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Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are known as the moderates of the Senate Democratic Caucus. There are problems with that designation, of course, such as the fact that Manchin's and Sinema's lifetime ACU ratings are 27% and 15%, respectively - not exactly the definition of "moderation." But the universe of Democratic Party officeholders has moved so far left that they now officially regard Josef Stalin as "squishy," so the definition of "moderate" has had to be softened a bit as well, in recent years. Since the Democrats usurped complete control of both the national executive and legislative branches in 2020,...

Tuesday on FNC’s “Fox News Primetime,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he was not surprised his colleague Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) came out to oppose the so-called Build Back Better agenda promoted by President Joe Biden. According to Graham, one of the takeaways was Manchin was “telling the world” reconciliation to pass spending bills was dead.

The latest version of Democrats’ $4 trillion Build Back Better reconciliation bill includes a provision to empower the government to set Medicare drug prices.Government price-setting of prescription drugs is zombie legislation that just won’t die. After briefly being excised due to opposition from moderate legislators, the latest version of congressional Democrats’ $4 trillion Build Back Better reconciliation bill includes a provision to allow the government to set Medicare drug prices. “Democrats announced they have sealed a deal [on] pharmaceutical drug costs for seniors,” announced the Associated Press last week. The consequences of prescription drug price-setting in terms of reduced access...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is frog-marching her vulnerable members to a political suicide vote on a bill that’s likely dead on arrival in the Senate.On November 2, five House Democrats—enough to block the passage of the spending spree that the party hopes to enact via the budget reconciliation process—wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, urging her “to only bring a bill to the floor for which we have a strong level of confidence…will be ruled in order by the Senate parliamentarian and earn passage in the U.S. Senate.”The lawmakers have justifiable reason for concern. Major pieces of the 2,135-page...

It's no surprise that someone who went out of his way to avoid paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in Medicare taxes would agree to jeopardize the Medicare coverage of 27 million beneficiaries.Twelve months after Joe Biden claimed at the final presidential debate that “not one single person, private insurance, would lose their insurance under my [health] plan,” Democrats stand on the precipice of turning Biden’s statement into a reprise of Barack Obama’s “If you like your plan, you can keep it” Lie of The Year. The effort could cost millions of seniors their private Medicare plans, as Democrats raid...

Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy held a roundtable discussion Thursday as a means to "expose" one of the underreported provisions in the Democrats' multitrillion-dollar reconciliation package: An attempt to grant amnesty to up to 10 million illegal immigrants. About 1.3 million migrants have been taken into custody at the border since President Biden took office, McCarthy noted at the top of his Capitol Hill briefing. ... ,,,Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio shared a few more numbers, saying about 208,000 migrants were apprehended in August. He noted Congress has still not received the September numbers from the Department of Homeland Security.,,,

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) on Thursday said he offered to change his party affiliation to an independent amid tough reconciliation negotiations with President Biden and the far-left. Manchin told reporters he had offered Biden and the far-left to become an independent if he become an “embarrassment” to the Democrat Party.

By this year’s standards, the process that led to Obamacare seems like a veritable exercise in transparency and open government.How quickly Democrats forget. A dozen years ago, President Barack Obama faced strong and justified criticism for backtracking on his promise, made numerous times during the 2008 presidential campaign, to televise health-care negotiations on C-SPAN:By this year’s standards, however, the process that led to Obamacare—the law that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said we had to pass in order to find out what’s in it—seems like a veritable exercise in transparency and open government. It’s gotten so bad that press reports...

I’ve directed staff at the Republican Study Committee to pore over the bill’s pages and produce for you a summary of the worst parts of the bill. Please read and share these points on social media, newsletters, opinion-editorials, and whatever other format you use to get your message out.

