Our latest Republican-instigated manufactured fiscal crisis is over. Finally. From the White House, received moments ago: On Thursday, October 17, 2013, the President signed into law: H.R. 2775, the “Continuing Appropriations Act, 2014,” which provides fiscal year 2014 appropriations for projects and activities of the Federal Government through Wednesday, January 15, 2014. The effective time for the continuing […]
Tag: Fiscal Responsibility
Posted inBreaking News, Economic Security, Policy Topics
U.S. House signs off on deal to reopen the federal government and pay America’s bills
An eleventh-hour agreement negotiated by Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell to reopen the federal government and pay America’s bills was accepted by the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday night after top House Republicans admitted that their attempts to extract a ransom in exchange for simply fulfilling their basic responsibilities as representatives had failed miserably. With […]
Posted inBreaking News, Economic Security, Policy Topics
U.S. Senate votes overwhelmingly to reopen federal government and pay America’s bills
At long last, we finally have some decent news out of the Other Washington. By a vote of eighty-one to eighteen, the United States Senate has voted to approve legislation that reopens the federal government through mid-January and allows the U.S. Department of the Treasury to pay America’s bills through mid-February. More than half of […]
Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics
An open letter to the Pacific Northwest members of the House Republican caucus
Editor’s note: The following letter was transmitted by facsimile to the offices of Dave Reichert, Greg Walden, and Mike Simpson this morning. A slightly different letter was sent to Raul Labrador, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, and Doc Hastings, who are known for being hardliners. All of the aforementioned individuals represent (or purport to represent) portions of […]
Posted inBreaking News, Economic Security, Policy Topics
Latest Republican thinking: We’ll vote to pay our nation’s bills for a few more weeks, but we won’t reopen the federal government
Sorry, Republicans.… not good enough: House Republicans, looking for a way out of a budget standoff they began, plan to vote as early as Thursday on a plan to raise the debt limit through November 22. But because the House proposal would not allow a vote on a Senate-passed measure to finance and reopen the government, […]
Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics
President Barack Obama nominates Janet Yellen to be the next Federal Reserve Chair
History was made today at the White House when President Barack Obama announced that he has decided to formally nominate Janet Yellen as the next chairperson of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Yellen, who currently serves as vice chair of the board, would be (if confirmed) the first woman and the […]
Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics
Outside right wing groups playing outsize role in Republican government shutdown
The New York Times has a great article today that delves into the origins of the House Republicans’ government shutdown. It turns out that powerful right wing groups, including the vast political machinery assembled and funded by the Koch brothers, have been agitating for a shutdown for a long time, and were finally able, with […]
Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics
Let’s not forget: House Republicans forced this federal government shutdown to happen
We are almost through Day One of the first major shutdown of the federal government in seventeen years, and sadly, it still appears that House Republicans are unwilling and unready to do their jobs. They could have easily averted the shutdown days ago by simply passing the continuing budget resolution the Senate sent them, and […]
Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics
House Republicans bent on taking another vote to defund the Patient Protection Act
The blackmail continues: House Republicans plan to attach a one-year delay of [the Patient Protection Act] and a repeal of its medical device to a stopgap spending bill on Saturday, a move that could ensure much of the federal government shuts down on Tuesday. Speaker John Boehner (R‑Ohio) outlined the maneuver to Republicans in a […]
Posted inBreaking News, Economic Security, Policy Topics, Public Service
White House: Larry Summers has withdrawn his name from consideration as Fed Chair
The White House has just dropped a Sunday evening bombshell: Neoliberal economist Larry Summers — who President Barack Obama was on the verge of nominating to be the next Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve — is no longer being considered for the position, at his own request! “Earlier today, I […]
Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics, Public Service
Larry Summers’ nomination for Fed Chair isn’t official yet — but it’s already in trouble
If the Beltway rumor mill is to be believed, President Obama is on the verge of nominating his old pal Larry Summers to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve. Summers, as most readers probably know, is one of the country’s most prominent neoliberal economists and an admirer of Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan. […]
Posted inEconomic Security, Public Service
Senate *finally* confirms Richard Cordray as Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chief
After months of senseless delay, the United States Senate has finally confirmed former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to serve as the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) originally conceived by Elizabeth Warren and created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act of 2010. By a vote of seventy-one to twenty-nine, the Senate agreed […]
Posted inEconomic Security, Elections, Humor & Satire, Legislative Advocacy, Policy Topics, Public Planning
The “Tim Eyman Memorial Bridge” meme: Why it got started, why it’s taken off
Last week, in the aftermath of the collapse of a key span of the Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River, a friend of NPI’s (Wu Ming) suggested in a diary on Daily Kos that we begin referring to the out-of-service crossing as the “Tim Eyman Memorial Bridge”. We ran with the meme, creating a […]
Posted inEconomic Security, Litigation, Policy Topics, Public Planning
It’s time to update Tim Eyman’s Failure Chart
Now that the Washington State Supreme Court has ruled, at long last, that the main provision of Tim Eyman’s I‑601 clones is unconstitutional and void, it’s time for us to update Tim Eyman’s Failure Chart. The Failure Chart is a handy resource that we maintain over at Permanent Defense which shows that most of the […]