In a tight race to keep his Senate seat in 2008, McConnell inserted the “Bluegrass Boondoggle” into the Farm Bill. The Boondoggle gave a special tax break to millionaire horse owners, costing the government $126 million over 10 years.

Though McConnell now decries wasteful spending, he publicly touted the millionaire-only earmark in 2008, and the GOP has done everything it can to preserve the tax break since. The House GOP budget, which gives massive tax breaks to the rich that Republicans say will be paid for by closing tax loopholes, doesn’t touch the Bluegrass Boondoggle.

That budget has wide support throughout the party and has been endorsed by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, another fan of humongous, unpaid-for tax cuts for the richest Americans. (Romney is, of course, also a fan of fancy horses.)

Romney has openly touted his friendships with the owners of NASCAR and National Football League teams. Given his support for a budget that gives away tax breaks to millionaire horsemen, he may be making a few friends in the horse industry too.

Neither one of these briefs are surprising. The Chamber is one of the nation’s biggest spenders on elections, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has long been an opponent of campaign finance regulation. Before President Bush appointed Justice Alito, who became the fifth vote to tear down much of America’s checks on big money in politics, the seminal case upholding America’s ability to defend against such money was McConnell v. FEC. In that case, Sen. McConnell was the lead plaintiff who sued — mostly unsuccessfully — to toss out the McCain/Feingold campaign finance law.

Yet while the briefs are unsurprising, they demonstrate both the corporate lobby and the Republican Party’s commitment to keeping wealthy interest groups’ ability to buy and sell elections intact.

After earlier indications that they would make substantial cuts to domestic programs to preserve defense spending, the House Appropriations Committee made it official yesterday, setting a spending level $27 billion below the level agreed to in the debt deal. The committee, bowing to the GOP’s more conservative wing, will make deep cuts to food assistance, financial regulations, and a host of other programs, setting up the potential for a government shutdown when the fiscal year ends in October, Politico reports:

The House begins with a total of $1.028 trillion for discretionary spending, $19 billion below the $1.047 trillion target set last summer and $15 billion below what was enacted just months ago for the current 2012 fiscal year. Republicans would also go $8 billion over the caps set in the Budget Control Act for defense spending, and the result would be a net reduction of more than $27 billion from all other appropriations.

This translates into an added cut of about 5 percent, with the burden falling chiefly on a half-dozen domestic spending bills affecting nutrition programs, transportation, financial regulatory agencies, natural resources, and especially the labor, health and education bill cited by Dicks.

After GOP leadership worked with Democrats to form the debt deal last year, the party’s conservatives have seemingly wrangled control back from Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). House Appropriations Chair Hal Rogers (R-KY) opposed efforts to break the deal but went along at Boehner’s urging in attempts to assuage more conservative members — even still, four conservatives pushed Rogers to cut as much as $97 billion from the debt agreement.

Senate Republicans, despite McConnell’s stated position last week, are now making similar rumblings. South Dakota Sen. John Thune (R) said Wednesday that the Senate GOP may back House Republicans in setting lower spending limits, saying, “I think we’ve got to be as aggressive as we can in trying to rein in the cost of government, the growth of government.” With White House officials reiterating the president’s veto threat, however, 2012 is shaping up similarly to the summer of 2011, when Republicans repeatedly pushed the government to the brink of shutdown and nearly caused its default before striking a debt deal at the last minute.

In his first opportunity to weigh in on the battle, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) yesterday sided with Obama and the Senate Democrats. Led by McConnell, all but two Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to uphold the August debt deal, The Hill reports:

The committee met to divide up the $1.047 trillion allocated to discretionary spending under the debt deal — $19 billion more than allowed under the House-passed budget that Boehner supported. [...]

[McConnell] was joined by most of the Republicans on the committee and all Democrats in advancing the spending levels to be used to construct the 12 annual appropriations bills.

Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) voted against the allocations.

House Republicans have attempted to walk back other terms of the deal as well, refusing to include agreed-upon defense cuts in their budget. Instead, they’ve pushed even deeper cuts than were already required for food stamps, education assistance, and other programs, targeting those programs that help the poor and middle class for a majority of their spending reductions.

Even as he sided with Senate Democrats on current spending levels, McConnell attempted to salve House Republicans. According to The Hill, McConnell’s office noted that “has said the Budget Control Act numbers are just ceilings, not floors, and he would work to cut spending going forward.”

