In case you haven’t read it already, Patrick Caldwell’s profile of the post-Citizens United landscape for campaign spending gets at a number of important trends. First, while 527 groups like MoveOn.org and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth told much of the story of spending during the last few election More…
It came as little surprise when Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) yesterday moved to kill efforts to lower seniors’ drug costs by squeezing Big Pharma. After all, Baucus earlier in the year had agreed to a controversial deal with the drug lobby, under which More…
Earlier this year, when it seemed plausible that Congress would address climate change in 2009, energy industry representatives were hyping the need for legislation to fend off regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency. When the EPA first declared carbon dioxide a threat to humankind in More…
With the news that Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) will be leaving his post to take the helm of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee following the death of that panel’s previous chairman, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) is set More…
Even as Congress moves to put more curbs on Wall Street excesses, the nation’s top banks are writing fewer of the campaign checks that once won them lawmakers’ attention – a sign of uncertainty in the financial industry over how large a role it should play in politics in More…
Nuclear power is courting some new friends as it pushes for government subsidies in the sweeping climate bill being debated in the Senate.
For the last decade, the biggest players in the nuclear industry lent most of their financial backing to Republican candidates and lawmakers, who have been the strongest More…
In the year’s first high-profile legislative setback for the gun lobby, the Senate on Wednesday shot down legislation to scrap state and local laws dictating who can carry concealed firearms.
The vote marks a rare victory for gun reformers, including President Obama, who have had little success battling the powerful More…
For Wall Street tycoons and corporate insiders it would be a dream come true: A hole in insider-trading laws allowing investors to profit from their access to sensitive information before the rest of the world is aware of it — like knowing the winning lottery numbers an hour before the More…
Here’s some persistence you don’t see everyday from a press corps charged with monitoring Congress: MSNBC’s David Shuster grilling Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) Monday on the relationship between the $223,000 Carper’s taken from insurance companies in the last four years and his opposition to the public plan option More…
In November of 2005, then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) took to the upper-chamber floor with a major announcement. The Senate, he revealed, would soon put its full weight behind legislation creating a multi-billion dollar fund to settle lawsuits from victims of asbestos exposure — lawsuits that had already bankrupted More…
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