Word: bille
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Democrats in Washington have taken extraordinary steps to address long-term unemployment in this recession. Last year Congress added 33 extra weeks of unemployment benefits. As part of the stimulus bill this year, Congress added an additional potential 20 weeks for the worst hit states, raising to 79 weeks the maximum time a laid-off worker can draw unemployment assistance while looking for a job. To combat "hysteresis," or the atrophying of job skills in the labor force, the Labor Department issued an opinion earlier this year that workers can still draw unemployment insurance even if they work a volunteer...
...there is "no justification for the current statutory penalty scheme" for cocaine, a position the commission first took in 1995. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress now agree that crack sentencing rules need to be fixed; and this may be the year that Congress finally heeds the commission. A bill creating parity between crack and powder cleared a House subcommittee last week, and the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to release a bipartisan parity bill after the August recess...
...issue of retroactivity, though, is anyone's guess. It would require an act of Congress to apply the crack-powder parity to mandatory minimums retroactively. The House bill is silent on that issue, and the Senate bill is expected to be as well. That would mean another fight from advocates for a retroactivity amendment. Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based reform group, asks: "If we've been doing something that's unfair for 23 years now, don't we have an obligation to address that unfairness...
...Clinton, Bill • two American journalists are freed from North Korean jail thanks to the diplomatic efforts of, which, of course, greatly upsets the ultimate undiplomat John Bolton and the nasty little troll Dick Morris...
...only a few years ago that an up-and-coming member of the House Democratic leadership pointed to a cozy arrangement in the Republican-written Medicare prescription-drug program as a symptom of everything wrong with Washington. The 2003 bill barred the government from negotiating for lower drug prices for its 43 million Medicare recipients. Instead, that task was delegated to private insurers and their agents, who Democrats argued - and still argue - don't have the muscle to get the steep discounts that a huge government program could. "Direct negotiation for lower prescription-drug prices is directly related...