Last night, the Senate passed H.R. 3548, the Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009. The House is expected to pass the Senate version quickly—perhaps today—and President Obama is likely to sign it.
The bill authorizes up to 14 additional weeks of benefits for unemployed workers nationwide, provided they have already exhausted their earlier authorized benefits or [...]
In response to the passions that some issues generate (this bill, for example), we’ve produced an ingenious new function in our comment system.
It’s sort of an automated schoolmarm that invites people to tone down their language if they’ve gotten a little too riled up. Visitors who use harsh language will be invited to reconsider [...]
The bill to extend unemployment benefits another little while has gotten a score from the CBO. That’s the Congressional Budget Office, a small agency that does economic modeling and estimates about the spending and revenue effects of pending bills.
You can see the analysis itself by going to the “Learn More” box on the page for [...]
Another bill to extend unemployment benefits was introduced yesterday. The text of the bill isn’t available yet, so I can’t tell you how long it would extend them for. The bill is H.R. 3756.
What’s this about foul-mouthed rants?
The top four most visited bills on the site so far this week deal with unemployment benefits, [...]
The bills in Congress address many controversial issues, so it’s no wonder that the comments on many bill pages can get pretty tough. Many people lack the social skills to deal with disagreement in a productive way. Instead, they call each other names and use vulgar language here on the site.
We don’t like it, but [...]
A visitor to WashingtonWatch.com writes in about the tenor of discussion on H.R. 3491, the Thomas G. Schubert Agent Orange Fairness Act:
With all due respect WashingtonWatch.com why is it that people are allowed to leave vicious & mean spirited comments about recipients of a bill. Why do you allow these people to continually leave [...]
Happy Fourth of July!
What better way to celebrate the founding of our nation than . . . um, by . . . blogging?
Those were the words that introduced the WashingtonWatch.com blog one year ago yesterday – well, one year and two days ago.
That’s right, this blog debuted exactly one year ago, give or [...]
On H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.
“WHY ARE MY MESSAGES NOT POSTING?“
Among the more bizarre comments we’ve seen in a while are the first few on H.R. 1467, The Safe and Secure America Act of 2009. The bill would extend provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act and the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 for 10 years. Serious stuff.
But that doesn’t mean that serious [...]
One of the bills that had a huge wave of popularity here on the site in the past was the Vietnam Human Rights Act of 2007. I still remember watching comments come rolling in at a pace of one every few minutes when the word went out among a group in the Vietnamese community about [...]