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Bloomberg is title and link only: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-13/senate-push-on-final-spending-bill-thwarted-by-disputes.html

Defying his party's leadership, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz upended plans for smooth passage of a $1.1-trillion spending bill, forcing a rare Saturday session as Congress braces to prevent a new threatened government shutdown.. Cruz launched the Senate into turmoil as he tried to use the government shutdown as leverage to stop President Obama's immigration plans. Now, Congress faces a midnight Saturday deadline to keep federal operations running. Senators were streaming into the Capitol on a sunny winter Saturday for a series of procedural votes, with many not happy about the situation. "I remind everyone, 12 o'clock midnight, 12 a.m., the...

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said there won't be any mistaking what Congress thinks about the Environmental Protection Agency when Republicans take control of the upper chamber in January. The Kentucky Republican, responding to comments Secretary of State John Kerry made at a United Nations climate change conference in Lima, Peru, said the EPA would be in his crosshairs early next session. "Given the change in management that’s coming to the Senate, overseas audiences may want to proceed with caution when it comes to Secretary Kerry’s recommendations and comments," McConnell warned.

If some (i.e. Harry Reid) in the Senate seek unanimous consent to go straight to a vote on Cronybus, but Cruz (and others who may wish to join him) delay this move by forcing Reid to hold a cloture vote - and thus stall the vote in the Senate on Cronybus by 30 hours - would you support this if it led to a short-term funding measure? While this move may upset Boehner, who has now bent his will to Obama's desire, would you support Cruz (or whomever may wish to do this - Warren?) doing this?

House speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Wednesday defended the $1 trillion spending bill as a bipartisan bill that's needed to keep the government open after Thursday, even as it came under attack from both Republican and Democrats. ...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said that Jesse Benton, the former campaign manager for Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), will be part of Paul's campaign team in 2016. Benton, served as McConnell's campaign manager for much of the 2014 cycle until he resigned amid questions about the role he allegedly played in a 2012 Iowa pay-for-votes bribery scandal. Paul, in an interview with WHAS11, said that he thinks "Jesse is honest, he's good at politics and I don't think he's done anything wrong." It wasn't clear from Paul's comments if he was referring to his Senate re-election campaign or the...

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, says he has every intention of voting to repeal Obamacare with a new GOP majority in January, but also said people should be realistic about what to expect in the way of repeal with President Obama still in the White House. “We certainly will have a vote on proceeding to a bill to repeal Obamacare. … It was a very large issue in the campaign,” Mr. McConnell told Roll Call. “We’re certainly gonna keep our commitment to the American people to make every effort we can to repeal it. “It is a...

First Democrats, now a former Senate GOP leader is attacking Sen. Ted Cruz for standing his ground instead of compromising on key issues. Trent Lott, a former Senate majority leader from Mississippi and now a lobbyist, dubbed Cruz one of the “problems” in the Senate and urged incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to quickly “co-opt” new Republican senators before Cruz and others in the “Far Right” deputize them. “There are problems,” said Lott, pushing bipartisanship at a media roundtable hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “Yes, we’ve got the Ted Cruzes in the Republican Party, and we’ve got Elizabeth...

I will keep nothing from you. Today, let me share with you the truth. Republicans will not stop Barack Obama’s executive overreach. In fact, while you were enjoying your Thanksgiving there were a number of stories out that the Republican leadership wants to give its members an opportunity to express their outrage and opposition. Expression is not action. They will take no action to stop the President. In fact, a few days ago the House Appropriations Committee tried to convince everyone they do not even have the power to stop the President. Congress’s own research service disagrees. But Republicans have...

In a very political move, the president has announced new rules for a specific group of illegal aliens. If your parents brought you to America when you were under 16, if you have completed high school, or served in the military, and if you are under the age of 30 now, then you are most likely going to stay in America. ... As for the policy, how can you blame kids when they are dragged to the US? It's not the child's fault that laws were broken. Thus the new policy is humane, and the President believes it will make...

