Terence Samuel

Just when you think you’ve seen everything, Congress pushes back the Easter recess, comes back to Washington on a Sunday night, and delves headfirst, along with the president of the United States, into the short and tragic life of Terri Schiavo and her fractious kin. And while a close reading of this case suggests that […]

Believe it or not, these are some of the best days Democrats have had on Capitol Hill in years. Considering the drubbing they took last November, they are having more fun than they have any right to expect. This may be out of necessity. They have stopped pretending that they are only temporarily in the […]

Watching Congress debate the federal minimum wage is a bit of an out-of-body experience. On this, more than on almost any other issue, the majority of the people involved in the debate have little or no experience with the circumstances they invoke to advance their arguments. The base salary for a member of Congress is […]

For more than a decade, the financial-services industry and its supporters in Congress, mostly Republican, have been determined to change the nation’s bankruptcy laws, hoping to make it more difficult for people in financial trouble to walk away from their debts simply by declaring bankruptcy. It’s been an especially hot topic since the mid-’90s, when […]

PHILADELPHIA — With Congress in recess this week, the whole country has turned into a town meeting on whether Social Security is on the verge of collapse and how soon and by what methods we need to fix it. But even during these debates, there is uniform acknowledgement that Medicaid and Medicare, which provide health […]

Democrats are so giddy with the momentum they have generated so far on Social Security that they are trying to transfer it to other issues. This week, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced a plan to expand economic opportunity to more Americans and strengthen the middle class. “The need to create jobs is urgent,” she […]

Next week in Washington, the hugely angst-producing debate over whether Howard Dean should lead the Democratic Party out of the George W. Bush wilderness will be decided in a contentious, probably bitter, and ultimately disastrous election, at least for the losers and certainly for the supporters of the losers. A bigger question, of course, is […]

Beginning what looks like a full-scale party offensive, Senate Democrats released a series of legislative proposals this week, which, they say, will serve as their Top 10 agenda items for the current session of Congress. There was a coherence to the enterprise that betrayed some of the policy strategizing and message-messaging that party leaders have […]

For a few weeks before the holidays, there was a school of thought that embraced and promulgated the idea that, at this particular moment, the choice of a new chair of the Democratic National Committee was an inconsequential event. The argument was that the party was so confused at this juncture, embroiled in so many […]