Senate news stories on Newser

Bill to Lower Student Loan Rates Fails in Senate

Kevin Spak — Tue, 08 May 2012 13:25:04 CDT

Hope your federal student loans are paid off, kids, because Washington appears deadlocked over legislation that would prevent their rates from doubling this July. A Senate bill to do so failed in a 52-45 vote along party lines today, failing to get the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster,...

Senate Passes Plan to Save Postal Service

Rob Quinn — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 03:55:00 CDT

A plan to save the US Postal Service from financial collapse has passed the Senate with unusual speed. The Senate plan calls for a major overhaul of the service, which is losing $36 million a day. The bill would allow the service to cut its pension and retiree benefit costs,...

2011 Senate 'Laziest' in Decades

Matt Cantor — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:05:34 CDT

The 2011 Senate produced less legislation than any other since 1992, according to a report by the chamber's own secretary. Throughout its 170 days, the Senate was in session an average of just 6.5 hours per day; only 2008's Senate had a lower figure, with three members running for...

Senate Sends Insider Trading Bill to Obama

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:26:14 CDT

The Senate today sent President Obama a scaled-down bill to explicitly ban members of Congress, the president, and thousands of other federal workers from profiting from nonpublic information learned on the job. In an unusual move, the legislation passed unanimously without a vote on the measure itself. Instead it passed...

GOP Balks at Renewing Violence Against Women Act

Kevin Spak — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 10:04:42 CDT

Conservative senators are coming out against renewing the Violence Against Women Act, which provides federal funding for domestic violence programs and passed with broad bipartisan support in 1994. Democratic women plan to march to the Senate floor today and demand a quick vote to extend the bill, the New York...

Senate Kills GOP Measure to Push Keystone Pipeline

John Johnson — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 18:45:17 CST

Looks like a good-news, bad-news result for President Obama today on the Keystone oil pipeline. The good news for him is that a Republican measure to fast-track the controversial pipeline fell short in the Senate, reports the Hill . Obama had personally lobbied against the measure, and passage would have been...

Maine's Angus King: Next Senate Power-Broker?

John Johnson — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:42:30 CST

There's a decent chance his name won't ring a bell, but the Washington Post today declares Angus King to be the "most important Senate candidate in the country." As the Fix blog explains, King is running for Olympia Snowe's seat in Maine , and as a popular former governor, he makes...

Senate Cat Candidate Hounded by Attack Ad

Mary Papenfuss — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 00:01:00 CST

Me-ouch. Hank the tabby who's running a spoofy campaign for a Virginia Senate seat had no idea politics could be such a catfight . Hank's already being hit with a dog-eat-dog attack ad firing questions off about his birth certificate, tax returns (he hasn't filed any), alleged use of catnip, and...

Olympia Snowe: I Quit Because Senate Is Hopeless

Kevin Spak — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 11:59:05 CST

Olympia Snowe has had it with the Senate's intractable partisan gridlock. In a Washington Post op-ed, Snowe explains her impending retirement , and she doesn't mince words. "Simply put, the Senate is not living up to what the Founding Fathers envisioned," she writes. "The greatest deliberative body in human history is...