Politics

The Week In Review

By Sunlight Foundation & Participatory Politics Foundation

Next week will be an important one. Congress will be back in session, President Obama will release his own health care plan on Monday and the White House will hold the health care summit on Thursday. In preparation, why not check out what we’ve been up to this week at OpenCongress?

• Speaking of the health care summit, Donny has a must-read preview of Thursday’s big event.
• Like a phoenix or maybe a zombie, new life was breathed into the public option this week. A movement to pass the plan through reconciliation made a lot of noise and even gained the support of some powerful players.
• John McCain [R, AZ] and Byron Dorgan [D, ND] are taking on the vitamin supplement industry much to the chagrin of some on the far right and left.
• Social Conservatives are railing against a bill banning discrimination of children in schools based on gender identity and sexual orientation. But does their ire stem from the bill or a supposedly controversial Obama education appointee?
• A Texas Democrat is trying to update a law that encourages mortgage lending to low-income and minority individuals, but some blame that law for the recent housing crisis.
• Lawmakers requested fewer earmarks in fiscal year 2010, but those earmarks were more expensive.
• Corporations are devising a way to skirt public criticism for campaign spending in the wake of the Citizens United decision.
• Democrats wants to extend unemployment insurance and COBRA health benefits ? even if it means exploiting a loophole in their own law.
• Donny takes a look at the stimulus on its one-year anniversary. On a related note, many lawmakers praised the stimulus money that came to their districts while condemning the stimulus.
• Donny also caught some Republicans voting against their own health care idea.

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Full post as published by Open Congress on February 19, 2010 (boomark / email).