Needless to say, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is not happy that President Obama thwarted his power grab, so he’s once again trying to get judges to roll back decisions made by the people the American people elected to govern:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that his conference has hired conservative attorney Miguel A. Estrada to file a brief in a case brought by Noel Canning, a Washington state businessman who operates a bottling company. Canning plans to challenge an NLRB ruling that said his company must establish a collective bargaining agreement with a labor union.

McConnell once again called Obama’s appointments an “unconstitutional action” and said his colleagues had been seeking a strong legal challenge to the appointments to support.

McConnell’s legal arguments are not strong. Although the Senate minority claimed that it could thwart recess appointments by having a single senator hold a pretend Senate session every three days, the Senate simply does not have the power to block appointments simply by hosting a meeting in the Neighborhood of Make Believe. As two of President George W. Bush’s top constitutional advisors explained in 2010, the Senate is in recess when it is “not capable of acting on the president’s nominations.” Because no nominees can actually be confirmed in a make believe session, these fake sessions do not defeat Obama’s recess appointment’s power.

Moreover, even if they did count as real sessions, it’s not at all clear that the Senate was not in recess during the three days between the pretend meetings. As the highest federal court to consider the question explained in Evans v. Stephens, “[t]he Constitution, on its face, does not establish a minimum time that an authorized break in the Senate must last to give legal force to the President’s appointment power under the Recess Appointments Clause. And we do not set the limit today.”

Ultimately, however, this case is likely to turn less upon what the Constitution actually permits than on the outcome of the high-profile challenge to the Affordable Care Act. The case against health reform is significantly weaker than the case against Obama’s recess appointments. Nearly 200 years of Supreme Court precedent conclusively establish that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional, not to mention the text of the Constitution itself. In the words of Judge Laurence Silberman, a leading conservative who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush, the case against the ACA has no basis “in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court precedent.”

Yet despite the fact that the health care challenge is so weak that it borders on frivolous, several of the Supreme Court’s conservatives appeared more interested in doing the Republican Party’s bidding than they did in actually following the law when the health care case was argued last month. If the justices ultimately strike down the Affordable Care Act, they will send a clear signal to every judge in the country that the Constitution does not apply any more when there is an opportunity to embarrass Barack Obama.

So Mitch McConnell might have a chance of winning his case after all — at least if the judiciary decides to put partisan politics ahead of the law.

On a local Kentucky radio show today, the Senate minority leader argued that the female members in his caucus agree with him that the GOP’s “war on women” is just “a manufactured issue”:

MCCONNELL: There is no issue. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Kelly Ayotte from New Hampshire and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe from Maine I think would be the first to say — and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska — ‘we don’t see any evidence of this.’

Except that they do. Three of the four women McConnell names have already come out against the GOP’s war on women — Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).

In fact, Murkowski specifically pushed back on claims like McConnell’s, saying, “If you don’t feel this is an attack, you need to go home and talk to your wife and your daughters.” Maybe McConnell should take her advice.

Listen to McConnell’s remarks here:

“As the result of a successful discussion among the minority leader, the White House and myself there will be no recess appointments during the coming adjournment,” said [Majority Leader Harry] Reid, speaking from the Senate floor.

In return, Republicans allowed passage by unanimous consent of several of President Obama’s noncontroversial nominees and allowed Reid to set up a vote on the confirmation of Stephanie Thacker to be a circuit judge for the Fourth Circuit for April 16, the day the Senate returns from its break.

It is, of course, unfortunate that Reid needs to strike a deal at all before the caucus that controls less than half the seats in the Senate will deign to allow completely noncontroversial nominees to move forward. Nevertheless, this incident proves the wisdom of Obama’s decision to make several recess appointments earlier this year despite McConnell’s objections. Prior to Obama’s actions, he and Reid had few bargaining chips they could use to prevent McConnell’s obstructionism in a Senate ruled by the filibuster. Now, Obama and Reid can use the threat of future recess appointments to ensure that the party that voters did not want to control the Senate does not have a total veto power over the president’s nominees.

