Senate Republicans, for a third time this week, blocked Democratic plans to crack down on Wall Street.

In a 56-42 vote, Republicans prevented Democrats from opening debate on a wide-ranging financial overhaul. Senate Democrats scheduled a third vote in three days to pressure Republicans into opening debate.

"This ought not at this juncture to be a partisan issue," said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.). "I believe fully that there are a number of my colleagues who ought to get to this debate. That's not to suggest that they agree with the product."

Dodd and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the top Republican on the banking panel, have been locked in bipartisan negotiations. Republicans have explained their votes as a way to allow the bipartisan talks to continue.

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/banking-financial-institutions/94837-senate-republicans-block-wall-street-bill-a-third-time

Pols rally to block handouts for illegals

By Hillary Chabot
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - Updated 20h ago

A Republican crackdown blocking illegal immigrants from scooping up taxpayer-funded benefits such as welfare and food stamps is gaining steam on Beacon Hill - as Democratic lawmakers and two candidates for governor scrambled yesterday to back the tough new measure.

“We can’t afford to be giving money to people who are breaking the law,” said state Rep. Jeffrey D. Perry (R-Sandwich), who filed an amendment to the budget that would force state departments offering taxpayer-funded assistance to check the applicant with federal immigration authorities.

“If our housing programs had this policy, the president’s aunt wouldn’t have been able to get access to our public housing,” said Perry, referring to President Obama’s aunt, Zeituni Onyango, an illegal Kenyan immigrant who notoriously nabbed a state-funded apartment in South Boston.

http://bostonherald.com/news/politics/view/20100427pols_rally_to_block_handouts_for_illegals/srvc=home&position=0

The Dupnik rebellion: Pima's top cop says "no" to SB 1070

Posted: Apr 27, 2010 8:26 PM EDT Updated: Apr 28, 2010 7:39 AM EDT

Reporters:  Steve Nunez and Forrest Carr

TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - Pima County's top lawman says he has no intention of enforcing Arizona's controversial crackdown on illegal immigration.  Sheriff Clarence Dupnik calls SB 1070 "racist," "disgusting," and "unnecessary."

Speaking Tuesday morning with KGUN9's Steve Nunez, Dupnik made it clear that while he will not comply with the provisions of the new law, nor will he let illegal immigrants go free.  "We're going to keep doing what we've been doing all along," Dupnik said.  "We're going to stop and detain these people for the Border Patrol."

The sheriff acknowledged that this course of action could get him hauled into court.  SB 1070 allows citizens to sue any law enforcement official who doesn't comply with the law.  But Dupnik told Nunez that SB 1070 would force his deputies to adopt racial profiling as an enforcement tactic, which Dupnik says could also get him sued. "So we're kind of in a damned if we do, damned if we don't situation. It's just a stupid law."

http://www.kgun9.com/global/story.asp?s=12386648

Poll finds Americans in an anti-incumbent mood as midterm elections near

By Dan Balz and Jon Cohen

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Members of Congress face the most anti-incumbent electorate since 1994, with less than a third of all voters saying they are inclined to support their representatives in November, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Dissatisfaction is widespread, crossing party lines, ideologies and virtually all groups of voters. Less than a quarter of independents and just three in 10 Republicans say they're leaning toward backing an incumbent this fall. Even among Democrats, who control the House, the Senate and the White House, opinion is evenly divided on the question.

"I'm not really happy right now with anybody" in Washington, Sandy Davis, 64, a Republican from Decatur, Ill. said in a follow-up interview. Although she expressed "mixed feelings" about a fresh crop of lawmakers, she added: "When the country was founded, those guys were all pretty new at it. How bad would it be?"

Still, for President Obama and his party, there are some positive signs in the poll. The public trusts Democrats more than Republicans to handle the major problems facing the country by a double-digit margin, giving Democrats a bigger lead than they held two months ago, when Congress was engaged in the long endgame over divisive health-care legislation. A majority continues to see Obama as "just about right" ideologically, despite repeated GOP efforts to define the president as outside the mainstream.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/27/AR2010042705324.html

Via Ed Morrissey:

Via Ed Morrissey:

WASHINGTON — When major companies declared that a provision of the new health care law would hurt earnings, Democrats were skeptical. But after investigating, House Democrats have concluded that the companies were right to tell investors and the government about the expected adverse effects of the law on their financial results.

At issue is a section of the law that eliminates a tax break available to companies that provide drug benefits to retirees as part of their insurance coverage. The tax change, expected to generate $4.5 billion of revenue over the next 10 years, will help offset the cost of providing coverage to the uninsured.

Within days after President Obama signed the law on March 23, companies filed reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying the tax change would have a material adverse effect on their earnings.

