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In one of its first major votes the newly elected U.S. House of Representatives approved the Keystone XL pipeline by a vote of 252 to 161.

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This editorial opinion in BBC News points to a Russian miscalculation on how its involvement in the U.S. elections would be seen in the U.S. Congress. The U.S. Congress voted for stronger sanctions on Russia with only 5 members in the Senate and the House of Representatives voting against sanctions- an overwhelming vote in favor of sanctions. This means future policy on Russia will be determined by the U.S. Congress, and with bipartisan support for such policies. President Trump reluctantly signed the bill, saying it took away from executive authority. Russia had hoped its efforts in favor of Trump would lead to an easing of sanctions, not grasping the role of Republicans in Congress who see interference in the democratic process in the U.S. in the same way as Democrats.

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The U.S. House of Representatives votes 285-144 to suspend the debt ceiling till Feb. 7, 2014. The deal forged in the Senate by Democrat Reid and Republican McConnell passed in th Senate by 81-18. The U.S. stock markets closed with the DJIA at 15374, up 1.6% compared to Sept 30 when the government shutdown began. The Republicans opposing the passage outnumbered those supporting it 144 to 87 in the House of Representatives. Because this was a repeat of similiar failure to reach agreement and last minute deals in 2012 and 2011 the equity markets appear to have taken the conflict between the two parties in stride.

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When Daniel Henninger of WSJ Editorial Board says in the adjoining article/video that to get anything done with something like the current split Congress a newly elected Republican president would have to operate by executive orders and could get little done, he is referring to the stalled Ukraine aid legislation in the US Congress after passage 70-20 by bipartisan vote in the US Senate. Legislation is stalled in the 2022 newly elected US House of Representatives with a group of Republican Congressmen called the Freedom Caucus seeking to block all legislation if it does not get its way. The now famous line "dead on arrival" line of Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana for legislation passed in the Senate for Ukraine aid. Pew Research looks at the change in the House and explains. It says about 49 members of Congress are part of or aligned to this group. About 71% or 35 of 49 members have less than six years of experience which includes 9 freshmen, compared to 58% or 100 of 173 Congressmen of all other Republican members of Congress. And two thirds of Freedom Caucus are from the South compared to 46% of all other Republicans in Congress. It is striking that only three are from states such as Wisconsin, Illinois and Pennsylvania or a mere 6% for Northeast and Midwest.  ...

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President Trump plans to introduce  tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminium. It is not clear whether this will be targeted at Countries flooding the U.S. market with cheap metals, or generally for all countries. Executives from the steel industry and aluminium industries met with Trump at the White House. This would fulfill one of the president's campaign promises.

There is a vigorous debate in the White House between advisors who advocate limiting the measures such as Gen Mattis at Defense, Gary Cohn at the Economic Council, on one side, and the Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Peter Navarro, on the other. 

Mr. Lighthizer has convinced the president of the need for strong action, yet he has hesitated in the past. Now president Trump says he wants "free, fair and smart trade," and will not let "American companies and workers be taken advantage of any longer."

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Daniel Henninger of the WSJ Editorial Board says even if a Republican is elected president it would be a question of 4 more years of what? The big problem today he says is the small number of legislators in the US House of Representatives, about 20 in the Freedom Caucus, that are opposed to the government operating unless they get their way. The result is that independent Speakers of the Republican controlled House, with Republicans having a slim majority, are unable to get elected, and the Speaker elected is a relative newcomer Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who entered Congress as recently as 2017. The new Speaker has said the legislation passed by a bipartisan group of Senators in the US Senate 70-30 for aid to Ukraine is "dead on arrival." Result an impasse with some saying this is the most ineffective Congress ever. In this situation if a Republican is elected president says Henninger he can do little because a loss of even one legislative branch to Democrats the House or the Senate would leave America where it started- in an impasse for 2024-2028. For this reason he says even though Mr. Trump said he would do great things there was little he could point to in his vision for the future, and little he could do just by signing executive orders that would later be reversed.  ...

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After resisting calls for impeachment inquiry into president Trump's dealings with Russia during his campaign by the Democrat controlled House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi decides to launch the inquiry in September 2019. The issue raised in the inquiry relates to a call made by the president and released transcript, and whistleblower's letter that showed president Trump asking the Ukrainian president to look into corruption of a company in which Democrat Joe Biden's son was a board member.

The U.S. provided funds to Ukraine as it struggled to keep Eastern parts of Ukraine from separating with the help of Russia. Mr. Trump states that the U.S. was left with providing most of the cost without European countries contributing enough, a complaint he has made since the beginning of his campaign about all U.S. allies in American engagements overseas such as Korea and Japan and NATO.

