Reid to support Iran nuke deal, fight to get it past Senate

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid will endorse the Iran nuclear deal, according to a statement the Nevada Democrat released Sunday.

"I strongly support this historic agreement and will do everything in my power to ensure that it stands," Reid said in the statement.

He called stopping Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon "one of the most important national security challenges of our generation."

"This nuclear agreement is consistent with the greatest traditions of American leadership. I will do everything in my power to support this agreement and ensure that America holds up our end of the commitment we have made to our allies and the world to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.  I will vote no on the resolution of disapproval and urge my colleagues to do the same," the statement continued.

The Nevada Democrat’s decision provides much needed support as President Obama tries to win approval for the plan.

“I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure the deal stands,” Reid told the Washington Post, which first published reports of Reid's approval.

The multi-national deal would lift billions in crippling economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for the rogue country curtailing its nuclear-development program.

Congress must approve the deal before it can be completed and is scheduled to vote promptly after returning from summer recess on Sept. 8 -- near the end of the members’ 60-day review period.

The House and Senate are expected to have enough votes to initially disapprove of the plan.

However, the plan is ultimately expected to go through because Obama will almost surely veto the disapproval measure. The Senate is not expected to have the two-thirds vote to override the veto, and the House override vote is also expected to be close.

Republicans who control both chambers largely disapprove of the plan and would need support from at least 13 Senate Democrats to override the veto.

Reid’s support follows New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer recently saying that he will not support the deal. Schumer is expected to replace Reid upon his retirement.

“We don’t disagree on much, but we disagree on this,” Reid said about Schumer's decision.

And last week, New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he would vote against the deal.

Via: Fox News

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[VIDEO] Why Congress Could Face a Government Shutdown This Fall

The House and Senate are set to leave Washington, D.C., for a month-long summer break. But they are leaving behind unfinished business.

When lawmakers return in September, they will have little time to tackle legislative priorities like the Iran nuclear deal, transportation funding and the debt ceiling.

However, the major fight could be over Planned Parenthood’s federal funding—possibly leading to another government shutdown.

Watch the video above to learn more why these 11th-hour issues will test the ability of congressional leaders to avoid a government shutdown.

Via: Daily Signal

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Senate GOP Backing Plan to Extend Obamacare Subsidies

In preparation for a decision by the Supreme Court to strike down Obamacare subsidies, a number of Senate Republicans are backing a plan that would temporarily restore them for current enrollees.

According to Politico, 31 senators have signed onto a bill authored by Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson that would extend the subsidies through September 2017 but, at the same time, repeal Obamacare's individual and employer mandates and insurance coverage requirements. 

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"In that moment of what could be political chaos, we're offering such a reasonable proposal that solves a mess," Johnson said, according to Politico. "It fixes a mess caused by a sloppily written law, unlawfully implemented. All we're asking for is a little bit of freedom back, which would be, I think, pretty popular."

The measure has the backing of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the rest of the GOP leadership, as well as a number of lawmakers who are facing tough re-elections.

But Johnson's plan is unlikely to gain support from the White House or Senate Democrats. 

The president has already been clear that he will not support legislation that would undermine the main tenets of Obamacare. 

And Republican colleagues in the House are also unlikely to sign on, Politico said.

"If you're voting for an extension, you're essentially voting for the continuation of Obamacare — that's a real problem," said Republican Study Committee Chairman Bill Flores, according to Politico.

Via: Newsmax

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The House Winner and Loser of the Year — and Other Notable Members’ Highs and Lows

At the end of the first session of the 113th Congress, it’s hard to call anybody much of a “winner,” as no one got close to everything they wanted. Republican leaders had an ambitious legislative agenda that was repeatedly squelched by a rebellious rank and file — or by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s circular file. Democrats hoped for more relevance, given the GOP leadership’s precarious grip on its conference, but Democratic “victories” were mainly a result of Republican meltdowns.

For the power players in the House of Representatives, it was mostly a year of lows, with not-so-very-high highs, and few lawmakers emerged unscathed from the heartburns of 2013. But when 218 took up the daunting task of designating the year’s “winners” and “losers,” it was hard to fit members into that binary, which felt overly simplistic, anyway.

So in the very first, year-end wrap-up post since the blog’s inception, 218 is offering up, for your consideration, one “winner” and one “loser” of 2013 — with a few runners-up. The rest of the the lawmakers profiled here defied those clear-cut characterizations, and are instead viewed through the prism of simply their wins and losses.

In 218′s estimation, the one clear winner of 2013 was … 

Rep. Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis.

