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While thousands of low-income Americans are suffering under sequestration, our Congress somehow managed to rush through a fix for the FAA cuts that were delaying their their flights. Imagine that! As Chris Hayes discussed in the opening of his show this Friday, it's so nice to see that those members of Congress have got their priorities in order.

HAYES: But we begin tonight with the big flashing headline breaking news of the day, from the least popular branch of government, the branch of government widely seen as the most dysfunctional branch of government, the one that contains the right-wing Republican House caucus committed to obstruction above all else. In that branch of government today, today we saw a remarkable display of urgency and pragmatic bipartisan problem solving come together in a matter of hours to fix the most pressing trouble facing America today.

And that very pressing problem is extended travel delays for frequent flyers and members of Congress. Yes, it was a long and tortured path to triumph on this issue. but today in a 361 to 41 vote, a resounding margin, House of Representatives overwhelmingly agreed to tackle the scourge of flight delays being caused by the furlough of federal aviation workers.

Sadly the first piece of legislation that members of Congress saw fit to pass will make those lines at the airports shorter, and as Hayes reminded his audience, here's who will not be getting relief from the bill passed this Friday.

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Stephen Colbert is still on vacation this week over at Comedy Central, but he did make an appearance on Jake Tapper's new show on CNN, The Lead. Colbert stepped out of character for the better part of the interview and discussed his support for his sister who is running for the U.S. House seat that was vacated by Tim Scott after he was appointed to the Senate to replace the Heritage Foundation's latest wingnut welfare recipient, Jim DeMint.

Colbert Busch's leading contender on the Republican primary side is none other than Mr. Appalachian Trails himself, Mark Sanford. If she's fortunate enough to find herself elected to the House, Colbert told Tapper she would be fair game when he's doing his show:

But now Colbert is breaking character to dip his toe into real politics – supporting his sister Elizabeth Colbert Busch, who works in business development at Clemson University and is running for Congress as a Democrat in their home state of South Carolina.

This is the first election Colbert has become involved in.

"I've actually worked very hard not to get involved in an election because I think people expect me - and I don't want to speak for Jon [Stewart], but people expected of Jon to exercise political power because we talk about politics a lot, and we did the rally and stuff like that," says Colbert.

But this time is different, says the Comedy Central star.

"She's my sister and I'm willing to break the jewel of my own creation to try to do something for her. Like I'm not worried about what it would do to me or my show to try to help her as myself, not as my character but as myself, and if people don't think that's the right thing for me to do, I don't care, it's my sister and I'm willing to help her," says Colbert.

Besides, Colbert says, "I've met these people and my sister is in the top decile."

And he would know. Colbert's faux conservative pundit shtick is basically the longest-running spoof of Washington, D.C., on television.

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It was nice to see some push back from the constant drone we're treated to by the talking heads in the media, who apparently will not be happy until Democrats agree to inflict some more pain on their constituents and raise Medicare retirement age along with benefit cuts. As Krugman rightfully noted, all the happy talk about politicians sitting down and having dinner together isn't going to resolve the fundamental policy differences between the two parties -- or the fact that one of them wants to completely take down our social safety nets and privatize them.

He called out George Will as well who was demanding that Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz explain whether Democrats would agree to raise the Medicare age:

KRUGMAN: Is it a condition of any Republican support that you have to go for really terrible policies? Because raising the Medicare age is a terrible policy. It raises medical costs, it does very little to improve the budget. It introduces a lot of hardship. Means testing in Medicare is a better policy. I don't particularly like it, but it's a better policy.

That's the whole idea. They know it's terrible policy and they want Democrats to do their bidding for them so they can immediately turn around and run ads against them in the mid-term elections. They were cynical enough to do it before and they'll do it again. So it's not just bad policy, it's bad and stupid politics as well.

The conventional wisdom talk from the Bloomberg White House corespondent here wasn't much better. There's nothing "optimistic" about these politicians potentially sticking it to the poor and the elderly when we've got record income disparity in the United States right now.

Full transcript below the fold.

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From this Wednesday's The Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell took apart "tea party" Rep. John Fleming for his remarks about irresponsible Republicans in the House never voting to increase taxes in the last 100 years -- and reminded everyone why they would be better off not quoting President Lincoln on taxes if they're not in the mood to make fools of themselves.

It seems Fleming repeated during a press conference, the same thing he wrote in an op-ed this week: FLEMING: GOP-controlled House has never raised taxes:

If some Republicans have their way, the party soon will make history for all the wrong reasons.

