Past Articles by Andrea Seabrook
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Ryan Brings Big Ideas, And Some Risk, To GOP Ticket Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan brings the kind of enthusiasm Mitt Romney could use - he's a darling of the conservative base that Romney has had a harder time winning over. But the ideas that have made him a star - particularly his plans for Medicare - may give Democrats an opening against him. |
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Ryan Offers Romney Risk, Reward Among those on Mitt Romney's list of potential running mates, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin has youth and experience. He's a conservative from a swing state, and he has big ideas and the policy chops to back them up. But the House Budget Committee chairman's fiscal ideas might cost Romney with independents. |
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Ryan May Offer Romney Risk, Reward Among those on Mitt Romney's list of potential running mates, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin has youth and experience. He's a conservative from a swing state, and he has big ideas and the policy chops to back them up. But the House Budget Committee chairman's fiscal ideas might cost Romney with independents. |
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HSBC Accused Of Letting Cartels Launder Money A Senate committee looked at the failure of HSBC bank to police money laundering. |
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Undeterred By Court's Decision, GOP Vows To Repeal Health Care Congressional Republicans reacted to the Supreme Court's validation of President Obama's health care law with a promise to repeal the law. |
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Undeterred, GOP Vows To Repeal Health Care Law Congressional Republicans reacted to the Supreme Court's validation of President Obama's health care law with a promise to repeal the law. |
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Congress Taking Student Loans, Highway Bill To Wire Congressional leaders say they are close to a deal on two issues with looming deadlines. But if Congress fails to lock down agreements this week, the federal highway program would come to a halt, and student loan interest rates would double. |
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Romney's Next Challenge: Woo Skeptical Republicans The presumptive GOP nominee took knocks from congressional Republicans during the party's presidential primaries. But Mitt Romney and his supporters are hoping Republicans will rally behind him ahead of what looks likely to be a hard-fought and close election against President Obama. |
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Big Political Donors Shy Away From Public Scrutiny Some donors willing to write seven-figure checks to superPACs have gotten something they weren't counting on: attention from the political opposition and the media. One donor says he feels like he has a "target strapped on my back." |
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In Fundraising, Walker Had A Governor's Advantage Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker vastly out-raised and outspent his Democratic challenger in the state's recall election, largely on the strength of big donations from out of state. He was helped by a quirk in Wisconsin law, which lets a governor facing a recall vote bypass political donation limits. |
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Sky's The Limit In Campaign Cash For Wis. Governor Scott Walker vastly out-raised and outspent his Democratic challenger in the state's recall election, largely on the strength of big donations from out of state. He was helped by a quirk in Wisconsin law, which lets a governor facing a recall vote bypass political donation limits. |
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#FollowFriday: A Tiny Shred Of Political Authenticity Politicians routinely use Twitter, but harder to find are those whose tweets actually, really, identifiably come from them. The ones who tweet interesting facts, interact with constituents, and even - gasp ? crack jokes on occasion. Let me recommend a few who walk the walk and tweet the tweet. |
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Some In GOP Warming To Parts Of Health Care Law If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns President Obama's health care law, they could be faced with political problems from two camps - those with pre-existing conditions and adult children who are on their parent's insurance plans. |
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Health Law's Downfall Could Put GOP In Odd Spot Republicans have rallied for repeal of the Affordable Care Act since the very day it passed. But now the GOP has a problem: Some provisions in the law are very popular with voters. If the Supreme Court strikes the law down, choosing whether to try to revive those parts could be difficult. |
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Remember The Debt Ceiling Debate? It's Back In the past week, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner have begun a new round of sparring over the U.S. debt ceiling. It's part of a number of problems involving debt, taxes and spending that are all slated to come to a head in early 2013. And solutions aren't likely before Election Day. |
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Group Aiming To Bypass Party Politics Hits Bumps Americans Elect is trying to run the first online primary to choose a presidential ticket, and get it on the ballot in all 50 states. But the group is having trouble attracting big-name candidates and refuses to name its financial backers. |
