charles schumer

Now that the veil has been lifted, here are a few of the important numbers surrounding the Senate’s health reform bill, courtesy of the Congressional Budget Office.

$848 billion: Ten-year cost of the proposal, all of it offset by revenue increases and budget cuts elsewhere.
$130 billion: Amount the bill would reduce budget deficits over 10 years.
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He’s been threatening to do it for weeks, and today Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) made good on his vow to push legislation reining in the overdraft charges that hit consumers who exceed their balances when making debit card purchases. Those fees — which average upwards of $30 a pop — have evolved into an [...]

After seven long days of partisan haggling, the Senate Finance Committee early Friday morning wrapped up its debate on the panel’s sweeping health reform legislation, including a last-minute deal to ease the penalties on those who fail to comply with the requirement that nearly everyone buy health insurance.
Coming into the day’s debate, the bill would [...]

It’s only been a few hours since the Senate Finance Committee killed two separate proposals to create a public insurance plan as part of the year’s health reforms. But some Democrats are already vowing to take up the fight again when the bill hits the Senate floor. Here’s the newly released statement from Sen. Russ [...]

The Senate Finance Committee just voted down the second and last public option amendment expected to be offered during the panel’s markup of health reform legislation. The proposal, sponsored by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), would have created a public plan to compete with private insurers on a newly formed marketplace, called the exchange.
The vote was [...]

Still arguing the Rockefeller amendment to create a public insurance plan at the Senate Finance Committee markup, we’ve moved into the phase of ideological bickering. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) just blasted the public option as the first step toward single-payer health care, and Sen. Orrin Hatch is reiterating the argument now. The comments riled Sen. [...]

Washington’s prognosticators have all but written off a strong public option as part of the health reforms working their way through Congress. But don’t tell that to Sen. Charles Schumer. The New York Democrat went out on a limb Thursday evening, telling reporters that a “strong, robust” public plan will be included in whatever final [...]

In the middle of June, the White House forged a deal with the nation’s largest drug makers. As part of the bargain — under which the pharmaceutical companies offered $80 billion over 10 years in reduced drug costs to seniors and the government — the administration vowed to withhold support for a proposal allowing state [...]

Perhaps emboldened by a rare victory over the gun lobby last week, a group of liberal senators introduced legislation Wednesday to prevent people convicted of felonies overseas from owning firearms.
The proposal attempts to close a loophole created by a 2005 Supreme Court decision, which found that the prohibition on gun ownership applies only to felons [...]

That’s the idea that was being tossed around yesterday in the Senate, where several White House officials testified before the Banking Committee on the early failure of federal efforts to control the rising tide of foreclosures.
It was Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to broach the topic, proposing a plan that would allow struggling homeowners on the [...]