In the past 100 years, since the authority of Congress to tax income was enumerated in the 16th Amendment, marginal income tax rates have never been raised when Republicans have held the majority in the House of Representatives. For nearly a century, Republican-controlled Houses held the line on tax rates, a Republican coup de pointe to Democratic tax-increase parries. Here’s the question for my fellow Republicans: Do we want to be the first-ever GOP House majority to raise federal marginal income tax rates? [...]

If Republicans really believe in the principles of smaller government and economic liberty — as we have over the past 100 years, and as many of us still do — we should be far more concerned about getting principle right instead of worrying about polls and re-election.

Abraham Lincoln reminded us to “adhere to your purpose, and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life.”

Here's more on O'Donnell's response from his site: O’Donnell on why Republicans shouldn’t quote Lincoln on taxes:

He failed to mention what the Republican-controlled House of Representatives during Lincoln’s presidency did with taxes. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell set the record straight on Wednesday’s show:

“That Republican-controlled House actually passed our first income tax which Lincoln signed into law to pay for the Civil War. It was a progressive income tax–3% on annual incomes over $600 and 5% on annual incomes over $10,000. The Supreme Court ruled those taxes constitutional, but decades later in 1895 the Supreme Court reversed the earlier decision and declared federal income taxes unconstitutional–which is why in 1913 it took a Constitutional amendment to re-establish federal income taxation.

O’Donnell also pointed out that Republicans constantly bring up Lincoln any chance they can get “because 21st century Republicans know that Abraham Lincoln is the only Republican that many Americans admire.”

“Abraham Lincoln is also the only Republican president, indeed the only president, who has ever gotten a Republican House of Representatives to raise income taxes. Republicans didn’t just establish the very first income tax as I just described. Two years later, they raised the rates. They doubled the top tax rate from 5% to 10%. That’s back when Republicans were responsible: 150 years ago.”

O'Donnell also reminded his audience that their stance on taxation may be one of the reasons that Americans have not given them control of the House of Representatives for all that many years over the last century.

Sadly, they wouldn't have it now were it not for cheating and gerrymandering.

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MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Friday recommended that Republicans "walk out" of talks completely because President Barack Obama's first budget offer was "loaded with Democratic priorities," citing an imperfect memory of the way President Bill Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) harmoniously "worked together" to reach a deal in 1995.

On Thursday, Republicans aides circulated what they said was the first White House budget offer. It reportedly included $1.6 trillion in taxes, $400 billion in entitlement spending cuts and $200 billion in new stimulus of payroll tax cuts and an efforts to encourage homeowners to refinance. The White House also wants a debt limit increase as part of the deal to avoid the crisis that ended with U.S. credit being downgraded in 2011.

On MSNBC Friday morning, Scarborough said that he would have laughed out loud if he had been in the room when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was making the offer.

"I would have said, 'We're all busy people, this is a critical time, if you're going to come over here and insult us and intentionally try to provoke us, you can do that but I'm going back to work now,'" Scarborough explained. "And I'd walk out."

"Was it necessary for the president to be so proactive with something even The New York Times said was -- quote -- 'loaded with Democratic priorities' and really gave Republicans nothing?" the conservative MSNBC host wondered. "I think they were awfully reckless yesterday with this first offer."

"Look at the other side that they're dealing with," co-host Mika Brzezinski pointed out. "Look at who they're dealing with, many of the same people as the last four years. So, what would you do if you knew who you were up against? Would you come out there with something that was incredibly giving from the get-go?"

"My response to [House Speaker] John Boehner would be very simple, just stop talking to them," Scarborough opined. "Don't talk to them until they make a serious offer... I've got to say that I'm really stunned by what happened yesterday."

"I can tell you, it's not a hard ask, it's a partnership," he added. "And actually as much as Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich loathed each other at times, they worked together to deal with Republicans like myself on balancing the budget on the first time in a generation, balancing it four years for for the first time since the 1920s, paying down the national debt. And you know what? Newt Gingrich always had to fight us on his right flank and he and Bill Clinton sat in the White House and strategized."

In fact, the budget negotiations between Clinton and Gingrich were no where near as smooth and cordial as Scarborough remembers. After Clinton passed his 1993 budget (and tax increases) with no Republicans votes, Gingrich led a 1993 effort to impeach the 42nd president of the United States in the House of Representatives. Clinton later was forced to shut down government for a total of 28 days in 1995 and 1996 over drastic cuts to spending on Medicare, education, public health and the environment. In the end, the parties did work together to create four consecutive balanced budgets for the first time since the 1920s. Forcing the government shutdown, however, marked the beginning of the end of Gingrich's career as Speaker.

