John Boehner's Chart Takes on America
Everyone seemed to ignored one thing that made Boehner's Thursday press conference new and special: a chart — from Paul Ryan, no less.
Advertisement
The Republican Party has earned such a reputation for stubbornness that the kind of extralegal presidential powers George W. Bush used to handle terrorists are now popping up in discussions of Barack Obama's budget negotiations with Congress. But Republicans have not decided to block all things forever. "No" has its limits.
Everyone seemed to ignored one thing that made Boehner's Thursday press conference new and special: a chart — from Paul Ryan, no less.
Some House Republicans are openly criticizing Speaker John Boehner, but right now, the threat that he could actually be deposed of his speakership remains small. So where's the mutiny coming from, exactly?
Michael Bloomberg on the fiscal cliff, Ezra Klein on conservative fiscal policies, Amy Davidson on Antonin Scalia, Michael Mazza on North Korea, and Xu Zhiyong on Tibet.
The latest poll numbers show that a record number of Americans favor raising taxes on the rich as a solution to our budget problems. With the fiscal cliff just weeks away, one question remains: Who cares?
Why is the fiscal cliff so boring? It's not because it's about math. But whether or not you freak out over tax hikes depends on what you think about how many details Republicans have made public. A guide.
This fiscal cliff is making people do crazy things. Case in point, 81-year-old Representative Bill Young coming very close to caning a protester who wanted "a commitment from him [Young] to extend the middle class tax cuts."
Ralph Benko on Paul Ryan's decline, Jonathan Chait on Marco Rubio's rise, Pankaj Mishra on Asia's insurgents, Jonathan Steele on Afghanistan, and Noam Scheiber on jumping the cliff.
SNL's image of a "poor orange man" who needs to be left alone may be funny, but it may not be true: Georgia Rep. Tom Price isn't quite coming for John Boehner's speakership, even if some of the House GOP is coming for his head.
It's a sign that maybe there's an emerging conservative consensus, given the growing number of Republican lawmakers suggesting the party should cave on lettings tax rates go up for the top 2 percent of income earners.
Obama and Boehner met at the White House Sunday for an undisclosed amount of time and discussed an undisclosed amount of solutions.
If John Boehner fails to get a fiscal cliff deal done, a responsibility he's now put entirely on his own back, then he might have trouble on January 3rd when he's expected to be re-elected as Speaker of the House. A conservative group is angling to throw a monkey wrench in that process.
Even though we don't know what's going on behind closed doors in the fiscal cliff negotiations — or on the phone lines (they talked!) — we can measure progress on the fight in a couple clear ways.
Dina Esfandiary on Syria's chemical weapons, David Ignatius on an economic NATO, Ezra Klein on budget bickering, Amy Davidson on Bob Costas, and Nora Caplan-Bricker on Uganda.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced Wednesday afternoon that the House can't go home for the holidays until the fiscal cliff is resolved, which sounds horrible, but maybe isn't totally. We asked Sen. Claire McCaskill's daughter.
The president's latest attempt to portray congressional Republicans as unreasonable now boils down to something like this: What? What did I say? It was y'all's idea all along.
A group of economic advisers from the Clinton era thinks it may have stumbled upon a brilliant solution for America's current economic situation: make it more like the Clinton era. Which, given today's Washington gridlock, may not be all that brilliant.
A newly released poll shows that the 53 percent of Americans would blame Republicans in Congress if a fiscal cliff agreement isn't reached. Obviously, that's more than the 1 Percent they're fighting for.
Jonathan Cohn on Republicans sending us over the fiscal cliff, David Brooks on Republicans saving us from it, Jeffrey Goldberg on Israel's disappearing allies, Bob Dole and Tony Coelho on disabled Americans, and Joshua Muggleton on Asperger's.
Monday afternoon's question-and-answer session was just as measured as any campaign stop, controversial hashtag and all. The only genuine part of the whole thing, then, comes from the reactions.
Basically, they want half the tax increases and 50 percent more cuts to entitlements, and say their plan adds up to $4.6 trillion in deficit reduction. Here's how the plans look side-by-side.
With Democrats having more leverage on taxes in the 2012 fiscal cliff fight, Norquist's power has become not a Democratic fantasy so much as a GOP nightmare.
Paul Krugman on the post-cliff trouble, Hendrik Hertzberg on the House, Amy Butte on the stock market's opacity, Doyle McManus on drones, and Nathan Brown on Morsi.
Every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the video clips that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention
We didn't need Jon Stewart to tell us how silly it is for Washington to threaten our economy with another downgrade. We need him to show us how silly this whole thing is making the rest of us.
The president asked for a whole lot in his opening offer to Republicans Thursday, and they rejected it.
