Wednesday, Feb 11th
Last update08:04:59 AM GMT
Congressional Glance
Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic effort Wednesday to immediately freeze increases in credit card interest rates, fees and finance charges.
Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic effort Wednesday to immediately freeze increases in credit card interest rates, fees and finance charges.
Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies.
The chairman of the Senate banking committee on Tuesday proposed to dramatically overhaul the regulatory system by consolidating bank agencies, creating a consumer financial protection agency and imposing new restraints on exotic financial instruments and credit rating agencies.
The 1,136-page plan by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, differs in major respects from both the White House and House plans. Even before it was made public, it had encountered sharp resistance from Republicans and powerful business interests in Washington.
Republican leaders are pleased their health reform plan would lower premiums on average up to 10% - and shave $68 billion from the federal deficit.
But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found an odd feature in the 230-page bill: Coverage would be more expensive for older people and folks who are sick.
The three senators have quietly inserted a provision into the Democrats' healthcare overhaul that would allow the Christian Science church to receive remuneration from the federal government for prayer treatments as medical expenses.
Why are liberal Democrats teaming up with a conservative senator for a provision that would normally be the bane of the Senate's liberal elite? Because the headquarters of the Christian Science church is in Boston.
Intelligence subcommittee Chairwomen Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) are leading an investigation into what they described as a practice of incomplete and often misleading intelligence briefings, which arose in the wake of CIA Director Leon Panetta’s June 24 admission that intelligence officials failed to notify Congress about a top-secret program to assassinate al Qaeda leaders.
TVNL Comment: The word is "lied."
A House intelligence committee meeting was abruptly terminated when Justice Department officials refused to be sworn in before briefing the lawmakers.
The officials had been expected to brief the committee Wednesday on the department's review of an internal CIA report on the 2001 shootdown of a plane over Peru that was carrying American missionaries. Two of the passengers were killed.
TVNL Comment: They reserve the right to lie.
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