money and politics

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 the drug companies vowed to support health reform legislation [...]

With Congress not expected to pass a climate change bill this year, industry groups see EPA as their new target.

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 to take Harkin’s place on the Agriculture Committee. [...]

One watchdog says the strange giving patterns just shows “the financial industry isn’t sure what’s happening to itself.”

Nuclear power courts new friends as it pushes for subsidies in the Senate’s sweeping climate bill.

The Senate shot down legislation Wednesday that would have effectively scrapped local and state conceal and carry laws.

A hearing this week marks a small step forward for a bill that’s gone largely ignored by Congress.

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 those same companies are trying desperately to [...]

While judges must recuse themselves from cases where financial interests are at stake, members of Congress regularly invest in the very companies they regulate.

After decades of abetment, Congress is watching with more critical eyes.