House

House and Senate members today approved language for a homeland security appropriations bill that would give the Pentagon the right to continue withholding photos of the abuse of detainees in its custody, the ACLU reported on Wednesday.
The ACLU has been trying to get its hands on those photos, as well as other records, since 2003 [...]

It appears that cap-and-trade legislation is turning out to be popular in the states of some conservative Democrats, according to a new poll that Democratic firm Garin Hart Yang conducted on behalf of the Environmental Defense Fund.
In Blue Dog Dem Heath Shuler’s North Carolina district, cap and trade is supported by 55% of voters, versus [...]

What with all the death panel talk and senatorial waffling, it’s hard to keep track of the latest developments in the health care reform debate. So we’ll do the work for you. At the end of each day, TWI will run The Daily Dose, a recap of the health care stories of the day that [...]

A statement this afternoon from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi leaves no mystery as to where the California Democrat stands on the public insurance option that’s been so contentious as the year’s health reform debate swirls on.
“A public option,” she says, “is the best option to lower costs, improve the quality of health care, ensure choice [...]

President Obama disappointed a lot of health care advocates earlier this year when, contrary to campaign vows, he declined to include in his budget the elimination of a decades-old ban on federal funding for needle exchange programs, which have been shown to prevent blood-borne illnesses like HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C.
Enter the House Democrats.
A House Appropriations [...]

Yesterday, we ran a piece pointing out that there’s really nothing stopping lawmakers, congressional staffers and other government employees from using the non-public information they gather from their daily duties to guide investments and reap enormous profits. Although a House bill — the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act — takes steps to end the [...]

Earlier this afternoon, Friends of the Earth, an environmental group that opposes the Democrats’ soon-to-be-voted-on climate change bill, shot out an email commending Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) for his shared opposition.
They’ll want to take that back. Doggett just took to the House floor to announce that he’s now supporting the bill. The reason? He was [...]

At a morning press conference, the first question to House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) was whether he thinks the Democrats, who hope to bring a sweeping climate change bill to a House floor vote tomorrow, have the numbers to pass it. The response:
Boehner: Well, first, let’s not — I don’t know whether it’s going [...]

Toward the end of Thursday’s House debate on credit card reform — legislation that passed with broad bipartisan support — Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) took to the floor to attack a Republican attempt to delay the vote until a drawn-out study could be performed.
“We should not delay one day more the suffering of the American [...]

To the surprise of no one, the House approved sweeping reforms to the credit card industry Thursday, including provisions banning retroactive rate increases, warning card owners 45 days in advance of rate increases and giving consumers more time to pay their bills.
The vote was 357 to 70. Several consumer-friendly amendments were added during floor debate, [...]