Tauscher's big weekend: Joins State Dept, then gets married (VIDEO)

So what do you do to top being confirmed as a Under Secretary of State? If you're East Bay Rep. Ellen Tauscher, you get married. On Saturday, the nation's top arms control official will tie the knot in Washington, D.C. with her fiance, retired Delta pilot Jim Cieslak. They were introduced by Tauscher's sister in 2007. "It's hard to be a blushing bride at my age, but I will do my best," she told her House-mates Friday during her resignation speech.

She delayed her resignation until the end of Friday's votes so she could cast one for the energy bill. Seems like President Obama is looking under the couch cushions for spare votes.

We love one of Tauscher's lines from her farewell speech. Amidst the warm fuzzies and standing o's from her House colleagues: "There's nothing like leaving to become popular." Well, yeah, except if your name is Jim Wright.

So this makes it official for the race to replace Tauscher in the East Bay: Game on!

Check out the video of Tauscher's Congressional farewell, punctuated by a warm embrace from Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

Posted By: Joe Garofoli (Email, Twitter, Facebook) | June 26 2009 at 12:52 PM

Miller proposes 100% tax on AIG bonuses

The AIG bonuses are a turning point for the Obama administration, just two months into the new presidency. The $165 million in bonuses to the same crew that brought down AIG and nearly the global economy with it is inflicting serious political damage. More ominously, it is threatening the administration's yet-to-be-released bank fix that is a necessary prelude to economic recovery.

Not that any new bank rescues were going to be popular before this revelation.

The administration is in a bind, since the bonuses were promised under contract. As Obama economic chief Larry Summers has said, the administration is not about to start breaking contracts, especially when the key to its bank plan requires luring billions of dollars in private capital to a "public-private partnership."

In rides Rep. George Miller, Democrat of Martinez, to the rescue today. After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's call yesterday for AIG looters to voluntarily return their millions went unheeded, Miller is proposing a special AIG bonus tax, at the rate of 100 percent.

He promised legislation as soon as this week. "AIG executives did not earn a bonus, they should not accept a bonus, and if they already did accept it they should return the bonus. And from those who don't return the bonus money voluntarily, we're going to get the money back for the taxpayer," Miller said.

Miller is co-sponsoring a bill for the 100 percent tax. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Napa, introduced a bill that would tax 90 percent of the bonuses issued by any firm receiving government rescue money. Miller said the House will take up the legislation in one form or another this week or next.

Posted By: Carolyn Lochhead (Email) | March 17 2009 at 02:35 PM

Carolyn Lochhead: Dems Avoid Transgender Vote

After weeks of delay and behind-the-scenes skirmishing among Democratic leaders, the House will debate but not vote Wednesday on including transgender people in a job discrimination bill.

The apparent point of the exercise is to pacify the transgender community and their allies while shielding increasingly precious freshman Democrats, whose concerns now seem to dominate every controversial policy in the House.

Martinez Democratic Rep. George Miller has assured the conservative-leaning freshmen whose victories in 2006 gave Democrats their new House majority that they would not be forced to actually vote on the transgender issue.

The issue blew up in Democratic leaders' faces last month when in hopes of passing landmark gay civil rights legislation during their first year in power, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., pulled transgender people out of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act known as ENDA, for fear it would fail.

The manuever opened an angry split between the openly gay Frank and much of the gay community. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., then decided to offer an amendment to put transgender people back in. The vote has been repeatedly delayed, with the latest debate-but-no-vote ploy surfacing last week. That bold decision has now been made official with a vote on the overall bill, sans transgender, scheduled for tomorrow afternoon after French President Nicolas Sarkozy addresses Congress.

In case you wondered, the House dining room menu has switched back to French fries from "freedom fries."

Posted By: Carolyn Lochhead (Email) | November 06 2007 at 09:48 AM

Carolyn Lochhead -- With friends like these ...

Prepare for a Democratic bloodletting if it turns out that two Bay Area House members -- Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland and Rep. Lynn Woolsey of Petaluma -- help kill fellow Northern Californian and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's biggest thrust against President Bush on the Iraq war: the $124 billion war spending bill that sets a date for withdrawal. A vote is scheduled for the end of the week.

Democratic leaders still don't have the 218 votes they need, thanks to defections among a handful of liberals in the Out of Iraq Caucus, who say the bill is not tough enough and lacks enforcement tools, and the conservative Blue Dog Democrats who say it goes too far in tying Bush's hands.

The ironic potential of two Bay Area liberals taking down the top

priority of their own speaker from San Francisco has not escaped notice. Pelosi may not be known as the "The Hammer," but she is no cream puff. Expect the claws to come out on a bill she has made her top priority.

The war spending bill is Pelosi's first concrete step to try to end the war as she promised from the moment the Democrats won control of the House in the November election. Its failure would deal a stunning setback to Pelosi and her war strategy, and leave Democrats looking disarrayed and impotent.

Thinly veiled if indirect threats of lost committee slots floated out of a closed-door meeting last week. Lee holds a coveted seat on the Appropriations Committee, which doles out spending.