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On Tour With Nancy Pelosi, Fundraising Rock Star In the last decade, Pelosi has raised close to $300 million for Democrats. We recently traveled with Pelosi on a fundraising trip. |
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Obama Fundraising Shows Focus on New Technologies While superPACs are turning out to be some of the biggest moneymakers this election season, President Obama, so far, has stayed old school. He is raising funds for his traditional campaign committee, Obama for America, and a party fund that he can use. |
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Obama Revs Up House Democrats For Election-Year Fight On Friday, President Obama stopped by the Democrats' retreat in Maryland, where he recapped the themes of his State of the Union address and previewed the Democrats' election message: They've done everything they can, they'll say, and Republicans have played politics. |
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House GOP's 2012 Mission: Unity Against Obama When Republicans took over the majority in the House of Representatives, they had a strong sense of unity and purpose. Their mood is more sober a year later, after a series of partisan political fights throughout 2011 blocked their agenda and tarnished their image among voters. So this past weekend, the House GOP gathered in Baltimore to regroup and set out their priorities for 2012. |
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New Hampshire Voters Speak Out New Hampshire accounts for a tiny portion of the delegates Republicans are competing for - just 5 percent. But voters in the Granite State feel their votes serve as an important vetting process and spring board for candidates. |
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GOP Candidates In Race To Prove Conservatism Republican candidates are battling in New Hampshire this weekend, ahead of Tuesday's make-or-break primary. With six main candidates still in the race, a main point of contention among them is: Who's the REAL conservative? |
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Spotlight Shines On Late Riser Rick Santorum Rick Santorum's late rise in the Iowa polls after months in the low single digits has let him skip a lot of scrutiny from the media and his opponents. A look at some of his more noteworthy positions during his years in the U.S. Senate. |
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Why Tea Party Freshmen Caved On Payroll Tax Deal They spent weeks vowing to oppose a short-term compromise bill extending payroll tax cuts and unemployment insurance. But in the end, not one of them showed up to oppose Speaker Boehner's plan. NPR has new details about the Tea Party's private deliberations. |
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On The Hill, Gingrich Made Friends And Enemies Newt Gingrich has spent decades weaving relationships in and around government - starting with his successful campaign to win the House majority back in the early 1990s. Some of his most ardent supporters now worked with him back then - but some of his angriest opponents did, too. |
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Did Bush Tax Cuts Foreshadow Supercommitte's Failure? The struggles in Washington to get budget deficits under control go back more than a decade. From the time of the budget surpluses and the question of what to do with them, the Capital and the nation have been deeply divided over President George W. Bush's push to give back the surplus as tax cuts. Now, with those tax cuts among the biggest factors behind an exploding federal debt, a solution remains just as elusive. |
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Did Bush Tax Cuts Foreshadow Committee's Failure? Lawmakers have spent much of this year struggling to reach a deal that could get budget deficits under control. But the problem has been developing for at least a decade. In 2000, there was a $200 billion surplus. |
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The Long, Slow March Toward Supercommittee's Crisis Lawmakers have spent much of this year struggling to reach a deal that could get budget deficits under control. But the problem has been developing for at least a decade. In 2000, there was a $200 billion surplus. |
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A Potential Superhero For The Supercommittee At a hearing before the bipartisan deficit-cutting panel on Tuesday, the head of the Congressional Budget Office managed to short-circuit partisan bickering over the debt by laying out some facts: Trimming around the edges is not going to be enough to slash the deficit this fall, Doug Elmendorf warned. |
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In GOP Presidential Field, Science Finds Skeptics Republicans have a new front-runner for president, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who doubts the science of climate change and says creationism should be taught alongside evolution. He's not alone in these views, which may be on display before a national audience at Wednesday night's GOP debate. |
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CBO Releases Report On Economy, Federal Budget The federal budget problem has gotten a little bit better. That's according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which released a new report Wednesday. The CBO estimates that this year's deficit will hit about $1.3 trillion. That's a huge amount of red ink - but it's also slightly less red ink than last year. |
