In The News

Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, D-Va., says he hopes the Senate will find a way to avoid the automatic doubling of interest rates on undergraduate subsidized Stafford student loans by a July 1 deadline. “We’re trying to come up with a solution that would enable students to continue to get the education they need to be successful and economically productive without a choking amount of debt,” said Kaine, talking to students and staff at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond t...Continue Reading

Jessica Beneke wants to eventually get a political science degree. But for now she’s taking paralegal classes at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond, paying tuition with government-backed Stafford loans and wondering when she and her fiancé—both of whom have been paying for school with loans—might ever pay off their loan debt.  “It’s killed our credit,” she told U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, who was at the community college Monday to talk to ...Continue Reading

Medicare Part D, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2005, was hailed as the hallmark of “compassionate conservatism.” With the stroke of a pen, Bush gave millions of Medicare recipients access to prescription drug insurance programs. The news media at the time was replete with stories of seniors facing bankruptcy or even death because the price of drugs they needed were out of their reach. Many private, supplemental Medicare ...Continue Reading

Times are changing fast and perhaps in no way faster than in how society views homosexuality. Seven short years ago, Virginia passed a constitutional amendment against gay marriage. Now our two senators — Mark Warner and Tim Kaine — are for marriage equality, and twice our electoral college delegates have gone to Barack Obama, the first president to make gay rights part of his platform. Some view this acceptance as cultural decline, but in another generation, the argument against gay...Continue Reading

President Obama is expected to make a decision in the next few months on the Keystone XL project. As the debate heats up, I worry that the shorthand used in talking about the issue obscures the real point. I’m a pro-pipeline senator. As a former mayor of Richmond, a city with a gas utility, I think it makes no sense to be anti-pipeline. But I oppose the Keystone XL project. Although the president’s decision is technically over whether to allow a pipeline to deliver oil from Alberta t...Continue Reading

As the Senate debates a bipartisan immigration reform proposal that would eventually put 11 million undocumented immigrants on a pathway to citizenship, a House committee led by Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte, R-6th, is moving toward approving a tough enforcement-focused immigration bill. Also Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office said 8 million immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S. would initially gain legal status under the Senate bill, adding that the measure would cut deficits by $197 billio...Continue Reading

Last year in Virginia’s U.S. Senate race, candidate Tim Kaine frequently advocated letting Medicare negotiate drug prices as a way to lower the program’s cost. Now Sen. Kaine is signing on to legislation that would do that. Kaine’s office announced this week he’ll join the list of cosponsors of the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act, which was introduced back in January by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D–Minnesota. The bill would end the prohibition on drug pric...Continue Reading

RAY SUAREZ: We turn now to politics and the ongoing debate over a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented people. The Senate today continued work on a sweeping bill to overhaul the nation's immigration system, moving toward a final vote before July 4. We have another of our one-on-one discussions with lawmakers. Last night, I spoke with Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky for his views of the legislation. He told us he would like to see more conservatives have a hand in shaping the...Continue Reading

President Obama said Syria has “crossed a red line” when it comes to allegations the country used chemical weapons against rebels. Now, the Administration has authorized limited-aid to those rebels. "We're going to keep working for a Syria that's free from Assad's tyranny," said the president in a recent press conference. Some members of Congress say the president may be crossing a different line – the War Powers Act, legislation drawn in 1973. That legislation, passed at the c...Continue Reading

Last week, Democrats helped defeat an amendment that would have required the U.S-Mexican border to be controlled for six months before any undocumented workers could get legal status. Supporters of the underlying bill say that would have tanked the entire proposal. Now supporters are eying other amendments ranging from health care to gay rights. Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine says it's good the debate is open even though some lawmakers are trying to unwind the bill. "There will be some amend...Continue Reading

