In This Issue:

Leading the Past Week; Legislative Branch; and Executive Branch.

Excerpt from Leading the Past Week -

The past week could be best described by one word. Chaos. In the House, a scheduled vote on the Helping Sick Americans Now Act, was abruptly pulled from the floor leaving for nearly two days of debate on a bill to protect America’s Helium reserves. While last week the Senate was forced to spend the whole week on the Market Place Equity Act, without even being able to vote on amendments or final passage as non-sales tax state Senators used a variety of procedural maneuvers to extend the debate on the issue. This “legislative chaos” also consumed other matters, for example the Brown-Vitter legislation was introduced with four Republican cosponsors at the beginning of the week, however by the end of the week, two of those had withdrawn, and it looked like others were also considering withdrawing their support as well. In spite of all of this chaos, Congress was able to pass a small fix to the sequester to deal with furloughs at the FAA, which will have an immediate impact on what had been a growing problem of flight delays, and perhaps was the most visible component of the impact of the sequester. However, while the majority of the sequester’s impacts continue to be seen below the surface, it is clear that there is effect on the economy. Whether Congress will choose to intervene again to put forward another fix will ultimately depend on the publicity the problem is receiving.