This month’s leak of data on the use of offshore tax havens and anonymous shell companies from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists emphasizes how massive and truly global the tax haven menace really is.
 
The files released by the ICIJ, analyzed in collaboration with nearly forty news outlets around the globe, implicate the families of foreign dictators in Nigeria and the Philippines, embroil international arms dealers, entangle conduits of the Iranian nuclear program, incriminate close associates of the current French President, and expose scores of other tax evaders and swindlers in the U.S. and around the world.

In the midst of an economic downturn, the U.S. agricultural sector has been remarkably resilient because American farmers have been willing to diversify and innovate. The expansion of renewable energy and the emerging national bioeconomy have been vital components of that diversification. U.S. agriculture supports 16 million jobs, both in rural and urban areas, including equipment manufacturing, bio-based manufacturing (using agricultural products to replace petroleum in manufactured goods), food and fiber processing, bio-energy production, and retail. More importantly, agriculture supports jobs and economic growth for the future by supporting development of innovative technologies.

There has been a quiet revolution going around the world, as communities and nations retake control of their food systems. In the U.S., more people are taking a look at processed foods at the supermarket and opting instead for healthier choices, grown locally with fewer pesticides. People in Cambodia have taken a hard look at what’s happening to their climate, soil and seeds, and figured out a new, low-cost way to produce rice, increasing production and putting farmers in charge. Brazilians are favoring local farmers growing sustainable foods for school lunch programs, lowering hunger rates dramatically as a result.

The annual budget process in Washington is a critical opportunity for both parties to offer solutions to the most pressing challenges facing our nation: record poverty rates, high unemployment and a shrinking middle class. Unfortunately, the president's budget - much like the Senate’s budget - doubles down on failed policies that limit opportunities for advancement and trap millions of Americans in a life of poverty and dependency.

In addition to weak economic growth and a looming debt crisis, fiscally bankrupt and ineffective welfare programs are a fundamental threat to every American who aspires to make it to the middle class. Despite record-level spending increases over the last five to 10 years, poverty rates are the highest in a generation with one in six Americans living in poverty.

Anyone who has read or watched any news source over the past year knows President Obama, numerous Administration officials, and many leaders in Congress agree that addressing the threat of cyber attacks is a critical national priority. Based on this threat analysis, the administration and many members of Congress continue to push for passage of cybersecurity legislation that would clarify and expand the government’s powers to receive and process traffic from American computer networks.

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor today regarding the heinous attacks at the Boston Marathon on Monday:
 
Today, the thoughts of every American are with the people of Boston, but especially with the many victims of yesterday’s horrendous attacks, and their families.
 
Many who were looking forward to celebrating the achievement of a loved one yesterday woke today to the grim reality of facing the rest of their lives with a disfiguring injury. For them, yesterday’s attacks were the beginning of a long, difficult journey. Three others who lined up to encourage others, including an eight-year old boy who was there to cheer on his dad at the finish line, lost their lives in the blast.
 
We pray in a special way for their families.

As the Senate prepares to debate gun safety legislation, Senators will go to great lengths to demonstrate they are ardent supporters of the 2nd Amendment. Meanwhile, the House will consider the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, a bill with enormous implications for the 4th Amendment, but few members seem equally concerned about the impacts of the House legislation on Americans’ privacy and constitutional rights.

The Obama administration’s budget included a promissory note. It will take them a few more weeks to tell us what they plan to spend next year on the Afghan War. Their intention to bring that war to an end, though, is clear.



Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and his Harvard colleague Linda Bilmes are predicting that this will produce “little in the way of a peace dividend for the U.S. economy once the fighting stops.” They base this bleak assessment on the kinds of meticulous calculations that anchored their 2008 book The Three Trillion Dollar War: on the huge sums we will and must be spending to care for wounded veterans, for example, and the money squandered when war support functions were massively and unnecessarily shifted to private contractors.



On Tuesday April 16th, the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights will hold an oversight hearing on the state of antitrust enforcement with the heads of the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division as witnesses. The Antitrust Subcommittee has a stellar record on putting a spotlight on the country’s most important antitrust issues, and an oversight hearing is long overdue. Their hearings in the past few years have highlighted competitive problems in media, airline, communications and health care markets. The subcommittee has also played an important role in encouraging the agencies to ramp up antitrust enforcement.