The Senate Armed Services Committee passed a $625 billion defense bill Friday that would raise the cost cap on the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford and free up nearly $2 billion to restore cuts from sequestration. Sen. Tim Kaine, a member of the committee, said he was pleased with facets of the bill he either drafted or supported. Separately, the House of Representatives passed its version of the defense spending bill. Kaine said the defense bill included key provisions of the first piece of legi...Continue Reading

There will be a good hard look at the Radford Arsenal’s needs for improvements and modernization, if Sen. Tim Kaine gets his way. Kaine won his bid for language in the National Defense Authorization Act requiring the Secretary of Defense review critical military manufacturing facilities, like Radford, that are essential to the nation’s defense industrial base. The aim is to develop a plan for future improvements to the facilities. Kaine also pushed successfully for the spending bill ...Continue Reading

Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, D-Va., is among a group of 14 senators that have written a letter to Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi today, expressing concern about the June 4, 2013 decision by an Egyptian court to sentence 43 Egyptian and international employees of non-governmental organizations –  including 16 Americans – to jail.  “The United States-Egypt relationship is a strategic and important one, and we value our bilateral security cooperation as an anchor of regional...Continue Reading

In what's believed to be the first time since 2005, a U.S. senator gave a floor speech in Spanish Tuesday. That senator, Democrat Tim Kaine of Virginia, spoke for 15 minutes in Spanish to lobby for the passage of the immigration reform bill currently before the Senate. Kaine and the rest of the bill's supporters have fought for the past two weeks to gain bipartisan backing for the measure, which would create a new path to citizenship for approximately 11 million illegal immigrants. Kaine explain...Continue Reading

During Tuesday's debate on the Senate's immigration bill, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) took to the floor and launched into an almost 13-minute speech in support of the bill crafted by the bipartisan "Gang of Eight." That's not the news. The fact that Kaine delivered it in Spanish is, because it's the first time a senator has delivered a full speech on the floor of the Senate in a language other than English. "I think it is appropriate that I spend a few minutes explaining the bill in Spanish, a langua...Continue Reading

When Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, took the Senate floor on Tuesday to deliver a speech in support of an immigration overhaul bill, he did it in a way no senator had done before: entirely in Spanish. “We are going to have hours upon hours of debate about this on the floor of the Senate, and taking 15 minutes to explain the bill in Spanish just seemed like a good idea,” Mr. Kaine said. “Latinos have so much invested in the outcome of the bill, people ought to know wha...Continue Reading

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia showed off his bilingual chops this afternoon, giving a 14-minute Senate floor speech entirely in Spanish in favor of a proposed immigration bill.  “I think it is appropriate that I spend a few minutes explaining the bill in Spanish, a language that has been spoken in this country since Spanish missionaries founded St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565,” said Kaine, who became fluent in the language as a young man while a missionary in Honduras. “...Continue Reading

In what may have been a historic first, Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, D-Va., today delivered a 14-minute speech in Spanish during a U.S. Senate debate on comprehensive immigration reform, pushing for support of a proposal drafted by a group of eight senators. “Let’s show this country and the world that this is not a Republican bill and it is not a Democratic bill but it is a strong bipartisan bill. It is time that we pass comprehensive immigration reform,” Kaine said. The Virginian de...Continue Reading

Washington, DC.- El senador demócrata por Virginia Tim Kaine quiso demostrar el martes 11 su apoyo al proyecto de reforma migratoria que empieza a debatirse en el Senado al recurrir a un gesto poco común en el pleno de esa cámara: un discurso íntegramente en español. Kaine, exgobernador de Virginia y miembro del Senado desde el pasado enero, desempolvó el español que aprendió durante su paso por Honduras como maestro para intervenir en el p...Continue Reading

If the Senate is going to spend the entire month of June debating immigration reform, then Sen. Timothy M. Kaine (D-Va.) figured he should say a word or two in Spanish. A large part of the momentum driving the immigration debate in Congress is the acknowledgment of the growing political power of Latino voters and the need in both parties to engage those voters. Kaine decided to use language skills he learned years ago to explain aspects of the bill to the nation’s roughly 40 million Spanis...Continue Reading