Recently in Congress Category

From a press release yesterday by Marcy Winograd, candidate for Congress in the 36th district of California:"If the President wants to appease the neo-conservatives, the deficit hawks, I would encourage him to cut our bloated military budget, which is now paying for multiple perpetual wars that create new enemies."...

Some people never learn:"De facto Republican Centrist Democratic senators have circumvented party leadership to approach Maine GOP Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins about reviving healthcare talks.Democrats such as Sens. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Bill Nelson (Fla.) and Max Baucus (Mont.) have approached Snowe within the past week to discuss her potential support for various healthcare proposals....Snowe said Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance panel, approached her in the past week to get her general...

Reuters has released some additional information contained in an e-mail correspondence between the New York Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission (the alleged watchdog) that show the lengths to which they were willing to go to keep secret  this $70 billion "backdoor bailout" of Goldman Sachs, and other big banks, under the guise of saving AIG. Even so far as to have the release of the documents considered a matter of "national security."...

One would think there would be some limit to the Republican strategy of "no."  If Obama decided to endorse a bipartisan proposed plan that does the one thing every single American could agree we should do, it would be reducing the deficit, right? Wrong. Republicans are opposing a plan to put together a commission of 18 Democrats and Republicans to evaluate different ways to reduce the deficit.  The panel would have until December 1 - after the midterm elections - to produce a...

Pundits all over the political spectrum continue to turn the election of Scott Brown to Ted Kennedy's senate seat into this weird notion that Democrats should somehow start working with Republicans in a bipartisan manner. This rationale is irritating at best, because it implies that a) the Democrats weren't trying to be bipartisan in the first place and b) the Republicans would acquiesce to bipartisan efforts if the Democrats tried harder. Both are untrue....

On Wednesday (January 13) Government Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was questioned by FCIC chairman Phil Angelides about some, shall we say, less than ethical practices at Goldman. In essence what Goldman is accused of doing is selling securities as safe investments while at the same time betting their value would go down, Here is a portion of the transcript, from McClatchy:"PHIL ANGELIDES (the commission chairman): I want to ask you about a very specific...

There's a lot of good stuff coming out of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) hearings. In fact, it's starting to take on sort of a Watergate-y feel about it, or as George Costanza put it, it's like an onion, the more layers you peel back, the more it stinks. There is too much to cover in one post, so please indulge me. I hope you find it as interesting as I do. On Thursday...

Over the holidays right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh suffered sharp chest pains and was admitted to Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu.  Rush despite his record for clean living (sarcasm intended) did not suffer any real medical emergency and was released a couple of days later.  Upon his release from the hospital, Rush never one to waste an opportunity to look ignorant stated to the press:  "Based on what happened to me here, I don't think...

Ping pong, anyone? With much of the national attention focused on the underpants bomber, the White House, the Senate, and the House are preparing for a game of three-way table tennis, as they work on the final version of the health care reform bill. Well it's not really 3-way, it's the White House and the Senate on one side, and the House on the other. I wonder how that's going to turn out? All this...

Do you ever look at how members of Congress vote on any particular issue, health care reform for example, and wonder, what are they thinking? How can they be so out of touch and out of step with the majority of Americans? This might clear it up for you:"The Center for Responsive Politics released a study which found that, while only one percent of all Americans are millionaires, 44 percent of congressional members [237 out...