Appropriations

The Postal Regulatory Commission said a request to cut Saturday service would save billions less than USPS has estimated.

Portugal's government has fallen apart after its parliament rejected a budget-cutting plans, stoking fears the nation could require an international bailout.

White House Chief of Staff William Daley is recusing himself from the hunt for a director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Ten former chairmen of the President's Council of Economic Advisers are calling on Congress to use the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction plan as the foundation for serious fiscal talks.

Earmarks can still be found in short-term spending bills, even after Republicans vowed to end the practice.

Connecticut's governor is proposing $1.5 billion in new taxes to help tackle a $3.3 billion budget gap.

New data shows U.S. orders for long-lasting products unexpectedly fell in February.

Toyota is hoping to resume work on hybrids in Japan soon, as Honda extends closures at some factories.

House Appropriations Committee members should get greater access to information about the intelligence operations the committee funds, through a new arrangement announced Wednesday.

Local Tea Party leaders threatened House Republican freshmen with primary challenges if they did not vote against short-term spending bills during a Tea Party Caucus meeting at the end of February, a meeting participant revealed.

Fiscal expert Stan Collender, who attended the Feb. 28 meeting, detailed the confrontation in a new post on his blog, Capital Gains and Games.

The Tea Party Caucus meeting was addressed by Jennifer Stefano, a leader of the suburban Philadelphia Tea Party movement; Billie Tucker, a founder of the Jacksonville, Fla., First Coast Tea Party; and Jamie Radtke, former chairwoman of Virginia Tea Party Patriots.

Collender writes "tea party state chairs openly threatened the reelection of the tea party supporting members of Congress who attended. This was anything but subtle."

He adds that meeting was revealing because the activists “instructed” the members not to vote for short-term spending bills. That week, six members did so and when the next continuing resolution (CR) came to a vote, 54 Republicans voted against it.

“Actually, ‘instructed’ is not strong enough; what they said to the members is best described as nonnegotiable demands. They insisted that no one vote for that first extension of the CR unless it included a provision defunding healthcare reform (they called it “Obamacare’). They also unequivocally insisted that no one vote to increase the debt ceiling. And, they were absolutely adamant that the spending cuts in the continuing resolution that the House members were so proud of were insignificant and that entitlements had to be tackled immediately,” Collender writes.

He adds that “the tea party folks – both members of Congress and others – do not trust House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) or Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) not to sell out their agenda.”

“Given what I heard a the caucus meeting, Boehner and Cantor might both get primary challengers from tea party candidates in 2012,” he adds.

Collender concludes that House leaders may have to shut down the government next month to satisfy the Tea Party.

A group of 29 fiscally conservative organizations have written to Congress calling for the immediate defunding of Planned Parenthood, adding to the chances the GOP will push for this in negotiations with Democrats over a 2011 funding bill.

Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), Citizens Against Government Waste, Americans for Prosperity and 26 other organizations joined the letter sent Monday.

“On economic merit alone, Planned Parenthood should be near the top of the cut list. To begin with, as Chuck Donovan at the Heritage Foundation has pointed out, Planned Parenthood is awash in net income. From 2002 to 2007, the national organization and its affiliates took in $388 million more than they spent on programs and services," the groups write in the new letter.  "Even in the midst of the recession, the president of the organization still received more than $337,000 in an annual salary and tens of thousands more in benefits and allowances.  Planned Parenthood is receiving a rolling, annual bailout, and they don’t even need it."

The letter comes after Congress last week agreed to a three-week spending bill that does not include a Planned Parenthood defunding rider. Ahead of debate on that bill, anti-abortion-rights groups such as the Family Research Council were joined by some fiscal groups, such as the Club for Growth, in opposing the bill. But other groups, like ATR, are supportive of short-term measures.

The economic stimulus added upward of 3 percent to fourth-quarter economic growth and increased employment by as many as 3.6 million jobs, according to a report released Friday. 

In its quarterly report, the White House's Council of Economic Advisers found that the economic stimulus passed more than two years ago added between 2.3 and 3.2 percent to fourth-quarter gross domestic product and raised employment by between 2.5 million and 3.6 million jobs. 

The economy has expanded for six straight quarters and added 1.5 million private-sector jobs in the past 12 months, the report said. 

Public investment spending on items such as infrastructure and clean energy totals $142 billion, according to the report.

The Obama administration moved forward Friday with a housing initiative designed to revitalize deteriorated neighborhoods while improving education, job and public transit opportunities in those areas.

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan said 17 communities will share $4 million in funding for planning grants as part of the new Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, which received $65 million in funding as part of the fiscal 2010 budget. 

Six other communities will compete for about $61 million in grants to use for competitive grants to assist in the "transformation, rehabilitation and preservation of public housing and privately owned HUD-assisted housing."

Reopublican and Democratic leaders are mounting a bipartisan, bicameral effort to reduce waste and reform government

“I am determined, and our party is determined, not to have a shutdown," House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers said.

Schumer seizes on Marco Rubio, Jim Jordan defections; says Boehner should consider "leaving the Tea Party behind."