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Va. Truck Stop Owner Irked At Washington Politicians Corey Berkstresser's father bought the Lee Hi Travel Plaza in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains in the mid 80s. The family has worked hard to build up the business. But these days, gas prices are up and the effects of the bad economy are showing up everywhere. Even the tips the waitresses get are down. Everyone is blaming Washington for the mess. |
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Supercommittee Picks Fuel Doubts Over Its Success The supercommittee is tasked with finding a longer-term plan for the federal government's spending. But the politics of the panel's co-chairs may be a roadblock to negotiations. |
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Supercommittee's Picks Fuel Doubts Over Its Success The supercommittee is tasked with finding a longer-term plan for the federal government's spending. But the politics of the panel's co-chairs may be a roadblock to negotiations. |
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Debt Downgrade: A Spark For Political Compromise? "The silver lining to the downgrade is it'll make us face reality in Washington," says GOP freshman Andy Harris. Many in Washington - and on Wall Street - are pinning their hopes on a supercommittee being created to come up with ways to cut the deficit. |
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In less than four weeks, the U.S. government could go into default on some of its debts. President Obama has been spending a lot of time talking to lawmakers. On Thursday, he gathered Congress's top brass in a White House conference room to lay the groundwork for what he hopes will be a final deal, which would get the federal budget under control, and raise the debt limit before that default-deadline. |
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Obama Calls Democratic, GOP Leaders To Debt Talks President Obama invited congressional leaders to the White House for face-to-face meetings on the budget Thursday. He wants to reach a deal within two weeks, which would leave time to raise the federal debt ceiling before an Aug. 2 deadline. |
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You Know What's Wrong With Congress Congress seems to have no answers on the debt-ceiling issue, so NPR's Andrea Seabrook takes it to the people. What do they think lawmakers should do? What do they want? Do former members of Congress have any insight into what it will take to get a deal? |
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House Votes On Libya Resolutions The House voted Friday on two resolutions dealing with NATO-led military operations in Libya. The first would have authorized U.S. operations for a year - that failed. The second would have placed severe funding limits on American involvement in the conflict - that failed too. |
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GOP Leaves Talks On Raising Federal Debt Ceiling The Obama administration has set a hard deadline of Aug. 2 for Congress to come up with a deal on raising the debt ceiling, and pass it into law. But the parties have hit a stalemate on the issue of taxes. |
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Bernanke: Government Borrowing Is Unsustainable The influential group, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, held a meeting Tuesday that featured heavy-hitters from the economic world, including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. They warned that the budget crisis is worse than many people assume, and fixing it will be very painful. |
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Zombies Walk The Halls Of Congress Political scandals don't always kill the participants. Some survive. Some give up the ghost. Some whose careers have died keep on going. |
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Democrats Ponder Whether Weiner Should Stay Or Go Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) said he will not resign after admitting to inappropriate exchanges with women online and tweeting a lewd picture of himself. Democratic leaders must decide whether to ask Weiner to resign. In the past, Weiner has been an effective communicator for their causes. |
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The long-distance signature machine has its critics, but it had a great admirer in Thomas Jefferson and was found to produce a valid presidential signature during the George W. Bush administration. Now, it has signed an extension of the USA Patriot Act into law. |
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Lawmakers Meet To Discuss Deficit In the midst of the deficit and debt crisis, budget heavyweights gathered in Washington, D.C., to talk about ideas for the future. This includes Bill Clinton, Paul Ryan and most of the late Gang of Six. |
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Pelosi: 'You Can't Let Their Anger Take You Down' In 1958, a young Nancy D'Alesandro watched a high school friend pull a debate topic out of a bowl. The question: "Do women think?" Now, the person who achieved the highest political rank for a woman in American history reflects on how far she's come - and the attacks that seem more focused on her appearance and her ambition, rather than her ideas. |
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Politicians And Their Wives: What's Fair Game? Political wives and their messy marriages have been at the top of the news this week - from Maria Shriver to Callista Gingrich to Cheri Daniels. It's not a new phenomenon. Says one political consultant: "There is no definition of fair game. So whatever you think it is, you can disabuse yourself of any of that notion." |
