The Hill
provides a behind-the-scenes look at how House Majority Leader Eric
Cantor (R-VA) successfully navigated the STOCK Act, the bill that would
apply insider trading laws to members of Congress, through the House
with bipartisan support.

“Cantor…wanted to study, expand and build
support for an insider-trading bill that would garner support from a
large majority of House GOP legislators. In doing so, the majority
leader read Throw Them All Out, the book by Peter Schweizer that served
as the basis for the ’60 Minutes’ report… As the House deliberated,
the Democrat-led Senate pounced. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
(D-Nev.) bypassed committee action and quickly passed the chamber’s
version of the STOCK Act. “

“Cantor, who is not shy in mixing it
up with Democrats, refrained from responding to the attacks and worked
to win over skeptical House Republicans. From late December until its
passage in February, Cantor met with scores of members, talked with the
counsels on six of the committees with jurisdiction and briefed the
conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC) and the entire House GOP
conference… In an unanticipated twist as the measure neared
consideration on the House floor, Cantor praised Walz and Slaughter in a
press release. He also called Walz for help to pass the insider-trading
bill.”

Lawmakers “attempted to pack hundreds of special spending provisions into at least 10 bills in the summer and fall, less than a year after congressional leaders declared a moratorium on earmarks,” the Washington Post reports.

“The moratorium, announced last November in the House and in February in the Senate, is a verbal commitment by the Republican leadership to prohibit lawmakers from directing federal funds to handpicked projects and groups in their districts. Lawmakers have tried to get around the moratorium by promising to allow other groups to compete for the funds. But the legislative language is so narrowly tailored that critics consider the practice to be earmarking by another name.”

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that while just 23% of Americans see Congress as a whole favorably, substantially more, 41%, express a favorable impression of their own representative.

From the political dictionary: “smell of jet fuel”

“I’m ashamed.”

— Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), in a Face the Nation interview, on how Congress has conducted its business.

[Read more…]

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s (D-AZ) husband scolded House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) “for failing to visit his wounded wife while she was recovering from injuries sustained in a shooting in his and Giffords’ new book,” according to The Hill.

Boehner was in Houston for a basketball game while Giffords was in rehabilitation in the same city.

Writes Mark Kelly: “Considering that she was a member of Congress and he was the highest-ranking member, we thought he’d ask to visit Gabby or at least give a call to see how she was doing. Our only contact with him had been a simple get-well card he’d sent a few days after Gabby was injured.”

House Republicans released a final version of a spending bill “would unravel school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year, which included limiting the use of potatoes on the lunch line and delaying limits on sodium and delaying a requirement to boost whole grains,” the AP reports.

“The bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. USDA had wanted to prevent that.”

60 Minutes ran a devastating report on how lawmakers and their aides “have regular access to powerful political intelligence, and many have
made well-timed stock market trades in the very industries they
regulate. For now, the practice is perfectly legal, but some say it’s
time for the law to change.”

Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) got a little heated at a local restaurant and started screaming at his constituents.

[Read more…]

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) “vows to return to Congress in a new book that details months of intense therapy and her emotional battle to come to terms with what happened when a gunman opened fire in front of a Tucson grocery store,” the AP reports after obtaining a copy of her memoir, called Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope, due out later this month.

The book also describes lighter moments, “like when President George H.W. Bush
and his wife, Barbara, visited Giffords at the Texas hospital. Giffords
kept replying to Bush with the only word she was able to say: ‘chicken.’ At another point, a specialist showed her various politicians
to see if she recognized people. When she saw former California Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, she said: ‘Messin’ around. Babies.'”

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) “pushed back hard” against an upcoming 60 Minutes report “that is expected to raise questions about potential conflicts of interest between congressional leaders’ personal stock holdings and their involvement in legislation that may affect those investments,” Politico reports.

60 Minutes is apparently doing a piece on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as correspondent Steve Croft showed up at a routine press conference today to ask her about a conflict of interest with her investments.

[Read more…]

Members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion
in 2010, a nearly 25% increase over the 2008 total, Roll Call reports.

Nearly 90% of that increase is concentrated in the 50 richest lawmakers.