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein noted on Thursday that the first White House budget proposal was a signal that President Barack Obama would no longer begin negotiations by conceding to Republican demands as he had done so many times during his first term.

"Previously, Obama’s pattern had been to offer plans that roughly tracked where he thought the compromise should end up," Klein wrote. "Perhaps the key lesson the White House took from the last couple of years is this: Don’t negotiate with yourself. If Republicans want to cut Medicare, let them propose the cuts. If they want to raise revenue through tax reform, let them identify the deductions. If they want deeper cuts in discretionary spending, let them settle on a number. And, above all, if they don’t like the White House’s preferred policies, let them propose their own."

"The GOP is right: This isn’t a serious proposal. But it’s not evidence that Obama isn’t serious. He’s very serious about not negotiating with himself, and his opening bid proves it."

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Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist says that President Barack Obama did not win re-election because of his promise to raise taxes on the wealthy, but it was because attack ads made voters thing that Mitt Romney was a "poopy-head."

During a Monday interview on CBS, Norquist suggested that Republicans had a mandate not to raise taxes, even it meant going off the so-called "fiscal cliff."

"The House of Representatives was elected, committed to keeping taxes low," the Americans for Tax Reform president explained. "The president was elected on the basis that he was not Romney and that Romney was a poopy-head and you should vote against Romney. And he won by two points. But he didn't make the case that we should have higher taxes and higher spending, he kind of sounded like the opposite."

"Well, I'm not sure that's what the president called Mitt Romney," CBS host Norah O'Donnell pointed out. "The debate that was had -- and I listened very closely to it -- he said very clearly throughout the debate that the wealthiest Americans should pay more. And he won eight of the nine battleground states. And Republicans failed to reclaim the White House or the Senate. What about the exit polls that show a broad support on raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans? Are you wrong?"

"Again, you saw those ads that suggested Romney gave people cancer in Ohio for months and months unanswered," Norquist insisted. "You can trash an individual and get them to vote against him. Again where we have an election, there are 30 Republican governors, okay? And they're running campaigns against raising taxes and in favor of, frankly, phasing out the income tax in North Carolina and Kansas and Oklahoma."

O'Donnell pointed out that even House Speaker John Boehner had said that Republicans were willing to accept new revenue as part of a compromise.

"In 2011, Obama said the world would end and we should pass around smelling salts because he wanted to raise the debt ceiling," Norquist opined. "We got a debt ceiling agreement. It was a great compromise. We cut spending. We didn't raise taxes. We didn't cut spending as much as the Republicans wanted. The [Paul] Ryan plan would have reduced Obama's overspending by $6 trillion, we only got two and a half trillion in restraint."

"That's a compromise, it's not as much as the Republicans wanted. The Republicans have already compromised."

In exit polls released on Tuesday, six in ten voters said they supported raising taxes. Almost half wanted to see tax hikes specifically on those making more than $250,000 a year.

“On this particular issue, it wasn’t close,” Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod told CBS News on Sunday.

“You need new revenues, and every objective person who has looked at this agrees on that, so the question is where is that revenue going to come from?” he pointed out. “The president believes it is more equitable to get that from the wealthiest Americans who have done very well and frankly don’t need those tax cuts and who benefited disproportionately from the tax cuts in the last decade. Most Americans agree with that.”

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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says that it's now obvious that GOP hopeful Mitt Romney will lose in November because "everybody knows" he will never be president.

During an interview that aired on Sunday, CNN host Candy Crowley asked the former House Speaker if there would continue to be partisan gridlock in Washington if President Barack Obama was re-elected and Republicans retained control in the House of Representatives.

"You'll see more of the same because it's really important for the public to know that the Republican obstruction of President Obama's jobs bill and whatever he was advancing -- their obstruction is their agenda," Pelosi explained. "It's what they believe in."

"I always say to my Republicans, whom I know, take back your party. Because this wing of the party or this over-the-edge crowd that is taking charge of wagging the dog in Congress is never going to cooperate because they do not believe in a public role: clean air, clean water, public safety, public education, public transportation, public health, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. They don't believe in that, and that's what their budget is about."

"Bipartisan cooperation is on the ballot too," she continued. "When President George W. Bush was president and we were in the majority and I was the Speaker, we had our differences, we fought, but also found common ground. There are so many places where we came together."

