Saturday, May 25th
Last update02:13:16 AM GMT
Congressional Glance
The immediate issue is a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act, the corporate and Wall Street regulatory overhaul act passed last year to address some of the financial abuses uncovered in the wake of the 2008 crash.
In the year since its passage, Dodd-Frank has become a favorite target of business leaders and conservative lawmakers who blame it for creating "uncertainty" in corporate boardrooms, and therefore hampering job creation.
Has Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) turned the House Oversight Committee into a bank lobbying firm with the power to subpoena and pressure government regulators? ThinkProgress has found that a Goldman Sachs vice president changed his name, then quietly went to work for Issa to coordinate his effort to thwart regulations that affect Goldman Sachs’ bottom line.
Many have had the sneaking suspicion that our elected “leaders” in Congress are not going to Washington D.C. to represent us…but for their own personal gain. This video may just validate that assessment!
Using the net worth data compiled by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics (see list below) we found a disturbing trend. The analysis of the information in this video has not been seen by anyone…not on Fox News…not on CNN…and you have not read about this in the Wall Street Journal…yet.
After nearly 200 years, the House is killing the messengers. Leaders are ending the page program that began in the 1820s, allowing high school students to serve as messengers while getting a behind-the-scenes look at Congress that few Americans ever get.
Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wrote House members Monday that the Internet and email have left the pages with little to do. Their message - delivered via mail - said the House could no longer justify the $5 million annual expense.
The House has voted to block action to address climate change, to stop actions to prevent air and water pollution, to undermine protections for public lands and coastal areas, and to weaken the protection of the environment in dozens of other ways.
Representatives Henry Waxman of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts have released a fact sheet detailing all 110 anti-environment votes taken by the House of Representatives this year.
Tea Party leaders in the House have dramatically stepped up their assault on America's environmental and public health safeguards. Last week alone they used about 50 floor votes and more than 30 policy riders on spending bills to undermine the protections that keep our air safe, our water clean, and our public lands intact.
Another barrage of anti-environment bills is on its way. The upcoming debate in the full House on funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department will likely feature votes on even more policy riders designed to prevent the government from upholding basic environmental standards.
Back in 1995, the last time conservative Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, one of the first laws they attacked was the Clean Water Act. As early as today, the House will vote again to undermine that 1972 landmark law, and I hope the results will be the same: a public backlash that stalls environmental rollbacks.
The measure the House is considering this week (H.R. 2018) is narrower than the more comprehensive rewrite of the Clean Water Act that House Republicans failed to get enacted in 1995, but it's just as destructive. The bill targets the very heart of the Clean Water Act: the notion that a federal backstop is needed to ensure that states don't give a pass to polluters.
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