All posts tagged: Congress
The first day of public hearings into the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump included an explosive revelation. William B. Taylor Jr., the senior American diplomat in Ukraine, tied Trump even more directly than we previously knew to the effort to pressure Ukraine to probe his political opponent. But as damaging as Taylor’s testimony proved, it
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After a series of meetings and phone calls with high-ranking officials this month, a Republican who deals regularly with the Trump administration confided in me about his frustration. “The dysfunction in this White House just knows no bounds,” he said. Of the many things people worried about before President Trump took office, it turned out
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A year ago, I declared on these pages that despite being a Republican my whole life, I would not under any circumstances vote for Donald J. Trump for president. Since then, I’ve been asked by other Republicans if I kept that promise (I did) and whether I regret it (I don’t). Republicans who disagree with my stance
Read MoreWhile reading Gregory Weiner’s fascinating book American Burke, I came across this comment: “(Daniel Patrick) Moynihan’s intellectual curiosity was such that he gravitated toward thinkers with whom he disagree precisely because he disagreed with them and could consequently learn from them.” This observation reminded me of an incident in 1948 involving C.S. Lewis and Elizabeth
Read MoreOn Thursday morning, Paul Ryan was elected Speaker of the House. In his 13-minute acceptance speech, Ryan acknowledged that the House of Representatives is broken – “We are not solving problems. We are adding to them.” – and offered up some procedural changes, including having committees retake the lead in drafting all major legislation, opening
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During the Obama presidency, the national debt has nearly doubled, federal spending as a percentage of the gross domestic product reached a post-World War II record, and the federal government extended its reach in health care, higher education, corporate governance, the energy sector and much else. President Obama inherited a financial crisis that his defenders insist
Read MoreAccording to White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer, “middle-class economics” will be the “core theme” of President Obama’s State of the Union speech this evening. Mr. Pfeiffer, appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, said, “I think we should have a debate in this country between middle-class economics and trickle-down economics and see if we can
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We live in an era of unusual political polarization, but the polarization isn’t simply between the two parties; there are also splits within them. Last week the Republican Party’s divisions were on display, when Speaker of the House John A. Boehner — who helped his party gain its largest majority since the Truman administration —
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The Pew Research Center released a new survey that included the following findings: Level of Dissatisfaction Just 26 percent are satisfied with national conditions, while 71 percent are dissatisfied. Forty-nine percent say they think 2015 will be a better year than 2014, while 42 percent think it will be worse. The current ratings are more
Read MoreWhen I worked in the Bush White House and revelations about enhanced interrogation techniques became public, I spoke with several people, both within and outside the administration, to discuss and grapple with its moral implications. (Because of my faith perspective, some of the conversations were placed in an explicitly theological context.) I was uncomfortable with
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