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Obama’s Immigration Reform Push To Begin This Month

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WASHINGTON — Despite a bruising fiscal cliff battle that managed to set the stage for an even more heated showdown that will likely take place in a matter of months, President Barack Obama is planning to move full steam ahead with the rest of his domestic policy agenda.

An Obama administration official said the president plans to push for immigration reform this January. The official, who spoke about legislative plans only on condition of anonymity, said that coming standoffs over deficit reduction are unlikely to drain momentum from other priorities. The White House plans to push forward quickly, not just on immigration reform but gun control laws as well.

The timeframe is likely to be cheered by Democrats and immigration reform advocates alike, who have privately expressed fears that Obama’s second term will be drowned out in seemingly unending showdowns between parties. The just-completed fiscal cliff deal is giving way to a two-month deadline to resolve delayed sequestration cuts, an expiring continuing resolution to fund the government and a debt ceiling that will soon be hit . . .

Good news for immigration advocates may have come Tuesday night, when Boehner broke the so-called “Hastert Rule” and allowed the fiscal cliff bill to come for a vote without support from a majority of his Republican conference. Given opposition to immigration reform by many Tea Party Republicans, the proof that Boehner is willing to bypass them on major legislation is a good sign, the Democratic aide said.

“If something is of such importance that the GOP establishment [is] telling Boehner, ‘You must do this. You need to get this off the table soon,'” the Democratic aide said, the speaker could break the Hastert Rule again.

Read full story HERE.

Video: Krauthammer Calls Fiscal Cliff Deal ‘Complete Surrender’ by Republicans

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On Tuesday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer speculated that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor might try to replace John Boehner as speaker of the House.

“It’s possible this is the prelude to a challenge Thursday to Boehner’s leadership by Eric Cantor,” Krauthammer said. “I think that would be quite naked to do it at this late hour, as a result of this split over the vote. Look, there are a lot of conservatives in the Republican caucus in the House who hate the bill — and for good reason. I mean, this is a complete surrender on everything. The ratio of tax cuts — of tax hikes to spending cuts — is 40 to 1, rather than 1 to 1 or 1 to 2 or 1 to 3. So, I mean it’s a complete rout by the Democrats. So it’s understandable.”

Krauthammer said that if the House rejects the Senate fiscal cliff bill, Republicans should start over with a clean slate in the new Congress.

Read story from The Daily Caller HERE.

Congress Approves ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Measure

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photo credit: donkey hotey

Congress approved a plan to end Washington’s long drama over the “fiscal cliff” late Tuesday after House Republicans surrendered to President Obama’s demand to let taxes rise on the nation’s richest households.

The House voted 257 to 167 to send the measure to Obama for his signature; the vote came less than 24 hours after the Senate overwhelmingly approved the legislation.

House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) and most other top GOP leaders took no public position on the measure and offered no public comment before the 10:45 p.m. vote. Boehner declined even to deliver his usual closing argument, leaving House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) to defend the measure as the “largest tax cut in American history.”

The bill will indeed shield millions of middle-class taxpayers from tax increases set to take effect this month. But it also will let rates rise on wages and investment profits for households pulling in more than $450,000 a year, marking the first time in more than two decades that a broad tax increase has been approved with GOP support.

The measure also will keep benefits flowing to 2 million unemployed workers on the verge of losing their federal checks. And it will delay for two months automatic cuts to the Pentagon and other agencies that had been set to take effect Wednesday.

Read more from this story HERE.

Bait and Switch: In Face of Fiscal Cliff, Obama Demands Spending Boost for 2013

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President Barack Obama smashed a completed fiscal-cliff deal with a last-minute demand for increased spending in 2013, according to an e-mail from the GOP’s Senate leader, Mitch McConnell.

Under the deal, planned tax increases on middle-class Americans would be cancelled, but Obama insisted on raising tax rates on Americans earning more than $400,000 per year.

“They’re holding that [deal] hostage” to boost 2013 spending, GOP Sen. Bob Corker said shortly after Obama lauded the pending agreement.

“The tax piece is complete and done as of last evening at 1:45 a.m. I thought the entire deal was sealed. Early this morning, the White House called demanding that we also turn off the sequester,” said the email, signed “Mitch.”

The sequester refers to scheduled cuts in spending during the first nine months of 2013. Half of the $109 billion in cuts are to be imposed on the Pentagon.

Read more from this story HERE.

Happy New Year?

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The beginning of a new year is often a time to look forward and look back. The way the future looks, I prefer to look back — and depend on my advanced age to spare me from having to deal with too much of the future.

If there are any awards to be given to anyone for what they did in 2012, one of those rewards should be for prophecy, if only because prophecies that turn out to be right are so rare.

With that in mind, my choice for the prediction of the year award goes to Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal for his column of January 24, 2012 titled: “The GOP Deserves to Lose.”