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US president Biden has asked Democrats to first reach an agreement on a social and climate policy package and only then vote on an infrastructure bill. Republicans have supported investments in infrastructure, but not supported the social and climate policy package. Democrats progressive wing supports infrastructure but only after the social and climate policy package is approved. To pull together the different groups in the Democratic party and win support among some Republicans requires a skillful balancing act bringing in support from all sides in the national interest. The Biden plan for $3.5 trillion for Build Back Better has a$1 billion infrastructure plan, and a plan for workers and families on social issues confronting the country including child care, education, income related to reduce disparities, and healthcare. It also includes investments in green energy so reduce emissions to tackle climate change. Because Democrats have a thin majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives this balancing act will also require Democrats to reduce the size of the package to less than $3.5 trillion bringing in the most essential components for investment in 2021-2022 and making additional investments in the following years. ...

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The title says this but Biden has not blown it by conducting discussions on the debt ceiling with Kevin McCarthy, Republican leader in the House of Representatives. Krugman presents MAGA Republicans as controlling the House. The situation is a bit more complicated than that as the Republican margin is only 222-213 with moderates who could move in Biden's direction if a default is impending. Previous articles in the NYT and WSJ have shown how the president has his own set of options including  simply ignoring the ceiling or citing a part of the Constitution of the US that gives the president the authority to conduct the business of the country in such a situation. Mr. Biden is taking the situation as calmly as possible, as the midterms have also given the president a situation where he sees the country on his side with Democrats needing only a few moderates in the Republican party to support him. Mr. McCarthy has his own reasons to support Biden as he supports president Biden in the task of backing up NATO and Ukraine. Having discussions with McCarthy keeps the country together at a time when Ukraine has a planned counter offensive to defend the country. Biden was able to achieve legislative achievements that are comparable to FDR and Lyndon Johnson because of his calm and patient approach. ...

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 U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, views China's response in trade negotiations as one of conducting extended negotiations that lead to little change. This has continued says Lighthizer for over a decade putting the U.S. at a serious disadvantage in trade. At a White House meeting in August 2017 Lighthizer convinced president Trump that China was in his words "tap, tap, tapping us along."  This confirmed president Trump's own instincts about the U.S. trading relationship with China. Lighthizer is a veteran of trade negotiations, having experience in the Reagan administration as the Deputy Trade Representative in 1983 in negotiations with Japan, when Japan was in a similar situation that China is today. At the time trade negotiations with Japan were getting nowhere. Lighthizer is said to have turned one Japanese response in negotiations into a paper plane and sent it flying right back. Lighthizer does not seek the limelight but is serious about his role having published op-eds in the NYT and WSJ since 2000 about how U.S. trading relationships were putting the U.S. and U.S. workers at an unfair advantage. Many of these op-eds are in the Lyrarc archive and a Search with the term "Lighthizer" would bring up these articles. This report in NYT shows how the role of Lighthizer was not anticipated by China when it sent Liu He to Washington in November 2017 to negotiate with the U.S. President Trump made certain Liu He and other Chinese leaders would have to talk to Lighthizer first. In a session with president Jinping laid out U.S. views that the past negotiations had accomplished little and new negotiations had to be undertaken very differently from negotiations in the past. Earlier in July trade negotiations conducted by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross were "shut down" by president Trump because China continued to repackage earleir offers which meant little to the U.S. As a lawyer at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher LLP Lighhizer represented steel industry clients hurt by subsidized Chinese steel industry imports. Mr. Trump and Lighhizer have bonded well because their instincts have been the same- that the U.S. had not been well represented in earlier negotiations by lawyers who saw themselves as speaking for American exporters.  Lighthizer is also a seasoned trade negotiator and has waited for the right time and situation to tackle the unbalanced trading relationship with China. For 30 years Lighhizer represented American manufacturers as he practiced trade law at the Skadden law firm. His strategy has been to get the administration to unite behind a clear trade strategy. He says "I try to be friendly in trade negotiations. I am not the theatrical type. The art of persuasion is about knowing where the leverage is." At this time the leverage lies in the huge trade surplus of about $300 billion China has with the U.S. The U.S. goal is to bring this down by $100 billion through this new negotiating strategy as earlier negotiations have failed. ...

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The trade adjustment assistance bill failed to win passage in the U.S. House of Representatives with 86 Republicans and 40 Democrats in favor, and 303 members voting against it. The Republican leadership passed a bill that gives the president trade negotiating authority without the trade adjustment assistance legislation and this passed the House in 219 to 211 vote. The Senate earlier passed legislation with the trade adjustment assistance included in fast track trade negotiating authority, making it necessary for the Senate to pass a new bill similiar to the House excluding trade adjustment assistance.

