Articles About Republicans

The Treasury Department is planning to sell $142 billion worth of toxic assets that it acquired during the financial crisis.  According to Treasury, it wants to sell approximately $10 million worth of assets every month, depending on market conditions and hopes to end the program next year.  Treasury acquired the securities — primarily 30-year, fixed-rate […]

January’s big snowstorms on the East Coast contributed to the creation of just 63,000 jobs nationally in that month.  In February, however, businesses started to hire workers. The economy added 192,000 jobs, the best showing since May of last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.  The unemployment rate – which is politically important […]

Republican congressmen searching for sizeable spending cuts are targeting Wall Street’s regulators over a plan to slash millions from the budgets of several vital agencies. They are setting their sights on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).  The workload of both agencies is expected to increase significantly as […]

Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker – a Tea Party favorite — accused the state legislature’s 14 Democratic senators of “vacationing” because they walked out of the State Legislature and took refuge in Illinois to avoid a vote that would strip most of the state’s employees of their collective bargaining rights.  Because of the Democrats’ absence, […]

The Obama administration and the Treasury Department have decided that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the public-private housing finance model in place for the past four decades – will come to an end, although they pledged to continue backing the agencies’ existing obligations. “The GSE (government-sponsored enterprise) model is dead,” an Obama administration official […]

President Barack Obama is proposing an option to create an insurance fund for mortgage-backed securities, similar to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that protects Americans savings accounts. The proposal consists of three legislative options for making long-term changes to the housing finance system, while taking short-term moves to gradually reduce the government’s role in the […]

Implementation of the historic Dodd-Frank bill – which President Barack Obama signed into law last July to regulate Wall Street against the excesses that led to the Great Recession — is in danger of being gutted if Republicans’ proposed deep spending cuts become a reality.  Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) pointedly criticized Republicans’ proposal to slash […]

President Barack Obama’s crackdown on Wall Street excesses could be hampered if the incoming Republican-controlled Congress refuses to fund two crucial regulatory agencies.  The Dodd-Frank financial reform law – passed with heavy Democratic support – promised a generous budget to regulate the $600 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market.  Now, the law’s implementation may be derailed by […]

Now that the long-awaited data from the 2010 Census has been published, the states are learning which places will gain congressional seats and precious electoral votes — a circumstance that could impact the outcome of the 2012 presidential election.  The U.S. Constitution requires a census count every 10 years to accurately reflect population shifts in […]

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s efforts to keep the successful Put Illinois to Work program alive have come under fire from State Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno (R-Lemont).  The issue is $47 million in bond money that Quinn used to extend the job-creation program through the first of the year.  The program was originally funded by […]