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Their power ebbing, Senate Democrats launched a last-minute drive Saturday to confirm roughly 20 of President Barack Obama’s nominees, and several Republicans blamed tea partyer Ted Cruz for creating an opening for the outgoing majority party to exploit. The weekend session unfolded as measures that could prevent government operating funds from running out at midnight remained in limbo. Even so, there was little apparent concern about a shutdown that Democratic and Republican leaders said they wanted to avoid. Republicans tried to slow the nomination proceedings, but several voiced unhappiness with Cruz, R-Texas. One likened his actions to his role in...

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...

Or may have decided. We won’t know for a few months whether the Massachusetts senator will challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, but if she chooses to run, we’re going to look back at this week as a pivotal moment in Warren’s decision-making. Warren has been waging two battles against mainstream Democrats over the past month in an attempt to reduce Wall Street’s influence within the party. Both of those battles hit inflection points this week. The first is over President Barack Obama’s nominee for the under secretary for Domestic Finance, the number three position at the Treasury Department....

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Welcome back. Great to have you. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network. Grab audio sound bite number one. The Drive-By Media is comparing Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz, but they're doing it the following way. Elizabeth Warren is wonderful. Ted Cruz is mean and nasty and a threat to the republic. It's about 25 seconds, and again, just a media montage to give you a flavor here. ED HENERY: Elizabeth Warren saying she may hold all of this up and do a reverse of what Ted Cruz did. TAMARA KEITH: She's sort of pulling a Ted Cruz. JOE...

Democrats Vote to Shut Down Government December 11, 2014 by Rush Limbaugh BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Okay. We have a vote on the rule on the budget resolution in the House called the cromnibus omnibus and it's a little bit in the weeds to explain this,therefore nobody better than me to do it.What just happened isthat THE RULE setting the stage for the vote later BARELY PASSED.They had to vote on the rule, the procedure, in order to set the stage for the vote on the final passage of the omnibus bill in the House of Representatives. The vote was...

The US House passed a continuing resolution before the midnight deadline. But the Senate did not take it up. Therefore by failing to pass their own resolution, THE SENATE DEMOCRATS SHUTDOWN THE US GOVERNMENT.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on Thursday held a conference call with government agencies and departments to prepare them for a possible shutdown, as the House struggles to pass a funding bill. "Congress is taking a series of actions today on legislation that would prevent a lapse in appropriations and allow for continued Government operations. We continue to believe that time remains for Congress to pass full-year appropriations for FY 2015, and prevent a government shutdown," an OMB official said in a statement. "However, out of an abundance of caution, we are working with agencies and taking steps...

Senator Elizabeth Warren is bat guano crazy. She is calling on Democrats in the House to oppose the bi-partisan budget bill negotiated by the House and Senate because an obscure rule dealing with derivatives contained in the Dodd-Frank financial regulation reform bill has been removed.If House Democrats follow her lead, the budget bill will fail and the government will be forced to shut down at 12:01 AM on Friday. At present, Speaker Boehner does not have enough votes for Republicans to pass the measure themselves. That’s because some conservatives in the House are also bat guano crazy and insist...

Interesting argument!

Rush Limbaugh is a savvy guy who thinks Republican leaders are wrong to shun the idea of another government shutdown. Appearing on Fox News Sunday, he argued that the only important poll is the one held on Election Day. “[The GOP] won a landslide election ten months after that so-called shutdown . . . The essence of a poll is an election, and I’ve got two of them. And we would have won in 2012 if 4 million Republicans hadn’t stayed home.” The belief that Romney would have won in 2012 if millions of Republicans hadn’t sat out the election...

* MailOnline exclusively obtained a draft copy of the legislation under consideration by conservatives in the House * It says 'no part of any appropriation,' including 'funds or fees collected' can be used by 'any agency to implement' Obama's immigration directives * House Republicans will discuss the legislation at a closed-door meeting tomorrow on Capitol Hill * The language could be part of a must-pass bill that would keep the government's doors open beyond next Thursday * The White House reiterated its preference today that Congress pass a yearlong appropriations billThe White House said on Monday that it would veto...

Most Freepers think a government shutdown would benefit the country yet all surveys are phrased as "Who would you BLAME for a government shutdown?" I say we need surveys using the word credit instead of blame.

Via the Daily Caller, there’s a caveat here but I’m not sure why. First Jon Karl asks whether Obama would veto a single bill that funds the entire government for 12 months but specifically blocks him from carrying out executive amnesty. Yup, sure would, says Josh Earnest. Okay, says Karl, but what if Republicans pass a bill that funds the entire government for 12 months except for Homeland Security, the agency tasked with implementing amnesty, which would be funded on a short-term basis only until O rescinds his executive order? Earnest is noncommittal about that one. That idea, the...

Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama announced that Republicans had decided not to impeach President Obama over his plan to allow millions of immigrants to remain in this country without fear of deportation through his executive authority. But that concession is not the end of the matter. He is planning much more serious mischief: using Congress’s power of the purse to pressure the White House into backing off. Condemning the immigration action as “unlawful,” Mr. Sessions says he and other Republicans may filibuster any attempt to pay for government operations through the full fiscal year, which ends Oct. 1. Instead, he...

Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama announced with great gravity the other day that Republicans had decided not to impeach President Obama over his plan to allow millions of immigrants to remain in this country without fear of deportation through his executive authority. But that concession is not the end of the matter. He is planning much more serious mischief: using Congress’s power of the purse to pressure the White House into backing off. Condemning the immigration action as “unlawful,” Mr. Sessions says he and other Republicans may filibuster any attempt to pay for government operations through the full fiscal year,...

They say politicians, like generals, tend to fight the last war. In the Constitutional showdown over President Obama’s executive orders on immigration and threatened government shutdown, Republicans are poised to lose an important fight they can and should win. They lack confidence because they suffer PTSD from the last battle. It’s quite a turnaround from Obama’s historic drubbing in the midterms a few weeks ago. Suddenly, he seems smug and purposeful while Republicans are fearful of missteps in a minefield.Republicans and many legal scholars believe Obama undermined the constitutional order with unknown consequences. At worst, he’s ignited an arms race...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) needs to stop defending the disastrous 2013 shutdown. The stunt he inspired was, for all but the Kool-Aid drinkers, a low point in recent Republican history. It plunged the party into a slump and allowed the president to divert attention from the looming Obamacare debacle. It was only after the shutdown ended by complete surrender that Republicans and the media could focus on the horrible Obamacare rollout. The shutdown was so harmful that virtually no conservative — not even Cruz — recommends a repeat over the president’s executive order on immigration. So why is Cruz still...

Watch for a shift in their perspective, which is already underway.Conventional wisdom is malleable, and it appears that conventional wisdom on the wisdom of shutting down the government is shifting, at least within the Republican party. While the old CW was that it was a terrible idea that Republicans suffered for, and it would be foolish to do it again, the new CW seems to be, "Hey, didn't we shut down the government and win the next election?" The other day, influential conservative journalist Byron York began pushing this line, writing that the 2013 shutdown "so deeply damaged GOP prospects...

Mark Levin debunks the RINO lie about debt default by breaking down every government shutdown in modern American history.

It’s hard to overstate how irresponsible President Obama would be to go forward, as he almost surely will, with his sweeping executive order on amnesty. Ross Douthat of the New York Times has written a fine column on why doing so would be, in his words, a “disgrace.” What the president is on the verge of doing would do tremendous, long-term damage to our political culture and our constitutional order. It would set a dangerous precedent. And it would be an act of extraordinary selfishness. By now none of this should surprise us. Yet on some level it’s hard to...