Last Week In Congress: How Cascadia’s U.S. lawmakers voted (June 17th-21st)

Good morn­ing! Here’s how Cas­ca­di­a’s Mem­bers of Con­gress vot­ed on major issues dur­ing the leg­isla­tive week end­ing Fri­day, June 21st, 2019.

In the United States House of Representatives

$982.8 BILLION SPENDING PACKAGE: Vot­ing 226 for and 203 against, the House on June 19th approved a $982.8 bil­lion pack­age con­sist­ing of four of the twelve appro­pri­a­tions bills that will fund gov­ern­ment oper­a­tions in fis­cal 2020, which starts Octo­ber 1st, 2019.

The bill (H.R. 2740) funds a $690.2 bil­lion Pen­ta­gon bud­get while repeal­ing the 2001 Autho­riza­tion for Use of Mil­i­tary Force (AUMF) and pro­hibit­ing the diver­sion of mil­i­tary funds to wall con­struc­tion on the south­east border.

In addi­tion, the bill would pro­vide $17.2 bil­lion for oper­at­ing the State Depart­ment and $24 bil­lion in bilat­er­al for­eign aid includ­ing $3.3 bil­lion for Israel, $1.52 bil­lion for Jor­dan, $1.4 bil­lion for Egypt and $445.7 mil­lion for Ukraine.

The bill also would appropriate:

• $42.2 bil­lion for K‑12 edu­ca­tion programs;
• $41.1 bil­lion for the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health;
• $13.3 bil­lion for the Depart­ment of Labor;
• $4 bil­lion for the Cen­ters for Medicare and Med­ic­aid Services;
• and $495 mil­lion for the Cor­po­ra­tion for Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing, among hun­dreds of oth­er outlays.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Cas­ca­dia total: 10 aye votes, 6 nay votes, 1 not voting

WARRANTLESS COLLECTION OF AMERICANS’ COMMUNICATIONS: Vot­ing 175 for and 253 against, the House on June 18th defeat­ed an amend­ment to H.R. 2740 (above) aimed at restrict­ing intel­li­gence agen­cies’ use of the bil­lions of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions involv­ing Amer­i­cans inad­ver­tent­ly col­lect­ed as part of war­rant­less sur­veil­lance of for­eign tar­gets under Sec­tion 702 of the For­eign Intel­li­gence Sur­veil­lance Act. The amend­ment sought to with­hold fund­ing to admin­is­ter Sec­tion 702 next fis­cal year unless the gov­ern­ment takes addi­tion­al steps to pre­vent vio­la­tions of Amer­i­cans’ Fourth Amend­ment pri­va­cy rights.

For exam­ple, stricter con­trols would have to be imposed to keep agen­cies from using war­rant­less tar­get­ing of for­eign­ers, which is per­mit­ted, to inten­tion­al­ly or acci­den­tal­ly access the com­mu­ni­ca­tions of peo­ple in the Unit­ed States.

The FISA law gives agen­cies includ­ing the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency and FBI war­rant­less access to com­mer­cial data­bas­es of for­eign­ers’ voice and dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions — phone calls, emails, online chats, text mes­sag­ing and social-media post­ings — that pass through wire­less and land­line facil­i­ties in the Unit­ed States. But in order to use the data to tar­get Amer­i­cans, they must obtain court war­rants based on prob­a­ble cause.

When the gov­ern­ment inad­ver­tent­ly col­lects inno­cent Amer­i­cans’ com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the infor­ma­tion must be expunged or dis­re­gard­ed, although the law lacks a means for out­siders to see if that has occurred.

Spon­sor Justin Amash, R‑Michigan, said his amend­ment would “allow the gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue using Sec­tion 702 for its stat­ed pur­pose of gath­er­ing for­eign intel­li­gence, while lim­it­ing the gov­ern­men­t’s war­rant­less col­lec­tion of Amer­i­cans’ conversations.”

Mike Conaway, R‑Texas, said the amend­ment could mean that “if a ter­ror­ist locat­ed in a for­eign coun­try com­mu­ni­cates with con­spir­a­tors locat­ed in the Unit­ed States, the Intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty might not be able to use Sec­tion 702 to tar­get that ter­ror­ist because he is com­mu­ni­cat­ing with a per­son in the Unit­ed States.”

A yes vote was to adopt the amendment.

Cas­ca­dia total: 9 aye votes, 7 nay votes, 1 not voting

U.S. FUNDING TO COMBAT CLIMATE DAMAGE: Vot­ing 174 for and 251 against, the House on June 18th defeat­ed an amend­ment to pro­hib­it U.S. fund­ing in H.R. 2740 (above) to sup­port the Unit­ed Nations Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change. With one hun­dred and nine­ty-five sig­na­to­ry nations includ­ing the Unit­ed States, the con­ven­tion, or treaty, is the gov­ern­ing author­i­ty for a series of inter­na­tion­al efforts to slow the rate of glob­al warming.

