Samuel Knight

*Amid legislative efforts to tweak the Affordable Care Act, business lobbyists and unions are uniting to push for a bill that would repeal the $63 reinsurance tax–a two-year levy on group plans designed, in the words of The Hill, to “help stabilize the individual market as sick patients come on board.” The tax would be […]

*New York Times reporting suggests that both sides might agree to a GOP face-saving medical device tax repeal to avoid a shutdown. *POLITICO is summing up House Republicans’ and Ted Cruz’s bleating on the airwaves today as a bid to convince the American people that the inevitable shutdown won’t be their fault. But a CBS/New […]

An article published in the Guaridan today indicates that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could, in fact, face a backlash at home, when he throws a tantrum in response to the detente between Iran and the United States at the United Nations: In the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, prominent columnist Nahum Barnea wrote that, in his […]

Upon seeing the headline of a Robert McCartney column bemoaning the fact that DC government officials won’t need to risk arrest to protest budgetary constraints imposed on the city by Congress, I, as a DC resident, Googled “DC residents protest shut down.” In 2011, when threatened with a shutdown, Washingtonians organized a protest on Facebook […]

In an interview with David Gregory this morning, Senator Ted Cruz cited numerous examples why his legislative strategy based around straw men reeks of badger excrement of the most pungent variety. Lying about his “agree on a political issue or I’ll sweat spinal fluid to withhold already-agreed-upon funding because of arcane laws” strategy being based […]

*Federal public sector unions will lobby the government for back pay if the government shuts down, saying they’ve seen their salaries contract enough under sequestration. According to The Hill, union officials predict that about 800,000 workers will be furloughed if (when) the government shuts down. *A minimum of 40 people were killed and 100 people […]

A new revelation in the deluge of stories exposing NSA surveillance of American citizens: Laura Poitras and James Risen are reporting that the NSA has been using its big data, since at least January 2011, “to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their […]

Well, it looks like the Kamikaze Kaucus has come up with a debt ceiling “compromise” – if Democrats agree to delay Obamacare for a year and acquiesce to a repeal of the medical device tax, Republicans will be kind enough to grace America with a continuing resolution. How charitable. So we’re headed for a shutdown. […]

Another reminder that the 2008 financial meltdown is still nipping at our heels: the Federal Housing Agency needs – and will receive – $1.7 billion bailout. It’s the first lifeline the FHA has received in its 79 year history, according to the Wall Street Journal, because private sector hucksters ran to the public institution to […]

The Atlantic’s Andrew Cohen has penned an easy-to-read informative piece about the Antideficiency Act – the obscure legislation that permits government shutdowns. In addition to giving a historical perspective to federal shutdowns and the inter-branch power struggle over public funding it attempted to address, Cohen explains how shutdowns are: (1) not as drastic as they […]