Today the Senate voted on a repeal of two authorizations for war, the first from 1991 and the second from 2002. The first authorized the president to conduct the Persian Gulf War (or "Gulf War I") and the second authorized the invasion and overthrow of Iraq (or "Gulf War II"). These two wars will be unofficially over if the bill passes both chambers of Congress and is signed by President Biden. That's a historic thing to achieve, obviously.

Of course, these two wars were never official -- because the United States hasn't formally declared war on any country since World War II. Instead, in both 1991 and 2002, Congress passed an "Authorization for the Use of Military Force" (A.U.M.F.) which gave congressional consent to an American president waging a long war in a foreign country. There is a dicey question that has been argued over since Vietnam about who is really in charge of sending America troops to war -- the president or Congress -- so this left no doubt that both would be on the same page, but without going so far as to formally pass a declaration of war. What the legislation which moved forward today would do would be to officially revoke both of these A.U.M.F.s .

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When pundits handicap the possible Republican presidential field these days, several names almost always lead their lists of those who have not yet declared their candidacy (but probably soon will): Ron DeSantis (of course), Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, and Tim Scott. These are all the current favorites, and all have been at least making some moves towards actually declaring and running. Then there's a second tier of possibilities that usually gets mentioned as well: Chris Sununu, Glenn Youngkin, and maybe Kristi Noem or Greg Abbott to round things out. But for some reason, Chris Christie is almost always treated as an afterthought -- someone barely worth a mention in a tertiary list that might be called: "Oh, these people also might run, too." I've always thought this was a mistake because it seems to me that Christie is all but champing at the bit to take on Donald Trump.

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Politics can be a dreary subject at times, but every once in a while a story pops up which is nothing but cheerful news. This week's feel-good story comes from President Joe Biden -- only the second Irish Catholic to ever become president of the United States. Biden just made this auspicious news by accepting an invitation to visit Northern Ireland, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Accords. This was timely indeed, since it happened during the week which ends on Saint Patrick's Day. Biden, in accepting the invitation, made a point of saying he'll be visiting both Belfast (in Northern Ireland) as well as the Republic of Ireland.

The invite was personally extended by the United Kingdom's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, but Biden had a standing open invitation to visit the Republic as well. This week, Biden will also meet with Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar for the traditional Paddy's Day "giving of the shamrocks," to show America's solidarity with the Irish Republic. Varadkar will no doubt offer his own personal invitation to Biden at the time.

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In the past few days, two large American banks have failed. Everyone in the financial world is now holding their collective breath, hoping that this will be the full extent of the damage and that we won't see more banks shutter their doors as well. The bank failures (even if they stop at two) will have other widespread economic consequences as well. This all might just convince the Federal Reserve not to hike interest rates another half a percent when they meet next week (which was anticipated by many) and instead leave them where they are for now. Rising interest rates played a role in the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, the first to fail. There will likely be political fallout as well, as Congress holds hearings and investigates and possibly even passes some changes to the banking laws. This would be appropriate, since the real reason these banks failed is that they were allowed to run too much risk.

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We have to warn everyone up front here that this week's Friday Talking Points column is not going to follow the normal format. Most of it is actually going to review the speech that President Joe Biden gave yesterday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Biden went to Philly to introduce his annual budget proposal, which was publicly released just before he spoke.

Rather than do what many Democratic presidents do when faced with an unruly house of Congress run by the opposition -- which is to go into a defensive crouch and try to compromise on just how much the federal budget needs to be slashed -- Biden instead took the fight to the Republicans by showing America that if we would just tax the ultra-wealthy enough to pay their fair share, this country could accomplish all kinds of good things and reduce the deficit at the same time. That is surprisingly refreshing to see from a Democratic White House, we have to say!

