Free Republic

One of the most politically intense fights over the Affordable Care Act was over the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, infamously dubbed a "death panel" by Republicans during the 2010 elections. On Thursday, Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled that they would keep working to keep opposition alive by doing everything they can to impede the board's implementation. The two leaders wrote a letter to President Barack Obama, notifying him that they would not be submitting any recommendations to the panel because of their opposition to it and to the law in...

House Speaker John Boehner took a lot of heat in January when he rubber-stamped the president’s job-crushing tax increases. Indeed, an entire movement sprang up on Twitter -- symbolized by the hashtag #FireBoehner -- in the weeks prior to the “compromise” urging conservative members of Congress to oust him from his position of leadership in part because he publicly proposed tax hikes as part of the negotiations. The initiative failed, of course, but that didn’t stop Republicans from bristling at Boehner’s supposed betrayal and questioning his leadership. Now, it seems, that’s all water under the bridge -- at least for...

Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said at a Thursday press conference that House Republicans will rise up against GOP leadership if House Speaker John Boehner tries to rush any immigration reform bill through his chamber of Congress. “There would be a revolt among Republicans” if Boehner abandoned regular order on this issue, Rohrabacher said in response to a question from Breitbart News at the presser. According to a recent Politico report, Boehner is seriously considering abandoning regular order to rush through immigration reform. Regular orders is the process by which a bill is supposed to come up through the respective committees...

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Wednesday refused to weigh in on the substance of a bipartisan Senate agreement to expand background checks for gun purchases, saying only that the House would “review” any legislation the Senate passes. “As I’ve made clear, any bill that passes the Senate, we’re going to review it,” Boehner told reporters after a meeting of the House Republican conference. “In the meantime, we’re going to continue to have hearings looking at the source of violence in our country. We’re going to wait and see what actually passes over in the Senate.”

Seven hundred retired Military Special Operations professionals from the organization "Special Operations Speaks" sent a letter to the House of Representatives urging members to support H.Res 36, which will create a House Select Committee to investigate last September’s deadly terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. “It appears that many of the facts and details surrounding the terrorist attack which resulted in four American deaths and an undetermined number of American casualties have not yet been ascertained by previous hearings and inquiries,” the letter states. It continues further, "Additional information is now slowly surfacing in the media, which makes a comprehensive bipartisan...

Speaker John Boehner told fellow House Republicans in an Easter week memo that his decision to allow the sequestration cuts to take effect has forced President Barack Obama and the Democrats to confront economic issues they have long been avoiding. “We forged a new tactical plan that focused on using our limited leverage to maximum effect in support of the reforms needed to support economic growth and job creation for all Americans,” Boehner wrote in the memo distributed to House Republicans on Thursday. … The memo noted that GOP efforts had forced Senate Democrats to produce their own budget plan...

This comes amid stories that Obama's chief political goal is helping his fellow Democrats win a House majority in 2014 and as his Organizing for Action (formerly Obama for America) is still cranking out press releases about the dire effects of the sequester. It's not unheard of for a politician to make public threats and private blandishments at the opposing party at the same time. But it is sometimes awkward. Especially if the threats and blandishments are not entirely credible. Democrats have some chance of winning the 17 seats they need for a House majority. But it's an uphill climb....

"Here in the hall, she casts an unlikely silhouette -- unassuming in a lineup of proud stares, challenging us once more to look up and draw strength from stillness." Speaker of the House John Boehner was referring to the new statue of Rosa Parks in the Capitol's rotunda. Boehner told a Washington crowd about how Parks' strong religious faith bolstered her at every turn, and gave her the quiet yet steely courage necessary for the tough civil-rights battles that she fought, and which ultimately changed the face of American society. "Humility isn't incompatible with bravery," Boehner reflected. "When we put...

A nun has been implicated by prosecutors in a troubling case of election fraud, according to local news reports. It's been alleged by Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters that Sister Marge Kloos of the Sisters of Charity mailed in an absentee ballot of Sister Rose Marie Hewitt who had reportedly passed away on October 4th of last year. Deters sent a letter to the Board of Elections that said: Re: Deceased Voter Rose Marie Hewitt. Please be advised that sufficient information has been developed with respect to the above mentioned matter to determine that there is probable cause to believe...