One year ago, the House Budget chairman was the just-defeated vice presidential candidate and, though long-referred to as a GOP “thought leader,” hadn’t proved he could translate his respect within the conference into something tangible.

This year changed that. Ryan is now a deal-maker. He got the budget deal — a small one, granted — across the finish line, and proved he could work across the aisle when it mattered. He was also instrumental in helping to end the shutdown. Though he kept quiet for months leading up to the battle over the continuing resolution, his Wall Street Journal op-ed was a turning point for Republicans: It signaled that the fight over defunding Obamacare was over, and that the GOP ought to refocus on entitlement spending.

Of course, Republicans didn’t really get any concessions on entitlements in any of the big deals at the end of this year. Ryan’s ability to sway the conference, however, even when he can’t deliver the moon, shows he is going places. His first stop might be the chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee, and from there the speaker’s gavel — if he doesn’t make a run for the White House in between.

When pressed to pick the “loser” of 2013, 218 settled on …

Via: Roil Call

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Obama rallies supporters Monday evening to save Obamacare

President Barack Obama will ask his most ardent followers on Monday evening to help bail out his rapidly sinking Obamacare project.

The 8:15 p.m. online speech will be delivered to Obama’s Organizing for Action supporters, and Obama is expected to ask them to save the Obamacare program, which has eliminated health insurance plans of at least four million Americans.

Obamacare’s launch has been so politically painful that many Democratic legislators have threatened to abandon ship even before it becomes operational on Jan. 1.

Obama will also try to go on the political offensive by urging his followers to push for the Senate-passed, business-backed immigration reform bill.

Democrats say the bill is popular and will help Americans. But GOP leaders in the House have temporarily stalled it because of opposition from voters who are already worried about unemployment, outsourcing and automation.

If it becomes law, the bill would provide a work permit to one extra Democratic-leaning immigrant or guest-worker for every American who turns 18 during the next 10 years.

On Friday, Obama held an emergency Obamacare meeting with his allies in the health-benefit companies, including the CEOs of Aetna, Humana, CareFirst and Cigna Healthcare.

That meeting came one day after Obama tried to blame the companies, not his regulations, for the millions of policy cancellations. In a White House press conference, he announced he would not prosecute executives who violate the 2010 Obamacare law by selling popular, low-profit pre-Obamacare insurance policies during 2014.

Via: Daily Caller

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Democrats Threaten Defections to GOP Bill Changing Obamacare

 

The White House has until Friday to find a cure for President Barack Obama's ailing healthcare initiative or face possible defections by top Democrats willing to support a House GOP bill to change it.

Political pressure from both sides of the aisle has been steadily growing and will come to a head on Friday when Republicans take up a proposal by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton allowing individuals to keep their current coverage even if it does not meet the standards set out in the Affordable Care Act, reports CNN. 

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The New York Post reported that many Democrats are enraged and fear their once-safe seats are now threatened in the 2014 midterm elections. They didn't hesitate to launch into the administration during a close-door session at the White House Wednesday.

“It got heated. Don’t come here telling us [the Web site] would be fixed by November 30 because the whole world believes it won’t be fixed,” fumed Rep. José Serrano, D-Bronx, according to the New York Post.

“They heard our caucus,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-NJ. “In this business, you keep your word or get out.”

In the Senate, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri reportedly said, “The [ObamaCare] store’s open and the door’s locked.”

“I’m frustrated and angry along with everyone else,” she declared.

"We've got to get out of the bunker and fix these problems," a senior Democratic congressional source told CNN, referring to the fact that millions of Americans are losing their current plans because they don't comply with Obamacare requirements for more comprehensive coverage, including such things as mental health and prenatal care. 

Via: Newsmax

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Dems give White House tight deadline to fix Obamacare

Democratic senators facing voters next year are willing to give the White House time to resolve the glaring problems with Obamacare.

Very little time.

At the pleading of senior White House officials, Senate Democrats are holding off on demands to delay major aspects of the health care law until the Obama administration has the opportunity to fix the website problems that are thwarting enrollment in the program.

Democratic senators facing reelection have a green light to bash the White House and call for certain legislative fixes. But they’ve been urged by senior administration officials not to insist on delaying the controversial law’s core: The mandate for individuals to purchase insurance coverage or face penalties.

(PHOTOS: House hearing on Obamacare website)

Their requests are being heeded — for now.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who attended a tense two-hour meeting with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday over the issue, stressed that senators should give the administration just “a little bit” of breathing room.