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President Joe Biden released his third budget proposal today. It is an opening bid which both lays out Biden's negotiating position in the upcoming showdown with congressional Republicans. But it also unveils a policy blueprint for Biden's yet-to-be-announced re-election campaign. Biden used his budget to showcase his unfinished agenda -- much of which was included in his earlier "Build Back Better" proposal -- and indicate where his political priorities lie. It is a promise to the American people what Biden will be fighting for, whether for the next two years or the next six.

When it comes to the question of what government should do for the people, the two major political parties have a major difference of opinion that is seldom going to be laid out in such drastic contrast as it will this year. Biden's plan would increase taxes on corporations and those making over $400,000 a year and use the resulting revenue to both fund new initiatives as well as reduce the deficit by almost three trillion dollars over the next decade. This is a direct challenge to Republicans, who have made deficit-cutting the centerpiece of their own agenda for this year's budget. Biden is daring them: "You want to cut the deficit? Well, my opening bid is $2.9 trillion... what do you say to that?"

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President Joe Biden is reportedly going to unveil his budget proposal tomorrow. Like any White House budget proposal, it will contain both some good ideas and some bad ideas, and it will be argued about by both sides of the political divide. Progressives will argue it doesn't contain enough of their agenda items, moderate Democrats will argue it contains too many progressive ideas, and the Republicans will try to demonize it as the worst idea anyone has had since the dawn of time. Also, like all presidential budgets, it will not pass Congress intact -- not by a long shot. The House and the Senate will want to pass their own budgets, and at most they'll co-opt a few ideas from Biden's budget while charting their own course on much of it. But politically, Democrats will have a window of time where they will be able to make a potent point: something is better than nothing.

House Republicans are full of newfound deficit hawkery, and they've already threatened to use the debt ceiling as leverage to get what they want. Their main problem, however, is that they have no real idea what it is that they want. They want, in a generalized sense, to slash government spending. This has been a conservative talking point for approximately forever. But while it is fun for them to blithely speak of balancing the federal budget in 10 years, actually accomplishing that means making some awfully tough decisions. And then publicly defending those decisions.

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Some people were expecting some explosive news this week from Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News. He had, after all, been handed what could have been something extremely volatile -- access to all 40,000-plus hours of video footage from the January 6th insurrection attempt at the United States Capitol. Carlson himself predicted his revelations from this extraordinary access would land with a bang. But what he just unveiled wasn't just "not a bang," it barely even qualifies as a whimper. It fizzled. It was a dud. A gigantic nothingburger.

What Carlson unveiled on his show was a very weak attempt to make exactly the same nonsensical case that Representative Andrew Clyde proposed, mere months after a violent mob attacked the seat of American government:

Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion, staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures. You know, if you didn't know the TV footage was a video from January 6, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.

Got that? They weren't violent insurrectionists bent on overturning a presidential election and preventing the peaceful transfer of power -- they were just ordinary tourists, wandering around the Capitol taking selfies, as tourists are wont to do.

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Donald Trump is running for president again. Forgive me if this was an unnecessary thing to point out, but at times it seems like the public almost needs a reminder of this fact, due to Trump's almost non-existent campaign so far. Personally, I am left wondering when Trump is going to get back to his signature giant rallies and start actively running once again in a big way. If President Joe Biden announces his re-election bid, it will almost certainly clear the Democratic field of serious contenders, so the primary fight on the Republican side is going to be the only game in town for the next year or more. But so far, it has been a real snoozefest.

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Apparently, there was a big murder trial down South that culminated this week, but we have to admit that since it wasn't an overtly political case, we just didn't pay much attention to it. Instead, as always, we had our nose to the grindstone of sifting through the week's political news so that you don't have to. In other words: Welcome to another installment of Friday Talking Points!

We're going to start this week with some good news. Not great news, mind you, but pretty good nonetheless. A spate of actual bipartisanship broke out in the Senate this week and with amazing speed (for Congress in general and for the Senate in particular) they came up with proposed legislation that might actually have a chance of passing. Well, passing the Senate at least, since nobody has any clue of what the GOP House will do these days.

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