Did I miss a memo somewhere? Is it time for another presidential election? Did they repeal the 22nd Amendment and allow Barack Obama to run for a 3rd term in the White House? That's how it felt last night as I sat and watched Obama give his hour-long State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, along with many other notable figures. It sounded like a campaign speech, with a lot of lofty, mostly unattainable goals, with a doubling down of the rhetoric he normally uses. It took him all of about five minutes to begin his...

Obama to Pope: 'I have appreciated our work together over these last four years' President Barack Obama has released a statement on the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and, as usual, it's all about himself. In three spartan sentences, he manages to use the word “I” four times. The use of the first-person singular is Obama's own Holy Tradition, a hallmark of both his rhetoric and his governing style. His administration is a Magisterium of one. Nonetheless, one line is particularly galling: “Michelle and I warmly remember our meeting with the Holy Father in 2009, and I have appreciated our...

As a group of senators unveil their bipartisan proposal for immigration reform today and President Obama heads west this week to rally support for his own ideas, a separate bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives is on the verge of finalizing its own designs for comprehensive immigration reform. The discussions, which top aides close to the talks discussed on the condition that they not be identified, are described as “Washington’s best-kept secret.” Last week, House Speaker John Boehner spilled the beans on the secret group, revealing that the lawmakers had been “meeting for three or four years...

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is voicing confidence in the prospects for immigration reform in the House, saying that a bipartisan group of lawmakers “basically [has] an agreement” after more than three years of secret talks. -snip- Obama is preparing to launch a major push for comprehensive immigration reform with a speech in Las Vegas next week. Much of the spotlight has focused on the Senate, where a bipartisan group is reportedly close to announcing an agreement on basic principles for an overhaul of the system. That group now includes Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a potential presidential contender who laid out...

Speaker John Boehner finally declared this week that President Obama's goal over the next few years is to "annihilate" the GOP. Wow, he finally figured that out. And to reporters about his ticket's defeat in November, Rep. Paul Ryan stated that there was a failure to turn potential Republican voters out -- again, another "ah ha" moment. What is really going on is that the more old-time Republican Establishment is starting to realize that simply playing the same old game against a new, brilliant and Democratic political juggernaut led by their symbol of success, President Obama, will likely yield the...

At the inaugural celebration, Obama actually seems somewhat cordial to John Boehner, House Speaker. But Michelle is much too busy shoveling food into her mouth, and when Boehner tries to get her attention, she manages an eyeroll at him...

First Lady Michelle Obama rolls her eyes (0:09 in clip) after House Speaker cracks a joke to President Obama at the luncheon that took place after the inauguration.

I’m a Tea Partier! I’m also a lifelong Republican as was my father, a Chicago Packard dealer Service Manager in the Capone Era. We even owned Machine Gun Mike McGurk’s ’29 Packard coupe for a while. Dad said he got to vote against that SOB Roosevelt 4 times! I went to Tea Party meetings on 3 occasions – 3 different groups. I attended a big rally here in Bakersfield where John Boehner and my Congressman Kevin McCarthy attended and were denied an opportunity to speak. They never forgave the Tea Party. It was such a stupid move, but that’s history…...

A poet laureate comes to Washington. Yawn. In the world capital of the sound and fury that often signifies not very much, the disciplined sentiments of a poet sound as alien as a tax cut for millionaires. We live in a city of argument, one-upsmanship, and winners and losers playing a power game where rhetoric rules without eloquence. Pragmatism trumps poetry every time. We have no majesty, none of the grace notes of language and no call for a poet to memorialize events, celebratory or tragic. But wait. Natasha Trethewey, the newest poet laureate, wants to change that. By moving...

U.S. House Freshman from Oklahoma, Congressman Jim Bridenstine (R), was sworn into office on January 3, 2013. His first vote was the same day, for Speaker of the House. He cast his vote not to return the gavel to John Boehner. It takes some courage to raise your hand, swear your oath of office, and immediately vote against leadership. Bridenstine did that. After securing a seat on the House Armed Services Committee, and the Science, Space and Technology Committee, the question is, will Bridenstine be allowed to keep his Committee seats? Opposing Boehner's agenda has brought loss of committee seats for...

