Recent Streetsblog USA posts about U.S. Senate

Cantor Orders Up Tax Cuts, Hold the Jobs

By Tanya Snyder | Oct 3, 2011 | No Comments

Congressional insiders say that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is refusing to hold an “all or nothing” vote on President Obama’s jobs bill. Cantor says he’ll bring “elements” of the bill to the floor but not the whole bill. It’s pretty clear which elements Cantor approves of. He expressed his preferences soon after the president unveiled […]

Republicans Have Their Own Plan to Pay for Infrastructure Jobs: Oil Drilling

By Tanya Snyder | Sep 30, 2011 | 8 Comments

President Obama has proposed a plan to pay for the American Jobs Act, the $447 billion bill to create 1.9 million jobs, including $50 billion for infrastructure. His “pay-for” plan includes limitations on itemized deductions for the wealthy and the elimination of some tax loopholes for oil and gas companies. Republicans have a different idea, […]

Sen. Menendez Introduces Bill to Plan For Livable Communities

By Tanya Snyder | Sep 28, 2011 | 1 Comment

New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez has taken up where former Senator Chris Dodd left off. Last week, Menendez offered a fresh version of Dodd’s Livable Communities Act. The bill would formally authorize the HUD Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities and its Regional Planning and Community Challenge grant programs, restoring funding for those programs to […]

Mica, GOP Leadership Looking to Raise Transportation Spending Levels in Bill

By Tanya Snyder | Sep 23, 2011 | 8 Comments

According to yet another great report from Jeff Davis at Transportation Weekly, House Republican leadership has given House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica permission to seek additional revenues to fund the transportation reauthorization at levels $15 billion higher than initially proposed. One Republican source, quoted in Transportation Weekly, said that given the persistently high unemployment rates, […]

Dealbreaker: Senate Rejects House Budget Due to Lack of Car Subsidies

By Tanya Snyder | Sep 23, 2011 | 7 Comments

What’s keeping Congress from passing an extension to the federal budget? Democratic protection of automobile subsidies. After midnight last night, the House finally managed to narrowly pass a budget extension bill, but Senate leaders have already rejected it out of hand, since it includes about half the disaster relief they’d like and cuts $1.5 billion […]

Senate Saves a Sliver For High-Speed Rail

By Tanya Snyder | Sep 22, 2011 | 13 Comments

President Obama had sought $8 billion for high-speed rail in 2012. The House-passed budget had exactly zero. The Senate bill approved by the Transportation subcommittee Tuesday followed suit. But the full Appropriations Committee yesterday put $100 million back into next year’s budget for the president’s signature transportation initiative. That’s still starvation wages for the program, […]

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