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Lobbying From The Great Beyond

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - By Alex Knott - Oct. 30 (Special Report) - With a little planning, you can lobby Congress from beyond the grave. Every year, hundreds of Americans continue to make campaign contributions, lobby Congress and in some states cast votes after they have died. And it’s all completely legal.

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In the Right - Keyes and Birthers, Buckley and Birchers

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - By Bill Pascoe - Jul. 28 (Opinion) - "Dear Birthers, "Stop! "Sincerely, "Serious Conservatives."

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Smiling GOPers Ought to be Frowning

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - Jul. 14 (Opinion) - Craig... you got that right.... Hell... Kyl couldn't even bother to say "good day" or "hello".... Sotomayer had to remind him of civil manners.... Republicans..... the only white meat.... A minute late and a woohoo short. I got nervous when I saw Craig'

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What To Watch For At Sotomayor’s Hearing

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - By Keith Perine - Jul. 13 (News Analysis) - The Republicans’ theme will be that the judiciary faces a “fork in the road” that requires judges to choose between hewing to the law or allowing their experiences to influence their decision-making, according to a Senate GOP aide.

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Senators Debate ‘Public Plan’ Health Care Option

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - By Kathleen Silvassy - Jul. 06 (News Analysis) - A government-run insurance program would be an “obstacle” to health care overhaul, a top Senate Republican said Sunday, and such “unfair competition” would lead to nationalized health insurance, while a top Senate Democrat defended it as one means to “keep the private insurance companies honest.”

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Debating the Options on Paying for Health Care

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - Jun. 29 (News Report) - While President Obama has left the details on health care overhaul to the congressional committees charged with writing the bills, one top Senate Republican said Sunday it’s going to take “president leadership” to win bipartisan deals on paying for a plan, such as taxing employing benefits.

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What the Latest Polls Show on Health Care

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - By Ron Faucheux - Jun. 27 (Opinion) - On one hand, Americans believe that the health care system needs fundamental change. But on the other hand, they’re happy with the quality of their own care and don’t want medical options limited by bureaucrats.

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Little Airports Rely On Political Clout To Stay Aloft

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - By Bennett Roth - Jun. 08 (Special Report) - ... the Murtha airport is one of many small-town airports — in districts represented by members from both parties — that have been heavily subsidized though federal grant programs, earmarks and the economic stimulus plan (PL 111-5).

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Putting Students on the Same High-Performance Page

Sun, 03 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - By Lydia Gensheimer - May. 03 (News Report) - What happens when you have a law that’s supposed to improve performance among the nation’s school children but instead it creates confusion, lowers expectations and can result in a “dummying down” of state standards? That’s what a panel of educational experts is trying to address with a plan to incorporate common academic standards. They are urging Congress to support a state-led initiative to develop more-uniform, clear and integrated standards that reflect both the global marketplace and Americans’ mobility within the country.

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What Obama Has Shown, So Far, About His Style of Governing

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - By Adriel Bettelheim - Apr. 27 (News Analysis) - in the case of Barack Obama , who will mark his 100-day milestone on Wednesday, the benchmark is being treated with unusual significance. As the first new president in eight years, the first African-American president ever, and a president called upon from the start to manage both a deep recession and two wars, his every move has been guaranteed an intense level of attention — and comparisons to FDR are more direct than most new presidents face.

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Sources: Wiretap Recorded Rep. Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - By Jeff Stein - Apr. 19 (News Report) - Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript. In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win. Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”

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Tax Code Changes: Wealth Transfer — Aggressively Progressive?

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - By Richard Rubin - Apr. 16 (News Analysis) - But trying to achieve fairness through the tax code is neither simple nor economically risk-free. The income tax is a crude, imperfect tool that doesn’t address the underlying causes of income disparity. Additionally, the tax system’s complexity as well as the wide regional differences in the cost of living make it difficult for lawmakers to effectively define rich and poor using a single national income standard.

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Tax Code Changes: Industry in the Cross Hairs

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - By Joseph J. Schatz - Apr. 14 (News Analysis) - Energized by a global summit meeting two weeks ago where world leaders called for a crackdown on abusive tax havens, Congress seems likely this year to debate significant elements of the federal income tax code as it affects corporations. But it’s not likely to be the debate those companies had been hoping for.

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Playing Political Chicken with the Estate Tax

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - By John Cranford - Apr. 12 (Opinion) - Tax wonks with a macabre sense of humor are having a field day with the game of chicken now being played out on Capitol Hill over the estate tax. At either end of the political spectrum, the absolutist position in this fight is to allow current law to stay in place in all its quirky glory — and then see where the chips fall. The problem is, the estate tax will switch from on to off to on again between now and 2011. The current law is, in a word, stupid. It will not permit the federal government to collect any tax at all on the estates of people who die after midnight this coming Dec. 31. But Uncle Sam will then be able to impose the heftiest levy in a decade on the estates of those who leave this world after midnight on Dec. 31, 2010.