The White House suggested that companies were exaggerating the effects of the tax change. The commerce secretary, Gary F. Locke, said the companies were being “premature and irresponsible” in taking such write-downs.

Representative Henry A. Waxman of California and Bart Stupak of Michigan, both Democrats, opened an investigation and demanded that four companies — AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere and Verizon — supply documents analyzing the “impact of health care reform,” together with an explanation of their accounting methods.

The documents — hundreds of pages of e-mail messages and financial worksheets — include large amounts of data that substantiate the companies’ concerns. They have reignited a battle over the law in Congress.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/business/27health.html?ref=business

A financial regulatory reform bill has at least one supporter outside of Congressional Democrats, Lloyd Blankfein, the head of investment bank Goldman Sachs. 

"I'm generally supportive," Blankfein told the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. 

Wall Street will benefit from the bill because it will make the market safer, Blankfein said.

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/banking-financial-institutions/94735-blankfein-supports-financial-reform-legislation

The Obama administration has only partially complied with congressional subpoenas for information on the deadly November shootings at Fort Hood, Texas.

The failure by the Defense and Justice departments to turn over all the requested documentation — which they say they do not intend to do — is not likely to ease the growing tension between some key senators and the Obama administration over the incident at the Army base on Nov. 5, 2009.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/94747-obama-administration-only-partially-complies-with-ft-hood-subpoenas

The House followed the Senate’s lead Tuesday and voted to block its automatic pay raise as it heads into a highly contested election season.

The move marks the third consecutive year lawmakers have voted to halt their automatic cost-of-living increase. The law governing congressional pay raises requires members to vote against getting a raise. Otherwise, the raise takes effect automatically.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/94679-house-votes-down-automatic-pay-raise

 

Senate Republicans have block a financial overhaul bill for the second day in a row.

Senate Republicans, for the second time in two days, blocked Democratic plans to overhaul the financial system and crack down on Wall Street.

In a 57-41 vote, Republicans prevented Democrats from opening debate on a wide-ranging financial measure. After Democrats failed Monday to garner the 60 votes necessary to open debate, Democrats pledged to push repeated votes this week to portray Republicans as standing up for Wall Street.

Republicans say they are opposing the bill as a way to gain leverage in negotiations on the bill. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the top Republican on the banking panel, continue to pursue bipartisan negotiations.

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/banking-financial-institutions/94659-republicans-block-democratic-financial-overhaul-a-second-time

Via Daniel Foster:

Also, Sen ML Reid says energy/climate bill to go before immigration; this keeps Sen. Lindsey Graham at table, preserves some momentum

http://twitter.com/MajoratWH/status/12963165002

Via Breitbart.tv:

Marines tell Idaho congressional candidate Vaughn Ward to pull campaign ad

The Pentagon bars political activities that 'imply or appear to imply official sponsorship, approval, or endorsement.'

BY DAN POPKEY - dpopkey@idahostatesman.com

Copyright: © 2010 Idaho Statesman

Published: 04/27/10

Congressional candidate Vaughn Ward has violated a Pentagon directive prohibiting the impression that his campaign is supported by the military, according to the Marine Corps.

Ward is a Marine major assigned to 28 days of annual reserve duty at the Office of Legislative Affairs in Washington, D.C. Ward won a Bronze Star with Combat V for valor for leading a Marine company in Iraq from April to October 2006.

Ward and state Rep. Raul Labrador are the top candidates in the May 25 Republican primary. The winner will challenge Democratic Rep. Walt Minnick in November.

The Marine Corps wrote Ward earlier this month saying his online ad on the Drudge Report website on March 31 and April 1 violated the directive. The ad showed Ward in camouflage and body armor and said, "With Your Help I Will Vote To Repeal ObamaCare!"

The $2,500 ad encouraged contributions and directed viewers to the campaign website, vaughnward.com.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/04/27/1168913/marines-tell-ward-to-pull-campaign.html

Via Ed Morrissey:

 

OFFICE POLITICS
The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama's health care "reform" law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius's staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.

"The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote," says an HHS source. "Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think."

The analysis, performed by Medicare's Office of the Actuary, which in the past has been identified as a "nonpolitical" office, set off alarm bells when submitted. "We know a copy was sent to the White House via their legislative affairs staff," says the HHS staffer, "and there were a number of meetings here almost right after the analysis was submitted to the secretary's office. Everyone went into lockdown, and people here were too scared to go public with the report."

In the end, the report was released several weeks after the vote -- the review by the secretary's office reportedly took less than three days -- and bore a note that the analysis was not the official position of the Obama administration.

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/04/26/what-lies-beneath