Laura Matthews - International Business Times
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has reportedly temporarily hit the brakes on a bipartisan plan he’s working on with Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to avert the first-ever U.S. default and reopen the government.
PBS NewsHour - PBS NewsHour
Political negotiations over the government’s budget in Washington, D.C., are at a standstill, with Republicans in Congress threatening to shut down the government unless President Barack Obama agrees to defund the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as “Obamacare."
Bernie Becker - The Hill
The federal government does little in the way of oversight for tax breaks that generally offer the biggest savings to the wealthy, a new paper argues.
Gregory Korte - USA Today
WASHINGTON — So-called "tax expenditures" — those deductions, credits, exclusions, loopholes and other goodies that clutter up the tax code — now amount to nearly $1.2 trillion a year, the government says. But it's not all corporate tax giveaways and special-interest handouts: More than 90% of federal tax breaks go ...
Bob Dunn - Hampshire Gazette
NORTHAMPTON — While lawmakers consider whether to use military force in retaliation against Syria’s alleged use of nerve gas on its citizens, the National Priorities Project has calculated such action may cost hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.
Nicholas Kristof - The New York Times
On security issues, we Americans need a rebalancing.
Mattea Kramer and Jo Comerford - The Nation
It’s 2023 -- and this is America 10 years after the first across-the-board federal budget cuts known as sequestration went into effect. They went on for a decade, making no exception for effective programs vital to America’s economic health that were already underfunded, like job training and infrastructure repairs. It wasn’t supposed ...
Michael Winship - Bill Moyers
Just as we’re bemoaning our narcoleptic Congress (see our latest, “Do-Nothing Congress Gives Inertia a Bad Name”), the august body suddenly awakes and springs into action as if someone upped the amperage on its power massage recliners.
Keith Proctor - CNN Money
FORTUNE -- Video surveillance is big business. Expect it to get bigger. After law enforcement used closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras to help identify last week's Boston bombing suspects, lawmakers and surveillance advocates renewed calls for increased numbers of cameras nationwide.
Joshua Song - Chicago Tribune
Members of Stevenson Green Team spent their weekend in Washington D.C. as participants in the “If I Had a Trillion Dollars” Youth Film Festival. The festival, sponsored by the National Priorities Project (NPP) and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), asked young people how they would allocate a trillion dollars ...
