recession

The Senate will hold a procedural vote tomorrow at 12:15 p.m. to limit debate on legislation extending unemployment benefits in all states, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) just announced on the chamber floor. Senate rules mandate that the final vote can’t come earlier than 30 hours after the cloture vote. To expedite final passage, however, Durbin [...]

The Senate is on the verge of passing a bill extending unemployment benefits up to 20 weeks nationwide, after lawmakers on Monday easily hopped the procedural hurdle bringing debate on the legislation to an end.
The cloture vote was a lopsided 85 to 2. After weeks of haggling over controversial amendments, only Republican Sens. Christopher Bond [...]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) threatened to hold a midnight vote yesterday to proceed to long-delayed legislation extending unemployment insurance for up to 20 weeks. That vote didn’t happen, but it might not have to. Reid’s office said this morning that party leaders “should be able” to reach agreement to skip that step and [...]

The New York Times reports that the U.S. economy grew last quarter for the first time in the past year:
Gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the three months ending in September, a significant spike from a relatively shrunken base. The economy had contracted at annual rates of 0.7 percent [...]

Moments ago, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) took to the chamber floor with a strange claim about the urgency surrounding legislation to extend unemployment insurance.
“The benefits haven’t run out yet,” Kyl said. “We’re going to pass this before the benefits run out.”
It’s tough to decipher exactly what he means.

In the wake of yesterday’s Senate vote on an unemployment insurance extension, there’s been some confusion — including among TWI commenters — about what exactly happened. And what happens next.
Here’s the bad news for those having exhausted their benefits: The vote on cloture to proceed to the bill doesn’t mean that the bill has [...]

Just in from the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.): the upper chamber will hold a procedural vote next Tuesday afternoon to proceed to legislation extending unemployment insurance (UI) nationwide.
The cloture vote is indication that Reid and GOP leaders failed to reach an agreement on amendments to the bill, which would extend UI [...]

Enacted as part of February’s economic stimulus bill, the popular $8,000 tax credit for new homebuyers expires Nov. 30, prompting calls among some lawmakers to extend it for the sake of struggling consumers and a sputtering housing market.
Those calls gained some volume this morning in the Senate Banking Committee, where Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) reiterated [...]

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke announced last month that the recession was “likely over” and that the economy was in the early stages of a recovery. The problem is, many Americans don’t look around and see a recovery.

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne today joins the ranks of those predicting that, a year from now, the health care debate will be a distant memory, lost in the raging political scuffle over who’s to blame for rampant unemployment.
While official Washington and much of the media focus on the great health-care struggle, the administration’s economic [...]