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Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is sharing his regrets about his "fiscal-cliff" strategy, less than a month after the House bitterly swallowed a last-minute deal hatched in the Senate. In a private speech to the Ripon Society on Tuesday, Boehner said that he should have taken a different course after the November election by immediately demanding that the Senate produce a bill to avert the worst parts of a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that were due to hit on Jan. 1. Instead, Boehner delivered a formal speech at the Capitol on the day after President Obama won a...

(Reuters) - Ending a self-imposed silence about the November election, 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan said on Wednesday that he and presidential running mate Mitt Romney lost not because of ideas, but due to ineffective communication.

Speaker John Boehner said he believes the primary goal of President Obama’s second term is to “annihilate the Republican Party.” “Given what we heard yesterday about the president’s vision for his second term, it’s pretty clear to me that he knows he can’t do any of that as long as the House is controlled by Republicans,” Boehner said in a speech Tuesday to The Ripon Society. “So we’re expecting over the next 22 months to be the focus of this administration as they attempt to annihilate the Republican Party. “And let me just tell you, I do believe that is...

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke criticized the debt ceiling as an unusual device that can be used to prevent the United States from paying it’s bills, as he suggested that the country would be better off if the debt limit did not exist. “I think it would be a good thing if we didn’t have [the debt ceiling],” Bernanke told students at the University of Michigan today. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think it’s going to be around.” Those remarks put Bernanke in agreement with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who has said that Congress should eliminate the...

If financial aid to Israel were slowly decreased over time, it would increase the Jewish state’s sovereignty because they wouldn’t need to get permission from the U.S. every time they need to defend themselves against aggressive neighbors, Sen. Rand Paul said on Monday. Paul said that while he knows the idea of decreasing any kind of foreign aid is a “minority opinion” in Washington, it will be a lot harder for America to help others “if we are out of money,” reported Fox News. …

Let me see if I understand this correctly.  QE4 is announced and it was declared that bonds will be purchased for as long as the eye can see or until we achieve an unemployment rate of 6.5%.  Several weeks later, the majority of Federal Reserve officials announced that it would be “appropriate” to end QE4 prior to the end of 2013 or by the end of 2013.  So, what the heck happened to 6.5% unemployment?  The Fed, for almost 100-years, has operated with two mandated objectives, namely stable prices and full employment.  In order to achieve those goals, they can...

This time I should’ve been the one listening. But listening can be tough sometimes when you’re an analyst and a commentator, and people around the country – listeners, readers, media, candidates, causes, businesses, etc. – come to you to find out why things are happening and what may happen next. Analysis and commentary is one of the few things in life I’m really good at. My car expertise begins and ends with changing a tire. Any toy that comes with the phrase “some assembly required” my kids immediately take to my wife. And when that much-anticipated Zombie apocalypse finally happens...

WASHINGTON – House Republican leaders abruptly pulled their fallback tax bill from the floor Thursday night, conceding that they did not have the votes to pass it. “The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass,” Speaker John A. Boehner said in a statement. “Now it is up to the president to work with Senator Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff.” The decision was a major setback for the speaker, who was pushing his so-called Plan B to prevent lower tax rates from expiring on...

Former President George W. Bush ambled back into the spotlight Tuesday to laud legal immigration, a decade after he helped inflate the real-estate bubble to its 2007 peak while trying to boost homeownership among Hispanics. “America is a nation of immigrants. … Immigrants can help build a dynamic tomorrow. … They invigorate our soul,” Bush said at the keynote speech of a one-day symposium on immigration’s role in the economy at the Dallas-based George W. Bush Institute. “Growing up in Texas we have had the honor and privilege of meeting many of the newly arrived,” the former president said. “They...

Jeb Bush in 2016? (CNN) -- For all of our post-2012 election talk about the changing culture, the changing demographics and, perhaps, a changing party, preliminary thoughts out of D.C. about the 2016 election have us headed toward not much change at all: Clinton vs Bush ... again. I am as intrigued by the prospects of these two juggernauts, Jeb and Hillary, locking ideological horns as I am repulsed by the thought of half of my life being dominated by two family names. One, Clinton, has risen from the ashes after the White House. The other name, Bush, is so...

