newswire - page 11

A Republican lawmaker defended the lack of a federal prohibition on usury by citing economic problems in East Germany before its 1989 collapse. Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) was attacking a proposal to cap consumer interest rates in the United States at 36 percent. The legislation was introduced during a House Financial Services Committee meeting on Wednesday by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the panel. “That’s what they experienced on the other side of this [Berlin] Wall that had held them captive behind…

Keep Reading

Senate Democrats are on the verge of helping Congressional Republicans scale back key banking regulations signed into law after last decade’s massive financial crisis Moderate liberals on the Senate Banking Committee are working with Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) to hash out a proposal that would relax rules on speculation and oversight of some of the country’s largest banks. Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) are at the heart of efforts to revise the framework established…

Keep Reading

A top labor regulator could be poised to quietly rule on matters involving past clients. Senate Democrats this week hit out at National Labor Relations Board Member William Emanuel for only disclosing the names of those who recently paid at least $5,000 for his legal expertise. The legislators noted that while these disclosures may satisfy Congressional requirements, President Trump initially made rigorous ethics demands on his nominees. In a January executive order, days after his inauguration, Trump asked appointees to abstain from taking part “in any particular matter…directly…

Keep Reading

States that want to force Medicaid recipients to get a job before qualifying for healthcare have an ally in the Trump administration, according to remarks made on Tuesday by the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Speaking to the National Association of Medicaid Directors, Seema Verma gave a nod to the several states across the country that had hoped to enact Medicaid work requirements only to be shot down by the Obama administration. “Those days are over,” Verma said in prepared…

Keep Reading

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) called out the Center for Medicare Services (CMS) for not properly gauging the threat of opioid abuse by the elderly. More than 727,000 individuals in the Medicare Prescription Drug program are at risk of opioid addiction, according to some government measures, yet CMS estimated that the at-risk population was only a sliver of that, according to a GAO report released Monday, GAO blamed insufficient data collection at CMS for that massive gap in oversight. “Without expanding and enhancing its data collection…

Keep Reading

Republicans are attempting to hurriedly ram major tax reform through Congress. The House Ways and Means Committee started mark-up hearings on Monday, to advance a bill that would re-write the tax code. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) complained at the start of the process about the dearth of any public examination of the proposal in hearings before the influential Ways and Means Committee. Doggett also decried Trump’s refusal to disclose his own financial holdings–a move that would reveal how he personally stands to be impacted by…

Keep Reading

House Republicans introduced a $1.5 trillion tax cut proposal on Thursday that would drastically reduce current obligations for some of the wealthiest individuals and firms in the country. The so-called Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which has received an endorsement from President Trump, includes tax reductions for most Americans. But benefits fall heaviest on entities at the higher end of the wealth spectrum. Pre-deduction corporate tax rates would be permanently slashed from 35 percent to 20 percent. Other types of businesses, like partnerships and S-corps,…

Keep Reading