I have made it no secret that I am not a big fan of John Boehner. I have been more than a little harsh in my critique of his handling of the House of Representatives and the failed negotiations he conducted with President Obama. I am here today to say I own Speaker Boehner an apology. I still wonder if another Republican would be a better choice to run the people's house, but I may have underestimated the ideology of the man he has tried to deal with. Barack Obama is a true ideologue, I was first alerted to this...

In an interview with Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal, newly re-elected House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) opened up about President Obama’s utter unwillingness to cut a single dollar from federal spending. In a stunning admission, Obama reportedly told Boehner, “We don’t have a spending problem.” Boehner added that President Obama continues to maintain that America’s federal deficit is caused not by governmental overspending but by “a health-care problem.” Said Boehner, “They blame all of the fiscal woes on our health-care system.” Boehner told Obama, “Clearly we have a health-care problem, which is about to get worse with Obamacare....

A concerted effort to unseat Speaker John A. Boehner was under way the day of his re-election to the position, but participants called it off 30 minutes before the House floor vote, CQ Roll Call has learned. A group of disaffected conservatives had agreed to vote against the Ohio lawmaker if they could get at least 25 members to join the effort. But one member, whose identity could not be verified, rescinded his or her participation the morning of the vote, leaving the group one person short of its self-imposed 25-member threshold. Only 17 votes against Boehner were required to...

A pork-barrel feast of goodies for federal agencies to fix museum roofs in D.C. and aid fisheries in Alaska, cooked up in the middle of the night, is not the way to aid hurricane victims or run a government. As if the fallout from agreeing to a bad deal that raises the debt by $4 trillion and accepts a 41-1 ratio in tax hikes to spending cuts weren't enough, Speaker of the House John Boehner has New Jersey's Chris Christie on his case. "There's only one group to blame," the New Jersey governor said of the Sandy relief bill that...

So it looks like during the fiscal cliff talks Speaker Boehner had some fun F-bombs to share with Harry Reid.While it was a sentiment most normal Americans share with the Speaker, given Reid and Obama ultimately got their way I have to wonder how it really went down.

I have confirmed with a group of Congressmen that House Speaker John Boehner will not be reelected Speaker tomorrow. He will either resign or be forced out tomorrow. Only 17 members are needed to block Speaker Boehner's election tomorrow. A Speaker needs an absolute majority of all votes cast for a specific person. If no one has a majority, the House is speakerless. I've confirmed these rules with the House Parliamentarian.

It's official, fiscal cliff crisis averted! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!Meanwhile back in the real world...

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: It's possible that this is a prelude to a challenge, Thursday, to Boehner's leadership by Eric Cantor. I think it would be quite naked to do it at this late hour as a result of a split over the vote. Look, there are a lot of conservatives in the Republican caucus in the House who hate the bill, and for good reason. This is a complete surrender on everything. The ratio of tax hikes to spending cuts is 40:1 rather than 1:1, or 1:2 or 1:3. So, it was a complete rout by the Democrats. So it's understandable....

Emergency legislation to avoid the economy-threatening fiscal cliff ran into vehement New Year's Day opposition from House Republicans, casting doubt on the divided government's ability to prevent widespread tax increases and painful, across-the-board federal spending cuts. "I do not support the bill. We are looking, though, for the best path forward," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., declared after a closed-door meeting of his party's rank and file. While Speaker John Boehner took no public position, an attempt to add spending cuts was all but certain before the leadership called for a final House vote on the measure that cleared...

While most media accounts of the fiscal cliff fiasco have focused on Republicans' travails, few have adequately noted Democrats' starring role in our current dysfunction.  Harry Reid obstructed a vote on the president's plan, Nancy Pelosi whipped votes against her own erstwhile plan, and the president has fully retreated from ideas he supported as recently as last year.  A pre-Christmas Wall Street Journal article walks readers through the failed negotiations, and two recurring themes are woven throughout: (1) Obama has zero interest in meaningful concessions on his end, and (2) Obama is supremely confident in his ability to stick Republicans...