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House rules of order from the U.S. House of Representatives would have as presiding officer at the Republican National Convention, Speaker Paul Ryan. Efforts to change this were pushed back at a RNC meeting in Florida. Trump's representatives Manafort and Ben Carson attempted to repair damaged relations between the Republican National Committee, its chairman Vince Preibus, and Trump, at that meeting. The Manafort argument was that Trump's flaws were of personality not character, which would be easier to fix than that facing Hillary Clinton, yet many RNC members were skeptical of this. A April 2016 WSJ/NBC poll shows Hillary Clinton leading Trump 50% to 39%, by 11 points- the surprising finding is that the poll also shows 56% of both candidates support comes from voters anxious to avoid the alternative candidate.

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In his 2019 State of the Union speech Mr. Trump calls for unity but continued emphasis on the border wall and strict immigration. Democrats offered little approval of the speech even when it sounded conciliatory on parental leave and infrastructure. The president continued his criticism of Democratic leaders Schumer and Biden in informal remarks.  The president called immigration a "moral issue," saying "no issue more illustrates the divide between America's working class and America's political class than illegal immigration," that wealthy donors and politicians call for open borders while living behind gates, walls, and guards. This is the first time a president goes into a State of the Union Speech with 37% of Americans supporting him according to a Gallup poll. The only time a U.S. president had less support was in 1983 when Reagan faced a recession and in 2007 and 2008 when Bush faced problems with the Iraq War. Another feature of this House of Representatives in 2019 after the 2018 Congressional elections is that 131 women are now in the House. The president congratulated the women to wide applause.   ...

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This report in WSJ looks at the Biden education, healthcare and climate change plan. It is part of the Families and Workers Plan put forward by president Biden for $3.6 trillion. This figure has now been lowered to $2 trillion and may drop crucial provisions for education such as the cost free community college which poses serious risks for working class families unable to afford community college, and skews education access even further to higher income families. It also lowers college attendance of American men, which is falling to alarming levels. The reason the plans are being whittled down is the 50-50 split between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate and the failure of Republicans and two Democrat senators Manchin of West Virginia, Sinema of Arizona to support community college access. Parts of the current bill support child care, access to affordable housing and in home care for elderly Americans. New elections for Senate and House of Representatives in 2022 would have to settle the issues related to financing assistance for families and workers as the Senate today is divided 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans. A separate Bipartisan Infrastructure package has the support of all in the US Congress to build bridges and roads, other infrastructure badly neglected by different administrations over the last 2 decades. ...

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The Nebraska Supreme Court reverses a lower court ruling clearing a hurdle for construction of the Keystone pipeline. At about the same time the U.S. House of Representatives voted 266 to 153 in Jan. 2014 to pass a bill approving the project. It will pass a Senate vote. President Obama says he will veto the bill. The pressure clearly increases on Obama to approve the pipeline.

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Passage of a spending bill in the U.S. Congress in December 2014 to avert a government shutdown. The $1.1 trillion spending bill funds the U.S. government through Sept 30, 2015. It was achieved by Speaker Boehner gaining the support of Democrats in the House of Representatives. 56 Democrats joined 162 Republicans for passage of the bill 219 in support and 206 against. Tea Party members joined Liberals in Congress under Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to oppose the bill.

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The WSJ's William McGurn looks at the Trump impeachment in the Senate and compares this with a similar period when Bill Clinton, another president  was being impeached by Republicans. Bill Clinton survived the impeachment vote as is expected also for Mr. Trump. The strong economy supported Mr. Clinton in his State of the Union message that followed, as is expected for Mr. Trump in his State of the Union message. 

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President Biden tells an audience of workers that he sees the world through the eyes of Scranton and the working people he grew up with, and through the eyes of workers like those in the audience. He tells a audience of union workers that he is bringing manufacturing back, and doing this with investments of billions of dollars that never happened under previous administrations for a generation of Americans. Some highlights from his speech- Biden is investing trillions of dollars in American infrastructure, manufacturing and advanced technology and at the same time cutting the deficit by 1.4 trillion dollars The Republican plan of spending cuts being voted in by the House of Representatives will according to Moody's lead to a loss of 780,000 jobs in the US. Forty of the 500 largest corporations in the US paid zero taxes. About $200 billion dollars in profits of corporations are to be taxed at just 15%- lower than what working families pay- to fund much needed investment in America. There are 1000 billionaires in America compared to 700 before the pandemic, and they pay 8% in taxes. President Biden says under his watch no corporation or billionaire should pay less in percentage of income taxes than union workers in the audience.    ...

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The president says of the remarks by the former president about European countries that do not meet defense budget needs that Russia could then do what the hell it wants, that it was un-American and strange. Biden said- "History is watching. History is watching. History is watching. Failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten." He also pointed out that most of the $60 billion in military aid will be spent in the United States, it will create American jobs, it will renew the defense infrastructure of the US that is needed. Senator Tillis, Republican of North Carolina also said this on the floor of the Senate in the bipartisan Senate. effort. The House of Representatives led by a small faction in the Senate has changed Speakers 3 times, and the new Speaker Mike Johnson from Louisiana lacks extensive experience and is in this role for a few months. He is now faced with deciding how to move forward even with president's call to have a vote immediately on the biparitsan approval in the Senate for $91 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan that passed 70-29 with 22 Republicans voting for. ...

