FatherGarage.com

Politics abhors a vacuum, and so without any announced presidential candidates, candidates are beginning to jump into the Republican primary.

Hotline reported on Wednesday that Buddy Roemer, the former Louisiana governor who started out as a Democrat but is now a Republican, will announce the formation of an exploratory committee on Thursday.

Mr. Roemer was a Democratic member of Congress in the 1980s and was elected governor of Louisiana in 1987 as a Democrat. He switched parties in 1991.

As Hotline noted, Mr. Roemer is scheduled to appear in Iowa on Monday at a forum for social conservative activists. Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota; Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania; and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, are also expected to attend.

Earlier this year, Mr. Roemer told The News-Star of Monroe, La., that he was “getting ready to make my case with the American people.”

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Budgets in the House of Representatives will soon undergo some trimming, if Representative John A. Boehner, the incoming speaker, has his way. But according to a new report, congressional staffing levels have already fallen off over the last three decades and many House staffers could be paid significantly more for similar work in the private sector.

The study from the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan outfit that aims to make government more transparent, also found that many employees in personal House offices have seen little change in their salaries over the last 20 years and that congressional offices have shifted more of their staff members away from Washington and into their home districts.

The analysis comes not long after Mr. Boehner said in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that he would look to cut an array of House budgets by 5 percent in order to help reduce federal spending. “You’ve got to start somewhere,” the Ohio Republican said. “And we’re going to start there.”

The Sunlight Foundation’s review did offer several caveats – for instance, in its comparison of salaries in the House and the private sector, the foundation said it was unable to consider committee salaries and that it only had approximate private sector parallels for some positions in Congress.

But it also asserted that, on average, a House member’s chief of staff could make almost 40 percent more in a comparable private position. In other top jobs – such as legislative director, communications director or senior legislative assistant – a staffer could add an additional 50 percent to 80 percent to their salaries in the private sector.

The study also found that staffing levels in House personal offices, committees and leadership offices had dropped to 87 percent of their 1979 figures, with even greater reductions at the Government Accountability Office and other support agencies.

Among the report’s other findings: Except in some higher-ranking positions, salary averages in House personal offices had basically stayed the same over the last two decades, adjusting for inflation. And the number of employees in House personal offices based in Washington had fallen from about three-quarters in 1976 to roughly half in 2005 – which, according to the foundation, suggests that fewer staffers are dealing with policy issues.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

No one ever said this wouldn’t be semi-tough. The bipartisan deficit commission, rocked by criticism of painful draft recommendations by its leaders, has postponed for two days a vote on its report about how to address the nation’s mounting budget problem. The final report, formally unveiled Wednesday, calls for raising the age for Social Security [...]

Banks across the country are increasingly unloading toxic investments as stronger capital levels allow the institutions to clear their books, according to a report issued Tuesday. In their last public appearance, in 2008, these assets crippled banks and the economy, causing more than 300 institutions to fail. Since then, banks have had a tough time [...]

Can one day make a difference? Defense Secretary Robert Gates apparently thinks so. He’s ordered the early release of a Pentagon report on the effects of ending the military prohibition of gays serving openly in the armed forces. The report is due by Dec. 1, but Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Sunday it will be [...]

A Delta Air Lines flight to Moscow with an engine problem landed safely at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on Sunday night, The Associated Press reported. No injuries were immediately reported. Delta’s Flight 30 landed before 6 p.m. and taxied to a gate, said a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman, Holly Baker, told [...]