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    Michael McAuliff

    Michael McAuliff

    Senior Congressional Reporter, HuffPost

  • Lawmakers Don't Think Companies Should Have To Tell You If You're Eating GMOs

    Congress took the first step Tuesday to ban states such as Vermont from requiring companies to label whether foods contain genetically modified organisms, advancing a House Agriculture Committee bill that would pre-empt such laws. The bill, called the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015, sets up a voluntary program for companies that want to disclose genetically modified ingredients, and requires firms that develop new bioengineered foods to get them approved through what is now a voluntary program run by the Food and Drug Administration. Under that program, the FDA reviews a company’s claims that a product is safe, and either objects or not.

  • Paul Ryan Explains What Jeb Bush Meant When He Said Americans Should Work Longer Hours

    Rep. Paul Ryan, who was Mitt Romney's vice presidential nominee in 2012, declined Friday to say whether 2016 contender Jeb Bush's recent declaration that "Americans need to work longer hours" was as damaging as Romney's infamous "47 percent" remarks.

  • Paul Ryan Says Government Won't Shut Down Because Republicans Are In Control

    Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is confident there will be no government shutdown this fall because Republicans are in charge on Capitol Hill, he said Friday. "I’m not worried about that because we control both sides of the rotunda, the House and the Senate," Ryan, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a briefing with reporters. Ryan is optimistic despite the fact that the House has only passed about half of the 12 appropriations measures that are required to keep the government running through September, the Senate hasn't passed any yet, and Congress is on vacation for most of August.

  • Battle Over Confederate Flag Engulfs Congress

    A bill to fund the Department of the Interior stalled Thursday after Republicans tried to add an amendment that would protect the Confederate flag in national cemeteries. The measure had immediately sparked Democratic ire Wednesday night when it was added unexpectedly by Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.). A swarm of lawmakers took to the House floor in the morning to condemn the move.

  • Reid Slams Entire GOP Over 'Disgusting' Trump Remarks

    Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev. slammed not just Donald Trump but the rest of the Republican Party Wednesday over the wealthy businessman's anti-Mexican slurs. Trump has repeatedly described undocumented immigrants from Mexico as rapists and drug dealers, adding, Some, I assume are good people.

  • Jon Stewart Wanted Names Of 9/11 Bill Opponents. Here They Are.

    United Airlines Flight 175 -- a Boeing 767 with 65 passengers on board -- also left Logan for Los Angeles. American Airlines Flight 77 left Washington Dulles International Airport at 8:20 a.m. The plane, a Boeing 757 with 64 people on board, was bound for Los Angeles.

  • Disappointed Dems Help Pass Trade Relief For Fired Workers

    The House passed a bill Thursday to help workers displaced by the trade deals Congress just gave President Barack Obama the power to sign, but it's a bitter consolation for Democrats who think the White House should have gotten much more. The Trade Adjustment Assistance program -- passed as part of a larger trade preferences bill on a vote of 286 to 138 -- will spend about $450 million a year to retrain workers whose jobs are destroyed by free trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Obama is expected to finish soon. “The reason we need TAA is because we have lousy trade deals that end up with the loss of a lot of American jobs.

  • Republicans Secretly Relieved At Obamacare Ruling, Have No Plan Forward

    Republicans were publicly outraged the Supreme Court again found the Affordable Care Act constitutional, but there was also a deep sense of relief that they wouldn't have to deal with twin problems of ending health care for millions in red states or coming up with a replacement. "I was just up on the floor and I saw Paul Ryan," said Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), referring the the GOP chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Indeed, if the court had thrown out a key part of the law, Republicans who control Congress would have been faced with figuring out how to replace or fix a law that is providing subsidies for some 7 million Americans and benefitting many millions more.

  • Dems Will Torture GOP With Shutdown Politics In Spending Battle

    Democrats’ plan to block every GOP spending bill this summer isn’t a bid for a government shutdown -- it’s a strategy to bring Republicans to the negotiating table before it’s too late, Senate Democratic leaders told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. “In terms of shutting down the government, that’s what [Republicans] want to do,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the heir-apparent to Democratic Leader Harry Reid, said in an interview.

  • Top U.S. Senator Calls Charleston Shooter A 'Terrorist'

    The man who gunned down nine worshippers in a Charleston church is a terrorist whose brutal act demands a conversation that's much broader than the debate raging over the Confederate flag, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), said Tuesday. Dylann Roof, the apparent author of a white supremacist manifesto, allegedly killed the churchgoers to further his hopes for a race war. While some leaders, including the head of the FBI, have shied away from the terrorist label, to Durbin -- the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate who has long been an outspoken critic of gun violence -- Roof's alleged crimes make him not just an insane killer, but a terrorist who used violence to further a twisted political goal.

