A big audience turned out yesterday for the second meeting of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, or the "super committee," as its 12 members asked questions of the first witness, CBO director Doug Elmendorf. The meeting was open to the public and there was live video on the committee's new website.
While all the other cameras were focused on the committee members and witness, we turned ours 180 degrees to check out the crowd — and we want your help to identify the people keeping a close eye on this committee. Check out the photos below and the ...
Sen. Kerry Speaks on Super Committee Influence
In his first extensive interview about his membership on the Super Committee—the super powerful deficit reduction committee charged with finding $1.5... View Article
Continue readingTop donors to Super Committee House Dems lobby for Defense and Medicare funding
A replacement for the Space Shuttle, tax breaks for personal injury attorneys, two nuclear powered submarines and bigger Medicare reimbursements for some specialists and drugs are among the lobbying wish lists of the top career donors to the three House Democrats on the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, otherwise known as the super committee.
As we noted in our previous posts on the three House Republicans, the three Senate Democrats and the three Senate Republicans on the super committee, the dozen members all have private interests backing them who are far more concerned with their own bottom lines than ...
Continue readingMore on Open Meetings for the Super Committee
A number of press reports suggest today that the Super Committee’s rules permit it to close meetings to the public.... View Article
Continue readingSuper Committee Transparency Update: Rules Adopted
The “Super Committee” has just finished its first organizational meeting, and we now know a little more about how it’s... View Article
Continue readingBipartisan Bill Would Expose Efforts to Influence Super Committee
Representatives Loebsack (D-IA), Quigley (D-IL) and Renacci (R-OH) introduced the Deficit Committee Transparency Act today, an important bill that would... View Article
Continue readingSunlight Live to cover first “Supercommittee” hearing
After a quick summer recess, Congress returned this week with the newly formed “Supercommittee” scheduled to hold its first debt reduction meeting this Thursday at 10:30 a.m. EST. Unlike the debt negotiations held earlier this summer, the Supercommittee meetings will be conducted openly and we’ll be there to provide live fact checking, context and analysis so you can better understand the tanlged web of money and politics and how it relates to these meetings.
Although it is not yet known if the first hearing will be televised of livestreamed online, we will have reporters in the room ...
Continue readingDonors to Senate GOP super committee members seek tax cuts, tax breaks
The Club for Growth, which advocates making permanent some tax cuts and eliminating entirely others that, over just two years, would amount to more than $765 billion in lost revenues over two years, is a top donor to two of the three Republican Senators on the Joint Select Committee on Debt Reduction--the super committee. Other top donors include a hedge fund run by a top Republican donor that invests in, among other things, defaulted debt of sovereign nations, corporations trying to shield income earned overseas from U.S. taxes, and utility firms seeking to avoid regulation of greenhouse gases.
As ...
Continue readingSuper Committee Will Hold Public Meetings
We’re enormously relieved to read that the Super Committee will hold public meetings: Both meetings are open to the public... View Article
Continue readingSuper Committee Transparency: Not Going Away
Just a reminder: the issue of transparency for the Super Committee isn’t going away. It’s been three weeks since the... View Article
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