Free Republic

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi blamed former President George W. Bush and the Republicans on Friday for the more than $9 trillion that has been added to the national debt under President Obama's watch. Pelosi argued that under Obama, the annual budget deficit, which contributes to the national debt, has been reduced dramatically, and said that without Obama's work, the national debt would be even higher. She also mostly blamed Bush for not paying for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "When President Obama stood on the steps on the Capitol eight years from next week, the [budget] deficit was...

Obamacare, the left’s grand attempt to create a national government-run health care system, has failed. They promised lower health insurance premiums, but delivered higher ones. They promised more choice and competition, but delivered less. They promised continuity and better access to care, but delivered disruption and dislocation. Despite promises that people could keep their plans and doctors, thousands of Americans were forced into more expensive insurance with higher deductibles and plans that didn’t include their doctors. After spending billions in tax dollars, Obamacare managed to increase the number of people with health insurance by much less than predicted—with over 80...

The catastrophe of ObamaCare was and is complete Plain and simple, the PPACA (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) must be repealed utterly, no replacement or residual “good idea” left to haunt us. This is stated emphatically for the following reasons and I pray that Congress, particularly the republicans, are listening to the people and not to polls purposely skewed by the misleading, malpracticing media. It doesn’t take someone who has worked in healthcare to understand the overwhelming disaster that has been ObamaCare although I’m one who has, so it behooves us to go back to the beginning… why people...

The Drudge Report, the highly trafficked conservative news website, has been knocked offline for extended periods of time over the course of the last two weeks, succumbing to large distributed denial of service attacks, according to its founder, Matt Drudge. And it's a mystery who's behind it all. Drudge wrote on Twitter that a December 30 attack was the "biggest DDoS since [the] site's inception." A DDoS attack is executed by using hijacked computers or electronic devices to flood a website with redundant requests, aiming to overload the website's hosting server and render it unavailable.

According to A.P story run on Yahoo News, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee will oppose repealing Obamacare until an entirely new bill for health care is passed by the GOP in the Senate.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Donald Trump finally exacted revenge. On Friday, the president-elect settled scores with John Kasich and the Ohio governor's Republican machine. The first political casualty: Ohio GOP Chairman Matt Borges. Borges, a key Kasich ally, lost the top job after a series of dramatically deadlocked votes by the state party's Central Committee. Taking his place is Jane Timken, a prominent Stark County activist and donor. Most importantly, she's the person Trump wanted at the helm. Timken initially edged Borges by a single vote but couldn't reach the required majority in the first two rounds of secret balloting. That...

A Republican congressman took matters into his own hands Friday and personally removed a painting depicting police officers as pigs that a colleague had allowed to be displayed at the U.S. Capitol complex. “I was angry,” Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., told FoxNews.com. “I’ve seen the press [reporting] on this for about a week or so. … I’m in the Marine Corps. If you want it done, just call us.”

And so it begins. After six years of posturing and futile votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Republicans in the Senate have started a process to erase the most important provisions of the health reform law with a simple majority. Millions of Americans are at risk of losing their coverage. Republican opponents of the health care law insist that it has failed, though it has reduced the number of uninsured Americans to the lowest level in history. They say that it has driven up costs, though health care costs have risen at a much slower pace since 2010 than...

Filming his run for mayor didn’t work out so well for Anthony Weiner, but New York City Councilman Eric Ulrich is hoping for better luck. Mr. Ulrich, a Queens Republican who is considering challenging Mayor Bill de Blasio, began filming Wednesday for a possible reality show featuring his would-be run for mayor. Surrounded by a bevy of cameras, Mr. Ulrich said he wanted to avoid the fate of Mr. Weiner, a former New York City congressman, whose failed bid for mayor in 2013 was painstakingly chronicled in a feature-length documentary.

It didn’t take long for Republicans to make their first tin-eared mistake after winning a broad victory in November. In fact, they had barely opened the new session of Congress before performing a pratfall that called into question whether they learned anything from the populist revolt that struck both parties over the past two years. On Monday night, House Republicans met to consider their top priorities for the 115th Session of Congress, after an election in which voters made clear their displeasure with the Washington DC establishment and the status quo. Instead of focusing on moves to improve accountability...

