Obama Signs 'Imperfect' Spending Bill

President wants reform; Boehner and Cantor want 2-year ban

(NEWSER) - President Obama is urging Congress to crack down on earmarks in his weekly radio address today, even as John Boehner and Eric Cantor saw his crackdown and raised him an outright ban in what Politico calls a race for fiscal purity. Obama said some earmarks "support worthy projects in our local communities," but that reform was needed to signal "our commitment to fiscal responsibility." More»

Lots of other sparring, slicing, and dicing on your Sunday show roundup

(NEWSER) - Apparently President Obama and Nancy Pelosi aren't listening to the message Democrats were given Tuesday, complains Eric Cantor. "When you hear the president say things like 'we did a poor job of explaining what we were trying to do,' that is indicative of his not getting it," Cantor tells Fox News Sunday. "Voters have had enough of the Obama agenda." As for Pelosi's bid to lead the minority, "This is a woman who puts ideology first, and this is the direction they want to take again." Cantor also wants the Bush tax cuts extended permanently. Elsewhere on the Sunday dial, as per Politico: More»

(NEWSER) - Powerful special interests are killing health-care reform, which is par for the course in Congress, writes Joe Klein of Time. “We’ve gotten rusty at legislating,” says one Tennessee Democrat. That’s overly kind, Klein retorts. The only bills that pass these days are essentials like budgets and “cotton-candy giveaways.” The best of the health-care proposals, Ron Wyden’s, is doomed because no special interests are backing it. More»

(NEWSER) - When the stimulus was in the works, President Obama went to great lengths to show he was sacrificing his top pet project—a clean-coal power plant to be built in Illinois—on the altar of fiscal responsibilities. “It shows that we’re serious,” a rep for Nancy Pelosi said at the time. “There will not be earmarks in this bill.” But the plant is getting stimulus cash after all—$1 billion of it, Politico reports. More»

President's targets for cuts have eager defenders in Congress

(NEWSER) - To make an omelet, you’ve got to break some eggs. But some of the eggs President Obama broke in the list of budget cuts unveiled yesterday were golden eggs for lawmakers, and even members of his own party wasted no time in protesting, the Washington Post reports. Dems who said they plan to fight for favorite programs include Nancy Pelosi, who's asked members to come up with their own alternate list. More»