Boehner’s pick was Robert P. George, co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage, a group making headlines this week for its confidential memos revealing an intent to divide racial groups and scare parents as tactics to oppose marriage equality. George has explicitly participated in the effort to paint gays and lesbians as a threat to children through the Preserve Innocence project, for which he made a video warning about President Obama’s appointment of Kevin Jennings as Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. He also helped draft the Manhattan Declaration, which encourages Christians to defy the law to uphold their anti-gay, anti-choice beliefs. By working to ban same-sex marriage, George eagerly imposes upon the religious freedom of all faiths who support the freedom to marry.

George shares a connection to his fellow new appointee through their promotion of Islamophobia. McConnell appointed Zuhdi Jasser for his pick, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Most see Jasser as a “mere sock puppet” for those who spread animosity about the Muslim community, and Jasser’s group in turn has called the leadership of many U.S. Muslim groups “malignant.” He has testified before Rep. Peter King’s (R-NY) “radicalization” of Islam hearings and supports spying on innocent Muslims. Both Jasser’s group and the Bradley Foundation (of which George is a board member) featured heavily in last year’s Fear, Inc. report by the Center for American Progress, documenting the roots of the U.S. Islamophobia network. The Washington Post mistakenly described George as having a “less controversial profile” than Jasser.

These appointments are further evidence that the Republican agenda is not about defending so-called “religious liberty,” but about ensuring that their conservative values continue to have a prominent voice over other points of view.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for instance, has the most money of any senator from oil and gas this cycle. He’s the No. 8 recipient in oil and gas career contributions in Congress, taking over $1.15 million during his tenure.

Republicans like McConnell, who said a debate on oil subsidies is a “waste of the public’s time,” used one debunked myth after another yesterday afternoon:

LIE: More Domestic Drilling Would Lower Gas Prices: McConnell claimed Republicans have the “solution” to gas prices while Democrats are lacking. The GOP’s answers include Keystone XL pipeline and drilling, neither of which lower prices.

FACT: More Drilling Increases Big Oil Profits: Experts note that production doesn’t impact gas prices; if it did, our current eight-year high in domestic energy gas prices would mean $2 gas. An Associated Press statistical analysis finds absolutely no support that drilling lowers gas prices. Neither would Keystone XL help Americans at the pump; it would only send prices higher. The pipeline “risks raising prices as much as 20 cents a gallon in the Midwest, Great Plains and Rocky Mountains,” according to a 2010 Canadian report.

LIE: Big Oil Tax Breaks Promote Drilling.: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said taxes are an “inconvenient fact” that “lead to lower production.” “As we tax these energy companies it is sure not going to lead them to produce things that are more affordable more abundant in fact it will have the resulting impact of impacting negatively the prices on American consumers,” she said.

FACT: Big Oil Tax Breaks Increase Big Oil Profits.: A Congressional Research Service report from May 2011 found that the repeal of five key oil industry tax breaks would lead to little or no increase of gasoline prices. Experts like oil industry analyst Tom Kloza agree that it would have no impact.

Americans know that “oil companies that want to make too much profit” deserve the most blame for higher gas prices, a new Reuters poll found. Republican senators are working to increase the $137 billion in profits the Big Five oil companies sucked from working families last year, instead of helping their constituents.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

In 2010, a bill to expand disclosure passed the Democratic-controlled house of representatives, but failed by a single vote in the Senate as Republicans unified to filibuster the measure. That bill — the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act also contained provisions restricting
government contractors and foreign companies from political advertising.

Today, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and some of his Democratic colleagues unveiled a new attempt — the DISCLOSE Act of 2012 — focusing just on disclosure provisions. According to a fact sheet provided by Whitehouse’s office, the bill would require the following:

Any covered organization that spends $10,000 or more on campaign-related disbursements during an election cycle [must] file a disclosure report with the Federal Election Commission within 24 hours, and [must] file a new report for each additional $10,000 or more that is spent, detailing the amount and nature of each expenditure over $1,000 and the names of all of its donors who gave $10,000 or more.

Covered organizations include super PACs and tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organizations. Additionally, the ads would have to list the top donors behind the message.

With outside groups spending millions and hugely unpopular, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says Democrats are hopeful that even in a more Republican congress, the bill might attract bipartisan support. The Senate’s rules committee, which Schumer chairs, will begin considering the bill at a hearing next week.

