U.S. Senate News
This section focuses on the upper chamber of Congress, from major policy debates to confirmation hearings. The Daily Signal provides a conservative look at Senate priorities.
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news
Boeing Sale to Iran ‘Puts Money Before American Lives,’ Lawmaker Warns
Rep. Peter Roskam today criticized Boeing for “putting their financial interest first and foremost before American security” after the company announced the sale of $25 billion worth of commercial aircraft to Iran. The Illinois Republican’s remarks in an interview with The Daily Signal followed news that the aerospace giant employed and didn’t disclose its relationship… -
news
David Perdue, CEO Turned Senator, Warns of America’s Coming Debt Crisis
Before he made his first million, before he did business on six continents, and before he became a Fortune 500 CEO, David Perdue got his start picking peaches for about 40 cents an hour while growing up in Macon, Georgia. There his father taught him always “to add value,” Perdue says while recalling the stifling… -
opinion
Forfeiture Reform Advances in the Senate
On Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and ranking member Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., introduced the “Deterring Undue Enforcement by Protecting Rights of Citizens from Excessive Searches and Seizures Act,” or DUE PROCESS Act. The reforms contained in Grassley’s bill would significantly alter the federal civil asset forfeiture landscape, dramatically improving the lot of innocent… -
news
Senate Democrats Attempt to Force Vote on Export-Import Bank Nominee
In what amounts to little more than a political stunt, Senate Democrats attempted to circumvent the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday and bring a nominee to the Export-Import Bank’s board of directors directly to the floor. However, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, a Republican from Alabama, objected, killing the effort but triggering a debate… -
news
To Keep Guantanamo Open, Conservative Senators Push to Declassify Detainee Records
President Barack Obama is running out of time to fulfill his campaign promise to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay and bring some detainees to the United States. As the last months of Obama’s term approach, a new Republican measure could now make that a political impossibility. An amendment to the National Defense Authorization… -
opinion
The House Is Improving Medicare, and the Senate Can Make It Even Better
The House of Representatives has passed a short, but significant, 31-page Medicare bill, Helping Hospitals Improve Patient Care Act (H.R. 5273). The House measure would improve traditional Medicare in a number of ways, though most of these would be technical changes to current law. Because the bill was largely noncontroversial and thus enacted under a special… -
news
Conservative Senator Is Trying to Keep Women Out of the Draft
To Sen. Mike Lee, the battle over whether women should have to register for a draft that does not exist is more consequential than it sounds. Though the U.S. has had an all-volunteer force since 1973, some Republicans are using this year’s defense policy bill to try to require women to sign up for the… -
opinion
What’s Good (and What’s Horrible) in the Senate Defense Bill
The Senate will soon start debating the annual defense policy bill. This bill is particularly critical now when threats are rising, from state-sponsored cyberattacks to Russian aggression, to terrorism at home and abroad. At the same time, our military is getting smaller and weaker. Unfortunately, the Senate bill is a mix of good and bad policies,… -
opinion
Senate Votes to End a Textbook Crony Program
On Wednesday, the Senate passed a joint resolution that will effectively put an end to one of the most egregious programs that exists today: the U.S. Department of Agriculture catfish inspection program. It’s actually disappointing that the vote was as close as it was—55-43. It may sound a bit silly, admittedly, but this program created… -
news
Exclusive: Lawmakers Move to Make It Harder for IRS to Seize Money From Innocent People
On the heels of the House Judiciary Committee’s legislation reforming federal civil forfeiture laws, House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Peter Roskam, R-Ill., and Rep. Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y., are introducing a bill further protecting people from having money wrongfully seized by the government, The Daily Signal has learned. Roskam and Crowley’s bill, called the… -
news
‘An Abuse of Power:’ IRS to Face Lawmakers After Thousands Seized From Small Business Owners
For more than four years, Maryland dairy farmer Randy Sowers has been fighting the federal government, asking it to right what many say was a wrong. In Feb. 2012, two federal agents told Sowers, who owns South Mountain Creamery in Frederick, Md. that the Internal Revenue Service was seizing more than $60,000 from his farm’s… -
news
Lawmakers Introduce Bill Making It Harder for Police to Take Innocent Americans’ Property
For the last few years, opponents of civil forfeiture have been calling on Congress to make it more difficult for law enforcement to take property, cash, and vehicles from innocent Americans through a process known as civil asset forfeiture. Now, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers on Capitol Hill is taking action. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.,… -
news
NC Lawmaker Blames Media, Activists Groups for Bathroom Bill ‘Falsehoods’
RALEIGH, N.C.—Republicans are falsely being accused of instigating the transgender bathroom debate, state Rep. Dan Bishop from Charlotte, North Carolina, told The Daily Signal. “This controversy nationwide has been a media-driven, ideological carpet bombing,” he said. “And I think a very dishonest one across the board. Everything that we’ve done has been distorted—so many falsehoods,… -
news
Lawmaker: ‘Big Brother’ Shouldn’t Force Americans to Participate in Abortions
Recently-introduced federal legislation would protect doctors, nurses, hospitals, and health care providers from being forced to provide abortion as part of their practice or insurance plans. The Conscience Protection Act, House Resolution 4828, introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives at the end of March by Rep. John Fleming, R-La., currently has 49 co-sponsors…. -
opinion
The Problem With This Senator’s Plan to Help Businesses Deal With the Tax Code
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has released a plan to update the way businesses deduct the cost of capital expenses. Wyden is right to focus on capital cost recovery as a key way to improve the economy, but his plan does not go far enough to fix the problem because it focuses on administrative issues rather… -
news
Senate’s First Spending Bill Expected to Advance Without Major Conservative Policy Rider
While Senate leaders are hoping to earn final passage on a $37.5 billion energy and water spending bill this week, the legislation lacks amendments pushed by conservatives and boosts spending above President Barack Obama’s budget request. One of those amendments would have blocked funding for a major Environmental Protection Agency rule. Last week, Senate Republicans… -
news
A Preacher Turned Lawmaker and His New Campaign to Win the Old War on Poverty
Greensboro, N.C.—Mark Walker spent his childhood in and out of prison. He wasn’t an inmate, but the chaplain’s son at one of Alabama’s minimum-security state prisons, Berrydale Forestry Camp. And starting in elementary school, he followed his father while he made the rounds offering a message of salvation to inmates. “I remember the joy on… -
news
Mike Lee Forces Senate Republicans to Clarify Leadership Rules
After a week of campaigning, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has called it quits on a short-lived effort to win a post inside Senate leadership. A conservative upstart, Lee tried to break into the GOP’s upper ranks and win the fourth-ranking position as chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee. If successful, the effort would have… -
opinion
Establishment Senators Push GOP Unity Ahead of Conservative Values
The Senate is often referred to as a “club” — a term that certainly fits. The nickname was reinforced last week by a behind the scenes account of GOP senators who view their “club” as a pretty exclusive place. Basically, conservative ideas, opinions, and research need not apply. The main focus of The Hill’s article was about… -
news
Senators Lobby Consumer Bureau in Letter That Appears to Be Written by Agency’s Own Adviser
The Daily Signal has obtained a draft letter from two Democrat senators urging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to continue addressing what they call “discriminatory and unfair lending practices” in the auto industry. But, according to metadata found in the document’s properties, it appears the letter may not have been written by the two senators…