Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) have announced they've created a Super-Deficit Reduction website for people to track progress and check on key issues addressed.

The official name is Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction site, DeficitReduction.gov.

This public website will allow visitors to view the latest news and notices, live stream hearings and submit suggestions for the Committee’s consideration. Viewers may also access the adopted rules of the committee and navigate to each member’s personal website. 

It also allows citizens to voice concerns.

The 2011 Defense Department appropriations bill, which we mentioned in an earlier post here, has moved through the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The vote was 18-12. The bill includes three items items inserted by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., which provides money for three Spokane tech agencies or firms.

Those items are covered in the earlier post. The next step is consideration of the bill by the full Senate. It’s not clear when that will occur.

 

Patty Murray, D-Wash., has added language to the 2011 defense appropriation bill that would benefit area businesses and organizations. Here are the key Eastern Washington items added to the bill, which is now being considered by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

1. Washington State University’s Applied Science Laboratory: $1 million to be used to establish a fuel and energy lab at the ASL in Spokane. One goal is to work with Spokane’s ReliOn in developing alternative energy sources for the Navy.
   
2. WSU’s Positron Capture and Storage Project: $3 million for reseach into positron storage,  a high-density, concentrated non-nuclear energy source.
   
3. Spokane tech company Next IT: $1.5 million to design and develop virtual agent software to help servicemembers, vets and families obtain information about care and treatment.

 

 

At a time of heightened concerns over threats to government officials, federal authorities in Spokane kept quiet about the discovery of a bomb found alongside the Thomas S. Foley U.S. Courthouse last week.

They acknowledged the investigation Wednesday, however, after the latest edition of Newsweek magazine disclosed the March 28 discovery as part of an article examining increasing anti-government threats and violence spreading across the nation.

U.S. Attorney Jim McDevitt defended the decision to try keeping the case under wraps.

Read the rest of Thomas Clouse’s story here.

The news comes the same week a Selah man was charged in federal court with threatening to kill Democratic Sen. Patty Murray over her support for health care reform.

Charles Alan Wilson, 63, was arrested in Yakima on Tuesday, accused of leaving voicemail messages at Murray’s office saying she had a target on her back and “it only takes one piece of lead.”

Read the Associated Press story here.

If you’d like to “chat” about health care reform and you’ll be at your computer around 12:45 p.m. Wednesday, here’s an unusual opportunity:

Sen. Patty Murray and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius are hosting an “online chat” to discuss the topic. They’ll be answering questions that have either been submitted in advance to Murray’s Web site or questions that come in during the session through a special page setup on Facebook.

To watch the on-line chat live, click here between 12:45 p.m. and 1:15 p.m.

To submit a question during the chat through Facebook, click here.

For those who are philosophically opposed to joining social networking sites on which people from whom they’ve successfully hidden for decades might find and “friend” them, you can submit a question through Murray’s Web site by clicking here.

The $787 billion economic stimulus bill to be signed tomorrow by President Obama “is not the end of what we need to do,” U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said Monday.

She said the package, which includes billions for transportation, education, unemployment benefits and other help, was the best compromise on a controversial plan. But more remains to be done, she said, to shore up the banking industry and deal with the rapid increase in home foreclosures. Members of Congress have been warned that Obama’s budget proposal, to be released soon, will be a tough budget “in terms of cutbacks,” she said.

Murray was in Olympia Monday, meeting with Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, House Speaker Frank Chopp and other state officials.

The plan will help state budget writers somewhat. It includes $2 billion in new money for Medicaid, $2 billion for cleanup work at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, as well as $812 million in state stabilization money, most of it for education.

“That was a significant debate,” Murray said of the stabilization money. Key lawmakers, she said, were concerned about accountability over how that state money gets spent.

“There was a lot of concern among them about sending money out to the state that wasn’t going to be accountable, and having, a year from now, midnight basketball thrown back at us if that’s what the money was spent for,” she said.

And with the state wrestling with a budget shortfall estimated at at least $6 billion, Murray said that state lawmakers will still have tough choices to make. Lawmakers were clearly hoping for more state dollars, she said, but are grateful for the federal help nonetheless.

Some $500 million in new cash for the state’s roads and bridges will be largely up to the state Department of Transportation and local transportation authorities to divide up, she said.

But Murray urged patience, saying the money will take time to work its way into the economy.
“I think my worst fear is people are going to think things are better next Friday,” she said. Some economists, she cautioned, say that the stimulus might not start turning around the economy until the end of the year.

“But the alternative of doing nothing,” she said, “we would see an impact almost immediately.