To keep toddlers happy, we throw pennies at a wall and keep score in their heads. Then we try nickels. Once we had to quit and Fletcher, a little towhead, cried, “I learned to count by fives for nothing.” Pitching coins is more productive than throwing money at some government programs. Some increase inequality, or cause bigger forest fires, and the feedback loop from effectiveness to budgeting has been broken for generations. When all the coins in my purse are thrown, we play a game to pick up coins – fast! Effective parents pick up toys that way at bedtime....

...With a deadline of October 18th approaching—the point at which, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the U.S. would default on its debt if the debt ceiling were not raised by $480 billion—McConnell and Schumer agreed to raise the debt limit through December.... ...The critics might want to hold their fire until they see what happens in December. According to McConnell's allies, the minority leader had very good reasons for striking the deal. They say it connects all the important political dots now laid out before him as GOP leader, in ways that will benefit Republicans going into a midterm...

"The rich put cream on their berries; the rich drive shiny black cars." - (from the Broadway musical "Carnival!") The Pandora Papers, "an expose of the financial secrets and offshore dealings of dozens of heads of state, public officials and politicians," writes CNN, could not have come at a better time for congressional "progressives" who are seeking to win over enough Democrats to pass the massive Biden-Pelosi $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill, which is loaded with enough pork to infect the nation with financial trichinosis. The Pandora Papers, released by The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on Sunday, is not...

Pity Chuck Schumer, with AOC sniffing around for the scent of primary vulnerability while the Murder Turtle across the aisle is tenting his fingers, whispering “Excellent,” as the majority leader publicly nadlers himself. He’s got Nancy Pelosi jumping into the race for Most Senile Senior in the Dem leadership, alleged moderates terrified of 2022, the bro-betrothing weirdos of the progressive left, and a desiccated old freak in the White House who intervened and only made things worse. But Chucky’s real problem is the Wonder Twins, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who are driving him nuts with their stubborn refusal to...

Remember when John McCain was hailed by the Democrats for being a "maverick" because he often voted against his own party? Well, now that Joe Manchin (and Kyrsten Sinema) are opposing the $3.5 trillion Reconciliation Bill, the Democrats are most definitely NOT calling him a maverick. Instead they are calling him a lot of other unfriendly names as Manchin Derangement Syndrome goes red hot.

There was a time not very long ago when political parties never would have entertained the idea of jamming through any massive, generational reform without some form of buy-in from the other party. Today, Democrats argue that the filibuster's imaginary threat of "minority rule" has compelled them to use (really, abuse) the budgetary reconciliation process to jam through their entire agenda in the most expensive bill in American history. In the days before the Affordable Care Act vote fight forever changed the Senate, nearly every major post-war reform bill easily passed the 60-vote threshold: The Civil Rights Act got 73...

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) on Thursday confirmed to reporters his topline number for the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package is $1.5 trillion. During the media powwow, Manchin said the far-left “should elect more liberals” if they want a more radical package with a price larger than $1.5 trillion.

Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-VW) office on Thursday, ahead of when the House is supposed to vote on the “bipartisan” infrastructure bill, denies the reports that claim a deal has been made with the senator on a path to a reconciliation package. A spokesperson from the senator’s office told Politico, “There is no agreement, Manchin stands by his statement yesterday and reports of a number are completely inaccurate. He will continue to work in good faith.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced earlier in the week that she would be taking a second try at a vote on the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill on Thursday, after putting it on Monday because she didn’t have the votes.But it’s looking like she still doesn’t have the votes now, and in the words of The Hill, is “poised to pull the infrastructure vote” yet again.As we reported earlier, the progressives have made it clear that they don’t intend to vote on it, putting it in jeopardy. But if she puts it off again, after promising it for Monday,...

Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Tuesday urged House Democrats to block the $1.2 trillion “bipartisan” infrastructure bill, defying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) agenda of passing the legislation Thursday.

Progressive Democrats on Tuesday starkly warned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other party leaders that their position on President Joe Biden's infrastructure agenda remains unchanged: Without a deal on a broader, social policy bill, they do not intend to support a bipartisan infrastructure bill that Pelosi wants to bring to a vote this Thursday.