Like many of his Republican colleagues, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has indicated many times that he believes campaign finance disclosure — not limits — is the best way to ensure a just political system. With this new DISCLOSE Act, they will once again be forced to show whether they actually believe it.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

Their ads, focused on Kentucky and Ohio, included children singing “America’s bridges falling down, all around the country,” to the tune of the song “London Bridge is Falling Down.” A narrator warned:

The average age of a U.S. bridge is 45 years, dangerously close to the life span of 50 years. More than a quarter of our bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Because of tight budgets, bridge maintenance is in jeopardy. and if Republican leaders in Congress have their way those budgets will get cut even more. Text “Bridge” to 69866 and let Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell know we need a real highway bill to save our bridges and our lives.

This got the attention of McConnell’s staff, who posted a refutation on his campaign website. McConnell professed his support for the highway bill and slammed Laborers for its support of Democratic candidates and the “radical” Occupy movement.

“Contrary to the assertion in the ads,” McConnell’s staff claimed, “Senator McConnell has been working to pass the highway bill in the U.S. Senate, which is currently slated for a vote on final passage next week.” A McConnell spokesman also told a Louisville, Kentucky radio station that the minority leader was working with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to pass the highway bill.

Just before the vote, McConnell took to the senate floor and praised the lead sponsors, Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Jim Inhofe (R-OK) for their bipartisan effort. “They have worked together in a collegial way to bring us to this point on the highway bill,” he raved.

Moments later, McConnell joined 21 other Republicans — and no Democrats — in voting against the bill. The House is expected to take up a similar version in April, rather than the far inferior House Republican version.

McConnell’s office did not respond to a request for comment on why he voted against a bill he’d pledged to support and no explanations were apparent on his senate or campaign websites. But it would certainly appear that the Republican leader owes the Laborers an apology.

As it turns out, this was not an effective messaging strategy for Mr. McConnell, who has now agreed to allow most of the seventeen judges to move forward:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced the agreement on the floor but said they wouldn’t provide any details until they briefed their respective caucuses later in the afternoon. However, aides said the deal will allow Democrats to move 12 district court judges and 2 circuit court judges by May 7.

Now, let’s be clear, this is not a perfect deal. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever why every judge who has cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee could not be confirmed today — and there is certainly no reason why judges who received little if any opposition in committee need to wait as long as May 7. It’s also inexcusable that one of President Obama’s most outstanding nominees, Ninth Circuit nominee Paul Watford, is not on the list of judges being confirmed (a list of the judges is below the jump).

Nevertheless, today’s deal is a massive improvement over the status quo. According to data provided by the Federal Judicial Center, the 112th Congress has confirmed judges at a rate of about 4.75 judges per month. Today’s deal, by contrast, means that fourteen new judges will be confirmed in just two months. This is a significant uptick — even if it is barely enough to make a dent in the 83 currently existing judicial vacancies — and Reid deserves credit for making this happen.

Indeed, there is an important lesson here for Reid and for progressive lawmakers in general. McConnell remains the most obstructionist Senate Leader in recent history, and he has been a constant barrier to ensuring our nation functions effectively from the moment President Obama took office. Nevertheless, we know now that he can be forced to back down. Harry Reid decided to fight this week, and he was rewarded for it. He should remember that fact the next time McConnell stands in the way.

—
According to a Senate source, the list of judges being confirmed are:

District Judges: Gina Marie Groh, of West Virginia; David Nuffer, of Utah; Michael Walter Fitzgerald, of California; Ronnie Abrams, of New York; Rudolph Contreras, of Virginia; Miranda Du, of Nevada; Susie Morgan, of Louisiana; Gregg Jeffrey Costa, of Texas; David Campos Guaderrama, of Texas; Brian C. Wimes, of Missouri; Kristine Gerhard Baker, of Arkansas; John Z. Lee, of Illinois;

Circuit Judges: Stephanie Dawn Thacker, 4th Circuit; Jacqueline Nguyen 9th Circuit

The Republican Party appeared to be unified in both supporting President Obama’s Afghanistan surge in 2009, and criticizing the withdrawal plan he announced last year. But fractures emerged within the GOP as the presidential candidates sought to get to Obama’s left on Afghanistan. But now the recent events there have split the GOP in three camps. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum appear ready to throw in the towel. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is still attacking the president for wanting to withdraw too soon and now the third wing is openly supporting Obama’s timetable, the AP reports:

Republicans and Democrats alike insist the United States should stay the course in Afghanistan, sticking to President Barack Obama’s timetable for withdrawing American troops despite the massacre of Afghan civilians and the burning of Qurans — two offenses blamed on the U.S. military that have stoked anti-American anger.