Via: Politico

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GOP tops Democrats in total votes

Republicans and Democrats may have split the two big prizes on the political map in Tuesday’s elections, but in terms of overall votes in New Jersey and Virginia, the GOP came out on top.

Powered by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s huge victory in New Jersey, the two Republican gubernatorial candidates won a combined 2.2 million votes, or about 400,000 more than the two Democratic gubernatorial candidates, who totaled 1.8 million.

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SEE RELATED: Christie’s win, Cuccinelli’s loss: Two playbooks for defending against the ‘war on women’

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Digging deeper into the election numbers, a Washington Times analysis of returns as they stood late Tuesday night showed that when it came to legislative races, the GOP also held a clear advantage.

In the Virginia House of Delegates, with all 100 seats up for re-election, the GOP won a total of nearly 1.1 million votes, compared to slightly more than 810,000 votes for Democrats.

In New Jersey, both the House and Senate were up for election, but the House districts are complex, with the top two vote-getters in each district winning. That makes the state Senate a clearer test, and in those 40 districts, the GOP won more than 950,000 votes, or 100,000 more than Democrats’ total.

Still, Democrats came away with a clear majority in the New Jersey Senate, holding at least 22 seats and possibly as many as 24.

Tallying total votes is inexact, and doesn’t necessarily translate to victories in the future. Sometimes it shows the effects of gerrymandering, or underscores a party’s ability to field candidates even in futile races.

But the parties say it can also be a kind of referendum.

Via: Washington Times

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DEMS PUSH TO TAKE UP AMNESTY, SAY BOEHNER WILL CAVE

On Thursday, President Obama took to the White House podium to triumphantly announce the end of the government shutdown. In doing so, he proclaimed that he wanted to push forward with other legislative priorities, including a budget, immigration reform, and the long-stalled pork-laden farm bill.

“[I]n the coming days and weeks, we should sit down and pursue a balanced approach to a responsible budget, a budget that grows our economy faster and shrinks our long-term deficits further,” Obama stated. Historically, “balanced” has been code for tax increases.

Obama then pushed on to immigration reform: “Number two. We should finish the job of fixing our broken immigration system.” Naturally, he blamed the Republican House for stalling his preferred immigration bill.

Finally, Obama called for the farm bill to be passed: “Number three. We should pass a farm bill, one that American farmers and ranchers can depend on, one that protects vulnerable children and adults in times of need, one that gives rural communities opportunities to grow and the long-term certainty that they deserve.” And, disingenuously, he called for negotiations.

Via: Breitbart

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Obama Will Insist on Tax Hikes in Budget Deal

(CNSNews.com) - As part of the deal to end the government shutdown and extend the debt limit, the House and Senate have agreed to begin long-stalled budget negotiations. The conferees planned to meet Thursday morning for breakfast -- to "break the ice," the Associated Press reported.

Once the actual talks get underway, President Obama will insist that tax hikes be part of the solution.

"The president has insisted that in the budget negotiations that he's been calling for all year, everything has to be on the table. And that will be his position going forward," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Wednesday.

Carney said what Obama believes is fair is reflected in the fiscal 2014 budget proposal he's already submitted. At the same time, Carney said Obama knows that neither he nor anyone else will get everything they want in a final deal.

"And that's the nature of compromise," Carney said.

"But he firmly believes that balance, when it comes to further reducing our deficits and building on the work that has been done over these past four years in which we have reduced our deficits...by half, we need to continue to take a balanced approach so that no sector of society unfairly has to bear the brunt of that project. That's always been his position and it will be his position moving forward."

"Balance" to Obama means tax hikes.

Via: CNS News

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House Republicans will probe botched launch of Obamacare

WASHINGTON — Republicans in the House of Representatives are making plans to investigate the disastrous Oct. 1 launch of the federal health insurance marketplace established under Obamacare.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has asked Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the federal contractors involved in the rollout to explain why things have gone so badly after their earlier testimony indicated that the marketplace information technology would run smoothly.

The federal marketplace, Healthcare.gov, was supposed to provide a one-stop site for users in 36 states to browse, compare and enroll in qualified health plans.

But millions of users and numerous software problems overwhelmed the site shortly after the enrollment period for 2014 coverage began. In subsequent days, the site was shut down temporarily for repairs, which have continued since the problems first surfaced.

Two weeks later, site navigation has improved but delays and malfunctions continue to dog the system, making it difficult for users to establish personal accounts and obtain federal subsidies to offset the cost of coverage.

Nearly 15 million people had visited the site as of last Friday, but the Department of Health and Human Services won’t release enrollment figures until November.

