On Dec. 8, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 4297, the Tax Cut Extension Reconciliation Act of 2005, by a vote of 234-197. Unlike its companion bill in the Senate, S. 2020, H.R. 4297 does not include charitable reform provisions. There are also a number of other major differences between the two bills that the House and Senate are expected to iron out in conference. A House-Senate conference could begin as early as next week, though it is unclear whether conferees will have enough time to come to agreement before Congress adjourns for the year.

Faith-based organizations and nonprofits got higher marks than government for their hurricane recovery efforts, according to a poll of Louisiana residents. "Louisiana residents were not particularly charitable when it came to evaluating government response to recent hurricanes, but were considerably more favorable of the efforts of faith-based organizations and nonprofits, including local community foundations and Red Cross," according to the survey by Louisiana State University. The complete survey can be found at http://www.survey.lsu.edu/.

The Federal Election Commission this week issued a draft rule on “coordination.” This Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was initiated as a result of an order of U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who ruled in Shays v. FEC that the FEC’s rule defining “coordination” undercut BCRA’s statutory purpose of regulating campaign finance and preventing circumvention of the campaign finance rules. For the draft reulemaking

Both the Washington Post and New York Times reported today the Sec. State Rice criticized Russia for moving against NGOs. A proposed law, which will be voted on Dec. 16, would ban foreign NGOs and limit what foreigh grants and foreign employees Russian NGOs could have. All NGOs would have to re-register and a state agency would decide if they can continue to operate. Officials are defending the bill, saying it is needed to crack down on graft and stop terrorist influence over NGOs.