  • Senate Gives Obama Huge Win On Trade

    White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday that Obama expects Congress to send him the TAA bill this week, but didn't say whether the president would sign the TPA bill before that happened. House Democrats could join Republicans to vote down TAA, potentially daring Obama to sign fast-track without the program. "There's no reason it should come to that," Earnest said.

  • McConnell Tries 'Trust Me' Strategy To Pass Obama Trade Bills

    McConnell's moves came after the House narrowly voted to give Obama the power he needs to fast-track mega-trade deals through Congress -- a victory House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) achieved without also proceeding on Trade Adjustment Assistance, the worker relief program that most Democrats say they need before they'll support trade deals. For McConnell, that meant he had to find a way to keep the backing of 14 Democrats who voted last month for fast-track authority, or Trade Promotion Authority as it is formally known, including many who said at the time that they also must have that trade adjustment program.

  • House Passes Fast-Track Trade Do-Over

    The GOP-led House of Representatives started over on trade Thursday, passing a fresh bill to give President Barack Obama sweeping powers to negotiate massive international agreements. The measure would grant Obama and the next president what's known as Trade Promotion Authority, allowing the White House to fast-track through Congress a string of enormous trade pacts, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Trade in Services Agreement -- covering well over half the global economy. Proponents argued that the huge trade pacts are the only way for America to maintain its status as the world's leader and ensure economic growth.

  • Trucking Industry Pleads With Congress To Raise Gas Taxes

    There’s an easy solution to stop the federal highway fund from going broke at the end of July, the head of the American Trucking Associations told Congress Wednesday -- raise the gas tax. Bill Graves, the Republican former governor of Kansas, delivered that message in testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee, telling lawmakers at the long-awaited hearing on fixing the highway fund that eventually, whether they want to or not, they’ll have to hike the tax. “Congress must find the courage to admit what I believe it already knows,” Graves said after explaining why his industry -- which paid more than $16 billion in fuel taxes in 2013 -- believes paying even more tax is the best option.

  • 72-Year-Old Senator Plows Through 46 Pushups Like There's No Tomorrow

    It was an otherwise ordinary Wednesday afternoon on Capitol Hill, until Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) lured reporters into a Senate room, dropped to the floor and did 46 pushups at warp speed. Nelson lost a bet to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) over the Stanley Cup. Nelson offered Florida's famous Cuban sandwiches to Durbin if his team, the Tampa Bay Lightning, lost to Durbin's team, the Chicago Blackhawks.

  • Lindsey Graham: Trump Is A 'Dream Come True' For Consultants

    Donald Trump's entry into the 2016 presidential contest is a "dream come true." Or at least it is for professional political handlers, quipped South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump's may GOP competitors. "I think it is a dream come true for people in the business," Graham joked Tuesday to reporters on Capitol Hill, several hours after Trump announced his plans in a rambling, off-script announcement. "Here’s the simple answer, and it’s the true answer," Graham said.

  • House Regroups To Save Obama's Trade Agenda From Democrats

    President Barack Obama suffered an embarrassing defeat Friday in his push to pass his trade agenda. Hours after House Democrats rejected a Trade Adjustment Assistance bill, which would have aided workers displaced by trade deals, the president pressed lawmakers to give it another go. "I urge the House to pass TAA without delay so that more middle-class workers can earn the chance to participate and succeed in our global economy," he said in a statement.

  • Democrats Rebel To Block Obama's Trade Deals

    Democrats rebelled against President Barack Obama's ambitious trade agenda Friday, spurning his last-second personal appeal and blocking a measure in the House that would have granted him the power to fast-track sweeping, secretive international agreements through Congress. The Democrats' revolt focused on a provision that they would normally back -- something called Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA, which would pay to help retrain workers whose jobs get shipped overseas by trade deals -- knowing that killing it would bring fast-track down with it.

  • Republican Says Unions' 'Crazy' Claims Would Make A Nazi Proud

    Politicians can't seem to resist comparing their opponents to Nazis, and it usually doesn't go well for them. But Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz. found a new and perhaps unintentionally ironic way to do it Friday while denouncing unions' arguments against President Barack Obama's trade agenda.

  • Activists Threaten Primaries Against Dems Who Back Trade Deals

    Democratic activists are trying to add momentum to a revolt against President Barack Obama's trade push Friday, threatening to seek primary opponents against any Democratic lawmakers who back legislation that helps the trade deals pass. The House is set to vote on several measures designed to help give Obama the fast-track authority he needs to pass major new trade agreements that would cover well over half the world's economy. Opponents, including most Democrats, say the deals will undermine U.S. labor laws, environmental rules, consumer protections and financial regulations while shifting even more manufacturing jobs overseas.