'Your papers, please' must never be heard in America
Less than a month after cruising to a new term in Washington, Rep. Jo Ann Emerson announced Monday she is leaving her southeastern Missouri congressional district to become the leader of an organization for rural electric cooperatives.
The Internal Revenue Service can't keep up with surging tax cheating and isn't sufficiently collecting revenue or helping confused taxpayers because Congress isn't giving it enough money to do its job, a government watchdog said Wednesday.
When D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray announced Wednesday that language in Congress' short-term spending measure allowed the District to spend its local dollars in the new fiscal year "for the first time ever," it generated some interest in the way that anything might that has never happened before.
Mayor Vincent C. Gray on Wednesday praised the insertion of language into a short-term federal spending plan that allows the District to use local funds for the fiscal year that begins on Saturday while Congress continues to debate its financial plan for 2012.
Congress made no new attempts to influence D.C. social policy, sending a city budget bill to the House floor Thursday without any amendments related to the nation's capital.
Republicans in the House think federal belt-tightening needs to start with Congress and the White House itself. On Thursday, the House Appropriations Committee will vote on a fiscal year 2012 government-operations appropriations bill that trimmed 5 percent from the Executive Office of the President. President Obama had originally sought to pump up his personal budget by $34 million, showing once more how out of touch he has become in these tough economic times.
The government has opened a preliminary investigation into reports of stalling engines in more than 43,000 Toyota Highlander hybrids.
"There's simply no evidence that the escalation is working. Conditions are deteriorating...Waiting until September is not the answer. Holding out blind hope — blind trust that progress will appear out of thin air, that is not the answer." — Sen. Harry Reid, in a Wednesday floor speech.
"There's simply no evidence that the escalation is working. Conditions are deteriorating...Waiting until September is not the answer. Holding out blind hope — blind trust that progress will appear out of thin air, that is not the answer." — Sen. Harry Reid, in a Wednesday floor speech.
"I am not leaving Congress because I have lost my heart for service. To the contrary, I see a new way to serve," she said. "I did not go seeking this opportunity, but I am excited about the new challenge it offers to find ways to promote strong rural policy."
She said she will miss working with small-business owners, families, community leaders, students and military members.
