1/26/2011–Introduced.Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2011 – Directs the Comptroller General to complete, before the end of 2012, an audit of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and of the federal reserve banks, followed by a detailed report to Congress. Repeals specified limitations on such an audit.
Tag Archives: 2011
Bank Closures Continue In 2011
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. or FDIC announced Friday the shuttering of two banks in Florida, and one in Colorado, taking the count of U.S. bank closures in 2011 to 58, after the 157 bank closures in 2010.
The three banks were closed on Friday by the regulators, with the assets of the failed banks beings assumed by other banks in an FDIC assisted transaction. The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund or DIF, by the three bank closures will be a total of $256.3 million.
Tampa, Florida-based American Momentum Bank acquired the banking operations, including all the deposits, of two Florida-based banks, Southshore Community Bank (SSHC.OB) in Apollo Beach, and LandMark Bank of Florida in Sarasota. Meanwhile, Kansas City, Missouri-based Bank Midwest, National Association, will assume all of the deposits of Greeley, Colorado-based Bank of Choice from FDIC.
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Hearing On Nullification Bill on Obamacare in Boise Idaho
Email contact from Idaho Senator Sheryl Nuxoll:
It is confirmed. The hearing on the nullification bill on Obamacare will be held on Monday, February 7, at 9:30 am in the House State Affairs Committee meeting in the East Side on the Garden level of the Capital. To testify, one must sign up at the door. We don’t know if signing will start at 7 am or 9 am. Usually to testify, one must not be long-winded. If there are a lot to testify, they may keep you to 3 minutes. We need as many down here to testify or just be here for support on this issue. For our state and nation and God. Please come if possible. Senator Nuxoll
Health care reform: House marches toward repeal vote
After promising a new era of openness and fiscal restraint, House Republicans veered from that standard on the first big vote of the new Congress: the repeal of health-care reform.
The powerful Rules Committee on Thursday vetted dozens of amendments, mainly from Democrats, but rejected all but one on party-line votes, eliminating the possibility of changes to legislation on the floor and leaving Democrats crying foul. [Editor's note: This paragraph has been changed from the original to account for an accepted amendment.]
GOP leaders also rejected calls to offset the cost of repeal, estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to be $230 billion over the next 10 years – more than double the spending cuts that the new GOP majority aims to pare from spending bills for fiscal year 2011. The CBO’s preliminary estimate of the cost of repeal, released Thursday, also projects that repeal would leave 32 million more Americans uninsured.
The full House on Friday accepted that rule, setting the terms for next week’s floor debate and ensuring the final vote will be a straight up or down one. The Friday vote in favor of those terms was 236 to 181, falling mainly along partisan lines.
Responding to criticism that this rule violates a key GOP pledge, Rep. David Drier (R) of California, who chairs the Rules Committee, said: “There is nothing to amend to the repeal bill. Either we’re going to wipe the slate clean and start fresh or we’re not.”
“Once that slate is completely wiped clean, we will be ready for this open and collaborative process to develop the real solutions we promised,” he added in Friday’s floor debate on the rule.
In a break with past practice, the entire meeting was televised – fulfilling a GOP pledge to make all committee proceedings more accessible to the public.
“I promised a more open process. I didn’t promise that every single bill was going to be an open bill,” said Speaker John Boehner in his first press briefing on Thursday. “We went through a whole Congress, two years without one – without one open rule. As I said yesterday, there will be many open rules in this Congress, and just watch.”
Democrats had hoped to force repeal proponents to take recorded votes on the most popular aspects of the new law, thus providing grist for campaign ads in the 2012 elections. These include ending the new ban on insurance companies discriminating on the basis of preexisting conditions, taking away the option for young adults up to the age of 26 to be covered by their parents’ health insurance, and free annual wellness visits, tax breaks to help employers pay for coverage for employees, and a ban on lifetime caps on coverage.