Key proponents of keeping troops in Afghanistan, like Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., say these tragic incidents shouldn’t diminish the American resolve to finish a job begun more than a decade ago.

Moreover, the Hill reports that Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who appeared to oppose Obama’s withdrawal plan last year, is urging Obama to maintain the current plan:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday backed the Obama administration’s scheduled withdrawal from Afghanistan, a conflict that has reached a critical moment following the alleged slaying of 16 Afghan civilians by a U.S. soldier.

McConnell emphasized he was speaking only for himself, and his remarks highlighted a divide in his party, with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) slamming the administration’s plans to withdraw the 23,000 remaining “surge” troops from Afghanistan by year’s end.

A new poll out this week found that Americans’ support for the war in Afghanistan at an all time low. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports today that “[a] growing number of Afghans say they have come to see a quick U.S. pullout as the best of bad options.”

REID: I’ve got a great idea. My friend the Republican Leader said these judges are all going to get approved anyway, so I’ve got an idea. Let’s go to this IPO bill immediately after finishing the highway bill, with the agreement that we’ll dispose of these judges immediately after that. . . .

McCONNELL: It is highly unlikely any of these district judges are not going to be confirmed. We’ve done a number of them this year. We’ve done seven this year. District judges are almost never defeated. This is just a very transparent attempt to try to slam dunk the minority and make them look like they are obstructing things they aren’t obstructing. We object to that. We don’t think that meets the standard of civility that should be expected in the Senate. And, so, any effort to make the minority look bad or attempt to slam dunk them that is sort of manufactured as this is is gonna, of course, be greeted with resistance.

Watch it:

Let’s explain what’s going on here. Both Reid and McConnell agree that there is nothing objectionable about these judges — in McConnell’s words, “it is highly unlikely any of these district judges are not going to be confirmed.” Additionally, both men agree that the Senate should vote on the “IPO bill” that Reid refers to, a bill dealing with investments in small businesses that recently passed the House. Initially, Reid wanted to vote on the seventeen judges awaiting confirmation before moving on to the IPO bill, but he even concedes this point — saying that he is willing to “go to this IPO bill” first as McConnell prefers.

And then McConnell says this deal is unacceptable because Reid “ma[de] the minority look bad.”

If this is truly McConnell’s reason for blocking these judges, then he just made an absolutely shocking admission. Thanks to excessive judicial vacancies, America’s courts are increasingly unable to function. In some courts, judges are so overburdened they have to rush major felony cases through as if they involved minor traffic violations. In one court, felony caseloads nearly doubled in just two years. Every court that is unable to handle its caseload means wrongly fired workers waiting months or years for justice and businesses that must delay making new hires until they are sure they won’t be hit with an unwarranted legal judgment. And yet McConnell says he is willing to punish all of these workers and businesses because he is upset that Reid has made him look bad. America can ill afford this kind of tantrum.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who introduced legislation containing a version of the Buffett Rule, slammed Republicans like Christie and McConnell today, saying that their “write a check” defense the tax code makes taxes “optional” for the wealthy, allowing them to “decide whether or not” they have to pay taxes:

WALDRON: Chris Christie, Mitch McConnell, a couple of the others have criticized Warren Buffett over the last couple weeks and said, you know, if he’s so disappointed he should just write a check.

WHITEHOUSE: You gotta love this idea that if you’re rich enough, the tax code becomes optional for you and you decide whether or not you’re going to write a check. You’re in a special category of people who doesn’t actually have to pay taxes, they just kind of get to if they feel like it. Let’s just say I haven’t heard them say that about working families.

Watch it:

Republicans like McConnell and Christie have done their part to make taxes on the wealthy as optional as possible. Despite the fact that the wealthiest Americans have seen their tax rates plummet even as their income rises, McConnell and his Republican colleagues have fought attempts to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy or to close loopholes that primarily benefit the rich. Christie, for his part, recently released a tax plan that would give 40 percent of its benefits to New Jersey’s richest one percent.

Buffett, meanwhile, has offered to write a check — as soon as Republicans do too. In January, he told Time Magazine he’d match any voluntary contribution made by Republicans. “I’ll even go three-to-one for McConnell,” Buffett said. So far, he has had to match only one Republican.