BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON | JAN 4, 2019
“When our new members take the oath, our Congress will be refreshed, and our Democracy will be strengthened by the optimism, idealism, and patriotism of this transformative freshman class.”
— Newly elected Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
“We’re going to impeach that motherfu—er”
— Newly elected Congresswoman Rashida Tiaib, D-MI, to a crowd of cheering supporters
Okay, then.
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
So the lobbyist beat the Obamacare supporter in the special election in Florida?
And the race wasn’t even that close.
David Jolly, a former lobbyist and former Staff Member to Congressman Bill Young, beat Alex Sink, a pretty well-known and well-funded Democrat who seemingly and improbably embraced Obamacare during the Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
Originally published in The Hill
Uncertainty is the one thing that seems certain in the world today. We are in an age of transition, sparked by changing social mores and unstoppable technological progress.
Where it will end, nobody knows.
Uncertainty breeds instability. And instability breeds insecurity.
Both political parties are embroiled in insecurity. Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
Since the grand opening of Healthcare.gov – the federal home of Obamacare – on October 1, 2013, the federal government has been able to sign up only 26,794 people.
26,794 people is something short of what the Administration of Barack Obama had hoped for, had sneered at Republicans for doubting, and had assured the American public it was on target to produce.
Put another way, after spending over three years and, according to the Washington Post, between $170 and $300 million (just for the website), the geniuses at the Department of Health and Human Services have been able to sign up the equivalent of the entire population of … Carbondale, Illinois (Pop. 26,241).
If you’re looking for something to compare all this with, Amazon.com gets about 4.3 million unique visitors – per day; almost 129 million per month.
According to NBC News, HHS has had a “goal of 7 million newly signed up by the end of March” 2014. Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
Passing a debt limit extension is hard.
The Democrats like to talk about how the Republicans should pass a clean debt extension. And then they like to run campaign ads against Republicans who vote for a clean debt extension.
Denny Rehberg, the Republican Congressman who ran for the Senate seat in Montana, found that out the hard way. So did George Allen, who ran against Tim Kaine.
Democrats ran ads hitting both Allen and Rehberg for voting to extend the debt limit, just as their President was beating up Republicans for not voting to extend the debt limit.
Hypocrisy runs so deep with the Democrats in Washington that they aren’t even self-conscious about it. Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
At my gym, they put little inspirational quotes up on the wall to get you to work out harder (that’s the theory, at least).
“Lead, follow, or get out of the way,” was last Tuesday’s quote, attributed to the Marine’s handbook, which was a revelation to me. I always thought that Lee Iacocca was the man who first said that memorable phrase when he was trying to fix Chrysler.
This quote must haunt Congressional Republicans on both sides of the Capitol dome.
In the House, the followers aren’t following the Leaders. In the Senate, the Leaders aren’t following the followers. Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
There is almost no good news for President Barack Obama in the CNN/ORC poll that was released earlier this week.
As the President giggled and played rock, paper, scissors with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-8 Conference in Ireland, the bloom appears to have begun to come off the Obaman Rose as far as the American people are concerned.
This is one poll taken last week (Tuesday through Thursday) so it might not signal a trend, but it certainly won’t generate confidence in the West Wing. Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
So, amid the myriad of scandals that currently occupy DC elite, the House of Representatives worked late into the night to vote once again to repeal Obamacare.
The press played this as another partisan attempt to poke at the President, a waste of time, a waste of effort, a waste of money. The bill wasn’t going to go anywhere in the Senate, so why would House Republicans do this for the 37th time?
I think there are several good reasons.
First, this is a revenue bill, and should the Senate want to go to conference on a revenue bill, this gives them a vehicle to do that. Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
“These guys are like the Hatfields and McCoys. That’s why they can’t get anything done in Congress.”
My cab driver pretty much nailed it on the head. Relations between the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress have taken on all of the characteristics of that famous family feud.
The Hatfield-McCoy feud started out when a McCoy came home from the Civil War as a Union soldier, angering a group of Hatfields, who had formed a pro-Confederacy vigilante group called the “Logan wildcats.” They promptly murdered him. Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
Greg Walden condemns an unpopular proposal in the President’s budget and gets attacked by the right-wing.
What is up with that?
Walden is the popular, smart, hard-working head of the National Congressional Campaign Committee. His job is to elect Republicans, or more precisely make certain that Republicans stay in control of the House.