Some 63% Want Candidates Elected This Year to Broker Deals With Lawmakers From Across Aisle Americans are largely pleased with the outcome of this month's midterm elections but have little faith that Republican gains in the House and Senate will prompt the two parties to work more closely to solve the nation's problems, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds. Weeks after Republicans recaptured the Senate and tightened their grip on the House, roughly three-fourths of poll participants said this month's midterm results woul produce "just some" or "not that much" change in a country that most believe has...

Former Sen. Bob Bennett says even though Republicans are set to take over Congress come January, don't expect Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee to set the agenda. Bennett, speaking at a conference in Washington, says Sen. Mitch McConnell, who will be majority leader in the next Congress, has done a masterful job of "isolating" Ted Cruz. "There is no cannier politician in Washington than Mitch McConnell," said Bennett. "Yes, Ted Cruz is an unsettling factor within the Republican conference. My sense of things is Mitch has very carefully, very methodically, very much under the radar isolated Ted Cruz. He's...

Republican leaders have intensified their planning to prevent a government funding shutdown, weighing legislative options that would redirect GOP anger at Barack Obama's expected action on immigration and stave off a political disaster, according to sources involved with the sessions. Obama plans to use his executive authority to change the enforcement of immigration laws by the end of the year, a move that top Republicans warn could derail efforts to pass a long-term spending bill by a Dec. 11 deadline. Increasingly, some top Republicans believe that it will be difficult to pass the year-long spending package that they originally envisioned,...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says he will work with Republicans when he's in the minority, vowing it will not be “get-even time.” Reid said Democrats, who lost the Senate in the midterm elections, will not operate the way Republicans did as the minority party, accusing them of obstruction. "We want to legislate. We’re not for stalling," he told reporters Thursday.

Washington (CNN) -- Nancy Pelosi doesn't understand why House Speaker John Boehner and newly-elected Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have been on the cover of Time magazine in light of their electoral victories, but she has not. "I was never on Time magazine cover even though I was first women to be (Speaker)," Rep. Pelosi, D-California, said. "Isn't that a curiosity? That the Republicans win, Boehner's on Time magazine. Mitch McConnell wins, he's on the cover of Time magazine. Isn't there a pattern here?" Pelosi's comments came as a reaction to a press conference question Thursday about whether she has...

There is an idiom that parents and employers likely put in practice when an important task has to be completed correctly; “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” President Obama certainly understands that sentiment with a slight variation; if the nation wants anything done at all, the President has to do it himself due to Republicans who have done nothing since January 2009. Sometime next week, after waiting patiently for Ted Cruz to order House Republicans to take up, and pass, the Senate’s bipartisan immigration reform, the President will take action on immigration reform. The...

At certain moments during the past year’s long and often tedious march to November, the political class, already bored with discussing a GOP Senate takeover most considered nearly certain, started debating a few post-election hypotheticals. With Republicans in control in both the House and the Senate, would the president try again to strike the elusive grand bargain?(No.) Would Senate Republicans retaliate against Democrats for choosing the so-called nuclear option? (Maybe.) Would Democrats filibuster relentlessly, like Republicans did when they were the minority party in the Senate? (Probably not.) Of all the questions about a Republican Senate that hovered over the...

Republican Party's leaders perform no better than matriculants of a clown school, McConnell chief among them. Engender a despair born of surviving one Establishment Clown after another, since 1988 Mitch McConnell is the Shutdown Clown in the Establishment’s growing circus of Clowns—all performing under a “big tent.” Merely one day after being elected to the Senate, McConnell relentlessly declared, and was dutifully recorded to say, “We’re not going to be shutting down the government or defaulting on the national debt.” McConnell spoke these exact words in his very first news conference. The Leftists in the room recognized what was really...

* Obama is reportedly looking to expand his deferred action program to include any one who came to the U.S. as a child * The sweeping order would also allow parents of both citizen children and illegal immigrant children to remain in the U.S. * As many as 4.5 million illegal immigrants with U.S. born children could be protected * A growing number of conservatives are pledging to stop Obama by restricting immigration funding in an upcoming spending bill * Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell has explicitly said there won't be another government shutdown - period House Speaker John Boehner...

Sen. Mitch McConnell has been unanimously re-elected as Republican leader, his staff says