House

O tempora, o mores! O Cicero, if thou couldst be with us now! The corruption of our age is approaching that of your own! But who speaks for the ancient Roman—and modern American!—virtues of civic duty and personal responsibility?

Mitch McConnell’s plan, as Eric Cantor and Jim DeMint said tonight, is “going nowhere.” Which is where it deserved to go. It was too clever by half, transparently cynical, probably unconstitutional, and Rube Goldberg-like in its incomprehensibility.

Paul Ryan was interviewed on Fox News’s Special Report last night. Watch the segment for an impressive, and unapologetic, defense of the House Republican budget—and (what Republicans too rarely stress) an explanation that the status quo is "collapsing." His plan, Ryan says, "saves Medicare from going bankrupt. Senator Reid seems to be content with the fact that Medicare is going bankrupt because they're offering no plan or solution to solve the problem."

Much has been made of the Paul Ryan-authored House budget’s proposal to make Medicare more solvent through increased competition and choice — and rightly so. But that proposal is hardly the sole difference between the respective budgets authored by Ryan and President Obama.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the House of Representatives voted yesterday to repeal mandatory federal funding to states to establish Obamacare exchanges. The Inquirer writes:

Perhaps one of the most impressive victories in the November 2010 election was when Vicky Hartzler unseated Ike Skelton, a 17-term congressman and then chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, in Missouri’s Fourth Congressional District.

“It was more than a hobby,” Rep. Chuck Fleischmann says, talking about his interest in politics. “It was a passion.” From an early age, Fleischmann volunteered on political campaigns, “knocking on doors, passing out pamphlets,” he explains.

Of all the developments worth following these days, from the vigorous Republican insurgency to the apathetic Obama presidency, I’d like to add another: the relationship between the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and Republican freshman Allen West of Florida.

In the wake of President Obama’s conclusion that his own professed view of marriage is unconstitutional (at least when codified as federal law), the House of Representatives will step up and defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in federal court.

The new Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, by a margin of 15 percentage points (54 to 39 percent), Americans favor the repeal of Obamacare.  This marks the 22^nd straight week that Americans have supported repeal by double-digits.

The phone rang just now at home, where I was (and am) writing this week's editorial on Libya. The voice at the other end said, "Bill, this is John Boehner." We've been so swamped with automated fund-raising calls recently that I started to hang up—but fortunately I realized that automated callers don't usually greet me by name. I gathered myself just in time to respond, "Hi, John," and the speaker gave me (and I'm sure many others on his call list) a brief update on GOP budget strategy. It sounds tough-minded and sensible.