Statesmanship at its finest: during fiscal cliff talks, President Obama reportedly told Speaker Boehner that he would use his two major speeches in January to blame Republicans for the stalled deal. According to the Wall Street Journal, the president wasn't too happy with the options House Republicans were willing to present, and made it clear he was willing to throw the GOP under the bus for the nation's financial woes. Mr. Obama repeatedly lost patience with the speaker as negotiations faltered. In an Oval Office meeting last week, he told Mr. Boehner that if the sides didn't reach agreement, he...

President Obama has threatened House Speaker John Boehner that if no deal is struck on the “fiscal cliff,” he will use his Inaugural address and State of the Union speech next month to blame Republicans, according to the Wall Street Journal. In the Journal’s behind the scenes account of how fiscal cliff talks between Obama and Boehner hit a wall, what comes across is that the president is emboldened by his reelection and eager to extract more concessions from Boehner than he was willing to accept during last summer’s debt limit talks. This excerpt from the piece is revealing: Mr....

Obama: I Met Republicans Halfway On Taxes, More Than Halfway On Spending THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon, everybody. Over the last few weeks I've been working with leaders of both parties on a proposal to get our deficit under control, avoid tax cuts -- or avoid tax hikes on the middle class, and to make sure that we can spur jobs and economic growth -- a balanced proposal that cuts spending but also asks the wealthiest Americans to pay more; a proposal that will strengthen the middle class over the long haul and grow our economy over the long haul. During...

A Wall Street Journal report detailing the broken-down status of talks between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner on the year-end “fiscal cliff” reveals that Obama threatened to use both his inaugural and State of the Union speeches to blame Republicans if there’s no deal. Negotiations reportedly came to a standstill after Boehner proposed increasing the tax rate on top earners: Mr. Obama repeatedly lost patience with the speaker as negotiations faltered. In an Oval Office meeting last week, he told Mr. Boehner that if the sides didn’t reach agreement, he would use his inaugural address and his...

Congressional leaders and President Barack Obama called Friday for a return to negotiations to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, a day after talks cratered in a very public fashion when Republicans abandoned House Speaker John Boehner's backup plan. In truth, talks to secure a big deficit-reduction deal had already broken down Monday afternoon in the office of Mr. Boehner (R., Ohio)......[snip]A review of the negotiations, based on interviews with a dozen aides and lawmakers, suggests the problems lay in Mr. Boehner's inability to coax his rank-and-file to support a deal that raises taxes on higher-income Americans. Another factor was what...

A "serious" proposal is one that has a reasonable expectation of resolving a conflict. Anyone studying Speaker Boehner's Plan B proposal knows it wasn't serious. Why are so many defending it and bemoaning its defeat? It tells you an awful lot about the dishonest nature of politics in America today. Republicans -- fiscally conservative Republicans -- have argued since forever that tax increases diminish economic growth. For the past two years, they have argued that increasing taxes on the "wealthy" would wreak havoc on our fragile (at best) economy. In fact, three studies have confirmed that this "millionaires tax," now...

Last week, Republicans proved they are not a governing party. Next week we will see whether Democrats are. A governing party would have, reluctantly, passed Speaker John Boehner's Plan B, which would have preserved the current tax rates on everyone with incomes under $1 million. Passage would have put Senate Democrats on the spot, since they voted for a similar measure in 2010. They might have engaged in negotiations with Boehner that could have been more productive than his negotiations with Barack Obama this month and in the summer of 2011. Then, as Bob Woodward reports in his book "The...

Why is Barack Obama playing hardball on fiscal-cliff talks with Gee-Oh-Pee 'leadership' -clearly not negotiating in good faith- as he seems to even welcome the pending economic catastrophe most sensible Americans find so terrifying? If Obama looks like he doesn't care, it's because he doesn't: the WH knew from the start that weaker-than-circus-lemonade John Boehner would play tough at first, then promptly cave on things like still-yet-another debt ceiling increase and ill-advised new taxes on the entrepreneurs and small businesses that Reagan said 'create most or all of the economic growth in the U.S.' Meanwhile, the most damaging president in US history is...