In a Sept. 10 subcommittee hearing, Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president at CGI Federal, which designed and developed the federal insurance marketplace, testified that her company was confident that qualified individuals “could begin enrolling in coverage when the initial enrollment period begins on October 1.”

Michael Finkel, an executive vice president of Quality Software Services Inc., the company that wrote the software code for the so-called data services hub, offered similar testimony at the hearing. The hub routes information from the marketplace to various federal databases.

Via: McClatchyDC

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Senate leaders scramble to craft budget deal, but will House GOP buy it?

Republican leaders in the House and Senate will face restless rank-and-file members Tuesday morning when they give updates on ongoing negotiations to cobble together a budget plan that would end a two-week-old partial government shutdown and increase the U.S. debt ceiling. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., scrambled late Monday to iron out the specifics of an emerging budget proposal after a string of prior plans fizzled.

Reid appeared on the chamber floor Monday night to announce, "We've made tremendous progress -- we are not there yet -- but tremendous progress, and everyone just needs to be patient."

McConnell added, "We've had a good day...I think it's safe to say we've made substantial progress and we look forward to making more progress in the near future."

The House GOP Conference is scheduled to meet at 9 a.m. to discuss the tentative framework of the budget proposal with members, many of whom cast a skeptical eye toward the details of the negotiations that were dripping out Monday night. The Senate Republican Conference is scheduled to meet at 11 a.m. to receive an update on negotiations. 

Resistance in the House could scuttle, or at least stall, anything that emerges from the Senate. 

Via: Fox News

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GOP: WE'LL INCREASE SPENDING TO END SHUTDOWN

Over the weekend, House and Senate Republican proposals on the fiscal showdown, which largely met previously stated demands from the White House, were summarily rejected by President Obama and Senate Democrats. Having shown that they are desperate to end the stand-off, the GOP is now facing pressure from Democrats to undo the sequester cuts agreed to during the last debt-ceiling debate. Limping, the DC GOP seems ready to accept this defeat. 

The Budget Control Act of 2011, a product of the last negotiations on the debt ceiling, enacted across-the-board spending cuts in discretionary programs. They weren't smart. They weren't targeted. They didn't address entitlement spending, the real driver of federal deficits and debt. But, they were actual cuts in federal spending. It was something. Now, having completely misplayed its hand in the shutdown debate, the GOP is willing to negotiate it away. 

The Budget Control Act, aka sequester, limits discretionary appropriations in 2014 to $967 billion. The Senate Democrat budget blueprint, and Obama's budget proposal, outlines closer to $1.1 trillion in spending. Sources on the Hill tell Breitbart News that House Republicans are willing to increase discretionary spending above sequester levels to reach a deal to lift the debt ceiling and end the partial government shutdown. 

In other words, Republicans want to increase spending to enable the national debt to increase. 

Via: Breitbart

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Union concerned House will join Senate in sweeping immigration reform

A union representing hundreds of federal Citizenship and Immigration Services employees is concerned that House leaders will abandon the Republican-led chamber’s incremental approach toward illegal-immigration reform for the sweeping changes passed in the “extremely dangerous” Senate bill.

“I worry the House may be following a similar path,” Kenneth Palinkas, president of the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, said recently.

Palinkas said the union’s major concerns are that House leaders might be trying to “advance proposals to open citizenship benefits to the majority of those here illegally, in combination with proposals to expand visa programs.” 

He said the union also is concerned that House and Senate members will meet -- in what is known on Capitol Hill as “conference” -- to merge or “blend” the House bill “with the extremely dangerous Senate bill.”

Palinkas said the union is basing its concerns in part on media reports about Republican Reps. Paul Ryan, Wis.; Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Va.; Bob Goodlatte, Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Illinois Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez.

Goodlatte could not be reached for comment Sunday. However, his stated stance on immigration reform is that the system is “broken” and that the way for Congress to remedy the problem is to “methodically look at each of the various components that need to be fixed and take any final bill through the traditional legislative process.”

Via: Fox News

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HUELSKAMP: GOP LEADERSHIP FORGETTING TEA PARTY GAVE THEM HOUSE

Congressman Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) told Breitbart News that his party's leaders should be very careful about targeting conservative members associated with the Tea Party, as the reason Republicans hold a majority in the lower chamber is because Tea Party activists voted in a wave of conservatives in 2010. 

