Word: congression
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...will be hard for Republicans to vote against, including a package that extends unemployment insurance, health care benefits for the unemployed and tax breaks for companies; a bill to help ease credit for small businesses; the Federal Aviation Administration's reauthorization, a bipartisan measure that has been kicking around Congress for three years and would, analysts say, create upwards of 125,000 new jobs by modernizing aerospace infrastructure; and "meaningful" infrastructure investments, including, possibly, energy programs. "Every time you add something to a bill, there are some people who think that you bring support on - maybe...
...Congress Looks Toward a Jobs Stimulus...
...Congress and the President have broad powers to find and fix what ails government. Congress has oversight and investigative authority granted implicitly by the Constitution and explicitly by statute. Pretty much every agency in the executive branch, even top-secret ones, has an inspector general charged with rooting out fraud, waste and abuse. And whole organizations exist to pursue and expose noncriminal bad behavior in government...
...When one party is in control of both the White House and one or both chambers of Congress, the Hill often overlooks oversight of the executive branch. For example, says American Enterprise Institute scholar Norm Ornstein, during the period of GOP dominance under George W. Bush, homeland-security oversight failed. "The failure to do any oversight of the Homeland Security Department helped lead to the failure of Katrina," Ornstein says...
...Partisanship can stall investigations as easily as it can generate them. After the Bush Administration incorrectly declared that Saddam Hussein had dangerous weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the 2003 war in Iraq, Congress launched a three-phase investigation into the intelligence screwup. But Republicans accused Democrats of going on a politically motivated witch hunt, and Democrats said Republicans were complicit in a cover-up of Administration mishandling of intelligence. It took years to get through the first two phases of the investigation. By the time the third got under way, few were paying attention anymore...