Another vocal opponent, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, is a chief deputy in Pelosi's whip operation to round up votes for the speaker, but instead Waters is actively opposing the bill.

The endorsement of the bill by MoveOn.org Monday gave liberals considerable political cover. But for Democrats such as Lee, who has never voted a penny for the war, it's not so easy to abandon core principles.

Watch the Rules Committee vote later today to see if the Democratic leadership allows a Lee amendment that would make money available only to protect U.S. troops and bring them home. Such an amendment may allow the most anti-war Democrats to give voice to their views, but also vote for the leadership's proposal.

Woolsey, also a whip charged with rounding up California votes, says she won't budge. "I won't vote for it," she said. "I'll be true to my conscience."

But others are peeling off, recognizing the leadership bill would be a substantive move to stop the war, including anti-war Democrat Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, who is now charged with pressuring fellow liberals. Leading Blue Dog Rep. John Tanner of Tennessee has also dropped his opposition.

Rep. Sam Farr, and anti-war Democrat from Carmel, will vote for the spending, but has come under attack for attaching $25 million in the spending bill for spinach growers. Citizens Against Government Waste named him "Porker of the Month" for the move. The spinach aid is aimed at compensating farmers in Farr's district, where an e-coli outbreak was traced, leading to major financial losses. Farr, like Lee, has a seat on the Appropriations Committee.

Posted By: Carolyn Lochhead (Email) | March 21 2007 at 09:39 AM

Tick tock

Time is of the political essence, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has learned, when you promise to pass six major pieces of legislation in the first 100 hours of House legislative action.

It turns out that the 100 hours don't include the time the House takes for debating non-controversial matters such as Tuesday's resolution saluting the late President Gerald Ford.

So the clock started officially today at 1:00 p.m. (EST) when the House took up the first of the "Six for '06" bills and will stop and restart before the House passes all six bills next week.

Pelosi and her deputy, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., eager to show the public they are carrying out their 100-hour pledge, have created a website where users can see how much of the 100 hours have elapsed.

Posted By: Edward Epstein (Email) | January 09 2007 at 11:23 AM

Democrats play the name game on the Hill

Democrats are marking their return to power in the House of Representatives after 12 years in the minority by changing the names of several House committees, mirroring an effort Republicans made in 1994 after getting the majority for the first time in 40 years.

The House International Relations Committee, now chaired by Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, is reverting to the name it has held for most of the time since 1822 -- the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Lantos said the name change was "a nod to tradition and a signal of things to come."

Over at the Education and Work Force Committee, chaired by Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, the name is being changed to the Education and Labor Committee. Republicans, no friends of organized labor, had changed the name to make it look less union-oriented, in part.

The House Resources Committee is now back to its pre-Republican control name of the House Natural Resources Committee. In part, the new name marks the departure of former chairman Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, who lost last November.

Pombo was a sworn enemy of environmental groups and tried in his years in the chair to water down the endangered species act, and allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in many offshore ocean areas.

The House Science Committee will now be known as the House Science and Technology Committee to show a wider focus. Until 1994, it was known as the Science, Space and Technology Committee.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, who is expected to chair many investigative hearings into contracting surrounding Iraq and Hurricane Katrina and other areas has added what he said is a significant word to the name of the House Government Reform Committee -- making it the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The new name reflects the Democrats' belief that the old Republican-run Congress failed to conduct sufficient oversight on the Bush administration's activities.

The committee name changes were part of the rules package the Democratic-controlled House adopted late last week after electing Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco as speaker.

Posted By: Edward Epstein (Email) | January 08 2007 at 10:35 AM

Bay Area lawmaker touted for Democratic post

The Bay Area's Democratic House delegation is already soaring in the stratosphere, with Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco set to become speaker in the 110th Congress and three other senior members moving into key chairmanships.

Now comes word that yet another Bay Area Democrat, Rep. Mike Thompson of St. Helena, is under Pelosi's consideration for another key post, the chairmanship of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the 2008 election. The committee is the fundraising, candidate recruitment and strategy-setting organization for the party's national House campaign.

The outgoing chairman, hard-driving Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, was widely credited with playing a key role in the Democrats' victory on Nov. 7 through his tough and shrewd management of the national campaign. He parlayed his success into a top job, chairman of the House Democratic caucus, the fourth-ranking leadership job. Not bad for a guy just elected to only his third term -- although he was a key aide in Bill Clinton's White House before running for Congress.

Thompson, a former state senator who just won his fourth term, has been active in the campaign committee as chairman of its business outreach section.

Others said to be under consideration for the high-profile, high-stress job are Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., and Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Fla.

With Pelosi in the speaker's slot, she may seek geographical balance, which could work against Thompson as a Californian. However, Pelosi's first campaign committee chairman was the respected Rep. Bob Matsui of Sacramento, who ran the 2004 campaign in which Democrats were disappointed by not making gains. Matsui died a few months later.

But even if Thompson is passed over, he still has one of the best jobs in Congress. The Napa area congressman chairs the Congress' wine caucus.

Posted By: Edward Epstein (Email) | November 17 2006 at 12:14 PM