It’s not clear if Senators Reid and McConnell will allow much in the way of amendments to the tax cut deal, which should get a cloture vote shortly. But Senators are already filing those amendments, and one intriguing bipartisan one comes from Sen. Sherrod Brown’s office. U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Olympia J. Snowe [...]

Senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and Bob Casey (D-PA) want the Senate to take up and pass a one-year extension of unemployment insurance benefits from 26 to 99 weeks, but they did not sound hopeful on a conference call that this could get done before the extension lapses at the end of November. Getting jobless benefits [...]

I can’t believe people are falling for Mark Kirk making moon eyes at the DISCLOSE Act, as if this portends progress for getting the bill passed in the lame duck session. First of all, Kirk will show up in the lame duck, but he’ll replace Roland Burris – who was already a vote for the [...]

Senate Republicans created another roadblock today, stopping debate on the DISCLOSE Act, a campaign finance bill meant to be a response to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. The cloture vote was 59-39, one short of the 60 votes needed to move forward on the bill. Republicans were lockstep in opposition. Democrats tried to entice [...]

The Maine press and the national media devoted full coverage to the Lady Gaga/Servicemembers Legal Defense Network rally yesterday in Deering Oaks Park in Portland, and 2,500 supporters joined her at the event to press for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Gaga accomplished something that Barack Obama never did during the health care [...]

America’s newest community organizer, Lady Gaga, will hold a rally in Portland, Maine today, specifically targeting two Senators who may be the difference between breaking a filibuster on the defense authorization bill and letting it slip away, along with the legislative repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. Organizers say Lady Gaga is [...]

With the midterm elections just a couple months away, there’s no way that Congress will be able to pass any campaign finance legislation applicable between now and November, given the speed with which things move in Washington. So we’re stuck in a post-Citizens United world for this cycle. Indeed, we’re already starting to see large [...]

The Congressional Budget Office released a new analysis of the state fiscal aid bill set for a vote this morning in the Senate, and this time, it actually reduces the budget deficit by $1.4 billion dollars within the 10-year budget window. Which means that the bill will now save hundreds of thousands of jobs, provide [...]

Today at 5:00, the Senate will hold a cloture vote on a $26.1 billion dollar state fiscal aid package. The bill would provide $16.1 billion in Medicaid funding help and $10 billion to save education jobs. It’s fully paid for – some would argue in dubious ways – and it adheres to many guidelines that [...]

On a conference call with reporters, top labor officials and the head of a progressive coalition for education funding acknowledged that they would accept an offset to the education and Medicaid funding bill for budget-constrained states that would reduce expenditures on the federal food stamp program by $6.7 billion dollars starting in 2015. But they [...]

Elizabeth Warren is supposed to be a divisive figure, someone that Republicans (and some Democrats) who want to protect bank profits would reject out of hand. And yet, Republicans who have worked with her closely on the Congressional Oversight Panel, monitoring the TARP, showered her with praise yesterday: The two Republican appointees to the Congressional [...]