Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Just add cash. That was the ingredient Republican and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill needed to strike and pass a long-term budget deal after months of bitter fighting across and within party lines about how to spend funds that had been limited by budget caps. An $89 billion injection "changes a lot of votes," explained North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of Republicans' arch-conservative Freedom Caucus and an opponent of the bill, hours before it passed. And that figure, an important factor in securing the support of lawmakers from the Republican-heavy states of Texas and Florida, only...

Senate leaders reached a two-year budget deal, but Sen. Rand Paul is holding up a Senate vote. Congress must pass a deal before midnight to avoid a shutdown. The government will shut down. The Senate is in recess until 12:01 a.m. The Senate has gone into recess until 12:01 a.m. ET, which means the government will shut down at midnight. The next procedural vote to advance the budget deal will not happen before 1 a.m. ET.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is preventing a two-year budget deal from passing, as the White House advised federal agencies to prepare for the government to start shutting down at midnight. Congressional negotiators were scrambling earlier Thursday to lock in enough votes in the House, and that was before Paul, a Republican, made public his dissatisfaction with the deal, which would raise government spending, avert a government shutdown and lift the debt ceiling. A senior administrative official said the White House is instructing agencies to begin shutdown preparations in the event that Congress fails to pass a budget before the midnight...

Not only did Mitch McConnell just give Schumer everything he wanted on budget and health care, he ensured that for the remainder of the year, Democrats can get everything they want and conservatives will not pass a single priority. Not one. snip McConnell is planning to introduce debate in the Senate on immigration next week by putting forth a blank bill with nothing in it. He will then allow anyone to offer amendments, and, in his words, “whoever gets to 60 wins.” snip The GOP platform has become a free-for-all. The only ones who don’t get blank checks are conservatives....

The budget agreement reached by the Republican House and Republican Senate would increase spending over $500 billion over the next two years. It does not appear to cut a penny from domestic spending; in fact, along with military increases, it increases domestic spending by hundreds of billions of dollars. Basically, what happened is that the Democrats held military spending hostage so that they not only protected all their favorite spending programs but got huge increases for them. According to outlines of the budget plan circulated by congressional aides, existing spending caps would be raised by a combined $296 billion through...

House conservatives on Wednesday revolted against a massive bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling and bust spending caps, complaining that the GOP could no longer lay claim to being the party of fiscal responsibility. “I’m not only a ‘no.’ I’m a ‘hell no,’ ” quipped Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), one of many members of the Tea Party-aligned Freedom Caucus who left a closed-door meeting of Republicans saying they would vote against the deal. It’s a “Christmas tree on steroids,” lamented one of the Freedom Caucus leaders, Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.). “This spending proposal is disgusting and reckless — the...

(a) Transmittal of special message Whenever the President, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the head of any department or agency of the United States, or any officer or employee of the United States proposes to defer any budget authority provided for a specific purpose or project, the President shall transmit to the House of (1) the amount of the budget authority proposed to be deferred; (2) any account, department, or establishment of the Government to which such budget authority is available for obligation, and the specific projects or governmental functions involved; (3) the period of time...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has announced a deal with Senate Democrats to fund the government and set spending levels for defense and nondefense programs over the next two years. The legislation would avert a government shutdown on Friday, when federal funding is due to expire, and boost defense and nondefense programs. It also lifts the debt ceiling to March 2019, which White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders hailed as a decision that would move Congress away from "crisis-to-crisis budgeting." The deal is backed by McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), and will almost certainly be...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon that a deal had been reached to fund the government for 2 years, which includes raising military spending but excludes a DACA provision. Why it matters: The budget lifts sequestration caps, increasing discretionary spending by $300 billion over two years. The deal extends CHIP for 10 years instead of two and includes disaster relief and opioid response funding.

BREAKING: Senate leaders have reached an agreement on a two-year budget deal, adding billions of dollars in federal spending. The bipartisan accord would lift statutory budget limits by more than $200 billion, provide tens of billions of dollars in disaster relief funding. Senate leaders unveiled the deal Wednesday after months of negotiations -- and after Senate Democrats agreed to set aside immigration policy demands. The plan still faces head winds -- particularly in the House, where conservative Republicans are balking at the increased spending and liberal Democrats want further assurances on immigration. The announcement came as Congress faces yet another...

