Washington Insider
March 8, 2012
Super Tuesday Interlude: First Obama Press Conference of '12
President Obama hosted his first press conference of the year on Tuesday, neatly timed to coincide with the Republican Party’s histrionic Super Tuesday. Obama fielded questions on everything from the GOP race to the Rush Limbaugh controversy (though interestingly, nothing on the economy). But his topline answers came on foreign policy.
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March 1, 2012
Kicking theTransportation Bill Farther Down the Road
Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) insisted this week that a stalled transportation bill that has been languishing in the House is not yet dead, and that a scaled-down version that had been talked about is even less likely to garner support. But time may be running out, either way.
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February 23, 2012
House and Senate Bills on Transportation Land in a Ditch
The transportation bills’ path to law appeared circuitous at best this week, while Congress left on a week-long break without taking final action on the matter, leaving lingering questions in both chambers. Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) delayed a final vote while acknowledging that rounding up votes from his caucus had been made more difficult because the legislation did not include sweeteners that...
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February 16, 2012
The 51%: Half U.S. Households Pay No Federal Income Tax
While much of the tax debate has focused on wealthy Americans, a new discussion focuses on this startling statistic: 51 percent of U.S. households, roughly 35.5 million people, pay no federal income taxes. The number can be laid at the feet of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), according to National Journal's Nancy Cook.
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February 9, 2012
Obama Unveils Budget, but It's Not Expected to Go Far
In the most cooperative political climate, a president’s budget filing is greeted as suitable fodder for Capitol Hill fireplaces. The document President Obama filed on Monday, working off a $3 trillion-plus deficit-reduction blueprint released last year, may not meet even that standard. Obama presses ahead on his election-year themes: clean-energy spending, reinforcement of his crackdown on Wall...
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February 7, 2012
Insider Trading Bills Gain Traction in Senate This Week
Legislation intended to block members of Congress and their staffs from insider trading and calling for internal ethics panels to enforce the ban moved forward in the Senate on Monday. Spurred by a November "60 Minutes" report on potential insider trading by members, the STOCK Act is geared toward cutting off lawmakers from drawing on non-public information for profit. But the Senate effort is encountering...
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January 30, 2012
Legislators Push Alternate Online Piracy Bills
While other websites were going dark earlier this month to protest online piracy legislation, KeepTheWebOpen.com was lighting up. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), (pictured in foreground), is using crowdsourcing to gauge public opinion and gather suggested edits to the text of his online piracy bill.
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January 23, 2012
Multi-Year Goal for Farm Bill: Doing More With Less
The House and Senate Agriculture committees face time and funding constraints as they work to produce a multi-year farm bill that will revamp farm-support programs, consolidate conservation programs and affect nutrition policy — while also cutting mandatory spending.
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January 19, 2012
United Front, Tension Beneath
With less than 10 months to go before the 2012 election, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) can see a path to becoming majority leader. It will involve pragmatism, occasional compromise and careful choices about when to fight with the Democrats. In the House, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has the majority, but he does not appear to have the luxury of picking his fights. And that’s where...
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January 9, 2012
A Lot of Symbolism, A Little Substance from 112th Congress
In a divided Congress, with one chamber’s majority in basic agreement with White House policy and the other vehemently opposed, Congress assumed a split personality on many pivotal votes in the first session of the 112th Congress. The result was that many votes in 2011 carried only symbolic weight.
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