A rock star on the campaign trail, Bachmann wields little influence on the Hill
Rep. Michele Bachmann has emerged as a leading voice opposed to raising the nation’s borrowing limit, rejecting the White House’s contention that failing to do so could have catastrophic consequences and arguing that the country could use a little bit of “tough love.”
Rather than promoting her views in the back rooms of Congress, however, the Republican presidential candidate has preferred venues where she wields a lot more power: on the campaign trail, where in recent weeks she has attained rock-star status, and in front of the television cameras that gave her a start as a conservative firebrand.
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Brookings: Green economy is improving but not in the clear
Mark Muro, Brookings senior fellow and director of policy for its Metropolitan, argues that although a green economy employs significant numbers of Americans in every region of the country, global market challenges are proving to be a serious challenge.
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Wolf criticizes counterterrorism nominee over detainee resettlement plans
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) has accused President Obama’s nominee to head the National Counterterrorism Center of misleading him about plans to resettle Guantanamo Bay detainees in Northern Virginia, an effort the administration later aborted, and urged the Senate to reject the nomination.
Obama earlier this month chose Matthew Olsen, currently general counsel at the National Security Agency and previously a longtime Justice Department official, to be the country’s next counterterrorism chief.
Wolf, in a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was troubled by Olsen’s actions as former director of the Guantanamo Review Task Force, whose members assessed all the detainees at the U.S. military prison and recommend whether they should be prosecuted, held indefinitely or transferred home or to a third country.
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GOP dissent complicates path to resolving debt-ceiling crisis
The president, the speaker of the House, the chairman of the Federal Reserve and Moody’s credit-rating agency all say that a failure to raise the U.S. debt ceiling by Aug. 2 would be an economic catastrophe and must be avoided.
Rep. Eric A. “Rick” Crawford (R-Ark.) thinks they’ve got it wrong.
Crawford, a freshman legislator, said that the president could cope with a full stop on U.S. borrowing by using incoming tax revenue to pay for the services he thinks are essential — soldiers, Medicare and Social Security, and interest on existing debt.
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