Crowley wondered if Democrats could also find common ground with Romney like they had with Bush.

"Oh, Mitt Romney's not going to be president of the United States ," Pelosi said, rolling her eyes. "I think everybody knows that, right?"

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It seems Republicans are determined to continue to be completely tone deaf if they think trotting Allen West out there as someone they want representing their party on a national level is a good idea. This is the same man that bragged about torturing a policeman in Iraq, that has called the progressives in the Congress Communists, and who regularly shoots his mouth off being as mean and nasty towards those on the other side of the aisle as possible, where the list is too long to go into here.

The reason I say they're continuing to promote him on a national level is because Mitt Romney decided this is just the guy who should serve as the chair of his Black Leadership Council. Now they've got him out there, giving their weekly address, complaining about the defense cuts that their vice presidential nominee voted for. I can only assume they're hoping that no one ever watches this, or that their base who might be interested in it, is just too uninformed to realize that all West is serving up for them here is a big huge pile of steaming hypocrisy and misinformation about who has been obstructing and making sure nothing gets done or passed in the Congress if President Obama might gain from it, the consequences of their actions and how damaging they have been to the American public and our economy be damned.

West seems to be doing his best to give cover for their vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, who voted for those defense cuts and as David Plouffe pointed out last weekend, is now running from that vote as fast as he is his fictional marathon time.

And this is a member of Congress that just decided to go on vacation again while, as Think Progress noted, leaving key bills awaiting action. They've got more on other bills but here's the portion on the defense cuts:

5. Sequestration. A spokesman for Boehner said earlier this week that stopping budget cuts he voted for last August “topped our July agenda and remains atop our agenda for September.” While House Republicans have complained about the imminent spending reductions and passed a bill that would require President Obama to find offsets for spending cuts they don’t like, Republican Leader Canter could not name a single compromise he was willing to make to get a deal.

Go read the rest of the list if you want your stomach to churn. But never mind all that. It's all President Obama's fault that these cuts might be coming if you believe Allen West and not the fault of a House of Representatives that is completely unwilling to compromise, ever -- Weekly Republican Address: Rep. Allen West (R-FL) on President Obama’s Defense ‘Sequester’:

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As always, everything is upside down in Fox-land. From America's News Headquarters Saturday morning, while awaiting Paul Ryan's campaign appearance in Florida, host Doug McKelway and GOP consultant Ron Bonjean were discussing Paul Ryan's plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program. Apparently Ryan is brilliant because he doesn't want to go after current beneficiaries.

I guess these guys don't think any of those seniors have an iota of concern for their children or grandchildren. They all know full well going after the social safety nets is the third rail of American politics, but they did their best here to carry water for Mittens and Ryan and pretend that this is just going swimmingly well for them so far.

McKelway brought his fellow Fox host, Carl Cameron back on the air with them and Cameron claimed that the George W. Bush tour to privatize Social Security worked out well for him and got them even with Democrats in the polls on the issue.

I'm not sure what alternative universe Cameron is living in, but that's not the way I remember that going down. The more Bush talked, the more unpopular his plan became until Republicans were forced to scrap the idea all together. And in 2006, it was one of the reasons that Democrats won control of the House of Representatives.

I mentioned Ryan wanting to privatize Medicare and Social Security to my Republican father last week and the first words out of his mouth were, "That didn't work out so well for Bush." I guess these guys don't think any of their viewers can remember back to seven years or eight years ago. Not surprising I guess, but usually they're trying to pretend Bush didn't exist. Now they're doing their best to revise history instead.

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South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday said President Barack Obama's plan to let tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire was "stupid."

During an interview on CNN, host Candy Crowley asked Graham if he would be willing to raise taxes on the middle class if Democrats refused to extend tax cuts for people making over $250,000.

"I'm not going to do a short-term thing that's stupid," the South Carolina Republican remarked. "It would be stupid in an economy this weak to raise tax rates on a million small businesses at a time they can't hire people now."

"If you're looking for a job, this election is not about Romney's tax returns, it's about your tax returns," he continued. "Both candidates should pledge, 'If I get to be president of the United States, we're going to do Bowles-Simpson [debt-cutting plan].'"

"And neither one of them has," Crowley noted.

"I think Romney has said he would embrace Bowles-Simpson," Graham insisted. "The fact that he rejects raising taxes at a time our economy is so weak is a good sign of leadership."

Earlier this year, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives rejected a plan similar to the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson proposal.