Wisconsin Dems say their internal polls show them on track to retake control of the state senate in the upcoming recall elections.
The Senate has just hauled this debt deal across the finish line, in a vote of 74-26.
It now heads to President Obama’s desk, with the U.S. having averted a default deadline by a matter of hours.
Safe to say no one’s really covered themselves with glory here, some certainly less so than others. Brian Beutler has our wrap.
Could the Washington debt deal sap Democratic momentum in the Wisconsin recalls?
The ridiculous, self-inflicted debt ceiling-fest cost the US government $1.7 billion $17 million dollars. That’s the amount of additional interest the USG had to pay investors when it went into the market to sell Treasury bills on Monday.
Quoting CNNMoney: “To be precise, the extra cost is $1,721,250,000 more in interest payments than the government would have needed to pay investors just two weeks ago, when they were willing to accept far lower rates before the debt ceiling became a crisis.”
Late Update: Hrrrmmrrm. As one reader has pointed out, the $1.7 billion figure cited by CNN doesn’t seem to add up. It seems dramatically higher than the math suggests — maybe an order of magnitude off. I’m not a financial journalist and the CNNMoney folks are. So I’m not going to say they’re wrong. It’s quite possible there’s a part of the math or their explanation I don’t understand. But let me take back my restatement of their numbers. I’m going to leave the post up for the record.
Later Update: And now CNN has updated their number, revising it from $1.7 billion to $17 million. Not chicken but quite a difference.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords makes first return to House since Jan. 8th shooting to cast vote in favor of debt deal.
Office press release after the jump … Read More
Debt bill passes House, Dems split down the middle. Details here.
Boehner tells Pelosi and Dems: Hey, don’t leave me hanging on this debt deal thing.
The new and brass-knucklier Jon Huntsman suggests Michele Bachmann gets so much press because she’s hot.
The Naval Medical Research Center has quietly conducted a rapid-response test to judge how quickly the US military could respond to a biowarfare attack from two unknown biological warfare agents, one bacterial, one viral.
The exercise, conducted in June, showed that drugs to prevent the contagions could be synthesized in 18 days.