“Banks or Peanuts?” A cop asked that question as I cleared the metal detector at the east entrance to the Rayburn House Office Building. “Peanuts” was a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on the salmonella outbreak traced to the Peanut Corporation of America—in Room 2123. “Banks” was the full House Financial Services Committee hearing […]

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MORE THAN A MILLION PEOPLE ON THE NATIONAL MALL, the Obama memorabilia open-air market at Farragut Square, cheers, tears, newspapers grabbed off newsstands the day after the inauguration. As I —left D.C.’s Union Station for New York at 6 a.m., a man standing in line ahead of me at the newsstand purchased ten copies of […]

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Stimulated Opposition—The $825 billion stimulus bill that began as House Resolution 1 moved through the Congress with the speed of a Bush war supplemental budget request. Yet the way it was received suggests that bipartisanship is already history. The opposition’s intent was evident before House Republicans unanimously voted against the bill, which passed by a […]

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Bair’s Bailout Plan—Barack Obama’s Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner and senior economic adviser Lawrence Summers have dominated the shaping of policy and news coverage of the new White House economic team. Sheila Bair isn’t even part of it. The director of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is a Bush appointee, whom many assumed would resign […]

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Filibuster Lite“I would just say, when you put a bill on the floor and file cloture immediately, that’s hardly a filibuster.” —Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) HOW DO YOU FASHION A MAJORITY OUT OF A MINORITY? Consider the trope Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been rehearsing for the media since the 111th Congress […]

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