Recently in Congress Category

Guest blogged by GrassrootsLobbyist: I appreciate Mike Huckabee.  Gov. Huckabee is the kind of politician America needs more of.    Now, don't get me wrong.  I disagree with about 99% of Huckabee's positions and think he knows about as much about effective fiscal policy as Sean Hannity knows about honesty and integrity.  However, he has proven to mostly be a man who offers an opinion but will respect the opinion of others and give voice...

I heard something on NPR this morning that irked me, to say the least.Since PBO took office over a year ago, there are still some 200 or so positions that are to be filled by his appointments. He has named people to these positions--don't misunderstand--but apparently there seems to be a little problem in getting the various Director-level folks into these positions. The little problem is ... partisan politics on the part of the Republicans.Positions...

Putting together different pieces of testimony from yesterday's hearings before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, it's easy to see how the New York Federal Reserve's "backdoor bailout" of Goldman Sachs and other large banks, via insurance giant AIG, became such a convoluted mess---nobody knew anything about it. Least of all the people who were allegedly in charge---Larry, Moe, and Curly former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, and then head...

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...