Category: US Senate

Jelly Bellies and big spending: Inside the GOP struggle to sell voters on its tax law

The following article by Erica Werner was posted on the Washington Post website May 10, 2018:

House Speaker Ryan, right, listens to House Majority Leader McCarthy, left. Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Republican leaders and campaign officials are scrambling to do more to sell voters on their signature legislative achievement — a $1.5 trillion tax cut — amid poor polling numbers, rank-and-file members who lack a consistent message and a president who refuses to focus on the issue.

President Trump, when given the chance to tout his party’s tax law, has repeatedly gone off topic, including on Saturday when he traveled to Cleveland for a tax roundtable. While other speakers sang the law’s praises, Trump mixed in remarks on China, North Korea, Syria, immigration, the mayor of Oakland, Calif., Congress’s budget deal, his own poll numbers and the media’s coverage of his presidency. Continue reading “Jelly Bellies and big spending: Inside the GOP struggle to sell voters on its tax law”

GOP Senate intel chair rips House committee’s sham Russia probe

The following article by Carolne Orr was posted on the ShareBlue.com website May 9, 2018:

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, walks away from a meeting with House GOP members, on Capitol Hill January 30, 2018 in Washington, DC. Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

‘I’m not sure that the House was required to substantiate every conclusion with facts.’

Senate Intelligence Committee chair Richard Burr (R-NC) just threw some serious shade on the the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee’s Russia probe, saying his colleagues didn’t “substantiate every conclusion with facts.”

Burr made the remarks Tuesday, in response to a reporter’s question about whether the Senate intel committee’s report on Russian interference would agree with the findings of the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). That report concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence operation aimed at helping Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Continue reading “GOP Senate intel chair rips House committee’s sham Russia probe”

Trump calls on Congress to pull back $15 billion in spending, including on Children’s Health Insurance Program

The following article by Damian Paletta and Erica Werner was posted on the Washington Post website May 7, 2018:

Credit: J. Scott Applewhite, AP

President Trump is sending a plan to Congress that calls for stripping more than $15 billion in previously approved spending, with the hope that it will temper conservative angst over ballooning budget deficits.

Almost half of the proposed cuts would come from two accounts within the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that White House officials said expired last year or are not expected to be drawn upon. An additional $800 million in cuts would come from money created by the Affordable Care Act in 2010 to test innovative payment and service delivery models. Continue reading “Trump calls on Congress to pull back $15 billion in spending, including on Children’s Health Insurance Program”

Then and now: How Congress reacted to impeachment threats against Presidents Clinton and Trump

The following article by J.M Rieger was posted on the Washington Post website May 4, 2018:

According to Congress, a president can obstruct justice. Just as long as that president is a member of the opposite political party. (JM Rieger/The Washington Post)

On April 27, 1998, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) laid out what would soon become one of the four articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton.

“What you have lived through, for two-and-a-half long years, is the most systematic, deliberate obstruction of justice, coverup and effort to avoid the truth, we have ever seen in American history,” he said. Continue reading “Then and now: How Congress reacted to impeachment threats against Presidents Clinton and Trump”

Justice Department Won’t Be Extorted, Rosenstein Warns Republicans

The following article by Katie Benner and Nicholas Fandos was posted on the New York Times website May 1, 2018:

Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, said at the Newseum on Tuesday that “there have been people who have been making threats, privately and publicly, against me for quite some time.”Credit: Michael Reynolds/EPA, via Shutterstock

WASHINGTON — After months of conceding to demands from a small group of House Republicans for more visibility into continuing investigations, the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, pushed back on Tuesday, declaring that the Justice Department “is not going to be extorted.”

His comment came the day after revelations that several of those Republicans, led by Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina and other loyalists of President Trump, had drafted articles of impeachment to use against Mr. Rosenstein in case the long-simmering dispute with the deputy attorney general boiled over. Continue reading “Justice Department Won’t Be Extorted, Rosenstein Warns Republicans”

Marco Rubio just went way off message on the GOP tax cuts — and conservatives are furious

The following article by Jeff Stein was posted on the Washington Post website May 1, 2018:

Sen. Marco Rubio when he was a presidential candidate. Credit: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Democrats frequently claim Republicans’ corporate tax cuts enriched big businesses while doing little for workers, but now that line of criticism is coming from a prominent Republican: Sen. Marco Rubio.

“There is still a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they’re going to take the money they’re saving and reinvest it in American workers,” the Florida senator told the Economist in a recent interview. “In fact they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.” Continue reading “Marco Rubio just went way off message on the GOP tax cuts — and conservatives are furious”

Investment Boom From Trump’s Tax Cut Has Yet to Appear Image

The following article by Matt Phillips and Jim Tankersley was posted on the New York Times website April 30, 2018:

President Trump’s tax cuts have not yet translated into expanded investment by companies like Caterpillar, which provided a front-end loader for Made in America Day last year. Credit: Tom Brenner/The New York Times

After years of costly layoffs and plant closings, things are looking up for the heavy-machinery giant Caterpillar, which forecasts solid global sales growth and increased demand this year. Yet despite the corporate investment incentives at the center of President Trump’s tax overhaul, the company’s executives have no plans to supercharge investment or expansion.

Caterpillar’s plans for new investment remain low by historical standards. Instead, the company has started using cash to repurchase its own stock as a way to return cash to shareholders, something it hadn’t done since 2015. Continue reading “Investment Boom From Trump’s Tax Cut Has Yet to Appear Image”

GOP’s pathetic new pitch to voters: Cut Social Security and Medicare

The following article by Oliver Willis was posted on the ShareBlue.com website April 25, 2018:

Republicans in Congress are pushing plans for their most unpopular ideas, even as the party faces major challenges in upcoming elections.

Congressional Republicans have released an election year proposal targeting massive cuts to government programs that millions of Americans, including the poorest people, have relied upon. Continue reading “GOP’s pathetic new pitch to voters: Cut Social Security and Medicare”

Rand Paul’s claim that cutting $13 billion a year would balance the budget

The following article by Glenn Kessler was posted on the Washington Post website April 26, 2018:

Politicians often use differing “baselines” to project favorable policy outcomes. The Fact Checker’s Glenn Kessler explains why this doesn’t work. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

“The bottom line has to equal 1 percent. A 1 percent cut each year is about $13 billion, actually balances the budget in five years.”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), in an interview on CNN, April 17, 2018

Regular readers of The Fact Checker know that we long have looked askance at claims that balancing the federal budget would be relatively easy, as long as long as lawmakers do not engage in “smoke and mirrors” and simply cut back spending. It’s a quaint notion, straight out of Hollywood in movies like “Dave.” Continue reading “Rand Paul’s claim that cutting $13 billion a year would balance the budget”

Desperate McConnell plots to stop red-state Democrats from campaigning

The following article by Matthew Chapman was posted on the ShareBlue.com website April 19, 2018:

Sources report McConnell is using a shady new strategy to keep his Senate majority: block red-state Democrats from going home to campaign.

Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is no longer confident he can keep his GOP majority this fall. It’s apparently so bad, he’s resorting a desperate Hail Mary tactic: keeping the Senate open so long that red-state Democrats will be trapped in Washington and unable to go home to campaign for re-election.

At least, that’s what sources tell the conservative Washington Examiner.

According to the new report, White House legislative liaison Marc Short told a private gathering of GOP donors that McConnell wants to extend the workweek so vulnerable Democratic senators in states Trump won are “tied up from campaigning.” Continue reading “Desperate McConnell plots to stop red-state Democrats from campaigning”