Free Republic

Conservative Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama could be chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, injecting a much needed shot of populism into the GOP policymaking apparatus. Sessions would join other conservative chairmen with populist leanings, including the two men whose committees oversee Wall Street. But Sen. Mike Enzi — a Wyoming conservative who is closer to the party Establishment and the business lobby — could take the gavel instead. Here’s the background on the race for Budget chairman: Technically, the entire Senate Republican Conference — all 53 or 54 GOP senators — choose the committee chairman. But as a...

How could a major tax deal brokered by the top Senate Democrat die so quickly at the hands of a Democratic president?SnipUntil late last week, Senate Finance, Ways and Means and leadership met regularly and were making progress on the package of tax breaks known as tax extenders. The group of some 55-plus tax breaks have expired, and many lawmakers in both parties want to renew by the end of the year, amid warnings from the IRS that failing to act would disrupt the upcoming tax filing season. They include everything from a major business research credit to one for...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) wants Republicans to reverse the Democrats' filibuster reforms in the new year, arguing that doing so will make it tougher for President Barack Obama to get his nominees approved. The new system requires just 51 votes to advance executive branch nominees and judges nominated for all courts except the Supreme Court, instead of the 60 votes that were previously required. Democrats approved the reforms after Republicans were refusing to let many of Obama's nominees go through. Half the nominees filibustered in the country's history, for example, were blocked by Republicans during the Obama administration.

Harry Reid personally voted against Landrieu and screwed his own party. Checking the Roll Call this morning, Harry Reid's vote is Nay. Why did he allow the vote (since he rules the Senate with an iron fist) and then vote against her and ruin her chances in Louisiana? Nothing short of the Bills passage would have saved her down there. She's too little to late now and the union jobs are being pooched. And Obama stands above it all to pooch the Union jobs with a veto promise. This might have been the last chance for the Democrat Party (notice...

Would somebody please explain to me why all these "important" votes in the Senate now need 60 votes to pass? I know that it is some kind of "rule" that Harry Reid instituted, but when does it kick in, and what is the reasoning behind it?

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats, by a single vote, stopped legislation that would have approved construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, one of the most fractious and expensive battles of the Obama presidency. The vote represented a victory for the environmental movement, but the fight had taken on larger dimensions as a proxy war between Republicans, who argued that the project was vital for job creation, and President Obama, who had delayed a decision on building it. Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, who is facing a runoff election Dec. 6, had pleaded with her colleagues throughout the day to...

There’s a debate raging on the Senate Floor right now over the Keystone XL Pipeline, and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D – CA) is lamenting how dirty the air is where the pipeline will end, Port Arthur, TX. Specifically, she is using a photo of a playground in the Texas city located near oil refineries showing dark plumes of smoke pouring into the sky and an entirely overcast sky. She claims the air will become even worse if the pipeline is approved. I’ve done graphic design for many years now and can tell when something is most likely Photoshopped. This is...

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...

Embattled Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and other supporters of building the Keystone XL pipeline appear to be one vote short of the 60 they need to win a key vote on the project on Tuesday. Landrieu has 59 votes backing legislation to approve the project, and Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Angus King (I-Maine) appear to be her top targets to get to 60. The effort is crucial to Landrieu because of her runoff election in December against Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who also backs the pipeline. Landrieu is seen as a decided underdog in the race, and Senate Democrats...

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.

ANCHORAGE — First-term Democratic Sen. Mark Begich has conceded his race against Republican challenger Dan Sullivan, the former Alaska natural resources commissioner who has led in his first run at elected office since Election Day on Nov. 4. According to a Division of Elections update Monday afternoon, Begich trailed Sullivan by more than 6,200 votes, about 2.2 percent. Spokespersons for the Begich campaign had said repeatedly since Election Day that every vote deserved to be counted and hinted that uncounted votes from rural Alaska might put Begich ahead. The Associated Press called the election for Sullivan on Nov. 11. Nearly...