Taxes on the wealthy are going up, House Speaker John Boehner conceded on Wednesday in challenging President Barack Obama to sit down with him to hammer out a deal for avoiding the fiscal cliff. The statement to reporters reflected how negotiations on reducing the nation's chronic federal deficits and debt have evolved since Obama's re-election last month. Republicans once opposed to any new revenue in their quest to shrink government now realize Obama's victory and public support for the president's campaign theme of higher taxes on the wealthy leave them with little negotiating leverage. Less than four weeks from the...

Republicans had better learn from history -- and from Ronald Reagan's mistake. President Obama and his fellow big-spenders in Congress are promising if they get higher tax rates today they'll make even higher spending cuts tomorrow. It's an old sucker's game. Republicans -- and the rest of the country -- should know it by now, because for three decades we've all been suckers. If history is our guide, and Republicans in Congress don't grow a spine, by this time next year we'll have higher taxes, higher spending, more debt and a bigger government. Twice before, Republicans have been fooled into...

TOLEDO, Ohio—Mitt Romney projected confidence Wednesday that he's going to win Ohio, in spite of a recent spate of polls showing him trailing President Barack Obama in this crucial swing state. "I'm going to win Ohio," Romney told NBC's Ron Allen in an interview. "I'm going to become the next president."In a separate interview with ABC's David Muir, Romney downplayed several recent polls that suggest he's losing ground to Obama in Ohio and other battleground states. "Polls go up, polls go down," Romney told ABC. But, he added, he was "absolutely convinced" that people would support his campaign after watching...

(CNN) – Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney pointed Wednesday to the Massachusetts health reform law he signed – and particularly its coverage of children – when asked about his compassion for middle class people. Romney raised the law in an interview with NBC News. Conservatives have criticized Romney for supporting the law, which is similar to the health reform law signed by President Barack Obama. Romney has said his law was constitutional and appropriate in Massachusetts, but was not meant to be implemented nationally. "I think throughout this campaign as well, we talked about my record in Massachusetts, don't forget...

TOLEDO, Ohio — Mitt Romney, while campaigning in Ohio on Wednesday, highlighted the healthcare law that he passed while governor of Massachusetts as proof of his empathy for people. “I think throughout this campaign as well, we talked about my record in Massachusetts, don't forget — I got everybody in my state insured,” Romney told NBC News in an interview before he headlined a rally here. “One hundred percent of the kids in our state had health insurance. I don't think there's anything that shows more empathy and care about the people of this country than that kind of record.”

"I've been across this country, and my heart aches for the people I've seen," Romney told a crowd of several hundred people here. "There are so many in our country that are hurting right now. I want to help them....I care about the people in America," he said. "And the difference between me and President Obama is I know what to do, and I will do what it takes to get this economy going."

NEW YORK (AP) — Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney is unlikely to win Bill Clinton's vote, but that doesn't mean he can't soak up a bit of the popular former president's luster. The two men stood side by side Tuesday as Clinton introduced Romney before the GOP candidate's speech to Clinton's annual global conference in New York. Clinton recalled working with Romney to save AmeriCorps, and praised the former Massachusetts governor's efforts to persuade fellow Republicans to support the national service program. Romney, taking the podium, returned the compliment. "If there's one thing we've learned in this election season,...

Mitt Romney's comments about 47 percent of Americans being dependent on government and locked in to vote for President Obama highlight a fundamental reality in American politics today: The gap between the American people and the political class is bigger than the gap between Republicans and Democrats in Washington, D.C. Romney's remarks are the GOP equivalent of Obama's notorious comments about small-town Pennsylvania voters bitterly clinging to their guns and religion. Both Romney and Obama highlighted the condescending attitude that political elites hold of the people they want to rule over. A National Journal survey found that 59 percent of...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You know, I could be wrong about this, but here's Bill Kristol, who is saying that Romney... Let me get this quote in front of me. I always put this stuff the bottom of the Stack. Bill Kristol says Romney was "stupid and arrogant," and every Democrat under the sun is retweeting it. On the tape, talking about the 47%, Kristol says Romney was "stupid and arrogant." Every Democrat under the sun's retweeting that all over the place, Donna Brazile and others. You know what struck me about this? During the primary, all these people -- not...

By itself, the state of the economy is enough to guarantee a close election, and every national survey during the past two weeks has put Obama and Romney in a statistical tie. Now another key factor points in the same direction—the shifting balance between the political parties. This matters because party preferences and voting patterns are more closely linked today than they have been in several generations—and two recent in-depth surveys of the party system document that a clean Democratic victory, of the sort the party enjoyed in 2008, is exceedingly unlikely. The surging Democratic tide of four years...