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The US House of Representatives voted 245-189 in favor of repealing the health care law. Only 3 Democrats joined the entire Republican caucus in voting for repeal, compared to 34 Democrats who voted in March 2010 against the health care law. This is a largely symbolic move as the Democrat controlled Senate will not consider the repeal, and even if it did the President would veto it. Republicans favor some aspects of the health care law which allow children to be on the parent's insurance till age 26, and a ban on insurers denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions. Opinion polls show 46% of respondents opposed repealing and eliminating the law, and 45% favored repealing it. The health care issue ranks third among the economic issues important to respondents, behind unemployment and reducing the federal budget deficit.

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Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan visits the White House to meet president Trump. Mr. Trump welcomes Khan and lauds the Pakistani leader as an athlete and a leader. He tells him trade deals can be struck, future was bright and flow of aid can be turned on. Trump makes a casual offer to help mediate the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, even though it is certain that nothing comes out of this, because of India's position not welcoming other countries doing any mediation. At the heart of this reconciliation is Afghanistan and president Trump's conviction that Pakistan can get the U.S. out of Afghanistan. Trump stated this- "I think Pakistan is going to help us out, to extricate ourselves. Pakistan is going to make a difference." The idea is that Pakistan can persuade the militants, the Taliban, into a face saving settlement that will allow American troops to come home. Mr. Khan in turn stated that Pakistan had given up its policy of using Afghanistan to give it "strategic depth" against India. The army would not go behind the back of the civilian government to conduct a policy of its own. Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Trump are impatient to get this done. The deadline of Mr. Pompeo is September 1 and talks continue between the Taliban and representatives from Afghanistan. The U.S. effort is handled by Zalmay Khalizad. How Afghanistan is governed in the future is not determined and Pakistan has a key role to play in making a sensible solution take place if it decides that something new has to be tried.  In the past U.S. governments from both parties lacked the ability to take a good hard look at the facts the origin and evolution of this dispute. To tackle it directly with a willingness not only to call it for what it is but also to give the other side an incentive to try new solutions. The inventive style of the Trump administration to tackle the situation directly, but also come up with new and novel solutions is what is now being tried. ...

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President Trump reset the border debate after the government shutdown on border wall funding by emphasizing immigration issues but not repeating his threat to call an emergency. This time he was more conciliatory on the border wall issue, explaining that it be " a smart, strategic, see through steel barrier, not just a simple concrete wall," and deployed in areas identified by border agents as having the greatest need. On withdrawal from Middle East, the president said "great nations do not fight endless wars." Trump now faces a rocky second half of his term because Democrats control the House of Representatives after the 2018 Congressional elections. He said "if there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be a war and investigation." He faces the Mueller investigation by Special Counsel Mueller on the meddling by foreign powers in U.S. 2016 presidential election, with the arrest of lawyer Roger Stone recently, and Democrats in no mood to compromise on the wall. ...

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Differing views of Republicans in the Senate on cuts to Medicaid and shifting of Medicaid to the states, cuts in food aid and distribution of the aid, green tax credits, business deductions are likely to lead to a revised bill being passed in the US Senate. It will then have to be passed in the US House of Representatives. DJT calls it the biggest tax cuts in history and one that aids small business.

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Senator Rubio, Republican nominee for Secretary of State, is given good points by the Wash. Post for helping negotiate a 2013 bipartisan deal on immigration that passed the Senate but could not pass in the US House of Representatives. And for his willingness to compromise.

On Ukraine and Eastern Europe after the invasion of Ukraine Rubio with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) inserted an amendment into 2023 defense authorization bill that prevents any president from withdrawing from NATO unless two thirds of the Senate agrees.

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U.S. president Trump asks for resignation of Attorney General Jeff Session after the 2018 Congressional elections. The Democratic Party gained a majority in the House of Representatives, with the Republican Party retaining control of the Senate. This makes further investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election likely. The official probe into this meddling is being conducted by Robert Mueller, Special Counsel, which is supervised by Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein because Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation.  The resignation leads to the Justice Department being headed by Matthew Whitaker, Mr. Session's top aide. Mr. Whitaker, a former prosecutor, is a conservative legal advocate who was critical of the Mueller investigation, in several tweets cited in this WSJ report, calling it  political fishing expedition," and calling for cutting the budget of the Mueller investigation to make it ineffective. Mr. Whitaker now supervises the Mueller investigation for 210 days till a successor is nominated by Mr. Trump. ...