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Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) warned Republicans Friday not to seek concessions in exchange for raising the nation’s debt ceiling. Murray, fresh off negotiating a two-year budget deal with her House counterpart Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), said Democrats will not negotiate over raising the debt ceiling. “We will not negotiate over whether or not the United States of America should pay its bills,” she writes in a letter sent to her Senate colleagues.

Latest on the Tax Deal: Payroll Tax Cut, Estate Tax BackDecember 6, 2010 4:45 P.M. By Daniel Foster     What we’re hearing: A two-year extension of all current income, dividend, and capital gains tax rates, plus a one-year (or 13 month) extension of unemployment insurance. Chuck Todd reports that the tax deal could include a payroll tax holiday. But Marc Ambinder reports that it will instead include a two percent two percentage point reduction in payroll tax that would replace President Obama’s favored Making Work Pay tax credit, and a reinstatement of the estate tax over a certain yet-to-be-decided threshold. Multiple reports...

President Bush yesterday said he will team up with Democrats to pass an immigration bill with a guest-worker program that his own party blocked this year, and his Republican opponents predicted a bloody intraparty fight but said they cannot stop such a bill from passing. "We will fight it, we will lose. It will go to the Senate, it will pass. The president will sign it. And it will happen quickly because that's one thing they know they can pass," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican and chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, who had led the opposition to...