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G-20 Summit Communique: Implications for the Global Poor

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - By Madison Powers - Apr. 03 (Opinion) - The problem, as many Europeans see it, is that the U.S. stimulus package had to be as large as it was, and so much of it had to be devoted to social safety-net programs simply because the United States was not carrying its fair share of the global burden of putting in place programs that would ensure economic stability in the first place.

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Obama Seeks to Delay Tanker, Cancel Bomber

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Congressional Quarterly - By Josh Rogin - Mar. 10 (News Report) - The White House has given the Pentagon guidance to delay procurement of aerial refueling tankers by five years and cancel plans for a new long-range bomber, according to three sources close to the discussions.

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GOP Moderates See Political Benefits in Opposing Obama’s Economic Agenda

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Congressional Quarterly - By Alan K. Ota - Feb. 09 (News Report) - So far, Obama has little to show for his charm offensive. Dent, Upton and their allies in the 33-member, moderate Republican Main Street Partnership opposed the House-passed stimulus legislation, disagreed with the release of an additional $350 billion in bailout funding for the finance industry and are signaling possible opposition to other big pieces of his agenda.

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With Lobbying Rules Waived, Lynn’s Earlier Pentagon Tenure Now at Issue

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Congressional Quarterly - By Josh Rogin - Jan. 25 (News Report) - Moreover, some allege that Lynn sought to relax accounting rules while in office and misled congressional staff on Defense budget matters. The Pentagon still has never achieved financial transparency. But with fiscal reform as a top priority in a time of economic crisis, Lynn’s Pentagon record has increasingly come under scrutiny.

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Obama Should Heed Kennedy’s Cuba Lessons When Thinking About Iran

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Congressional Quarterly - By Jeff Stein - Jan. 19 (Special Report) - President Obama, 47, will inherit the latest bag of dirty tricks that, so far, have failed to undermine the regime, much less dislodge it from power or cripple its nuclear weapons effort. “The covert American program, started in early 2008,” New York Times reporter David E. Sanger revealed on Jan. 11, “includes renewed American efforts to penetrate Iran’s nuclear supply chain abroad, along with new efforts, some of them experimental, to undermine electrical systems, computer systems and other networks on which Iran relies. It is aimed at delaying the day that Iran can produce the weapons-grade fuel and designs it needs to produce a workable nuclear weapon.”

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McCain Picks Up Where He Left Off on Earmarks, Lobbying

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Congressional Quarterly - By Jonathan Allen - Jan. 08 (News Report) - The Arizona Republican was on familiar turf Wednesday inside the Senate television studio — nine weeks and one day after losing the presidential election to Barack Obama — pushing for earmark and lobbying overhauls alongside longtime legislative partner Russ Feingold , a Wisconsin Democrat.

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CQ Politics | Liberal Thinkers Encourage Spending on Ambitious Projects to Revive Economy

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Congressional Quarterly - By Shawn Zeller, CQ Staff - Jan. 06 (Opinion) - With the economy looking bleaker by the week, it has seemed as if Barack Obama might have to wait on some of the ambitious initiatives he proposed during his campaign, such as attacking global warming and pursuing national health insurance. The massive government spending the president-elect has prescribed for the recession, though, has given liberal and environmental activists hope that in stimulating the economy he might still carry out some of these projects.

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Obama Tries to Be the Un-Cheney

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Congressional Quarterly - By David Nather - Dec. 09 (News Analysis) - But how much of this openness in the transition team can actually transfer to the new administration? Obama promised to require his executive branch departments and rulemaking agencies to “conduct the significant business of the agency in public,” including posting videos and transcripts of the meetings online.

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Obama Might Change Cuba Policy

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Congressional Quarterly - By Shawn Zeller - Dec. 08 (News Report) - The business community had some success in persuading Bill Clinton to loosen travel rules and sign a law allowing trade in food and medicine. But George W. Bush was not nearly as persuadable. He tightened travel rules; restricted humanitarian, agricultural and religious missions that Clinton routinely permitted; and even limited the travel of Cuban-Americans to see relatives on the island.

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Obama’s Operation May Become the Model of Fundraising

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Congressional Quarterly - By Emily Cadei, Shawn Zeller - Nov. 13 (Special Report) - Opponents of fundraising restrictions say Obama’s financial success is proof that campaign finance laws don’t work and, moreover, aren’t necessary. But supporters of financial limitations contend that the 2008 race underscores the need for a public finance overhaul. And they argue that while Obama’s small donor model signaled the current system’s doom, it also could be the key to overhaul. “The bottom line is that it is impossible to judge the Obama fundraising numbers without some idea about what the system is supposed to accomplish,” Richard Hasen, an election law professor at Loyola Law School, wrote in a recent article on the legal Web site FindLaw.

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Want to Lobby? Register with the President

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Congressional Quarterly - By Shawn Zeller - Nov. 07 (News Report) - President-elect Obama is already backing off his pledge not to hire any lobbyists to serve in his administration. But one prominent hired gun — Stuart Pape, managing partner at the biggest lobbying firm in Washington — expects that Obama will soon after taking office set new disclosure requirements for lobbyists trying to influence executive branch officials.

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