Momentum is building for Democrats to try one last time to pass a version of the DISCLOSE Act once Congress resumes, this time without the extraneous (and some say, onerous) prohibitions on campaign spending by federal contractors or companies with partial foreign-ownership. The New York Times and Politico More…
While the lame-duck session appears to be one of the best opportunities for Democrats to pass key pieces of energy legislation before they have to compromise more with Republicans, the general consensus seems to be that we won’t see much action on energy proposals in November.
One clean energy advocate More…
The flood of political spending, coupled with the likely defeat of campaign finance hero Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), is making the elections a pretty grim spectacle for campaign finance advocates, but The Wall Street Journal opinion page is feeling positively giddy:
As for the rest of us, we can
While there’s certainly no longer any chance that the DISCLOSE Act, which fell short of overcoming a GOP filibuster by just one vote the other week in the Senate, will have the chance to unmask the donors behind the large nonprofits, unions and business leagues spending millions in the More…
Though Senate Democrats say there won’t be much time in the lame-duck session to pass significant energy legislation, environmentalists know it could be their last chance to move key bills, given the potential for Republicans to make gains in the mid-term elections. I wrote about this in a story More…
Eleven Democratic senators have signed onto a resolution, sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), vowing to strike down any proposal by the White House debt commission to reduce Social Security benefits, including raising the retirement age.
As I reported yesterday, electric vehicles advocates are confident they’ll get a vote on their proposal proposal to incentivize the vehicles in 2011. Well, it looks like that vote could come sooner.
The Senate is expected to recess this week (likely between Wednesday and Friday) in order to give lawmakers campaigning time ahead of the November mid-term elections. While few thought senators could get anything significant done on energy before the midterms, it’s now all but certain.
Democrats have punted, at least for now, on voting on the Bush tax cuts. Rather than forcing moderate Democratic members to OK a tax increase for wealthy Americans, leadership will call a vote during the lame-duck session. After the Nov. 2 election, they also need to take up a reauthorization More…
To no one’s surprise, today’s energy and climate meeting between key senators and President Obama appears to have been inconclusive, with Democrats opening up to further concessions and Republicans remaining reluctant to sign on. Darren Samuelsohn reports:
Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman told reporters after the 90-minute
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