Senate Republicans passed a budget resolution on Wednesday that would repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act. The resolution, which used the reconciliation process to repeal elements of Obamacare with only 51 votes, was introduced Tuesday by Sen. Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.), the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. Republicans are using the reconciliation process to “fast-track” repeal and send legislation to President-elect Donald Trump’s desk as soon as possible. The budget resolution would require $1 billion in deficit reduction over the next decade and reserves funds for a replacement health care reform plan. “Make no mistake about it, we’re...

One of 2016’s most spectacular examples of government dysfunction was the U.S. Senate’s outrageous refusal to consider President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. That dereliction of duty by the Republican majority not only denied a sitting president his constitutional prerogative to fill vacancies in the court (so that the appointment would go instead to a hoped-for Republican successor). It also prevented the court from resolving a handful of cases because of a 4-4 split and probably discouraged the justices from accepting other cases because of the possibility of a...

It was probably never a good idea for House Republicans to use a procedural gimmick to change ethics rules. It was definitely foolish to do it as their first order of business in the new Congress. House Speaker Ryan told them so, but his lieutenants were not interested in optics as they prepared to clamp down on the independent Office of Congressional Ethics. Two tweets from President-elect Trump, however, were enough. In a sharp turn, lawmakers dropped their gambit today. Trump was understandably miffed at the ham-fisted move by the new Congress to make disempowering watchdogs the first order of...

The mainstream media are abuzz with claims that House Republicans have voted to “gut” or “eviscerate” the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), or to strip it of its independence. Perpetual House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) claimed Republicans had “eliminated” the oversight body, and linked the move to President-elect Donald Trump, claiming that the House Republicans’ move represents a violation of Trump’s campaign promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington. The story qualifies as “fake news,” and the fact that it is being repeated by so many outlets does not make the it any less fake. First of all, the...

Congressional Republicans have long boasted that once they claim the reins of power, they will act quickly and decisively to roll back what they view as the most onerous piece of President Obama’s domestic agenda: the Affordable Care Act. But their actions starting Tuesday to end Obamacare will be far less sweeping, at least initially, than a full-blown repeal of the law.

After the shocking results of the 2016 election, most analysts focused on the shift among working-class whites towards Donald Trump. However, there was another seismic transformation on election day that may have longer repercussions: young black men are leaving the Democratic Party like never before. Exit polls of the nationwide House races showed two important numbers, black men and millennials voted for the GOP in numbers that hadn’t been seen in decades. According to CNN exit polls, 18 percent voted of black men for a Republican candidate for the U.S. House, which is more than three times the number of...

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan came to Hagerstown Thursday bearing gifts, announcing the start of a $105 million project to widen Interstate 81. In partnership with West Virginia, the first phase of construction of the long-sought project, which recently got under way, will expand the heavily traveled interstate to six lanes from U.S. 11 in West Virginia to Md. 63 near Williamsport. "These improvements to I-81 are critical infrastructure investments that will help citizens here in Washington County, across Western Maryland and all across our state go about their daily lives in a faster, more efficient and safer manner," Hogan said...

Soon after his inauguration next month, President-elect Donald Trump will nominate someone to the Supreme Court, which has been hamstrung by a vacancy since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February. There will be public debates about the nominee’s credentials, past record, judicial philosophy and temperament. There will be Senate hearings and a vote. No matter how it plays out, Americans must remember one thing above all: The person who gets confirmed will sit in a stolen seat. It was stolen from Barack Obama, a twice-elected president who fulfilled his constitutional duty more than nine months ago by nominating...

Did the GOP not just win an election, in part, because of the devastating effects Obamacare is having? They keep pledging they are going to repeal it, but one Republican Senator who will have a great deal of say in the matter wants to keep the Obamacare taxes in place. Some conservatives have long pushed for repealing the entire health law, including the taxes. But other Republicans, including Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), want to keep some of the taxes to provide revenue for a replacement plan. “There needs to be some source of revenue,” Cassidy told The Hill. He noted...

Texas Republicans have spent years trying to crack down on illegal immigration across the southern border with Mexico. Emboldened by the election of Donald Trump, however, the time may finally be right for the GOP to mobilize an assault on loosely defined "sanctuary cities," especially with two large counties eyeing such policies. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has pushed the issue to the front of his unofficial agenda for 2017, pledging in interviews and on social media to sign into law a "ban" on cities and local governments that are seen as protecting people in the U.S. illegally, with sanctions such...