Blog

Robert Novak has an interesting article outlining how Jim DeMint's (R, SC) stand-alone bill to require full disclosure of earmarks played out in the Senate on April 12. Novak's main point is that senate Democrats kept DeMint's bill at bay to allow Robert Byrd (D, WV) (pictured at right) the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, to enact the tough-on-earmarks rule before him, in order to hold the appearance of Democrats as the pro-transparency party. >... the Democrats prepared carefully. ...

The bill to give Washington D.C. residents their first-ever voting member of the House of Representatives and Utah an additional Representative, has been revamped and is back on the House floor today. When it came to the floor last month, it stalled because a group of Republican representatives attempted to attach a provision to it that would have lifted D.C.'s ban on semiautomatic weapons. It was originally numbered H.R.1433, but, after being being officially postponed on the House floor, a ...

Here is the first report of President Bush's meeting today with the Democratic leadership to work out the stalemate over the supplemental war-funding bill. As expected, not much progress was made: >President Bush and Democratic leaders of Congress failed to reconcile key differences Wednesday over a disputed war-funding bill that would set deadlines for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. > >Bush met with a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the Cabinet Room for more than an hour. Democr...

via The Politico's The Crypt: >An anonymous Senate Republican has placed a "hold" on a bill by Sens. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) to require Senate campaigns to file disclosure reports electronically. My guess is that it is Bob Bennett (R-UT). As we have reported in the past, he has some problem with this bill, which simply replaces an archaic, snail-mail-reliant campaign finance disclosure system with a more efficient one that is done electronically. As long as this ...

Remember in March when Congress passed a bill that set an end date for the Iraq war? Well, the President didn't like it and he says he is going to veto it. But it hasn't happened yet. The bill is still in the negotiating stage, but, despite public opinion strongly on the side of Congress, it doesn't look like Bush is going to budge. On Wednesday, Democratic leaders Harry Reid (D, NV) and Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) (that's them on the right) will accept an invitation to meet with President Bush t...

There are a lot of problems with the growth of earmarked spending -- lawmakers' pet projects get funded at the expense of tax payers, massive amounts of spending go forward without the possibility of anyone being held accountable, peer review and other spending safeguards are bypassed in the process, etc... But as earmark spending has quadrupled in the past 10 years, a new downside of earmarking has emerged: it is costing the government itself more money to operate. Recently, when the OMB was...

The Senate and the President will be at odds again this week as legislation is once again taken up in spite of a threatened veto. Last week, the Senate approved a bill to provide federal funding for stem cell research, a proposal that President Bush says crosses "a moral boundary." This week, they will convene at 2PM today to consider another bill under the threat of a veto -- S.372, the Intelligence Agencies FY2007 Authorization bill. The bill will serve as a blueprint for the Intelligence ...

This morning, President Bush prepared to veto the stem cell bill by practicing his rhetoric at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast: >Renewing the promise of America begins with upholding the dignity of human life. (Applause.) In our day, there is a temptation to manipulate life in ways that do not respect the humanity of the person. When that happens, the most vulnerable among us can be valued for their utility to others -- instead of their own inherent worth. We must continue to work for a...

Here is the AP's most recent analysis [links added] of the behind-the-scenes struggle to round up support for passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill this year: >The terms of the immigration debate have turned less friendly for illegal immigrants as lawmakers and the Bush administration struggle to reach a deal in the next few weeks. > >In an ironic twist, the outlines of a potential deal have moved to the right - toward a more difficult road to citizenship for the nation's roughly 1...

Did President Bush and Senate Republicans pull a fast one yesterday on stem-cell-research-supporting Democrats? For some reason, eighteen Senate Democrats voted "aye" yesterday on two contradictory bills: one that would provide federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, and another that would put in place a law to permanently block federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. S.30, the bill that would block federal funding, was presented by Norm Coleman (R, MN) (pictured at right)...

S.5, the bill to allow federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, will be voted on it the Senate in a matter of hours. President Bush has vowed to veto the bill if it passes. He vetoed this same bill when Congress approved it last year. This time around, the Senate is ever so close to having the two-thirds majority support that they need to override his veto and enact the bill anyways. Yesterday, two supporters of the bill disagreed over whether or not they have two-thirds support: ...

The Politico is reporting that some Republicans are cracking on their opposition to a bill with a date for troops to be withdrawn from Iraq. >A diverse collection of House Republicans has formed an ad hoc group to negotiate with the White House on a compromise Iraq spending bill, Politico's Ryan Grim reports. The group plans to hold talks with National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, who has been working behind the scenes to cement opposition among Republicans to the spending bill that would ...

Two new polls have just been released, and regardless of which side you are more inclined to favor -- the Republican President or the Democratic-controlled Congress -- there is one for you to be proud of. The USA Today/Gallop poll has Instapundit declaring: "Congress's Approval Rate: Still lower than Bush's. And disapproval is higher" The Gallop poll itself put it this way: >Gallup's monthly update on key trends and indicators finds a modest improvement in the approval ratings Amer...

The bill to provide federal funding for embryonic stem cell research is going to beat the war-funding supplemental in becoming the first vetoed bill of the 110th Congress. It is scheduled to be voted on later this week and vetoed soon thereafter. This bill has already been vetoed once before. In the previous (109th) Congress, it was approved by the Republican-led House and Senate, but fell just short of the two-thirds supermajority needed to override a presidential veto. Now, In the De...

The Senate will be back from Easter recess tomorrow. Here are a couple strands of news to catch up on before then: Compromised Veto Fodder First off, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (pictured at right) and John Boehner (R-OH), the Republican leaders from the Senate and House, are asking Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to bring the House of Representatives back from recess early. The Republican leaders want to begin negotiating a compromise bill between the supplemental war funding bills, as passed i...