The expectations were low for the Senate Fiscal Reform Working Group, so today’s proposal to bring greater transparency, debt reduction and oversight can’t be viewed as a total disappointment. It demonstrated that even some of the Republican Party’s biggest porkers acknowledge that the favor factory needs to be cleaned up. …
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff sat down with a handful of bloggers yesterday to talk about some of the issues facing his department, including completion of the fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, compliance with Real ID and the prospects of immigration reform in 2008. Following his somewhat contentious testimony to …
The recent failures of Bear Stearns and the Carlyle Group, coupled with turmoil in the housing markets and overall pessimism about the economy, has Congress rushing to microphones to promise a legislative quick fix. Meanwhile, President Bush and the Federal Reserve are being second guessed by liberal economists for not …
If today’s oral arguments in the D.C. gun ban case are any indication, the nation’s most restrictive gun-control law could soon be ruled unconstitutional. Today’s hearing before the Supreme Court revealed that Justice Anthony Kennedy is far more inclined to support an individual right to keep and bear arms than …
Earmark reformers in the Senate failed to temporarily shut down the favor factory tonight, losing their vote for a one-year moratorium, 29-71. Appropriators managed to emerge victorious after nearly all Democrats voted against the measure. Just five Democrats voted for Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-S.C.) amendment to temporarily freeze the earmarking …
As the House prepares to vote on the Democrat budget resolution, let’s take another look at what the plan would mean for hard-working Americans: It raises taxes by $1.265 trillion over five years and $3.911 trillion over 10 years, or more than $3,135per household annually; It includes 17 reserve funds …
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is famous for striking to prevent docks from using technologies that reduce the need for union labor. The last time the ILWU went on strike it cost the economy $2 billion a day. But for the union’s efforts, it negotiated an average wage-and-benefit …
The clock is ticking as the Senate prepares to vote on a one-year earmark moratorium. With appropriators and lobbyists mounting a last-ditch effort to save their pork-barrel projects, earmark warriors took the Senate floor to deliver passionate pleas for a temporary timeout. Sen. Claire McCaskill, a freshman from Missouri, was …
Appropriators and other opponents of a one-year earmark moratorium ratcheted up their defense of pork-barrel spending today, signaling that many in Congress were not ready to take a timeout from the corrupting practice of earmarking. With most of the attacks directed at Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), sponsor of the one-year …
