A couple days ago, Dick Durbin was confronted by constituents in Illinois and forced to take a position on the uncontroversial values-based statement that said:  “Social Security and Medicare is based on a promise that if you pay in, you earned the right to guaranteed benefits… cuts to Social Security and Medicare will have a [...]

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is pushing a bill just introduced that essentially serves as a reminder to Bank of America customers that they should move their money to a local community bank. The legislation, from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC), is a direct reaction to Bank of America’s announcement that [...]

I have a piece for The American Prospect today about the Gang of Six proposal, and how it increased the possibility of default: Gang of Six fever has overtaken the Senate, and everyone has an opinion on how to incorporate the proposal into the debt-ceiling deal. Senator Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, wants [...]

Another powerful Senator has called for an investigation into Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. after continued allegations and arrests into the phone hacking scandal in Britain. Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), the second-ranking Senate Democrat, has called for congressional hearings and investigations of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire to determine whether it employed illegal practices in the United [...]

I received a little note last night from Amazon.com. As part of my previous adventures in blogging, I signed up for an Amazon associates account, which entitled me to gain a small share of proceeds from any Amazon product purchased off a link from my website. I just needed to affix a little code to [...]

One of the more revealing elements of the Greek bailout discussions is not that the IMF and European finance ministers want another round of austerity from Greece before providing funding, and not even that banks are being urged to take haircuts or engage in restructuring to accommodate the Greeks. It’s that other element – privatization [...]

I mentioned that Democrats would come out swinging today on jobs, pivoting back and demanding stimulus in any debt limit deal. But the actual press event they held seemed more like an opportunity to blame Republicans for deliberately sinking the economy. They weren’t very mysterious about this at all. As Chuck Schumer said, “If [Republicans [...]

This could be a consequential week for the President’s war in Libya. The House of Representatives will vote on limiting or ending funding for the military operation, and given the rising anger on both sides of the aisle about the abuse of war powers it just might pass. Last week, Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, Democrat [...]

We have 9.1% unemployment, but we can’t pass jobs bills because they’re too expensive. We have an unreformed financial sector still desirous of engaging in risky lending, but we can’t implement risk retention rules that would force financial institutions to keep a tiny sliver of the deals they make instead of packaging them up and [...]

Greg Sargent has more of the story about Tom Coburn’s unceremonious exit from the Gang of Six. We pretty much knew it had to do with Coburn seeking a global spending cap for Medicare. We didn’t know the details: The “Gang of Six” talks on deficit reduction broke down after Senators Dick Durbin and Tom [...]

The Senate plans a floor vote on the Ryan budget at some undisclosed point. Initially the thought was it would come up this week, but now that has been pushed back to “sometime this month.” There are only two weeks left before the Memorial Day break, so that doesn’t leave much time. It would be [...]