Several conservative House Republican members are contemplating a plan to unseat Speaker John Boehner from his position on January 3, Breitbart News has exclusively learned. Staffers have compiled a detailed action plan that, if executed, could make this a reality. The Republicans, both conservatives and more establishment members alike, are emboldened after the failure of Boehner’s fiscal cliff “Plan B” on Thursday evening. Dissatisfaction with Boehner is growing in the House Republican conference, but until now there hasn’t been a clear path forward.

House Speaker John Boehner (R.-Ohio) said on Friday that he was not afraid of losing his speakership in the aftermath of the stunning defeat dealt to him on Thursday evening by House conservatives who refused to vote for his “Plan B” proposal to increase the income tax rate on income over $1 million. When a reporter asked Boehner at a Capitol press conference whether he should be concerned about losing his speakership, Boehner said, “No, I’m not.” “Listen, you’ve all heard me say this, and I’ve told my colleagues this, if you do the right things every day for the...

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During his press conference today, called to announce his new gun control task force, President Obama invoked the Newtown massacre to apply pressure on congressional Republicans in the fiscal cliff standoff.

After House Speaker John Boehner was unable to muster enough support for his “Plan B” proposal, the Congress has adjourned for the holidays. At this point, Republicans should stay home until the new Congress convenes in 2013. A deal like “Plan B” that raises taxes on those making over $1 million per year and offers limited spending cuts over 10 years will do nothing to solve our underlying fiscal problems.

When you lose an election you get frustrated. When you’re sitting in a subpar 2 percent economy, and are faced with tax hikes rather than marginal rate reductions, you get even more frustrated. And when you’re staring at $47 trillion in spending over the next ten years, and $8.6 trillion in deficits, your frustration levels climb even higher. These are among the frustrations that led a number of House Republicans to pull back from Speaker John Boehner’s so-called Plan B. Nobody looked good on the Republican side when Thursday night’s vote fell through. But you have to understand their frustrations....

Capitol Hill reporters on Twitter writing Speaker Boehner has dropped Plan B fiscal cliff vote tongiht after revolt from House Republican caucus. House will recess until after Christmas.After raucus closed dooor House GOP meeting, Boehner says House has already passed bills to cut spending and taxes to avert fiscal cliff and the ball is the court of the Senate and President Obama.

The U.S. Congress. The House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Combined, they make up the greatest deliberative body in the world. Where our elected representatives meet and debate in the open to determine the laws of the land in the greatest representative democracy the world has ever seen. Committees are formed consisting of members of each party in our two-party system. These committees in both bodies use public hearings to debate and gather input on the important public matters of the day, such as tax policy, budgets, appropriations, etc. It is designed to be an open process that produces...

Under the leadership of House Speaker John Boehner (R.-Ohio), the 112th House of Representatives has thus far approved legislation that has increased the debt of the federal government by $2,176,949,774,695.46—or approximately $18,944 for per American household. The 112th House of Representatives has achieved this in a little more than 20 months time—and it may not be done yet enacting laws to approve new federal borrowing and spending. The 112th House came into power on Jan. 5, 2011, electing Rep. John Boehner as its speaker on that day. The Boehner-led House did not have a direct impact on the fiscal policy...

John Boehner is a good man in a hard place. He has served in public office as a lifelong conservative, not a RINO. His position on the Obama tax increases has been better than almost any other Republican who has been speaking out lately, given the Obama/Democrat election victories -- close loopholes and deductions for $800 billion in new revenue over a decade, but no increases in rates. But face it. Boehner is no match for Obama on the national stage. He cannot press the economic arguments articulately. He does not have a compelling personality. Obama is running circles around...

“Obsequious praise for small government does the Republicans no good when they too are in favor of big government in their actions.� Over the next couple of years, Barack Obama wants to raise the national debt to $18.9 trillion or so. John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and the congressional Republicans want to raise the national debt to $18.4 trillion or so.The present leadership of the Republican Party has gone from making the case that government is the problem and the American people are the solution to making the case that Democratic controlled government is the problem and Republican controlled government is...