The New York Times did follow up interviews with the small group of people in a recent survey who said they really did approve of Congress. The generally fell into two broad camps, which might be termed the “natural optimists” and the “Obama haters.”

“Take the second group first. Several respondents said they believed that Congress — which is divided between a Republican-controlled House and a Senate where Democrats are in the majority but generally unable to pass legislation because they lack 60 votes to overcome an almost automatic filibuster by the minority party — was trying its hardest in difficult circumstances, but was repeatedly frustrated by a hubristic White House with a my-way-or-the-highway attitude.”

“The other camp of respondents just tended to be looking on the brighter side of things: focusing on the future, crediting Congress with trying and offering some qualified thanks for the effort.”

Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) answered a town-hall question about his position on transvaginal ultrasounds by joking that he hadn’t had one.

[Read more…]

Speaker John Boehner, “the man who spent significant portions of the last Congress shuttling to and from the White House for fiscal talks with President Obama that ultimately failed twice to produce a grand bargain, has come around to the idea that the best negotiations are no negotiations,” the New York Times reports.

“While the frustrations of Congressional Democrats and Mr. Obama with Mr. Boehner are reaching a fever pitch, House Republicans could not be more pleased with their leader.”

After roughly a year and a half after its expiration, the Violence Against Women Act passed the House by 286-138 vote and will soon be reauthorized once it garners the president’s signature, NBC News reports.

The House vote was significant, because, for the third time this year, on a significant piece of legislation, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) showed a willingness to bring a bill to the floor without abiding by unwritten, so-called Hastert Rule.

“Being from New York we’re not supposed to be suckers. It’s bad enough that these guys voted against it, that’s inexcusable enough. But to have the balls to come in and say, ‘We screwed you now make us president?'”

— Rep. Peter King (R-NY), quoted by Politicker, urging donors to cut off Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and others who “threw a knife in the back in New York” by voting “no” on the Hurricane Sandy relief bill.

Ryan Lizza has a must-read profile of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA):

“In the next few years, a new field of Republican Presidential candidates will emerge to sort out some of these issues. Until then, House Republicans, who have moved sharply to the right since January, 2011, are the face of their party. They will also determine the destiny of President Obama’s second term, which features an ambitious agenda including taxes, immigration, and gun control. The Speaker of the House, John Boehner, has often shown a willingness to compromise, but for more than two years he has been stymied by a small and unruly group of right-wingers, led by his deputy, Eric Cantor.”

“Cantor is the House Majority Leader, which means that he is responsible for the mundane business of managing the schedule, the House floor, and committees, where legislation is generally written. He has used his position to transform himself into the Party’s chief political strategist. Cantor is frequently talked about as a future Speaker; he could even be a future President, some of his aides say. Since the election, as Republicans have confronted Obama in a series of budgetary battles–another will unfold this week–few have tried as hard as Cantor to reposition and redefine the defeated party.”

“Like most men, I’m more opposed to violence against women than even violence against men. Because most men can handle it a little better than a lot of women can.”

— Rep. Jimmy Duncan (R-TN), quoted by the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

“Frankly, every time I’ve gotten into one of these high-profile negotiations, you know, it’s my rear end that got burnt.”

— House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), quoted by the Associated Press.

Charlie Cook: “Democrats face twin struggles as they seek to retake the House majority they lost in 2010. First, the chamber has largely sorted itself out. With 96 percent of Democratic House members representing districts carried by President Obama and 94 percent of Republican House lawmakers representing districts won by Mitt Romney, each party pretty much has the seats God intended. The House simply doesn’t have much elasticity right now. Substantial gains would either require Democrats winning a bunch of Romney districts or Republicans capturing a lot of Obama districts. Given this sorting out and the almost parliamentary-style voting we’re seeing these days, either party would require one heck of a head of steam to pick up a lot of seats from the other side.”

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) tells NBC News that “the 24-year-old woman he tweeted at during the State of the Union address was not a romantic interest, but in fact his daughter.”

“The congressman would not elaborate on how he only found out three years ago that he had a daughter. He said circumstances led him to search on Google for the mother of his child.”

The Washington Post reports on the lawmaker who will spend up to seven hours staking out seats near to the aisle to be seen shaking President Obama’s hand as he enters the House chamber.

“They’ve been around for at least 46 years. For the people on the aisle, the State of the Union is a rare night when a low-ranking legislator can score both a TV appearance and a personal audience with the president. Just try to ignore the elbows thrown by your colleagues. And be brief.”

“The squatters on the House aisle are now a familiar part of the State
of the Union ritual — a signal that the night has evolved from from a
speech into a show, and then from the president’s show to more of an
ensemble piece.”

After insisting he wasn’t a “deadbeat dad” throughout his failed campaign for re-election, former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) filed court papers seeking to end his obligation to pay $2,134 per month in child support, the Chicago Sun Times reports.

“But once again, Walsh insists he’s no deadbeat. Both he and his attorney say that since he is no longer employed as a congressman, they want to ‘modify’ the previous agreement so that he pays 20 percent of his current salary.”

Roll Call released it’s annual list Capitol Hill’s leading staffers — “the people behind the scenes who wield the power and drive their party’s message.”

Rep. Raul Labrador’s (R-ID) fired his spokesman after he mistakenly tweeted in the name of his boss about his admiration for two actresses pole dancing in a Super Bowl ad, the Idaho Statesman reports.

The tweet, “Me likey Broke Girls,” was deleted after 14 seconds but is archived on a website that collects deleted tweets from politicians.

[Read more…]

Following reports that he plans an aggressive campaign schedule in the midterm elections, President Obama predicted that if Democrats pursue an ambitious agenda, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will soon have the speaker’s gavel back, the Washington Post reports.

Said Obama: “It won’t be smooth, it won’t be simple, there will be frustrations, there will be times when you guys will be mad at me, and I’ll occasionally read about it. I would expect that Nancy Pelosi is going to be speaker again pretty soon.”

Former House members “are spending their leftover money to pay for everything from luxury cars to foundations that bear their names,” USA Today reports. “The practice is legal but raises questions among government watchdogs about whether these accounts are used as political slush funds.”

“Federal rules bar former lawmakers from using leftover campaign money for their personal use, but a review of new reports show their contributors’ dollars pay for a wide range of expenses. Of the 82 House members who were defeated or resigned from the last Congress, more than one in four had more than $100,000 remaining in their campaign accounts at the end of 2012.”

Politico: “Twenty-one years ago, Nadeam Elshami got his first job on Capitol Hill, working in the Senate mailroom Today,
he’s the chief of staff to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of
California after serving as her communications director for the past
several years.”

A new Smart Politics report finds that nearly 40% of U.S. Representatives serve in districts outside of their birth state.
 
Key findings: 62.4% of lawmakers currently serving in the House represent districts in their birth state — 270 of 433 non-vacant seats — with 37.6% born elsewhere.
 
Despite the increased opportunities of mobility of the population over the decades, it is actually the younger lawmakers serving in the 113th Congress who are most likely to represent a district in the state of their birth at 69.8% for those born in the 1970s and 1980s. That number falls to 64.6% for those born in the 1960s, 61.4% for the 1950s, 59.6% for the 1940s, and 54.2% for the 1920s and 1930s.