Senate for approval. As seems...

The tea party is teeing off on Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. Matt Bevin, who is challenging McConnell in the GOP primary in Kentucky, seized on the senator’s vote Wednesday to move ahead on legislation to increase the nation’s debt limit, describing it as a blank check for President Barack Obama. The tea party-backed businessman and conservative groups signaled they won’t let Senate Republican incumbents forget the vote this election year. “Kentucky and America can literally no longer afford such financially reckless behavior from the likes of Mitch McConnell,” Bevin said in a statement. …

Way back in early February, we heard that Ted Cruz had decided to start playing nice with his fellow Republicans. What a difference 10 days make. After Speaker John Boehner moved Tuesday to pass a "clean" debt-ceiling increase, relying on Democratic votes in the House, it looked like the increase could have an easy path through the Democratic-controlled Senate. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said the nation would hit the debt limit at the end of the month, and with Congress on recess until February 25, Wednesday's vote was almost do or die. But the freshman senator from Texas had other...

When Treasury Secretary Jack Lew recently gave notice that the federal government would once again hit the debt ceiling in February, the response from congressional Republicans—who twice took the nation to the brink of default—was decidedly muted. The official line? “We believe that defaulting on our debt is the wrong thing,” says House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). “We don’t want to do that.” On Tuesday, the House duly voted to raise the debt limit without conditions, sending the action over to the Senate. This move represents a 180-degree turn from the previous strategy of trying to extract concessions from Democrats...

The Senate passed the House debt-limit increase on Wednesday, but not before some needless drama that helps to explain why Republicans remain a minority. Democrats had enough votes to pass the increase with a simple majority, which means they would have owned the debt increase. But then Senator Ted Cruz —the same fellow who planned the GOP's shutdown fiasco in October—objected on the floor and insisted on a 60-vote majority. This is exactly what Democratic leader Harry Reid wanted because if the bill failed he would have sent the Senate home on recess and returned later this month to join...

Washington (CNN) -- The Senate voted Wednesday to avert at least one chronic Washington political crisis for more than a year. With a snowstorm bearing down on the capital, it approved a House-passed measure that allows the government to borrow more money to pay its bills through March 2015. The White House signaled that President Barack Obama would sign the legislation, so the Senate vote was the last hurdle to resolving the debt ceiling issue until after the November congressional elections. Wednesday's result was a blow to tea party conservatives who oppose any kind of increase in federal borrowing. Filibuster...

WASHINGTON, DC -- U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, released the following statement regarding today’s debt ceiling vote: "Today's vote is yet another example that establishment politicians from both parties are simply not listening to the American people. Outside the beltway, Americans of all political stripes understand that we cannot keep spending money we don't have. "Some members of Congress care so much about being praised by the Washington media that they're willing to mortgage our children's future. They pretend we don't have a problem and can just kick the can down the road. "Let's be clear about the motive behind...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Before the House voted to raise the debt ceiling without any spending reductions or restorations of the military pension cuts Tuesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) reportedly warned her members not to act like Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman and taunt the "mediocre" GOP leadership for caving. According to the Washington Post, though Pelosi remained coy before the vote about whether she could deliver enough Democrats to pass the the clean debt increase, behind closed doors Pelosi and her lieutenants "instructed rank-and-file members, 'don’t gloat, take it in stride and hang together.'" In the end, House Speaker John Boehner...

The Senate narrowly approved a procedural motion Wednesday to end debate on a bill that raises the debt ceiling, with GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and his top lieutenant Sen. John Cornyn (Texas) providing the key votes. Sixty votes were needed to clear the procedural hurdle because of a filibuster by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who like other Republicans was deeply disappointed the House bill included no spending curbs. The 67-31 cloture vote took more Senate time than usual, highlighting the arm-twisting going on behind closed doors, as few Republicans wanted to be seen as casting the deciding vote for...

I guess I don't need to tell you what John Boehner can kiss next! No, on second thought, I wouldn't want either one of their DNA - even on my... The image that you just saw, had such a visceral impact on me that I had to spontaneously react to it. First of all, this really should come as no surprise to anyone among us that have been awake during this whole nightmare. I've written over and over, how the alleged 'two party system' at it's core, is a charade - a phony pageant. It is a bit of theatre...