Stephen Dinan

Year after oil spill, Gulf seafood rebounds

President Obama is doing stomach stimulus this week as he eats his way across the Midwest, but exactly a year ago he had more riding on the presidential palate as he ate his way across the Gulf of Mexico coast, trying to revive the region's tourism and seafood industries one shrimp po' boy at a time.

August 17, 2011

Fitch keeps U.S. credit rating at AAA

The Fitch Ratings agency on Tuesday affirmed its AAA credit rating for the federal government, giving the U.S. a boost just two weeks after another ratings agency marked it down for the first time in history.

August 16, 2011

Toomey focuses on fighting for spending cuts

He's the only member who voted against last week's debt deal, and also the only one who wrote his own individual budget this year - both of which make Sen. Patrick J. Toomey the wild-card selection to the 12-member deficit supercommittee charged with finding $1.5 trillion in deficit cuts by Thanksgiving.

August 14, 2011

Supercommittee is short on dealmakers, compromisers

The 12-member supercommittee tasked with straightening out the country's fiscal mess is long on lawmakers who have already whiffed in recent months on chances to strike deals and short on those who have shown a readiness to make the compromises that all sides say will be needed.

August 11, 2011

GOP picks 6 for deficit panel with tilt to spending cuts

Republican leaders Wednesday tapped six lawmakers with strong spending-cuts credentials to represent the party on the deficit supercommittee tasked with recommending $1.5 trillion in tax increases or spending cuts, sending a signal that the committee will focus heavily on trimming government.

August 10, 2011

House GOP prevents recess appointments

To C-SPAN viewers, Tuesday's House session opened just like any other. But expand the camera angle a bit, and the scene is anything but business as usual.

August 9, 2011

Obama renews call for more stimulus

Pummeled by ghastly economic news, President Obama called Monday for more spending and extended tax cuts that he said would help stimulate the economy — but these also could deepen the deficit problems that helped the federal government earn its first-ever debt downgrade last week.

August 8, 2011

Technology leads to end of House page program

Citing high costs and limited duties, House Speaker John A. Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Monday that they are ending the page program that has seen both successes and its share of controversy in its near 200-year history.

August 8, 2011

Deal puts FAA workers back on the job

The Senate on Friday moved to end a furlough of thousands of Federal Aviation Administration employees, using an abbreviated session of Congress to pass a stopgap bill that sends them back to work.

August 5, 2011

FY2011 deficit tops $1 trillion, with two months to go

The federal deficit this year has now topped $1 trillion and is on pace for the second-largest shortfall in history, with the government recording its 34th straight month in the red, according to the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office.

August 5, 2011

U.S. eats up most of debt limit in one day

U.S. debt shot up $239 billion on Tuesday — the largest one-day bump in history — as the government flexed the new borrowing room it earned in this week's debt-limit increase deal.

August 3, 2011

Senate’s Republican freshmen ensure Tea Party is heard

As the final vote on raising the government's borrowing limit approached Tuesday, Republican after Republican took to the Senate floor to attack the bipartisan deal. The one unifying theme: Most were freshman, newly elected with the support of the tea party movement, and showed no qualms about bucking their own party's leaders who wrote the deal.

August 2, 2011

House easily passes measure on debt ceiling; Giffords back at Capitol Hill

Punctuated by the surprise return of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, House Republicans and Democrats united Monday to avert a debt crisis, pushing through an increase of up to $2.4 trillion in new borrowing authority, imposing instant spending limits and setting up another five months of debate over making even deeper cuts or raising taxes.

August 1, 2011

Real work on debt limit still to come

The defining element of Sunday night's debt-limit deal is not what happens now, but what it sets up for the next five months: an all-out war between tax increasers and entitlement cutters, fought on the battlefield of a 12-member congressional "supercommittee."

August 1, 2011

Debt deal: $32.4 billion per page

The debt framework President Obama and congressional leaders reached Sunday night runs 74 pages long, and could authorize as much as $2.4 trillion in new debt — or $32.4 billion per page.

August 1, 2011

Biden works Capitol Hill for debt votes

The debt-limit framework has been struck — now leaders on Capitol Hill are feverishly seeking to sell it to their colleagues in the hope of beating Tuesday's deadline.

August 1, 2011

Obama’s base: We’ve been ‘thrown under the bus’

Even without a debt-limit deal completed, liberal lawmakers and activist groups are already lining up against the outlines of the agreement, saying President Obama and congressional Democrats are risking Social Security while squandering a chance to force tax increases.

July 31, 2011

Vote looms for a debt-limit deal

President Obama and congressional leaders late Sunday said they've settled on the outlines of a deal to raise the government's borrowing limit, and will pitch the deal to their colleagues Monday to try to tamp down burgeoning rebellions among both Democrats and Republicans.

July 31, 2011

Senate delays debt vote as optimism grows

Saying debt-limit talks between the White House and Republicans are making some progress, Senate Democrats put off a 1 a.m. Sunday showdown vote.

July 30, 2011

House votes to head off Senate debt bill in retaliatory strike

In a vote of theater politics, House Republicans introduced and then killed the Democrats' debt limit bill Saturday afternoon, trying to force both sides back to the negotiating table by showing there is no viable proposal left right now.

July 30, 2011