He attacked the Obama budget for its inclusion of a proposal to recalibrate Social Security’s cost of living adjustments to be more in line with actual Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
On Dec. 5, 1933, right after dinner bells rang across the country, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a proclamation that ended Prohibition and solidified the vast majority of Catholic votes for the Democratic Party for 40 years.
The first time Catholics voted overwhelmingly Democratic was in 1884, when a spokesman for a group of New York preachers, a guy named Samuel Burchard, condemned Grover Cleveland for being from a party that represented “rum, Romanism and rebellion.” That little statement energized German and Irish Catholics to swing the vote against James Blaine, giving a close election to Cleveland. Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
Probably the best thing for Republicans would be for the Supreme Court to rule that gay marriage is legal and let us all move on, but I don’t think that is going to happen. The media is completely focused on the goings on at the nation’s highest court, as if there is nothing else in the world that matters. And that means I have to give my two cents worth.
It used to be that the prospect of gay marriage was a sure political winner for the GOP. Karl Rove worked with different groups to get referendums on various state ballots to help drive the Christian right to the polls, the theory being that if Christians went to the polls, they would vote for George Bush. Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
In 1995, at Xerox Document University, Newt Gingrich and John Kasich convinced the revolutionary class of 1994 and reluctant old-timers to work together to produce the first balanced budget in a generation.
Kasich’s budget included a pro-growth tax reform agenda and some painful cuts to some entitlement programs, chiefly Medicare and Medicaid.
Republicans passed that first balanced budget, and through some luck and some unforeseen economic growth, the budget magically balanced three years later. Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
America Held Hostage: Sequester Day 11
Although it hasn’t made much news, what with the world missing a Pope, the Senate missing an on-the-floor bathroom, Venezuela missing a President, and President Hamid Karzai missing a press conference with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel; but President Barack Obama has missed the deadline for producing a budget document for the United States.
It’s not as if the whole government spending thing hasn’t been a big deal in Washington. You might have been following along as Republicans and Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
America Held Hostage: Sequester Day 8
It didn’t snow in DC on Wednesday so I spent the entire afternoon watching Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) filibustering the nomination of John Brennan to be the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Sen. Paul’s issue wasn’t with Brennan; it was with the refusal of President Barack Obama to describe his position on using drones to kill people generally, and Americans in particular, on U.S. soil. Continue reading
BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com
Think about the things ‘very conservative’, ‘far right-wing’, ‘ultra-conservatives’ have wanted to achieve in Congress over the past 40 years.
We’ll give you two hints:
– Long-term, permanent lower tax rates.
– Spending cuts in many bloated federal programs.
Just try to remember the headlines in the liberal media, both electronic and in print, whenever Presidents Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43 or Speaker Newt Gingrich tried to cut taxes or spending since 1980: Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
One hundred years, and 100 pounds ago I was the coxswain on the freshman crew at Marietta College, Marietta, Ohio 45750.
During that year I learned that “starboard” means right facing forward, and “port” means left facing forward. President Barack Obama’s inaugural address on Monday was a clear signal that he intends to steer the ship of state hard a-port.
During the speech I Tweeted that it was “⅓ Gettysburg, ⅓ FDR, and ⅓ State of the Union.”
The speech didn’t have the traditional reach across the aisle to the other political party suggesting Republicans and Democrats are smart enough, dedicated enough, and patriotic enough to find common ground and make America a better place. Continue reading
BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
Newly inaugurated President Barack H. Obama left the balcony of the west front of the Capitol and paused before going inside. He turned around and looked back down the mall at the throng that had just witnessed him taking the oath of office for his second term. It was a poignant moment. There was this triumphant, historic figure prolonging the experience, taking just one last look at a scene he will never see again, a scene that framed one of the greatest achievements of his lifetime. Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
New Year’s Day 2013. Football games? No. Parades? No. Hangover cure? No.
I spent the entire day watching the Chasing Classic Cars marathon on USA as background noise while focused on Twitter following the U.S. House Republicans wringing their hands over what to do about the Senate-passed bill to crawl back up the fiscal cliff.
Without getting into the weeds about things like (according to CNN.com) extending the excise tax carry-over on rum produced in Puerto Rico and the Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
We’re now within 10 legislative days ’til the Fiscal Cliff – assuming the Members won’t be decking the Halls of Congress with boughs of holly on Christmas Eve and Day.
There is movement in the positions coming from either end of Pennsylvania Avenue. The President campaigned successfully on the idea of raising taxes on the wealthy – with the wealthy being defined as any family earning $250,000 or more annually. Continue reading