Steve Benen

A year ago, congressional Republicans were an exuberant bunch. Riding high after massive midterm gains, and with President Obama’s approval ratings faltering, GOP leaders and rank-and-file members felt very good about themselves, their standing, their agenda, and their future. A year later, Republicans aren’t smiling quite as often. Thanks to their style of “leadership,” the […]

Congressional Republicans hoped pro-forma sessions every third day on Capitol Hill would prevent President Obama from making recess appointments. It didn’t — the president decided these sessions were a sham preventing him from using his constitutionally-mandated powers. Some credible observers have made the case that Obama overstepped his authority on this one. To crudely summarize […]

It’s a familiar story: Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital takes over a company, the company is ruined, and Romney and his investors make millions. But few of these stories look worse than the circumstances surrounding GST in Kansas City. Reuters reports today on the “steel skeleton in the Bain closet” — a Missouri steel company called […]

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that won’t necessarily generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * Who won the Iowa caucuses? Probably Mitt Romney, but in light of some minor discrepancies, we’re not entirely sure. * The Boston Globe, ostensibly Romney’s hometown paper, endorsed Jon Huntsman in […]

There was a bizarre scene on the House floor a couple of weeks ago, when Democratic lawmakers tried to bring up a bill, and House Republicans simply shut down the chamber. When Dems tried to at least have their say on the issue, GOP leaders shut off the cameras. This morning, we saw a nearly-identical […]

For thousands of American families, this reform will have a tremendous impact. Obama administration officials announced on Friday that they will propose a fix to a notorious snag in immigration law that will spare hundreds of thousands of American citizens from prolonged separations from immigrant spouses and children. The change that immigration officials are offering […]

Reading the new jobs report, I was reminded of something Dick Morris wrote over the summer. In August, the economy lost 30,000 healthcare jobs…. So why are jobs down? It is simply because the industry is traumatized and terrified by the impact of ObamaCare. No one knows what the reimbursement rates will be or what […]

In the previous post, we talked about the new monthly jobs report, but in keeping with tradition, here’s a slightly different chart — one showing just the private sector job market. Overall, the U.S. economy added 200,000 jobs in December, but as has been the case for a long while, it’s the private sector that […]

Mitt Romney will probably find today’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics very discouraging. The rest of us, though, have reason to smile. The U.S. economy gained 200,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate fell to 8.5%, the Labor Department said Friday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had forecast the U.S. would add […]

Back in August, Mitt Romney made a deliberate effort to appear moderate on taxes. “I don’t want to waste time trying to get tax cuts for wealthy people because frankly, wealthy people are doing just fine,” the Republican presidential candidate said. In November, he pushed the same line in a television interview, arguing. “I’m proposing […]