For exam­ple, it ush­ered in the Kyoto Pro­to­col in 1997, the Paris Agree­ment in 2015 and, in 2010, the goal among nations to lim­it glob­al tem­per­a­ture ris­es to 2 degrees Cel­sius above pre-indus­tri­al (about 1850) levels.

Amend­ment spon­sor Jodey Arring­ton, R‑Texas, called it “reck­less and naive to bind tax­pay­ers to inter­na­tion­al agree­ments that com­pro­mise our free­dom and our eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty and vir­tu­al­ly do noth­ing to impact the environment.”

Harley Rou­da, D‑California, said: “Nine­ty-sev­en per­cent of sci­en­tists rec­og­nize that cli­mate change is real. The Depart­ment of Defense rec­og­nizes this is one of the top, if not the num­ber one, nation­al threats to our security.”

A yes vote was to with­hold Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment sup­port of inter­na­tion­al efforts to address cli­mate damage.

Cas­ca­dia total: 5 aye votes, 11 nay votes, 1 not voting

CITIZENSHIP QUESTION ON CENSUS: Vot­ing 192 for and 240 against, the House on June 20th defeat­ed a Repub­li­can effort to fund the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s pro­posed addi­tion of a cit­i­zen­ship ques­tion to the 2020 census.

The amend­ment was offered to a $690.4 bil­lion spend­ing pack­age (HR 3055) for fis­cal 2020 that remained in debate at week’s end.

The Supreme Court is now weigh­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of a cit­i­zen­ship ques­tion, which Democ­rats say is a par­ti­san tac­tic to deter undoc­u­ment­ed aliens from tak­ing part in the cen­sus. Under the Con­sti­tu­tion, the decen­ni­al cen­sus is required to count all per­sons liv­ing in the Unit­ed States.

Amend­ment spon­sor Steve King, R‑Iowa, referred to the use of the cen­sus in allo­cat­ing con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts and said…

… it is impor­tant that we under­stand that the voic­es in this Con­gress be the voic­es of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens, not the voic­es of ille­gal aliens.

Jose Ser­ra­no, D‑New York, said the amend­ment would…

… reduce the accu­ra­cy and increase the under­count in places like Flori­da, Texas, Alaba­ma, Michi­gan, Cal­i­for­nia and New York. This, in turn, will affect reap­por­tion­ment and the dis­tri­b­u­tion of fed­er­al funds for the next decade in many of the com­mu­ni­ties we represent.

A yes vote was to adopt the Repub­li­can amendment.

Cas­ca­dia total: 5 aye votes, 11 nay votes, 1 not voting

In the United States Senate

BLOCKING ARMS FOR SAUDI ARABIA: Vot­ing 53 for and 45 against, the Sen­ate on June 20th adopt­ed a mea­sure (S.J. Res­o­lu­tion 36) that would dis­ap­prove of bil­lions of dol­lars in planned and ongo­ing U.S. arms sales to Sau­di Ara­bia and its allies in the Mid­dle East for use in a Sau­di-led war against Iran­ian-backed forces in Yemen. Con­gress vot­ed this year to end U.S. involve­ment in the Yemen war, but Pres­i­dent Trump suc­cess­ful­ly vetoed the measure.

Rand Paul, R‑Kentucky, said the Saud­is already have “enough arms to blow up the Mid­dle East ten times over. Is there just no stop­ping? Is there no lim­i­ta­tion to what we will do? Do we not believe that any of our arms sales should be con­di­tioned on behavior?”

Jim Risch, R‑Idaho, said: “These sales are need­ed to address the legit­i­mate secu­ri­ty require­ments of oth­er coun­tries we sup­port in response to there being numer­ous threats from Iran and its prox­ies. These threats are real.”

A yes vote was to block the arms sales.

Cas­ca­dia total: 4 aye votes, 2 nay votes

Key votes ahead

The House will debate fis­cal 2020 appro­pri­a­tions bills in the week of June 24th, while the Sen­ate will take up the 2020 mil­i­tary bud­get and emer­gency spend­ing to deal with immi­gra­tion over­flow on the south­west border.

Edi­tor’s Note: The infor­ma­tion in NPI’s week­ly How Cas­ca­di­a’s U.S. law­mak­ers vot­ed fea­ture is pro­vid­ed by Votera­ma in Con­gress, a ser­vice of Thomas Vot­ing Reports. All rights are reserved. Repro­duc­tion of this post is not per­mit­ted, not even with attri­bu­tion. Use the per­ma­nent link to this post to share it… thanks!

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