commerce department

The New York Times reports that the U.S. economy grew last quarter for the first time in the past year:
Gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the three months ending in September, a significant spike from a relatively shrunken base. The economy had contracted at annual rates of 0.7 percent [...]

Byron York had been working the sleepy “Census controversy” beat yesterday, so it makes sense for his story today to focus on how Republicans were fretting about the issue before Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) withdrew his nomination for commerce secretary.
“I think he had buyer’s remorse,” one GOP senator told me.  “After he looked into it [...]

Politico’s spin-crunching machine busts a gear in this analysis of what Republicans are saying about Sen. Judd Gregg’s (R-N.H.) withdrawal of his nomination for commerce secretary.
Nevertheless, for a Republican Party desperately careening from message to message, from “Drill Baby Drill” to “The Future is Cao,” Gregg’s move has rallied the troops and provided them with [...]

It seems that Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), President Barack Obama’s pick to head the Commerce Department, doesn’t exactly believe in the necessity of that agency.
CQ’s Jonathan Allen points out that Gregg, one of the upper chamber’s most vocal fiscal hawks, voted twice in 1995 to abolish the department — once in the Budget Committee and [...]

In case you were wondering, as I was, what exactly President-elect Barack Obama intends to talk about during the press conference the transition team scheduled for Wednesday morning, Politico offers this tip:

The news that President-elect Barack Obama may pick his national finance chair, Penny Pritzker, for secretary of commerce raises a couple of questions.
Pritzker, a Chicago billionaire and hotel heiress, was a major contributor to Obama’s presidential campaign and ran his record-breaking fund-raising juggernaut. This alone would seem to be problematic for a president-elect who ran [...]