President Trump told Republican lawmakers Tuesday that he would "love to see a shutdown" of the federal government if Democrats do not support his proposed changes to immigration law. [Snip] The White House has proposed steep cuts in legal immigration and increased border security, including a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, in exchange for continuing protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Democrats have balked at the proposals and forced a three-day government shutdown over the issue last month. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters that Trump's latest comment...

WASHINGTON -- Almost six in 10 Americans do not want another federal government shutdown over the Republican refusal to allow unauthorized immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to remain in the country, according to a poll released Monday. With the current temporary spending bill set to expire Thursday, 59 percent in the Monmouth Poll said it would be unacceptable for congressional Democrats to oppose a budget deal even if the so-called dreamers remain in limbo for now. Just 36 percent said it would be acceptable for the Democrats to do so. (Snip) " By 82 percent to 14 percent,...

Some people have called for a balanced budget amendment to our Constitution as a means of reining in a big-spending Congress. That's a misguided vision, for the simple reason that in any real economic sense, as opposed to an accounting sense, the federal budget is always balanced. The value of what we produced in 2017 — our gross domestic product — totaled about $19 trillion. If the Congress spent $4 trillion of the $19 trillion that we produced, unless you believe in Santa Claus, you know that Congress must force us to spend $4 trillion less privately. Taxing us is...

Allow me to confess that I’ve been right out there with the best of them (or is it the worst?) when it comes to high-fiving and back-slapping over the positive results of the tax cuts enacted before Christmas. Businesses are hiring, handing out bonuses and onshoring capital. Workers are seeing more money in their paychecks and will see significant benefits when they file their taxes next year. Yes, there is plenty to celebrate, but there’s also a second, far less pleasant reality to contemplate.As the WaPo reports this weekend, the federal government is now on track to borrow a massive...

WASHINGTON - The threat of yet another government shutdown looms in about eight days amid speculation that next year’s budget deficit could speed past $1 trillion. Despite a fast-approaching Feb. 8 deadline, Congress appeared no closer to passing a budget, after it approved a stop-gap bill last month, giving lawmakers more time to reach agreement on a variety of divisive issues, including immigration. A growing number of lawmakers in both parties were complaining about out-of-control figures in both domestic and defense spending. Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee called the large increase in military spending “grotesque,” while Rep. Mark...

Oregon's Legislature faces a likely budget shortfall as it prepares for the 2018 session that starts next week, the Senate president said on Monday. Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, said at an Associated Press forum that the Legislature "got a break" because voters last week passed Measure 101, which imposes a tax on hospitals and health insurers to help pay for Medicaid for low-income residents.

While Democrats didn't land a deal on immigration, the recent agreement to reopen the government nonetheless laid the groundwork for a potential Senate floor debate. "We're very pleased with how it worked out," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said Tuesday about the short-lived government shutdown, which drew attention to the standoff over the expiring Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. "When there is a Republican president, a Republican Senate, a Republican House that (is) quite recalcitrant against Dreamers, you are not going to get it all at once." However, even if the Senate passes an immigration...

Party leaders must learn from the GOP and listen to their base, which skews as progressive as the Republicans’ does reactionary. Senate Democrats on Monday voted overwhelmingly to end the government shutdown without protections for the DREAMERs - who were protected from deportation and allowed to legally work by the Obama-era DACA policy eliminated by President Trump in 2017. For the Democratic Party’s progressive base, their capitulation was a disappointing end to a moment in which it seemed like the party might finally take a real stand against abhorrent Republican policies. The DREAMERs were meant to be an unassailable group...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn't smile much. But as the Kentucky Republican sat in his chair on the Senate floor, listening to Chuck Schumer, announce that Democrats would vote to reopen the federal government, his lips spread into a nearly ear-to-ear grin. He looked like the cat that had just swallowed the Democratic Party. What McConnell knew - and what infuriated Democratic activists across the country were just finding out - was that Schumer's strategy of shutting down the government to force President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans into locking in an immigration deal had failed in epic fashion....

... "On The Right Side of History" did not get Trump wrong. That is why he calls himself "On The Right Side of History" because he is... In a string of 30 tweets, he laid it out. 1. For a couple weeks now, I've been saying that DACA is not a bargaining chip, it's a bait. In fact, you just saw who Trump used it to bait the Dems into a Banzai Charge on his most heavily fortified position. 2. Having been humiliated by Trump, the smarter Dems in congress, especially in the Senate are going to be hella wary...