That would certainly satisfy the requirements of reconciliation. Previously the bill cut the deficit by $118 billion in the first ten years and around $1 trillion in the next ten.

With this release, the House can then vote on the bill within 72 hours, as per their pledge to post the text and the CBO analysis in that period of time before a vote.

If you think our government elites have advanced much beyond the delusion that humans walked with dinosaurs, how do we explain our government’s deference to too-big-to-fail banks and the continued belief by almost half the Congress that government shouldn’t intervene in the economy to reduce unemployment?

Funny how all the liberals are never “my-way-or-highway” kind of guys.

Being abuse and humiliated for your illness or disability isn’t so bad, especially if small bills are involved.

Featuring music videos by Portugal The Man and Julian Amacker.

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig, Happy St. Patrick’s Day, and so forth. In the USA this holy day is fraught with pious religious significance, in the sense that tomorrow morning a lot of people will be throwing up into green plastic hats. In Ireland, apparently it has become traditional to celebrate St Patrick’s Day by getting [...]

Obama’s two intelligence heads, Leon Panetta and Dennis Blair, supported GAO oversight of intelligence activities before–presumably–they supported yesterday’s veto threat of GAO oversight.

The greatest problem with the Senate health care bill is not that it does “too little” to help people. The problem is that the bill does too many terrible things to help all the bad actors.

Presidential approval and the performance of the party in power in elections has historically been tied to economic performance, and more specifically job growth. This has been proven time and again, including with this Administration, as the President’s approval ratings and Democratic performance in the generic Congressional ballot have sunk with the economic bad news.

If the main players in Obama’s economic team – Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Council of Economic Advisers head Christina Romer, and OMB Director Peter Orzsag – can be believed, there is no relief on the horizon for jobs, meaning what you see is what you get for the midterms.

As former legal counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, David Addington apparently took the lead on refusing the 9/11 Commission’s request to review interrogation tapes or access to detainees. It appears Addington got the draft of the letter from 9/11 Commission–which was addressed to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet. Tenet and Addington clearly had a conversation about how to respond. But it seems that Addington drafted the response, got Condoleeza Rice, Andy Card, and Alberto Gonzales to review it, and then sent it to Tenet (and, presumably, Rumsfeld) to okay and sign the letter.

Why would Addington have obstructed the 9/11 Commission’s review?