Stephen Dinan

Despite looming shutdown, Capitol Hill is a ghost town

With the clock ticking to a March 4 government shutdown, you might imagine the Capitol would be buzzing, with lawmakers seeking to cut deals, make impassioned speeches and do everything they could to strike a deal on spending. You'd be wrong.

February 24, 2011

Shutdown skedaddle: Congress deserted as deadline looms

With the clock ticking to a March 4 government shutdown, you might imagine the Capitol would be buzzing with lawmakers seeking to cut deals, make impassioned speeches and do everything they could to strike a deal on spending. You'd be wrong.

February 24, 2011

CBO raises its stimulus cost estimate, again

Congress' chief scorekeeper has again raised the cost estimate of President Obama's two-year-old economic-stimulus program, calculating it will end up costing taxpayers $821 billion — or $34 billion more than originally projected.

February 23, 2011

CBO raises its stimulus cost estimate, again

Congress' chief scorekeeper has again raised the cost estimate of President Obama's two-year-old economic-stimulus program, calculating it will end up costing taxpayers $821 billion — or $34 billion more than originally projected.

February 23, 2011

Democrats say GOP cuts jeopardize border security

After watching Republicans use immigration to attack their priorities for the past two years, Democrats are turning the table, saying congressional Republicans' spending-cuts bill would slice money from border fencing and could scuttle much of President Obama's Border Patrol surge.

February 22, 2011

Democrats counter with cuts of their own

Just hours after House Republicans passed their bill late last week to cut $61 billion from 2010 spending, or what amounts to $100 billion below President Obama's original proposal, Senate Democrats countered with their ante — $41 billion short of Mr. Obama's budget, or essentially a straight spending freeze at the current fiscal year's levels.

February 21, 2011

In House debate, pet projects euthanized

After more than 100 votes in four days, the lesson from last week's spending debate in the House is that nobody's pet projects are safe anymore.

February 20, 2011

House GOP pushes through historic spending cuts

Flexing their new large majority in the House, Republicans early Saturday morning pushed through a bill that cuts more than $61 billion from last year's spending levels, setting up a showdown with Senate Democrats, who have vowed to block it, and President Obama, who has said he'll veto it.

February 19, 2011

Lawmakers hit limit for size of spending cuts

Drawing a line on how deeply they are willing to cut, a coalition of congressional Democrats and Republicans on Friday shot down an effort to slice another $22 billion from this year's federal spending levels.

February 18, 2011

Boehner, on spending, gives own ‘Read my lips’ pledge

Making a "read-my-lips" promise, Speaker John A. Boehner said Thursday that House Republicans will produce a budget this year that reins in entitlements and cuts spending, upping the ante on President Obama, who declined to tackle those long-term fiscal problems in the budget he sent to Congress on Monday.

February 17, 2011

House breaks old taboos in cutting spree

In the first freewheeling spending debate the House has held in years, Democrats and Republicans teamed up to take on entrenched defense interests and to rewrite a GOP 2011 spending bill to cut about $800 million from NASA and from homeland security research and development, and send the savings to fund local police and firefighters.

February 16, 2011

House breaks old taboos in cutting spree; Murtha’s project taken off dole

In the first freewheeling spending debate the House has held in years, Democrats and Republicans teamed up to take on entrenched defense interests and to rewrite a GOP 2011 spending bill to cut about $800 million from NASA and from homeland security research and development, and send the savings to fund local police and firefighters.

February 16, 2011

GOP bill zeroes out programs, puts curbs on Obama initiatives

The $60 billion in spending cuts House Republicans sent to their chamber floor Tuesday are more than just budget trims — they mark the beginning of the party's effort to tweak the way the Obama administration has operated during its first two years.

February 15, 2011

Federal deficit on track for a record this fiscal year

President Obama's budget, released Monday, was conceived as a blueprint for future spending, but it also paints the bleakest picture yet of the current fiscal year, which is on track for a record federal deficit and will see the government's overall debt surpass the size of the total U.S. economy.

February 14, 2011

Obama says Egypt must reach ‘genuine democracy’

Calling the upheaval in Cairo a chance "to witness history taking place," President Obama on Friday said Egypt now has an obligation to follow through to full democracy now that President Hosni Mubarak has ceded power and fled the city.

February 11, 2011

Book: Lincoln sought to deport freed slaves

The Great Emancipator was almost the Great Colonizer: Newly released documents show that to a greater degree than historians had previously known, President Lincoln laid the groundwork to ship freed slaves overseas to help prevent racial strife in the U.S.

February 9, 2011

Earmarks end for one year, but perk still potent on Hill

Capitol Hill insiders say at least 75 percent of lawmakers privately still think earmarking is a correct and proper use of congressional authority. Yet last week, one of the Senate's champion earmarkers, Sen. Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, hammered home the nail that officially ended the practice — at least for the time being.

February 9, 2011

Katrina, Bridge to Nowhere spurred ‘storm’ that doomed earmarks

It may have looked like boom times for earmarkers in 2006, when they carved out a record $29 billion in projects — but little did lawmakers realize that a perfect storm of events the year before had set the clock ticking on pork.

February 9, 2011

CPAC fissure over gays deepens; GOProud called incompatible

Deepening a rift ahead of the largest annual gathering of conservative activists in Washington this week, some of the movement's top leaders have circulated a private memo urging that conservatism's founding principles be recast to exclude gay rights groups from the Reagan coalition of economic, defense and social conservatives.

February 8, 2011

Reagan’s own philosophy puts his boyhood home in limbo

Nearly a decade after Congress told the National Park Service to try to buy Ronald Reagan's boyhood home, the plan remains in limbo — the victim of a budget dispute and of the former president's own limited-government philosophy.

February 3, 2011