"The Tea Party was the majority maker for House Republicans; without much of these new conservatives, there would not be a Speaker Boehner. There would not be an opportunity to push back on Obamacare, so it’s pretty clear," said Huelskamp. "But the Tea Party is not some small part--it is the conservative wing of the [Republican] Party, which is a pretty strong majority. I mean it’s taken on some key tenets of the Republican Party, which are conservative." 

Moderate Republicans appear most concerned about the effect conservative Senator Ted Cruz (R–TX) will have on the upcoming 2014 mid-term elections, and mainstream media outlets are taking delight in this worry. However, according to the Center for Politics, if the GOP is successfully blamed for the government shutdown, it is not conservative Republicans who need to worry about running in tough races. More importantly, even if those GOP moderates lose those seats in 2014, the analysis says, the GOP is not necessarily in danger of losing the House:

Let’s be clear here: This is largely a thought experiment. Republicans have plenty of things going for them in the 2014 midterms. There’s no historical precedent for the president’s party to take over the House from the other party in a midterm; indeed, history tells us that the “out” presidential party — in this case, the GOP — is likelier to gain seats than the “in” party. The president’s approval rating as measured by the HuffPost Pollster average is actually worse today — 43.4% approve, 51.0% disapprove — than it was right before the 2010 midterm (45.1% approve, 49.9% disapprove).

As we’ve shown recently — and as Prof. Arrington’s piece indicates — Democrats are going to have to really dominate the House generic ballot, and Election Day national House vote margin, to have a real chance at taking back the House.

However, if Republicans do open the door to the Democrats in the House, it’s not going to be the “Ted Cruz Republicans” who will pay the price. Rather, it’s the House Republicans in marginal districts who could see their ranks decimated, just like the House Democratic moderates whose anti-Obamacare votes couldn’t save them in 2010.

Does the outrage from moderate Republicans towards conservatives have more to do with the fact that moderates could lose hefty influence within the party after the 2014 midterm elections?

Via: Breitbart

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Now It’s Time for Full Throttle Defund of Obamacare

The House plans to pass a bill to raise the debt limit by $117 billion, bringing the new deadline to November 22.  The bill will specifically prohibit the Treasury Department from using extraordinary measures to concoct an arbitrary crisis deadline.

Conservatives can debate the prudence of this particular strategy, but the more important question is what comes after the vote on this bill.  The establishment has been trying to conflate the budget battle with the debt ceiling and transform our priorities into extraneous policy issues that are not nearly as serious and as pressing as Obamacare.

Now they have no excuse to ignore the Obamacare fight.

[Parenthetically, this delay should also preclude any effort to bring up amnesty this year.]

Once the debt ceiling is pushed into November, Republicans must all unite behind full defunding of Obamacare.  No talk about taxes, Social Security, or Medicare.  No talk about a grand bargain or vague fiscal agreements. With premiums skyrocketing, implementation of Obamacare crashing, and massive dependency right around the corner, we don’t have time for other policy fights.  This is the one the public sees most, and this is the one we must message throughout the Democrat shutdown.

Our message is very simple: this law was passed using the budget process to circumvent a higher vote threshold.  Now that the law is proven to be unworkable, it will be uprooted through the budget process.  We are willing to fund every other aspect of government, including those functions we oppose, except for Obamacare and the agencies tasked with enforcing it.

Unfortunately, there are those in the party who are not only distracting us with other issues but are also watering down our messaging on Obamacare.  Mitch McConnell and Susan Collins are committed to making this fight about repealing the medical device tax.  Obviously, the end-point of the negotiations would be a mere delay of that tax.

Via: Red State

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Take Back the House? Democrats Aren't Even Ahead on Friendly Turf In 2014

There’s nothing Democrats can do about gerrymandering, so here’s a radical proposal: Let’s turn our attention to whether Democrats are poised to capitalize on the opportunities that do exist in the House. Because for all the talk about gerrymandering, there are still 17 House Republicans in districts carried by President Obama. And there are another 17 districts that Romney carried by less than 3 points, and still a handful more of even redder districts where weak GOP incumbents won reelection by a narrow margin. If Democrats are going to ride a wave of public frustration with the shutdown, the wave would hit these districts first—and Democrats would need to be poised to ride it. Right now, they’re not.

Last time, Democrats didn’t even come close in most of the districts that Republicans continue to hold that also voted for President Obama. Only one was decided by less than 5 points.

Republican incumbents outperformed Romney in each of the 43 districts where Romney won by less than 5 points. And usually, those Republican incumbents outperformed Romney by a significant margin. They just weren’t close races (another reason why gerrymandering probably didn’t represent the GOP’s margin of victory in the House).

Via: New Republic

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