Despite reciting a litany of reasons why President Obama deserved to be booted out of the White House, Stephens said, “Let’s just say right now what voters will be saying in November, once Barack Obama has been re-elected: Republicans deserve to lose.”

To me, the Republican establishment is the 8th wonder of the world. How they can keep repeating the same mistakes for decades on end is beyond my ability to explain.

Read more from this article HERE.

Nuclear Option Destroys the Senate

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During the contentious Cold War era, the United States and the former Soviet Union operated on a theory of Mutually Assured Destruction. The Soviets were deterred from launching a first strike against the U.S., the thinking went, because they knew that the response would be immediate and devastating. We are facing a similar situation today in the United States Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) is threatening to launch a first strike against the core of the Senate’s standing rules – the filibuster.

If Reid fires that first shot, I promise to respond with my own rules change ideas that will expand the rights of all Senators to participate in the legislative process.

The Senate has long been a body that respects the rights of each individual Senator by allowing them to participate fully in extended debate and a free amendment process, regardless of whether they were in the majority or the minority.

Over the past few years, Senator Reid has used his power as Majority Leader to suffocate those two important traditions. He has routinely taken actions to prevent rank-and-file members of the Senate from offering amendments to legislation; now, he is promising to attack the right of Senators to engage in extended debate by pushing a version of so-called “filibuster reform.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Egyptian Democracy Activist Says ‘President Obama Needs to Stop Supporting the Muslim Brotherhood’

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Egyptian democracy activist Michael Meunier says President Barack Obama needs to stand up to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Meunier, a Coptic Christian, is head of the Al Haya Party in Egypt and leader of the U.S. Copts Association. After spending many years studying and working in the United States, Meunier returned to Egypt in 2007 and ultimately participated in the Tahrir Square protests that brought down the regime of Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

On Dec. 19, in between round one and two of voting on Egypt’s recently passed constitution, Meunier visited The Daily Caller to discuss what he sees going on in the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Egypt.

“What we have now is a fascist, Islamist regime that has no respect human rights, no respect for international opinion. Mubarak at least respected international opinion,” he said. “Under Mubarak there was a lot of corruption, but there was no religious fascism … [There was a] difficult life for Christians in Egypt as well, but there was law and order.”

Read more from this article HERE.

Senate Approves ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Deal; House Meets New Year’s Day

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The White House and congressional lawmakers have reached a deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff” that would delay harsh spending cuts by two months, Obama administration officials said on Monday.

The plan was hammered out by Vice President Joe Biden and Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The Senate overwhelmingly approved the deal, 89 to 8, in a vote just before 2am ET on New Year’s Day. The House of Representatives is expected to vote or take up the deal when it meets on New Year’s Day.

So, technically, the U.S. went over the cliff when midnight struck and some $600 billion of tax hikes and spending cuts kicked in but a deal could be approved by the full Congress in the next few days.

The agreement, which includes both spending cuts and revenue increases, extends tax cuts on incomes up to $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples. Those earning above that would be taxed at a rate of 39.6 percent, up from 35 percent.

Read more from this story HERE.

New Year’s Eve On the Cliff: Lawmakers Have No Bill and No Deal (+Update)

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photo credit: donkey hotey

UPDATE: Deal in the Works?

Senate leaders and Vice President Biden are putting the finishing touches on an agreement to extend income tax rates for the vast majority of the country, just hours before the “fiscal cliff” deadline.

The agreement will extend Bush-era income tax rates on individual income up to $400,000 and on family income up to $450,000, according to a senior GOP aide. It will adjust the estate tax rate to 40 percent, up from 35 percent, but maintain the exemption for all inheritances below $5 million, the aide said.

GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who is engaged in one-on-one talks with Biden, said the tax portion of the deal was finished, and that a broader agreement was at hand.
“I can report that we’ve reached an agreement on all of the tax issues,” McConnell said. “We are very, very close.”

Republican leaders in the House, meanwhile, said they would not hold a late-night vote even if tax and spending legislation cleared the Senate, guaranteeing that the nation will go over the fiscal cliff at midnight, if only for a few hours. Read more from this story HERE.

New Year’s Eve On the Cliff: Lawmakers Have No Bill and No Deal

Senate leaders are racing against the clock to reach a “fiscal cliff” deal the House and Senate can approve on New Year’s Eve.

Leaders in the upper chamber narrowed their differences Sunday as Republicans agreed to drop a demand to curb cost-of-living increases to entitlement benefits, while Democrats showed flexibility on taxes.

Yet after months of talks on ways to avoid the fiscal cliff of tax hikes and spending cuts at the end of 2012, House and Senate lawmakers find themselves approaching the new year without a bill to present to their members.

Significant differences remain over two key parts of a deal — the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester and the estate tax.

Instead of working through the night, the Senate recessed at 7:27 p.m. Sunday with plans to reconvene Monday at 11:00 a.m., and the House recessed around the same time. Read more from this story HERE.