It would take labor law in a new direction. Unlike right-to-work statutes, which help businesses escape unionization, the ERA would protect union workers from high-handedness and abuses of power by their union leaders.
The measure was formulated by Richard Berman, a Washington lobbyist and longtime foe of excessive union power in labor relations and politics. It’s been passionately embraced by Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah and 20 other Republican senators. In the House, its chief sponsor is Tim Scott of South Carolina, a star of the freshman class of 87 Republicans.
Though it has dazzlingly high poll numbers, the measure is unlikely to be enacted any time soon. Unless Republicans capture the White House and the Senate in the November election while keeping control of the House, it’s a sure loser. Even if Republicans gain full control in Washington, passage is not guaranteed.
As expected, labor leaders view the ERA with dread. Indeed, it threatens to diminish their authority significantly. And when labor chieftains feel strongly about an issue, congressional Democrats reflexively line up on their side.
In a letter to be released later today, a bipartisan group of 89 House members urge Barack Obama to fully implement Iranian sanctions Congress passed last year. In particular, the members of Congress want the president to implement the legislation, and not the president’s interpretation of the sanctions.
On the night Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in November 2010, John Boehner laid out the new Congress’s key priorities: to restrain the growth of government, cut spending, reform how Congress works, and end the uncertainty in the economy to help get Americans back to work. But then he offered a cautionary note to voters: “While our new majority will serve as your voice in the people’s House, we must remember it is the president who sets the agenda for our government.”
Jen Rubin makes the case today that the anti-piracy bills pending in the House, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and Senate, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), are likely unconstitutional.
We all spend so much time trying to make sense of the daily data deluge—retail sales, jobs, exports, deficits, political polling—that we often overlook more durable shifts in the underlying economy. Two are worth considering.
In 2010, Republicans won control of the House by offering to resist the Obama agenda. But their victory left open the question of whether they would also confront the grave fiscal challenges facing the country, and move beyond mere opposition to present an alternative governing vision to that of the Obama Democrats.
When former New Hampshire senator Judd Gregg was being considered for Commerce secretary in early 2009, his investments came under scrutiny. Among other things, Gregg had earmarked $66 million in federal funds to transform a decommissioned Air Force base in his home state into a business park.
Greece and Italy may be ungovernable, but America is ungoverned. The president ducked out of the country for an Asian tour while the supercommittee tried to reach agreement on a plan to cut the deficit.
The House of Representatives voted down a proposed balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, the Associated Press reports. The House did not achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to pass the amendment and send it to the Senate.
The crony capitalism represented by the failed “green energy” firm Solyndra has gotten a lot of media attention lately, but much lower on the public’s radar is a much bigger example of corporate pork over at the national space agency—and it’s bipartisan. Let’s call it Shuttlyndra.
Here’s how it works.
A little over a year ago, Congress approved a NASA authorization bill that mandated the agency to spend billions in taxpayer dollars over the next few years on a congressionally specified giant rocket with no defined mission and no budgets with which to build payloads for it.
Florida congressman Connie Mack IV is now the front runner in the Republican Senate primary race, according to a new Quinnipiac poll. Mack, who has not yet officially announced his candidacy, leads all other Republicans vying for the spot, including former U.S. senator George LeMieux, who was appointed by then governor Charlie Crist to succeed Mel Martinez. Thirty-two percent of the poll's respondents indicated they would vote for Mack.
