House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan challenged Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s policy of so-called quantitative easing – the printing of new U.S. dollars to buy government debt – and raised concerns that a weakened dollar and inflation could cause the loss of the currency’s global reserve status. (more)
President Obama continued his campaign to reach out to America’s business community on Monday, telling a few hundred business leaders at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce he wanted to repair relations after a rough two years. (more)
Chris Christie has a new political antagonist. (more)
If Washington had grown fuzzy about the razor’s edge the U.S. economy is currently balanced on, it got a bracing reminder Thursday. (more)
One thing is becoming clear about legislation that a bipartisan group of more than 30 senators plan to introduce later this month to implement the recommendations of President Obama’s deficit commission: the bill’s debut will be just the beginning of a protracted fight over its final result. (more)
The massive House Republican freshman class is poised to make their presence felt for the first time in the next few weeks, and will likely push immediate spending cuts above the goal set by House Speaker John Boehner. (more)
President Obama has chosen Jay Carney, the current spokesman for Vice President Joe Biden and a former Washington bureau chief for Time Magazine, to be his new press secretary, replacing Robert Gibbs. (more)
A group of three conservatives on President Obama’s financial crisis inquiry commission called the final report of the panel “unbalanced” and “incorrect,” in a 27-page dissent from the more than 500-page document endorsed by a majority of members. (more)
Republican Paul Ryan had a busy 24 hours Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. The Daily Caller found out he’s making it through the day with some American punk rock music in his down moments. (more)
The government’s chief actuary for Medicare spending on Wednesday said he had more confidence that Republican Paul Ryan’s plan to reform entitlements would drive down health-care costs than President Obama’s recently passed overhaul. (more)
1.) Deficit commission gets no respect during SOTU address — “Wait for the deficit commission.” That’s what the White House told Reuters’ James Pethokoukis whenever he asked about Pres. Obama’s strategy for dealing with America’s debt problem. “Obama’s panel has come and gone,” Pethokoukis wrote after the SOTU address. “And in his speech last night, he failed to explicitly endorse any of its budget-cutting recommendations.” After 10 months of deliberation and town halls across the country to the tune of $500,000, and a contentious fight over which commission faction’s proposal was the best proposal, Obama has essentially scrapped the whole thing. “I don’t agree with all their proposals, but they made important progress,” Obama said last night. “To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations.” Never mind that Obama has endorsed exactly zero of the commission’s ideas, but as Pethokoukis points out: “Did Obama not check his in-box? His bipartisan commission gave him a Social Security fix.” (more)
11:27 p.m. – Actually, one more. No, two. First, this is interesting. Conservative Richard Viguerie criticizes both Obama and congressional Republicans. (more)
Here’s the spin and the facts from the White House – and from Republicans – on the spending freeze in President Obama’s State of the Union address. (more)
Sen. Pat Toomey introduced a bill Tuesday aimed at laying out a path for the federal government to avoid default on its obligations if the debt limit is not raised in the coming months. (more)
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday he does not fault President Obama for avoiding the issue of Social Security in his State of the Union address, but cautioned that the political establishment in Washington has less than a year to make progress on entitlement reform. (more)
Sen. Mark Warner, a centrist Democrat from Virginia, said Monday that he will be looking for more than just a focus on growth and innovation in President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night. (more)
Sen. Jeff Sessions struck a defiant tone Monday toward President Obama in advance of the State of the Union address, saying he does not think the president is serious about deficit reduction and that the GOP should fight him the same way that Newt Gingrich fought Bill Clinton in the mid-90′s. (more)
President Obama is set to announce support for lowering the corporate tax rate in his State of the Union address Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday. (more)
The Pentagon’s top spokesman on Friday said that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates remains determined to eliminate funding for a $3 billion project contracted to GE, as the White House faced questions on the matter the day that President Obama named the company’s CEO to an uncompensated advisory post on economic affairs. (more)
1.) Obama’s jobs team gets green-washed — “President Barack Obama will name Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric Co.’s chief executive officer, to head his outside panel of economic advisers, replacing former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker,” reports Bloomberg News. “Immelt has sounded many of the administration’s themes: boosting jobs through U.S. exports, ensuring companies can compete with powers like China and India, and jumpstarting a clean-energy economy. Immelt wrote today that he and Obama ‘are committed’ to making the U.S. ‘the most competitive and innovating economy in the world.’” According to Bloomberg, “Immelt is among a group of executives — Boeing Co. CEO Jim McNerney; Motorola Solutions Inc. CEO Greg Brown, and Honeywell International Inc. Chairman David Cote — who have voiced support for Obama policies. The four serve on several of the president’s outside advisory boards”–and all four have made a killing on green jobs subsidies (more)
