Last night, the Senate found the votes to move forward on a motion to proceed for a $6.8 billion disaster relief funding bill. The roll call is here. Republicans Roy Blunt, Scott Brown, Susan Collins, Dean Heller, John Hoeven, Olympia Snowe, Pat Toomey and David Vitter joined all 53 Democrats in supporting. All of these [...]

Harry Reid will challenge the ability of Republicans to hold out on disaster relief spending against the wishes of GOP Governors and representatives in the region affected by Hurricane Irene, by introducing a $6 billion bill without offsets to replenish FEMA accounts for fiscal year 2012. The Senate action would replenish depleted accounts at the [...]

In a speech in Detroit tailored to the union audience, President Obama paid respect to the need for a strong American labor movement as a lever to move families into the middle class. He also previewed his jobs address coming on Thursday to a joint session of Congress, highlighting steps like “rebuilding roads and bridges,” [...]

The fight over whether to offset emergency spending on disaster relief, as Eric Cantor wants, could end up being the most interesting upcoming battle in Congress. The lines aren’t drawn in an entirely partisan way on this one. In particular, Republican Governors in the states affected want to see that disaster relief, and don’t care [...]

It appears that the inland waterways, particularly in Vermont, bore the worst hardship from Hurricane Irene, with flooding of areas that were probably less equipped to deal with such things than coastal regions. The amount of rain tacked on to an already wet August was too much for many tributaries to bear. The damage is [...]

That’s the implication of the House Majority Leader’s statement that Congress has to “find the money” for federal aid for natural disasters: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor assured his constituents on Wednesday that Congress “will find the monies” to assist earthquake victims in Mineral, Virginia – but the Republican lawmaker noted that “those monies will [...]

Eric Cantor is trending on Twitter right now, and it’s for a comment he made about the tornado that killed at least 116 people in Joplin, Missouri. Cantor, merely following established conservative ideology, made the statement that no emergency relief for Joplin would pass the House without corresponding cuts elsewhere. As the Washington Times reports, [...]

A powerful and unexpected tornado has killed at least 89 people, with the death toll expected to rise. The tornado cut right through the center of town, and residents had only 20 minutes of warning before it struck. Much of the city’s south side was leveled, with churches, schools, businesses and homes reduced to ruins. [...]

After several days of positive signs, the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has taken a clear turn for the worse. Now there is a suspected breach in one of the nuclear reactors, which could leak radioactive material. A suspected breach in the reactor at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant could mean more serious radioactive contamination, [...]

The locus of fear in Japan has shifted from the Fukushima Daiichi plant (although smoke was seen coming from Unit #3 today) to the produce and other food products coming out of the region. The FDA has banned the imports of milk and fresh produce from around the stricken nuclear power plant, which seems sensible. [...]

Scarecrow has a nuclear plant update from Japan. It looks to me like they’re in a holding pattern, with no meltdown yet but little progress in sustaining the cooling of the reactor core or the spent fuel rods. But I want to focus on another extraordinary effort aimed at preventing another consequence. Since the earthquake [...]