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, hit back at Sen. Al Franken, D-Minnesota, Monday for his comments that Cruz doesn't know what he is talking about when it comes to net neutrality. Cruz used a video that he uploaded to YouTube and social media that shows the senator explaining what net neutrality is and how it works.

NARAL has posted this interesting graphic: IMAGE ON LINK NARAL is referring to the abortion lobby’s ability to block pro-life bills and amendments by Senate filibusters (i.e., by requiring pro-life proponents to muster 60 votes to “invoke cloture”). Word to the wise: NARAL enjoys torturing numbers for its own devices. When discussing public opinion, NARAL counts everybody as “pro-choice” except those who want abortion to be flat-out illegal, and thus NARAL claims to speak for 70% of the population. Yet when NARAL is counting lawmakers for purposes of whipping up donations, it counts as “pro-choice” only those legislators who unblinkingly...

A coloring book featuring U.S. Senator Ted Cruz saving America while riding on a giant bald eagle and carrying a rifle in his hand is flying off the shelves of booksellers around the country.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The fate of a little-noticed ballot measure in strongly Democratic Oregon serves as a warning to President Barack Obama and his party about the political perils of immigration policy. Even as Oregon voters were legalizing recreational marijuana and expanding Democratic majorities in state government, they decided by a margin of 66-34 to cancel a new state law that would have provided driver's licenses to people who are in the United States illegally. Obama is considering acting on his own, as early as this week, to possibly shield from deportation up to 5 million immigrants now living...

Looming Environmental Protection Agency ozone regulations personify the Obama administration’s secrecy, collusion, fraud, and disdain for concerns about the effects that its tsunami of regulations is having on the livelihoods, living standards, health and welfare of millions of American families. Virtually every EPA announcement of new regulations asserts that they will improve human health. Draconian carbon dioxide standards, for example, won’t just prevent climate change, even if rapidly developing countries continue emitting vast volumes of this plant-fertilizing gas. The rules will somehow reduce the spread of ticks and Lyme disease, and protect “our most vulnerable citizens.” It’s hogwash. But Americans...

Do you remember the Louisiana Senate runoff election of December 1996? Conservative Woody Jenkins sure does. He was the Republican Senate candidate who got mugged out of a Senate seat by Mary Landrieu. Flashback to 18 years ago — reporting in the December 23, 1996, and February 10, 1997, issues of National Review — Rich Lowry tells the story of how Mary Landrieu won ‘The Big Sleazy’ Senate runoff election of 1996. Now just 2 1/2 weeks away from the the 2014 Louisiana Senate runoff, Lowry’s investigative reports from nearly two decades ago are a sober reminder of what can...

Republican Senate contender Bill Cassidy and his conservative allies have outspent endangered Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu by roughly a 180-to-1 margin on television since their campaign went into overtime. It was a reverse from earlier in the campaign, when Landrieu blanketed the airwaves and conservatives held onto their cash. No outside groups so far have come to Landrieu's aid, while GOP groups have ramped up their support of Cassidy.

According to Sen. Jim Inhofe, there may be enough Democratic votes to override President Barack Obama’s expected veto of legislation to authorize construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The Oklahoma Republican said that Democrats who survived their party's big defeat in the midterm elections want to keep their distance from the president — so much so that many of them would vote to override a possible veto on the pipeline. "After the beating the Democrats took, keep in mind we have another election coming up in 2016," Inhofe told WMAL Radio on Thursday, The Washington Free Beacon reported. "There are...

How many times can Cory Gardner explain that his answer to a government shutdown is “absolutely not”? We may not know the actual ceiling on that, but not for lack of effort from the Morning Joe crew. The newly-elected Senator from Colorado explains that “a mature governing body” should not have that on its radar at all, and instead emphasizes that Republicans took control of the Senate in order to expedite solutions, not obstruct the process. Gardner suggests that obstruction will come from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Democrats tried hard to paint the GOP as the Party of...