Here's a brief history of President Obama's White House chiefs of staff: Rahm Emanuel, a former Clinton official who then worked in investment banking, was replaced in 2010 by Bill Daley, a former Clinton official who then worked in investment banking, in order to run for Mayor of Chicago, a seat that had been held for 20 years by Bill Daley's brother.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Bill Daley, the man hired 10 months ago to turn the S.S. Obama around following the disastrous 2010 elections, is "shifting core responsibilities." Translation: He's being sidelined into a comfy "ambassadorial" position where he can't muck things up further for the beleaguered administration.
It's been almost a week since House Republicans, Senate Democrats and the White House last sat down to hammer out a budget agreement, and the schedule's still blank. Accusations of bad faith are now flying from both sides. Republicans are poised to reject a White House offer, TPM has learned, that would cut over $30 billion in current spending because of disagreements over whether the package should include cuts to mandatory spending programs. Democrats are pushing for such cuts, which include the big entitlement programs, though the specific cuts they're proposing remain unclear. In an ironic twist, Republicans oppose those cuts and want to limit the negotiations to non-defense discretionary spending, a smaller subset of the federal budget.
