Congress

Equating today’s rising credit card rates to usury, several House Democrats today announced plans to introduce legislation capping credit card rates at 16 percent.
“Things were a lot better for the average person in this country when we had usury caps,” Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), head of the House Rules Committee, said in a statement announcing her bill. [...]

Following in the footsteps of House health care leaders, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, plans to hold a hearing on contentious new recommendations for screening breast cancer, Harkin’s office said this afternoon.
The senator has yet to announce a date, but with the health reform debate likely [...]

It was inevitable that conservatives would attack the Senate health care reform legislation over the proposed o.5 percent hike in Medicare’s payroll tax for the country’s highest earners. Now they’re drilling down into the specifics.
Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa), senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has asked the Joint Committee on Taxation to analyze the [...]

In the wake of Saturday’s Senate vote to take up the chamber’s health reform legislation, the focus of the debate has shifted back to the public option, over which no fewer than four Democratic caucus members — Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) — have threatened to [...]

In a statement released Sunday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) became the latest Democrat to try to divorce the party’s health reform bills from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which issued controversial new guidelines last week for breast cancer screening.
Let’s be clear: the task force’s recommendation will have absolutely no impact on the [...]

More than 1 million unemployed workers are poised to lose their jobless benefits in January if Congress doesn’t step in to extend the filing deadlines for the emergency insurance program, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group.
Although Congress just enacted an extension of jobless benefits — up [...]

Moments ago, Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic proposal to freeze credit card rates on existing balances through the holiday season. The bill, sponsored by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), would prevent credit card companies from hiking rates and fees on existing balances until the industry reforms passed by Congress earlier this year take [...]

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) has a message for his Democratic colleagues moving forward with plans for another job creation bill: hold your horses. In an interview with MSNBC Wednesday, Clyburn said the focus for Congress now should be “to get the economy stabilized and grow the economy,” but added, “I don’t think we [...]

On Monday, The New York Times ran a damning story detailing how the nation’s drug makers are hiking their prices ahead of the reform laws winding their way through Congress. The very next day, some powerful House Democrats called for a closer look, asking the Government Accountability Office to examine the drug industry to verify [...]

Yesterday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters that Congress will likely stick around Washington well into December in order to wrap up legislation reforming health care and tackling unemployment. But he didn’t go out on any limbs to say what the latter bill will contain or how much help might be forthcoming. Instead, he [...]