Rep. Dave Camp speaks at a press conference. To buy this photo, go to: http://roll.cl/cqrcpix
Roll Call: “The House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday published a list of approximately 1,300 proposed limited tariff bills under consideration for inclusion in legislation that Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) is pushing. But the vast majority of the proposals benefit 10 or fewer companies, making them banned ‘earmarks’ under House rules, according to an analysis by Heritage Action for America.”
Washington Post: “Long-awaited consideration of legislation to reform the U.S. Postal Service will be debated and put up for vote in the House after the Fourth of July holiday. … The main reform bill in the House, co-sponsored by Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Dennis Ross (R-Fla.), would permit USPS to end Saturday mail deliveries, close thousands of post offices and phase out the use of doorside mailboxes in some communities.”
Reuters: “The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on renewing historically low individual tax rates before its August recess, a top Republican said on Friday. … The issue is not likely to be resolved until after the November 6 presidential and congressional elections, when lawmakers will have a condensed schedule to address fiscal policy.”
Sen. Lamar Alexander speaks with a reporter in this 2007 file photo. To buy this photo, go to: http://roll.cl/cqrcpix
Roll Call: ”Amid speculation that Senate Democrats will bring up a campaign finance disclosure bill as early as June, the League of Women Voters has launched a $90,000 radio ad campaign calling on four GOP Senators to ‘tell us you support full disclosure.’ The ads target Tennessee Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker and Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe because they are ‘key actors on this important issue,’ said the group’s president, Elisabeth MacNamara, in a statement.”
NPR: “Back in 2010, the concept of repealing the Affordable Care Act was a long shot. The idea of keeping the popular provisions and dumping the rest was mostly theoretical. Now, there’s a real chance the Supreme Court could strike the whole thing down. And the law is designed so that the ban on pre-existing conditions and the parents’ insurance provision are paid for by the thing Republicans hate — the mandate that all Americans buy insurance.”
CQ Weekly: “Dramatic changes in technology, manufacturing, global trade and even military threats have made the country’s export control regime, devised during the Cold War, look antiquated. Defense contractors, coping with stingier military budgets and growing competition on world markets, say that the restrictions are entirely obsolete and that the export controls themselves pose a significant problem.”
Sen. Tom Harkin is interviewed before the 2011 State of the Union. To buy this photo, go to: http://roll.cl/cqrcpix
It sounded like a throwaway line, but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell may have genuinely latched on to a good idea yesterday when he suggested the Senate give the job of cutting a student loan deal to just two colleagues: Tom Harkin and Mike Enzi.
“They just successfully negotiated a bipartisan FDA bill; let’s see if they can do the same on this,” the minority leader said yesterday — soon after the Democratic chairman and top Republican on the HELP Committee secured a 96-1 vote for their bill to bring the federal review process for new medicines and medical devices in line with the new era of drug shortages, biotechnology breakthroughs and generic upstarts.
If the pair could come up with a complicated package that Big Pharma, consumer groups and the FDA are all willing to live with for the next five years, in other words, surely they can come up with a winning formula for financing a simple one-year extension of the 3.4 percent Stafford student loan rate.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid meets with Lilly Ledbetter in January of 2010. To buy this photo, go to: http://roll.cl/cqrcpix
Roll Call: ”Senate Democrats intend to set up a procedural vote after next week’s recess on the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would update the Equal Pay Act signed into law June 10, 1963. … According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women who work full time still earn, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar men earn.”
AP: “Food stamp recipients are ripping off the government for millions of dollars by illegally selling their benefit cards for cash — sometimes even in the open, on eBay or Craigslist — and then asking the government for replacement cards. The Agriculture Department wants to curb the practice by giving states more power to investigate people who repeatedly claim to lose their benefit cards.”
CQ Today: “Senators met behind closed doors to consider legislation dealing with something they did not want to debate in open session, this time a bill extending an expiring 2008 surveillance law. But there was an unusual twist. Prior to the markup, even the subject of the meeting was secret.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid speaks during a press conference on a transportation bill. To buy this photo, go to: http://roll.cl/cqrcpix
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today enunciated an ambitious Senate “to do” list for the four-week run of legislating that will get started after the Memorial Day recess.
The first debate in June will be on Democratic legislation designed to subject Republicans to renewed “they’re waging a war on women” complaints; the bill would boost the legal remedies available to women who aren’t paid the same as men for doing equivalent work — allowing them to win punitive damages in their lawsuits (now they can get noting beyond double back pay) and to file class action suits in wage discrimination cases.
Next up after that will be the farm bill. The timing is designed not only to push growers of subsidized crops toward certainty about their incomes starting next year (in part by getting the House to move up its farm bill timetable) but also to help Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow portray herself as a fiscal moderate (because the bill promises to shave $23 billion from the deficit in the next decade) and thereby shut down the long-shot challenge to her third-term re-election bid from former GOP House member Pete Hoekstra.
