Politics

Congress Links

By Sunlight Foundation & Participatory Politics Foundation

• President Obama said today that he plans to help push climate change legislation through the Senate this year (MSNBC First Read)
• Sam Stein looks at BP’s lobbying game and finds 27 former Hill and White House staffers now working for the company to influence federal policy. (Huffington Post)
• A loophole in last-year’s increase in tobacco taxes has cost the government $250 million so far. (AP).
• Rep. Steve Cohen [D, TN-9] has a bill called the Tobacco Tax Parity Act to fix the loophole. It involves raising taxes on pipe tobacco by about 775%. (OpenCongress)
• As of yesterday, the national debt has officially crossed the $13 trillion mark. (Washington Independent)
• Members of the Black Caucus have introduced a resolution, H.Res.1416, to prohibit the Office of Congressional Ethics from making available investigative reports that didn’t produce any evidence of wrongdoing. (New York Times)
• Mountaintop mining is having a serious impact on some of West Virginia’s most treasured rivers, yet Rep. Nick Rahall [D, WV-3] has been single-handedly blocking the EPA from taking action. (Washington Independent)
• House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi [D, CA-8] says she personally supports the stronger derivatives language in the Senate’s financial reform bill. (FDL News Desk)
• Arianna Huffington on Congress’s efforts to clamp down on offshore corporate tax havens. (HuffPo)
• Several Republicans will be using tonight’s Taylor Swift concert as a fundraising event. (Party Time)

Full post as published by Open Congress on June 03, 2010 (boomark / email).