Today, Congress plans to vote on a federal extension of unemployment benefits, held up in the Senate for an unprecedented two months. The Senate will reconsider H.R. 4213, also known as the jobs bill or the extenders package, as the vehicle for a $34 billion extension of jobless benefits More…
This afternoon, the U.S. Senate passed a sweeping financial regulatory reform bill, overhauling the regulation of everything from the biggest banks to consumer financial products to exotic instruments like credit-default swaps to the derivatives used by farmers. The bill passed 60 to 39.
[Congress1] Earlier on Thursday, Republicans Olympia More…
Environmental groups are working feverishly behind the scenes to ensure that the climate and energy bill being cobbled together by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) includes a carbon cap on the power sector, but sources closely following the debate on and off Capitol Hill say there is simply not More…
Here’s a quick tour of a PowerPoint analysis obtained by TWI on Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s (D-N.M.) utility-only discussion draft, created with input from the staff of Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).
As projected, the bill would cut carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector by around 50 percent by More…
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) signed on overnight, meaning that the sweeping Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform bill, the Obama administration’s second signature piece of legislation, has the votes to pass. A final vote is expected for Thursday, and Obama is likely to sign the bill into law that day.
But More…
In an effort to maintain a cap on carbon — even a significantly scaled-down one — in energy and climate legislation, environmentalists are working with electric utilities and manufacturers to try to find middle ground that would center on a utility-only cap on greenhouse gas emissions, a source at a More…
Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) said he would consider the financial regulatory reform bill over the July 4 Senate recess. He’s back, and he says he is a yes:
I’ve spent the past week reviewing the Wall Street reform bill. I appreciate the efforts to improve the bill, especially the
A little history: Senate Democrats thought they were done with financial regulatory reform, ready to vote and pass the bill to President Obama. Then Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) decided he did not like how Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) required big banks and hedge funds to pay the $19 billion More…
I’ve been focusing intently on the jobs situation and unemployment extension bill this week, but here’s a roundup of the need-to-know news on the Wall Street or financial regulatory reform bill. The House passed the conference committee version with bipartisan support, and now it only needs Senate approval to More…
The unemployed now know that Congress cannot help them — at least not yet. After attempting to gain cloture and move forward to a majority-rules vote on an extension of federal unemployment benefits three times in as many weeks, the Senate finally gave up and went home. Moderate Republican Sens. More…
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