Free Republic

GOP Sen. Scott Brown (Mass.) said Monday he won't support Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) budget when it comes up for a vote in the Senate. Brown, a centrist who is running for reelection in 2012, said that Ryan's plan helped jumpstart a necessary debate, but that Ryan's Medicare reforms go too far. "While I applaud Ryan for getting the conversation started, I cannot support his specific plan — and therefore will vote 'no' on his budget," he wrote in a Politico op-ed. "Our country is on an unsustainable fiscal path," he added. "But I do not think it requires us...

Senator John F. Kerry, laboring to achieve a foreign policy victory that would be a highlight of his career, gained crucial support yesterday for a nuclear arms control treaty with Russia from his Republican counterpart, Senator Scott Brown. Brown’s backing gave Kerry additional momentum heading into a possible vote today. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry is President Obama’s man in charge of trying to lock down the two-thirds support of the Senate — 67 votes if every member shows up — required to ratify the New START pact. Kerry and other senators have predicted passage but...

Scott Brown was the Man with the truck during his senatorial campaign. Today he assisted President Obama in the sweeping overhaul of the American financial system. The least we can say he broke his promise for no new taxes that will cripple the economy. The truth is the Gov now will call the shots on Wall Street. Do you think your money is safer now? The Rock Star of the tea party movement is a star no more. He is a poster boy again, but this time it is not for Cosmo, but for the Obama agenda. Remember how the...

On the evening of Scott Brown’s election, I wrote that among the reasons for his victory was resentment of “a host of actions to prop up Wall Street firms at the expense of taxpayers.” Who would have thought that less than six months later Brown would cast the decisive vote in favor of legislation that institutionalizes Wall Street bailouts, and whose sponsors — Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank — played key roles in bringing on the meltdown, not to mention representing everything that is sleazy and corrupt about Washington. If Brown wasn’t running against Barney Frank when he railed against...

Republicans were forced to "back down" from blocking Wall Street reform, according to a fundraising letter sent by the president. In the e-mail to his supporters, President Barack Obama wrote that pressure on lawmakers forced Republicans to "back down" from blocking the legislation, which the Senate passed Thursday. "This movement proved again that the strongest special interests, who for so long have called the shots in Washington, can be beat," he wrote. "When opponents in Congress tried to block the legislation altogether, you stood up -- and they backed down. When the lobbyists pushed for loopholes and exemptions just before...