Angry phone calls. Dismissive press conferences. Negotiations without details. Nobody said this fiscal-cliff thing would be easy, but can't everyone get along? Isn't the president having his other rival over to the White House right about now?
Amy Davidson on Hillary Clinton, Matthew Yglesias on the fiscal cliff, Daniel Byman on Al Qaeda, Bill George on H.P., and Shikha Dalmia on immigration.
President Obama's sit down session with 14 chief executives on Wednesday afternoon went swimmingly. At least from the Obama administration's point of view it did.
After the president took the battle for the fiscal cliff over the edge of Twitter today, conservatives went right to work using the hashtag to push back up the social-media mountain — and quite successfully thus far.
Jonathan Cohn on Medicare, Grover Norquist on the fiscal cliff, Lynette H. Ong on China's construction boom, Bess Lovejoy on digging up the dead, and Jane Kramer on female bishops.
America's biggest anti-tax advocate has gotten the vast majority of congressional Republicans to sign his pledge to never raise taxes. But with the fiscal cliff looming, some influential Republicans are suddenly offering to break the pledge. Here's why.
As Congress attempts to negotiate a way to cut the budget deficit and avoid a fiscal cliff, it's worth remembering that one sticking point of the negotiations was supposed to eliminate the deficit problem entirely: the Bush tax cuts.
The Chairman of the Federal Reserve explained it all quite simply today: the sooner it's over, the better—and the sooner we can enjoy a good 2013.
Maybe Rep. Paul Ryan is the one guy who can bring together conservative Republicans with moderates to pass a budget deal avoiding the fiscal cliff. Or maybe he can't bring together anybody.
The meeting between President Obama and congressional leaders on the fiscsal cliff went well, and you can tell not by the nice statements released afterward, but by House Speaker John Boehner's face.
The key players in the budget negotiations finally sat down for the first time on Friday, but are still feeling each other out as they establish their opening gambits.
Jonathan Freedland on Gaza, Jacey Eckhart on military marriages, Daniel Gross on the payroll tax, Christina Larson on Hu Jintao, and Eugene Robinson on Republicans' listening problem.
Ezra Klein on tax reform, Alex Pareene on Republican rebranding, Amy Davidson on military sex scandals, Emer O'Toole on Savita, and Stephen Gandel on Goldman Sachs.
The latest trend in Fiscal Cliff analysis is to point out that it's not actually a cliff at all.
Now that the Democratic Party has fully abused and discredited Mitt Romney's economic vision for America, they've suddenly decided that maybe that one idea he had about tax deductions wasn't so crazy after all.
The lame duck session of Congress begins tomorrow, and the number one thing on everyone's mind is that darn fiscal cliff.
On Twitter this morning, we woke up to the "news" of Grover Norquist using a kindergarten term. But to be clear, the Republican tax puppetmaster was paraphrasing, trying to make a point that immature Democrats were calling his candidate a "poopy head."
Both President Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner have revealed their opening gambits in the great fiscal cliff chess match, and they are basically what everyone expected.
Most of the uncertainty over the fiscal cliff (which we discussed yesterday) was a result of neither side having taken a post-election stance on the issue. Now that Speaker of the House John Boehner has made his his first statement, things are not much clearer.
Now that President Obama has secured re-election experts agree that both something will happen with the impending "fiscal cliff" and no one can guess what that will be.
The New York Times reports that a group of Senators are quietly angling for a deal to avert mandatory government spending cuts in January, but liberal economic cheerleader Paul Krugman already sees the negotiation as an inevitable Democratic surrender.
For the last several months, Republicans and Democrats have been posturing their way towards the the edge of the so-called "fiscal cliff," a mix of nearly $500 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts set to go into effect in January.
Mitt Romney inadvertently blurted out an Obama campaign talking point last night while discussing the impending "fiscal cliff" facing Congress.
It was the Democratic talking point throughout last year's debt ceiling debate, "The Tea Party is taking the economy hostage," but now in a role reversal from last year, Democrats are the ones threatening economic ruin in an effort to wring concessions from Republicans.
Have a story we missed? A link we have to click? A sharp opinion about the news? Instead of waiting for us to post it, tell us on the Open Wire.
Submit your news and ideas | See all reader postsThe Atlantic Wire is your authoritative guide to the news and ideas that matter most right now. Our team tracks newsmakers and opinions across the entire media spectrum: newspapers, web sites, television, radio and magazines.
But we do more than just collect information. By synthesizing, analyzing and summarizing what’s out there, and adding new information when we can, we are a news engine that gives you a quick and valuable account of the issues of the day.
Have a hot tip? A story we missed? Tell us on the Open Wire
How to send us editorial or technical feedback
Get Five Best Columns in your inbox each morning (preview)
