Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse plans to introduce the “Paying a Fair Share Act” on Wednesday. The bill follows the contours of what President Obama laid out as “the Buffett rule” in his State of the Union address. The bill would set a second alternative minimum tax for millionaires, essentially, at 30%. So after taxpayers with over [...]

I don’t know if anything’s going to get done in Congress in 2012, but one thing is becoming clear – Senate Democrats will try to put Republicans up against the wall on taxes. They already have on the record multiple instances of Republicans voting almost in unison against millionaire’s surtaxes. Now we’ll see votes on [...]

Senators Bernie Sanders and Sheldon Whitehouse just held a conference call on the proposed Social Security cuts in the debt limit talks. And the takeaway was to inform the White House that they shouldn’t assume that Democrats will simply follow whatever deal they make, particularly if it includes cuts to the safety net. “There’s been [...]

Social insurance advocates remain dismayed by AARP’s decision to accept Social Security benefit cuts as part of a balanced solution to address the long-term funding gap, a decision they claim was not any different than their prior stances. AARP popped up yesterday to insist on their opposition to including Social Security as part of the [...]

That’s Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, talking about “a catastrophic bureaucratic failure on the part of the banks and the servicers” with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner yesterday. He systematically discusses the failure of servicers to provide mortgage modifications, the chaos when servicers put homes marked for short sale into foreclosure without telling the real estate agents, the [...]

The Senate Judiciary Committee just wrapped up a hearing on HAMP, the foreclosure crisis and bankruptcy courts, presided over by subcommittee chair Sheldon Whitehouse. Only three other members of the Judiciary Committee managed to attend this hearing. Al Franken and Richard Blumenthal were there the whole time, and Republican ranking member Chuck Grassley poked his [...]

Not to beat a dead horse over this, but given where we were just a few weeks ago, I’d say the fact that the President won’t endorse benefit cuts to Social Security in the State of the Union is a significant achievement. I don’t think we have a sense of how precarious this all was, [...]

The passage of the Sanders audit the Fed compromise does not signal the end of the amendment process to the Wall Street reform bill. In fact, several other measures should get a chance to become part of the legislation in a series of votes leading up to final passage. And many of them would greatly [...]

David Waldman has a thorough rundown of the series of six votes (1 down, 5 to go) necessary to pass health care reform in the Senate, along with the other procedural maneuvers. It’s worth reading in full, but here’s one of his conclusions: If nothing else, this week will be a useful demonstration of just [...]

Frustrated by the lack of action in Washington after a mandate for change in 2008, liberals and Democrats inside and outside of government have begun to question the Senate filibuster rule, which they attribute to the growing legislative paralysis. The filibuster (the Dutch word for “pirate”), the process by which Senators can endlessly continue debate [...]

Marcy Wheeler is liveblogging the Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing with Attorney General Holder. I just wanted to point out a few interesting pieces that I’ve seen. • Much of the hearing is concerned with the decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and some co-defendants in federal criminal court in New York rather than through [...]