It's a long shot, but if Republicans pull off an inside straight in November and pick up the 10 Senate seats needed to grab the majority, GOP senators almost certainly would make the soft-spoken but tough-as-nails Mitch McConnell of Kentucky the next majority leader. McConnell, 68, the minority leader, wouldn't bite when asked what his agenda would be if his party gains control. Though confident, he doesn't want to be presumptuous.
In an interview on August 2 in his spacious office in the Capitol, the bespectacled lawmaker made it clear that he thinks that President Obama has steered the country in a far-left direction, out of step with voters. So it's a safe bet that bruising clashes, especially over domestic policy, will follow if McConnell becomes the Senate's top leader -- at least until both sides decide that it's in their interest to compromise. Such deal-making took place in the 1990s after President Clinton was confronted with newly installed Republican majorities in the House and Senate. But given the level of partisanship in Washington and the anger in the country today, bipartisan deal-cutting is hard to imagine. McConnell also defended his party's stances in policy battles with the White House over nominations and on legislation dealing with the oil spill in the Gulf. He also explained the strong opposition of most Republicans to the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.
Read the full interview here.
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., has become a YouTube star after his opening statement in committee on the House health care bill, which has now received more than 3.1 million hits on YouTube. The conservative Republican, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on health, saw his bill to expand health savings accounts to low-income families signed into law in 2006. After his YouTube success, Rogers has been outspoken about President Obama's health care reform, and now he plans to introduce his own compromise bill.
NationalJournal.com recently spoke with Rogers about the prospects for a bipartisan bill, Obama's address to the joint session, the public option and why his video has been so popular.
Continue reading Hope For Bipartisanship On Health Care?.
In hopes of stimulating more private investment and competition in nuclear energy, a handful of House Republicans recently introduced a bill that would mandate the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to expedite its nuclear reactor review process for applications that meet certain criteria while helping to introduce more reactors into the marketplace.
The bill's sponsor, Rep. Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania, stresses the importance of blending more nuclear power into the nation's energy mix. Nuclear energy generates 20 percent of the nation's electricity and 35 percent of Pennsylvania's, but its development has stagnated for the last 30 years. Many observers trace that back to the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979; no one died in that partial core meltdown, but it remains the country's most significant nuclear emergency. The congressional district that's home to the plant borders Pitts'.
NationalJournal.com recently talked with Pitts to find out more about the bill and ask him to respond to concerns of both industry experts and those that NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko expressed in another interview with NationalJournal.com.
Continue reading A Quicker Path To Approval For New Reactors.
Twenty-five U.S. banks failed in 2008, making it the busiest year in recent memory for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation -- until this year, when bank failures are at 37 and counting.
As the FDIC has scrambled, so has the Government Accountability Office. As the FDIC's official auditor, GAO is responsible for reporting on the agency's fiscal health and transparency, and what it's seen is an "unprecedented drop" in reserve funds over the past year, according to Steven Sebastian, the GAO's director of financial management and assurance.
In a conversation with NationalJournal.com's Michelle Williams, Sebastian talked about why 2008 was a particularly painful year for FDIC and how 2009 will be another challenging one. Edited excerpts follow.Continue reading GAO: More Stress Ahead For FDIC.
